New Designs for Learning: Highlights of the Reports of the Ontario Curriculum Institute, 1963-1966 9781442632738

Table of contents :
Preface
Contents
Editor's Note
Introduction
Part One. The Curriculum and The Functions of The School
Introduction
Social and Individual Aspects of the Curriculum
For Whom We Teach
A Curriculum Credo
Part Two. New Curricula
Introduction
Reading
Science
Mathematics
Modern Languages
The Humanities and The Social Sciences
Part Three. New Technology and The Curriculum
Introduction
Overview
Teaching Materials in the Reading Programme
Part Four. Evaluating New Curricula
Introduction
Evaluating the Curriculum
Evaluation in the Reading Programme
Part Five. Curriculum Research
Introduction
Suggested Research Topics
Needed Curriculum Research
Part Six. New Designs for Learning
Introduction
Curriculum Change
Instructional Trends in the United States
A New Model For Educational Research and Development
Governors of The Ontario Curriculum Institute, 1963 - 1966

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NEW DESIGNS FOR LEARNING

In these past two decades we have been experiencing an unprecedented acceleration in the rate of growth of learning and the application of science to critical areas of human endeavour. The knowledge explosion has not only created unquestioned benefits, it has also served as a catalyst for social, economic, and political changes of a disturbing nature. The rate of change has left us no time to reach agreement upon the use of the new learning and the powerful new technologies. Today government, universities, and schools share the major burden for dealing with these problems of change. In 1960, in order to obtain answers to problems of curriculum reform, a Joint Committee of the University of Toronto and the Board of Education for the City of Toronto was established, and its work led to the creation of the Ontario Curriculum Institute. This volume, which may be looked upon as a sequal to the Joint Committee's Report, Design for Learning, edited by Northrop Frye (University of Toronto Press 1962), contains the highlights from the reports of the Ontario Curriculum Institute Study Committees, December 1963 to May 1966. It outlines the way in which the field of education is adapting to its responsible role of preparing the young people of this country for a world of rapid growth and change. who was educated athe Universities of oronto, Londonand Stockholm, was formerly Head of the History Department, York Memorial Collegiate. As Assistant to the Director of the Ontario Curriculum Institute, Mr. Burnham edited many of the original study reports. At the merger he became Staff Project Director, Office of Development, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. BRIAN BURNHAM,

The Ontario Curriculum Institute is now The Office of the Coordinator of Development The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

NEW DESIGNS FOR LEARNING Highlights of the reports of the Ontario Curriculum Institute 1963-1966

Edited and with Introductions by BRIAN BURNHAM Office a] Development

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Published for The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education by University of Toronto Press

Copyright Canada 1967 by University of Toronto Press Printed in Canada

Curriculum Series No. 1 The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Inquiries about this Series should be directed to the Institute, 102 Bloor Street West, Toronto 5.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily of The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Preface T he Ontario Curriculum Institute (OCI) was chartered as a non-profit corporation in January 1963. The Institute's objective, as defined at the founding conference, was: "In the interest of the advancement of education, to study and to promote study of all phases of the curriculum in the schools and universities of Ontario from the standpoint of content and the nature of the learning process and to disseminate the results of such study." The terms of reference were broad, and they began to expand as the task was taken up: studies in methodology and in school and classroom organization, the design of experimental materials, and a host of enterprises associated with curriculum renewal were soon undertaken. Equally broad was the support for the Institute. The provincial Department of Education, the Ontario Teachers' Federation, the sixteen provincial universities, the Ontario School Trustees' Council, all the major boards of education of the province, the associations representing school inspectors and administrators—all major segments of the educational community, in fact, shared in the founding and funding of OCI. Representatives of these organizations also constituted a Board of Governors. Appended to this volume is a listing of the men, women, agencies, and institutions who shared in the governance of the Institute. In giving so generously of their energies and abilities, these policy makers were the vital linchpins coupling the activities of OCI to the needs of the educational community. Many governors went even further in the discharge of their self-imposed responsibilities and joined in the investigative and developmental work for which the Institute was created. Financial support for the study programs also came from the voluntary contributions of business and industry, private individuals, and philanthropic foundations. These acts of generosity were not restricted to the province of Ontario, or to Canada, but extended beyond to the United States where the curriculum reform movement was already under way. Some notable beginnings had already been made in Ontario too. In the early 1950's, on the initiative of the Ontario Teachers' Federation, the Ontario Association for Curriculum Development, a voluntary, broad-based organization similar in nature to the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development in the U.S.A., had come into being. Thus many of

