This historically‐themed critical paper begins by reappraising selective early‐career progressive education writings by John Dewey in relation to how physical education was organized and taught in the Gary Schools, a programme Dewey widely praised in Schools of Tomorrow (Dewey & Dewey, 1915). The initial research context therefore is one which recognises that straddling the twentieth century between the mid-1890s and mid-1910s was a period when the emphasis in schooling in the United States of America moved from serving and sustaining rural and largely agricultural communities to invigorating education in new urban industrial towns and cities (Cohen, 2002). In building momentum for new innovative schools, Dewey & Dewey (1915/1980) collated ten school examples, the most notable in public rather than private schooling terms was the Gary Schools Plan, which had over 1000 pupils by 1908 and 3000 pupils in 1911 (Cohen & Mohl, 1979). Gary in Indiana was a rapidly expanding steel making city where public schools were ‘becoming world famous by providing more balanced attention to work, play and study’ (Reese, 2013, p. 328). The Gary Schools aimed to instill the idea of education reflecting the occupations of life with children experiencing extended opportunities to learn in playgrounds, gardens, libraries as well as machine shops, laboratories and assembly halls (Cremin, 1961). By running classroom and work/play programmes concurrently the Gary schools could be efficient with twice the number of pupils in attendance relative to the norm in other schools. Thus, through drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, the paper analyses the connections between John Dewey and the Gary Schools Plan in their shared quest to extend progressive education into new urban and industrial schooling contexts and highlights in relation to the nature of body/mind education areas of disconnection between theory and practice. For example, it remains likely that field observations by John Dewey himself might have led to a more critical perspective on the Gary Schools being made with findings having more in common with the lengthy subject specific evaluations body/mind education made by Hammer (1918).

Notwithstanding these concerns, the paper then focusses on selective mid‐career writings by John Dewey in relation to how habit and embodiment could effectively thrive as part of an enhanced physical education/health and wellbeing focus in schools. To date, very few research connections have linked John Dewey's educational thinking with the public health influences underpinning strengths‐based thinking on physical education/health and wellbeing, a situation compounded in some instances by considering there to be a separate body and mind (Dewey, 1928). Thus, the paper centres on Dewey's belief that habits when allied to continuity and interaction could help children to integrate experiences in ways which enable them to constructively evaluate the contribution of physical education/health and wellbeing to their education. For Dewey, habits were not mere repetitious events but more by way of acquired socially shaped predispositions which enable feelings and judgements to be shown in response to settings. By extension therefore psycho‐physical concepts of habit learned through physical education/health and wellbeing could be applied with a wider mental/moral dimension (Dewey, 1922/2012), as evident for example by continuous open‐ended experiences where learners' initiative and curiosity is used to reconstruct experiences in order to grow further. As experiences proliferate, learners' thoughts and feelings can become part of a repertoire of flexible and suitably sensitized habits which reveal independent thought, critical inquiry, observation, experimentation, foresight, and sympathy for others. The paper concludes with a specific example of how the connections between habit, embodiment and physical education/health and wellbeing could benefit contemporary schooling.

This historically‐themed critical paper begins by reappraising selective early‐career progressive education writings by John Dewey in relation to how physical education was organized and taught in the Gary Schools. In preparing this part of the presentation, the submission benefits from the primary data sourced from the Libby Library at Indiana University which contains the extended archival writings and notes from William Wirt the first Principal of the Gary Schools Plan. The second part of the presentation makes extended use of John Dewey's later writings, including some of his more occasional writings on the body and mind specifically.

This paper has reappraised the coherence between John Dewey’s progressive pedagogies and the early years of the Gary Schools Plan with regard to the body/mind specifically. These questions have been raised at a time when there has been a resurgence of interest in the writings of Dewey. Evidence suggests that there is a need for caution in suggesting that John Dewey and William Wirt had a close working relationships and that the Gary Schools Plan was particularly illuminating in its views of body/mind development. That said the second part of the presentation highlights that in terms of conceptual thinking Dewey's later writings from around 1922-1928 in particular have a great deal of relevance and traction for contemporary thinking on health and wellbeing. Next, the paper reviewed the extent of

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