Oswego Movement

The Oswego Movement (or Oswego Plan as it is sometimes called) was a movement in American education during the late 19th Century. It was based on the methods of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and introduced by Edward Austin Sheldon at Oswego Primary Teachers' Training School (now State University of New York at Oswego). The movement introduced the use of "objects", such as models and blocks, into elementary education under the name "object teaching". Sheldon and his colleagues helped spread object teaching across America by utilizing in-service and pre-service teacher education, a practice school, and education of teacher educators, at a time when most of these things were new. This enlightenment in education shifted the instructional focus to the child, stressing activity and concrete experiences, rather than rote memorization.