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PREFACE

the organizations which came together to create the Ontario Curriculum Institute already had had ten years of experience in co-operative examination of educational problems. It was, therefore, already an accepted premise that together the diverse educational organizations could do a better job than they could working as individual task forces. Furthermore, projects such as the creation of the Ontario Mathematics Commission, supported financially by the Teachers' Federation and the provincial authorities, demonstrated that a consortium of classroom teachers, supervisory personnel, and university scholars could, similarly, do a better job of curriculum renewal than could any group singly. This experience was repeated in the natural sciences, foreign languages, mathematics, English, and social sciences when the Joint Committee of the University of Toronto and the Toronto Board of Education established these five study groups in 1960-1961. In many ways the OCI was the heir to the Joint Committee's efforts. The pattern of work established by three of the Joint Committee's study teams, whose findings were published in Designs for Learning (1962) by the University of Toronto Press, was adapted and enlarged upon by the Curriculum Institute. The resulting mode of operation called for two types of study committees. First to be launched were subject-oriented investigations. From these microcosmic studies might result marginal gains in the quality of course content, methods, and learning resources in traditional areas of instruction. But committees were encouraged to think beyond merely shoring up existing structures. They were encouraged to envisage blueprints for entirely new approaches to the field under study and to the total school program in the light of today's needs and knowledge. Where new units were designed, it was hoped that they might rest upon a conceptual framework of broad application. And always it was to be understood that whatever emerged as new curricula was to be forwarded as an alternative, a new way of organizing for learning, not as a new orthodoxy or stereotype to be unthinkingly accepted. Committees of this type were composed of persons specially qualified to play one or more of the many roles associated with (1) defining an area of inquiry, (2) designing and (3) executing an initial research and development program, (4) experimental and field testing, (5) evaluation, (6) teacher re-education, and (7) dissemination of the new programs of materials. In practice, these or similar tasks occur over a span of years and require inclusion of leading scholars, teachers, psychologists, educational researchers, and administrators familiar with the school system. Laymen representing business, industry, labour, and school trustees have important roles too in communicating societal values and practical viewpoints. Committees move through phases

PREFACE

VU

of their work and alter their composition accordingly. Most of the developmental work requiring the day-in and day-out concentration of the whole committee working together was done, after the fashion of the Joint Committee and the Mathematics Commission, during the summer months when the Institute could purchase the services of professional educators without removing them from classrooms or offices. Planning, research, and trials took place mainly during the school year using needed talent on part- or full-time bases. This pattern proved satisfactory in the early stages of work. Later phases tend to require more and more time from fewer and fewer persons, usually specialists in field-test supervision, evaluation, and so forth. The OCI inherited another very valuable asset of the Joint Committee, Dr. J. R. H. Morgan, who as Superintendent of Secondary Schools of the Toronto Board of Education had been closely associated with the Joint Committee's studies. Shortly after the incorporation of the OCI, Dr. Morgan was persuaded to direct the permanent headquarters staff in support of the efforts of hundreds of part-time workers. Under Dr. Morgan and his successor, Dr. K. F. Prueter, the second type of study essential to major curriculum renewal was undertaken. When work commenced in 1963, it was agreed that the advance must be on the broadest possible front if significant gains were to be made. It was evident not only that all subject areas needed up-grading and up-dating, but that comprehensive or macrocosmic studies, for example, examination of the scope and organization of the total curriculum, of administrative practices, of school construction, were wanted. Research of many kinds in many fields and programs for the pre-service and in-service education of teachers had to be articulated with curriculum development. In time it became clear that each microcosmic and macrocosmic study must find its place in an all-encompassing systems approach to educational reform. It also became increasingly obvious both that this was a longer and harder road than had been anticipated and that it was an expensive trail to blaze. Moreover, communication with another agency vitally concerned with improving the quality of the classroom learning experience, the Ontario College of Education, through its Departments of Educational Research and of Graduate Studies, could obviously be improved if an organic union were effected. The decision to join forces was in keeping with the Ontario experience that curriculum renewal was most readily achieved when all the interested parties worked together as closely as possible. Union also meant that financial support might be concentrated on one comprehensive organization. In March 1965, the Board of Governors of OCI unanimously approved in principle the formation of an Ontario

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PREFACE

Institute for Studies in Education and expressed their willingness to participate. In "A New Model for Educational Research and Development," the last extract from the OCI's seventeen publications reproduced in this volume, Dr. R. W. B. Jackson describes the purpose and early history of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). It suffices to say only two things in conclusion. First, history will record that on September 1, 1966, the Ontario Curriculum Institute became the Office of the Coordinator of Development of OISE and brought with it an expanding program which enriched and was enriched by the merger. Secondly, may we hope that history in examining the first fruits of this bold enterprise, this legacy of the Ontario Curriculum Institute, will pronounce, in paraphrase of Emerson, the judgment bestowed upon a confederation effected a century ago, "They builded better than they knew." BRIAN BURNHAM February 1967

Staff Project Director

Contents PREFACE

V

EDITOR'S NOTE

xii

INTRODUCTION

3

PART ONE: THE CURRICULUM AND THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SCHOOL Introduction "Social and Individual Aspects of the Curriculum," Robert Ulich in New Dynamics in Curriculum Development (1964) "For Whom We Teach," Wilfred R. Wees in New Dimensions in Curriculum Development (1966) "A Curriculum Credo," The Committee on the Scope and Organization of the Curriculum in Children, Classrooms, Curriculum, and Change (1966)

9 12 18

32

PART TWO: NEW CURRICULA

Introduction

41

READING "Recommendations," from A First Look (1965) "An Experimental Integrated Language Programme," from Reading: A Demonstration Project (1966)

44 48

SCIENCE

66

"Objectives and Content of a Science Curriculum," from Science: An Interim Report ( 1963 )

69

"Experimental Teaching-Learning Units," from Science: Interim Report No. 2 (1964)

57

89

X

CONTENTS

MATHEMATICS "The What, the Why, the How of a New Mathematics Programme," from Mathematics: Report of the Committee Considering the Mathematics Programme (K-6) (1965)

98

"A Secondary School Programme for Non-University-bound Students," from Mathematics: The Four Year Programme ( 1965 )

115

MODERN LANGUAGES

136

"The Role and Value of a Second Language in Canadian Society," from French as a Second Language ( 1963 )

138

"Experimental Intensive Teacher Training Programme in Oral French," from The Modern Languages Committee: Interim Report No. 2 (1965) "Teaching the Russian Language," from Third Language Study in the Secondary Schools ( 1965 ) U Anglais: langue seconde des Franco-Ontariens à Vécole secondaire (1965) THE HUMANITIES AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES "Teaching the Creative Arts," from The Creative Arts: A Survey of Professional Opinion ( 1965 ) "Geography: A Conceptual Model for Curriculum Design," from Directions: An Initial Inquiry into the Social Sciences Program for the Schools (1966) PART THREE: NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE CURRICULUM Introduction "Overview," from Technology in Learning ( 1965)

"Teaching Materials in the Reading Programme," from A First Look (1965)

95

143 181 190 206 209

221

231 233 241

PART FOUR: EVALUATING NEW CURRICULA

Introduction "Evaluating the Curriculum," from Science: An Interim Report (1963) "Evaluation in the Reading Programme," from A First Look (1965)

249 252 259

CONTENTS

XI

PART FIVE*. CURRICULUM RESEARCH

Introduction "Suggested Research Topics," from Theory of Instruction and Cognitive Development: A Survey of Research Needs (1965) "Needed Curriculum Research," Floyd G. Robinson in New Dimensions in Curriculum Development (1966)

271 273 276

PART SIX: NEW DESIGNS FOR LEARNING

Introduction "Curriculum Change," Sir Ronald Gould in New Dimensions in Curriculum Development (1966) "Instructional Trends in the United States," Robert M. McClure in New Dimensions in Curriculum Development ( 1966) "A New Model for Educational Research and Development," R. W. B. Jackson in New Dimensions in Curriculum Development (1966)

287

312

GOVERNORS OF THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM INSTITUTE, 1963-1966

323

288 301

Editor's Note

As the frontispiece of each of the seventeen Ontario Curriculum Institute reports notes, every Institute publication represents the findings of the study committee responsible for the investigation. The Institute, in forwarding to the public such findings, offered editorial assistance but never attempted to homogenize the individual flavours which resulted from such diverse authorship. Thus, while each report may be expected to offer internal consistency, this anthology presents acceptable variants of grammatical and syntactical style and spelling. Beyond amendations necessitated by their new contexts, editing of each extract to achieve conformity in style or orthography would be pointless. There is, moreover, a point to retaining the differences. For although the Institute generally employs the briefer variant, for example "program," some study committees by selecting "programme" asserted that independence of mind vital to the creative art of curriculum regeneration. At the same time, an attempt has been made to reduce the confusing variety of footnote reference styles. For example, all references to publications have been organized at the end of extracts. Information on place and date of publication not included in the original reports has been supplied when it could be traced.

NEW DESIGNS FOR LEARNING

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Introduction P erhaps every age has produced its poets and philosophers

whose art and science have been sensitive to the "ever-whirling wheele of Change," as Edmund Spenser termed that force "which every mortall thing doth sway." The ancients contemplated the nature of change and developed systematic ways of thinking about it. But change for them, especially significant social modification, normally occurred slowly, and after major alterations there were periods of stability and equilibrium of a sort before the next tide of change. There were exceptions, of course, when natural or man-made calamities erupted to shake the foundations of social order: sword and spear, flood and fire, plague and pestilence may have been the agencies of very abrupt change. Throughout history, whole civilizations succumbed to externally or internally generated forces for change with which they could not cope. It is doubtful, however, that the production of new learning was ever a cause for serious disruption of any society until modern times. One might wish to exempt religious revelation from this generalization. In one major respect our age resembles those which preceded it. We too are conscious of the disruptive and potentially disastrous consequences of changes that might at first glance be regarded as unmixed blessings. But we are acutely aware that we are experiencing an unprecedented acceleration in the rate of growth of learning and the application of science to critical areas of human endeavour—the production of material goods and communications, for instance. Because of such changes, great numbers of today's citizens enjoy a way of life that might be envied by the richest potentates of any earlier age. The knowledge explosion, automation and cybernation, and other manifestations of the rapid change recently wrought by man's ingenuity have not only created unquestioned benefits, but have also served as catalysts for social, economic, and political change of a most disturbing nature. It is not just that scientific progress has given even to non-affluent societies the technical capabilities for loosing upon mankind irreparable destruction. It is not just that the application of science has disrupted production patterns and threatened to destroy the time-honoured relationship of man to work. It is rather that the rate at which the wheel of change has been whirling is too great for us. Wave upon wave of change, successive

4

INTRODUCTION

peaks of ferment with no quiet troughs to allow us to stabilize, to adjust, to assimilate; this appears to be our dilemma. We have had no time to reach agreement upon the use of the new learning and the powerful new technologies. The gulf separating nations and the rents in the social fabric of the various communities yawn wider under the impact of unassimilated change. The ratio of those who can cope to those who are floundering seems to be diminishing. The gap between those who can capitalize upon change and those who cannot seems to be increasing. The rift between the rich and poor manifests itself in our great cities; sometimes religious, racial, or linguistic differences accentuate the new problems. The schism grows between those of liberal and egalitarian philosophy and those whose humanitarian sentiments have not embraced the necessity of the voluntary harmonization of differences between human beings. The atomic, biological, and chemical weaponry now available for misuse pose threats of an obvious nature. The abc of the less obvious threats— the undigested social, economic, and political changes enmeshed with the knowledge explosion—are relatively latent. Of all the institutions that society has looked to in the past for leadership, government, universities, and schools today share the major burden for dealing with the problems of change. How are these institutions responding to the manifest need to identify, diagnose, and treat the malaise of change? A major purpose of the education of the young today must be to prepare them to understand, live with, create, direct, and control change. In their construction, organization, equipment, and curricula, today's schools are preparing themselves for these vital tasks. In his address to the Study Conference of the Ontario Curriculum Institute in December 1963, Dr. J. R. H. Morgan, then Institute Director, put it this way: "It surely must be obvious to all of us that we are living in an age when schools at all levels will be engaged in the pursuit of knowledge never heretofore dreamed of and, in that pursuit, a significant curriculum will require continuous investigation, renewal and rebirth." Professional educators have not been alone in their efforts to reshape the public education system to the new requirements. National and local government, business and industry, the scholarly community, and private philanthropy have become active partners in the renewal and enlargement of the public system of elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education. How are they doing so? (1) The recognition that new programs must be evolved to deal with the special problems of learners from urban and rural slums has resulted in experimental junior kindergarten curricula, often sponsored by local government. (2) The recognition that the expecta-

INTRODUCTION

5

lions of the good life engendered by mass media cannot be fulfilled for men and women lacking basic skills and resources has, in both Canada and the U.S.A., made allies of national governments and educators in job re-training programs. (3) The technological revolution with its demands for skilled workers has bound industry to the same alliance for the provision of greater opportunities for technical education. (4) Industry has also co-operated in joint ventures in the use of new technologies in the classroom, for example, the computer-based educational systems such as are now in experimental operation in the U.S.A. and may soon be initiated in Canada. (5) University administrators and scholars have, as never before, aided elementary and secondary school educators in determining directions and means for curriculum reform. (6) The findings of universitybased research psychologists that the period of most rapid growth in general intelligence came before the traditional school-entry age and their findings in sensory and cultural deprivation studies have accelerated trials of "Head Start" programs. (7) Other scholars, concerned with concept formation, have suggested ways in which curricula might be constructed in order to provide learners with opportunities to perceive the structures of knowledge in each discipline. Thus learners might understand how form and meaning is given to human experience rather than merely memorizing a recapitulation of each discipline's growth and a catalogue of its current corpus of knowledge. (8) The military is an ally too in the campaign for better instructional programs. In addition to the training of recruits in technical skills, national defence institutions have offered remedial programs in the three R's. They have pioneered in the use of non-literary learning sources, in the use of the principles of programmed instruction, and in systemsanalysis of their teaching techniques. (9) Philanthropy has been directed to the support of countless promising new ideas: for example, the Ford Foundation's Fund for the Advancement of Education was the prime support for early ventures in educational television; the Carnegie Foundation has supported the design of a computerized teaching laboratory. (10) Some philanthropic bodies have been the silent partners of broad-based curriculum research and development agencies: the Nuffield Foundation in association with the Schools Council in England and Wales; the Grant Foundation with the Educational Research Council of Greater Cleveland; the Ford, Atkinson, and Laidlaw foundations with the Ontario Curriculum Institute. (11) Recently, government has taken on the patron's role formerly held by the private foundations. In the U.S.A., the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Office of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment and Council on the Humanities among others are now providing financial support to pioneering ventures.

6

INTRODUCTION

In Canada, because education is by our constitution a provincial responsibility, it has been difficult for the federal Government to participate in funding projects which it is plainly in the national interest to support. Federal grants to universities and funds designated for technical and vocational education, manpower research, and adult, job re-training programs have shifted some of the financial burden to the national budget. Provincial treasuries have had to bear the major portion of the expenses attendant upon the creation of giant task forces such as The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. How adequate will the labours of such educational research and development laboratories be? Can they, along with other agencies so charged, in fact assist in devising means whereby the schools may play their proper role in preparing the citizenry for a world of pell-mell change? As Dr. Jackson points out in his description of the new institute on which so much of Ontario's educational future depends, we have but started on the process of building. How well the Ontario Curriculum Institute laid a foundation on which to build may be readily judged. The reader is invited to study the new designs for learning embodied in the extracts from the seventeen OCI publications issued between December 1963 and May 1966. The selections were made to provide the broadest possible grounds for assessment of these early efforts in curriculum renewal. Sectional and chapter introductions have been provided in order to set OCI's various endeavours in the context of the issues and developments in these fields in Ontario and elsewhere.

PART ONE

THE CURRICULUM AND THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SCHOOL

INTRODUCTION "SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF THE CURRICULUM," Robert

Ulich in New Dynamics in Curriculum Development

9

12

"FOR WHOM WE TEACH," Wilfred R. Wees in New Dimensions in Curriculum Development

18

"A CURRICULUM CREDO," Committee on the Scope and Organization of the Curriculum in Children, Classrooms, Curriculum, and Change

32

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Introduction F rom the beginning of history," Wilfred

Wees observed in Science in the Classroom, "men have been concerned with 'betterment', each with his own betterment, or with the betterment of somebody else, or with the betterment of mankind." Though wanting for little, Eve, the heroine of an early history book concerned with beginnings, was apparently tempted by promises of betterment. Notwithstanding the consequences of this episode, her descendants were so taken with the notion of bettering themselves and society that they institutionalized their desire by the creation of schools. The first curriculum, according to "J. Abner Peddiwell" (Harold Benjamin) in his history of paleolithic pedagogy, The Saber-Tooth Curriculum, featured a program of studies in fish-grabbing-with-bare-hands, woolly-horse-clubbing, and saber-tooth-tiger-scaring-with-fire. The curriculum, though objected to on religious grounds and damned for trying to alter human nature, was justified by the presence of fish and flesh in the cave larder and by the absence of unwanted livestock at the watering hole. The first curriculum reform movement based upon rational analysis pre-dates The Great Didactic of Comenius, though we may concede the point, made by Dr. Wees in his speech reproduced below, that The Great Didactic was the first body of systematic thought about education in Western civilization. The first curriculum reform debate pre-dates the twelfth century debate between the protagonists of the trivium and the proponents of the quadrivium. The first curriculum reform war pre-dates the verbal sparring of Quintillius or the mental gymnastics of Aristotle. The first great debate on the "new" aims of education began (or so "Peddiwell" relates) after the glaciers had muddied the clear fish-filled waters and driven off the succulent woolly horses and fearsome-toothed carnivores. Then early man discovered that useful skills such as fishnet-making, antelope-snare-construction, and bear-killing had no place in the existing curriculum, while the traditional program of bare-hand-fishing and so forth held sway in the schools. Thus the first great curriculum reform debate, that between the advocates of practical skills and the defenders of the traditional program, ran something like this. "Catching fish with bare hands is now impossible and the woolly horses and saber-tooth tigers are dead and gone. Why

10

CURRICULUM AND FUNCTIONS OF THE SCHOOL

hasn't the curriculum changed?" "Fish-grabbing, horse-clubbing, and tigerscaring aren't taught as utilitarian skills but to develop generalized abilities, strengths, and the courage which could not derive from mere training in seine-fishing, snare-setting, or bear-killing!" The application of systematic thought in more recent times has, of course, refined the language of the curriculum reform debate, but one wonders if the issues have changed very much. The question, then as now, seems to be the tuning of the curriculum to the times so that the school program serves the real needs of society and the individual. In one respect the real world of today is congruent with the fanciful world of The Saber-Tooth Curriculum. The crux of the matter is put this way by Sterling M. McMurrin: "The future of American education depends in large degree upon the character of our efforts to define its aims and purposes, for without a clear conception of what the schools should achieve it is not possible to determine either the proper substance of education or its appropriate methods" ("The Curriculum and the Purposes of Education" in New Curricula). We may insert "Paleolithic" just as readily as "Canadian" or "British" for "American" in the quotation! We have, to make some points, possibly slandered the character of paleolithic man's efforts to define the aims of education in terms more specific than betterment. Now we must inquire seriously into the character of our own efforts. The first fact that must be squarely faced in any contemporary consideration of the curriculum and the function of the schools is that today, perhaps unlike paleolithic times, there are no simple issues or simple statements of educational aims. All large communities are pluralistic, "a heterogeneous collection of persons, pursuing many different goals," as Derek Morrell put it in his address to the Fifst International Curriculum Conference in 1964. Democratic states "do not possess an official goal," he observed, and therefore we "cannot decide upon the uses of knowledge by accepting those which seem to bring nearer the attainment of the official goal, and by rejecting those which do not." In times of great national peril even democracies agree that certain objectives have unquestionable priority and sometimes foster certain social objectives to the detriment of personal educational goals. But this totalitarian approach is regarded as a temporary expediency. The normal pattern in a democracy is to reach consensus about aims, to reach agreement that some limited alterations in the status quo promote the betterment of society and all its members. In Ontario, royal commissions, such as the one which met immediately after World War II and the one currently meeting, help to consolidate and clarify thinking about aims, but the adoption of their recommendations depends upon

INTRODUCTION

11

their voluntary acceptance by democratically elected law makers. Although agencies of the state in many jurisdictions now possess great resources to stimulate educational research and development for the furtherance of accepted objectives, it is possibly still as true, as decades ago when it was written, that "educational objectives are seldom adopted full-grown in Canadian education; they develop in the thinking of the public even more surely than in the theorizing of the experts" (J. G. Althouse, "Educational Objectives" in Addresses). There are forces working within democratic states to undermine, unconsciously, this situation. In the United States massive federal funds for research and development in education represent a potential force for the attainment of national objectives. These monies, if unbalanced by a concern for the needs of individuals, may tip the scale disastrously toward the achievement of impersonal social goals. In Canada, the existence of federal funds for "manpower research" has given rise to demographic studies by educational agencies as well as by labour departments: an unbalanced concern for man as a statistic should be guarded against. And Floyd Robinson's proposal (see "Needed Curriculum Research" below) of a permanent structure "to set goals" and to be "continuously re-creating our social philosophy," if taken too literally, might be seen by some as a totalitarian threat rather than a democratic solution. Finally, Ole Sand's analysis ("Education for Quality" in New Dynamics in Curriculum Development) of the confusion arising from the close relationship of educational aims to the methods employed to attain them points up another problem. "All are entitled, by virtue of their citizenship in a democracy, to make certain kinds of decisions," he notes, but for daily instructional and institutional decisions others "are qualified by education, experience and position to make still other decisions." The failure to distinguish between aims and methods tends to cause, on the one hand, inappropriate or unintelligent criticism by laymen on matters of pedagogic methods and, on the other hand, a failure of the pedagogues to call the public to their councils when aims are to be reconsidered. The three extracts reproduced in this section represent the thoughts of a philosopher, a psychologist, and a broad-based committee of laymen and educators, on the questions of aims and methods. The viewpoints (they are not mutually contradictory but rather represent different approaches) are associated as aspects of the work of the Ontario Curriculum Institute's Committee on the Scope and Organization of the Curriculum. Dr. Ulich's address was delivered to the First International Curriculum Conference sponsored by the committee. Dr. Wees spoke to the assembly at the second conference (1966). The committee presented its credo in summing up its two-year study in the latter months of OCI's existence.

Social and Individual Aspects of the Curriculum ROBERT ULICH Professor Emeritus, Harvard School of Education

A curriculum, or a program of studies, represents an attempt on the part of educational institutions to provide a learning person with a coherent sequence of impressions, exercises and cognitive subjects by virtue of which he can participate consciously, conscientiously, and productively in the cultural development of the nation and of mankind as a whole. This generalization should serve as an invitation to ask more precise questions. May I mention some of them. What concept do we have of a "person"? What is learning? Which subjects should be taught? What is the relation of education to society? If we turn our attention to the first question, "What concept do we have of a person?," we find that every normal person has much in common with every other member of the human race (therefore I prefer the term "person" to the isolationist concept of "individual"). He is self-conscious, capable of emotional and rational reactions, and self-identical despite continual changes in his physio-psychic organism. But one can also emphasize the differences in persons by pointing at the variety of potential and real talents, achievements, and values in the human community. On the whole, every developed society recognizes in its members the common elements as well as the elements of variety. Hence, with regard to education, society has elementary schools which take care of a common and fundamental background of values and knowledge. And it has advanced and specialized institutions of learning to which the promising student is admitted after a certain age (which rises with the rising complexity of a civilization). However, even on the lower level of learning, meta-individual, or metapersonal, concepts enter into the formation of a person. Politically speaking, a liberal and democratic society will demand that the schools produce another type of citizen-mentality than will collective societies. The two

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13

demands, however, are not entirely exclusive unless we are faced with extreme contrasts between disintegrating liberalism on the one hand and radical totalitarianism on the the other. Existentially speaking, a society which tends to radical individualism regards the person as an end in himself. Such a society will demand that the schools produce personalities quite different from those found in cultures which regard the person as part of a cosmic enterprise. (The latter may be dominated by religious forms of humanism or theological interpretations of man, especially if there is faith in divine revelation.) These different demands and their impact on the curriculum can easily be shown by reference to medieval, democratic, and communist schools.1 But there are further complications. In every society education is influenced by varying opinions about prestige, generally mingled with different concepts of class and status. The medieval schoolmen, for example, were influenced by the Greek-Aristotelian contempt for practical work. But even without their admiration for the Greeks and Romans they would have disregarded labour because of the feudal hierarchy which put the ecclesiastical and military classes on the top and the labourer on the bottom of the scale. For the medieval aristocracy, just as for the Greek, the workman was incapable of achieving excellence. They failed to see that the lower stones in the social pyramid are just as important as the stones on the top; hence the many revolutions at the end of the Middle Ages. Such a vertical value-orientation as that of the Greeks and the Middle Ages is, of course, possible only in primarily agricultural and manufacturing societies where the process of material production needs only a limited degree of vocational preparation. In many respects, even the centuries after the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, up to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were medieval. For the bourgeois societies of Europe and to a certain extent also of America, the labourer was a person of inferior quality and needed only a rudimentary education, whereas the gentleman had to learn Greek and Latin. However, scientific, technological, and economic changes have brought about a different relation of society to labour, especially in communist countries with their emphasis on more effective modes of production. Modern China is a perfect example of the struggle of a labour-conscious government against older, primarily Confucian, forms of prestige. I wish, however, to emphasize one point. The fact that the cultural changes of our times have rendered certain subjects of the curriculum less prominent than in the past and almost negligible in the eyes of certain "curriculum makers" should in no way be used as a proof of the obsoleteness of these subjects. Theological studies are still requisite for the understanding of man

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and his culture. I belong to those reactionaries who deplore that so many gifted youths of the United States, and more and more also of other countries, are deprived of the riches they could derive of the classics— provided, of course, they are well taught. However, in order to avoid snobbish judgments on our ancestors, we should keep in mind that occupations which require a higher degree of talent, sacrifice, and preparation are of necessity more regarded than the less demanding ones. Even the most equalitarian society will always retain differences of reward and prestige. Closely connected with our first question is the second: "What is learning?" I have no intention to touch here upon the psychological problem of learning or upon the metaphysical question as to which mysterious evolutionary forces have made human learning possible. But I may discuss briefly certain organizational aspects of the teaching and the learning process. Why, despite the already indicated scientific and technical revolution, has our modern culture retained the primarily intellectual emphasis on learning? Why has the highly ambiguous distinction between "liberal" and "vocational" education developed in the schools of the West since the Renaissance and the Reformation? I have, for example, been informed that even the rather universally oriented North American high school curriculum contains about eighty per cent theoretical subject-matter—not always to the advantage of the intellectual level of achievement. Young people, forced into subjects they cannot well comprehend, inevitably inhibit the progress of brighter pupils. Some of the reasons for the one-sided situation have already been explained, that is, the old hierarchy of values and social prestige, the stubbornness of traditions, and the rewards for higher talent and effort. On the other hand, the intellectual and verbal one-sidedness in our curriculum has led to serious defects in the formation of the human person. With prophetical insight did the great Swiss teacher, Pestalozzi,2 decry the moral damage created by "the irresponsible use of words" in the learning and communication of modern man. More than ever, it seems to me, we should remember his demand for the education of "the heart, the head, and the hand." For only, so Pestalozzi says, by motivating all the productive qualities which nature has given him (intellectual, emotional, moral, and manual) can man find his "truth"—truth understood in the modern existentialist meaning as a person's inner experience of being "truthful to himself" and therefore happier than when floundering in a maze of intellectual irresoluteness. Is it not a strange paradox that there never was a time which offered so many possibilities for personal enrichment as ours, yet suffered so much from what I may call emotional desiccation and unhappiness?

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And so we arrive at our third question: "Which subjects should be taught?" It is evident that there is no universal program of studies. The North American attempt to create a high school curriculum for all pupils was a failure and still is a failure wherever it is being made. Fortunately, larger communities insisted on a diversified organization of learning, with a college preparatory department on the one side, and commercial, technical, and general departments on the other. Also the common elementary school, to which I referred at the beginning, has far exceeded the boundaries of the "Three R's" considered sufficient at the time of Jefferson and even of Lincoln. Yet, the elementary school is still a haven of certainty in comparison with the confused concern of all modern countries, the secondary school. For today it is no longer the privilege of a few, often with academic ambitions, but has become a part of universal education for young people of most varied talents and vocational interests. Even twelve years of elementary and high school training are no longer considered sufficient. Many communities desire a more or less obligatory Junior and Community College which would extend the schooling period of more than one-half of the school population to fourteen years. About thirty per cent of the youth of the United States attend a four-year college, often followed by graduate institutions. This development forces onto school benches an increasing number of practical-minded people who, up to the nineteenth century, would have run a shop, ploughed the field, or sailed the seven seas. Should such a situation not compel us to reconsider the value of a good vocational education? Should we not understand that an applied and practical training, not narrowly but flexibly conceived and properly taught, can contain a rich human element, richer in personal significance than a semi-intellectual training, unwillingly accepted by many young men and women? The reasons why so many communities hold their vocational schools in low esteem are obvious. In our society the students in vocational schools are generally considered of lesser talent than those in other schools and therefore fail to attract the best teachers. Furthermore, these students come from families of lower social status. The history of the teaching profession reveals to the observer that the prestige of the instructor is related to the prestige of the group he serves as well as to the prestige of the subjects he teaches. The more esoteric subjects, like rare stamps for the collector, enjoy a higher esteem than ordinary values. Finally, the old handicraft with its rich chances for individual creativeness is gone. The work and the training of the apprentice, previously performed in the shop of the guild master, is now done in advanced schools of design and in the ateliers of artists.

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The three topics discussed so far have all touched upon a central educational problem expressed in our fourth question: "What is the relation of education to societv?" So far, I have emphasized the close relation between the curriculum and its objectives on the one hand, and between curriculum and the social environment on the other. But should those who are responsible for planning the curriculum also 'consider the processes of learning and teaching entirely "dependent" or "contingent" upon society, as textbooks on the history of education make us believe? Schools are linked with their society. They become obsolete without the capacity of continual adjustment to the changing scenes of history. But that should not mean that they are the obedient servants of society and its m°st rs. Rather the conscientious teacher, on every level of instruction, should consider himself as a trustee of essential human values. These he must defend when they are offended by the surrounding forces and even by governments. In other words, education has its inner logic, or, if I may use a Greek term, its inner logos. The formula 2 X 4 = 8 is correct in every human society, whether democratic or fascist, healthy or rotten. As a matter of fact, the rapid changes in our society (call them "progress") have become possible only because of the steady and ever extending application of the logic of mathematics and the sciences to the problems of man and nature. But this logic has also made our wars more devastating than they ever were and it now threatens the human race with annihilation. Hence, despite the valid, but often also invalid, arguments of the relativist, we as educators have to commit ourselves also to another reflection of the logos in human history, the logic of values. It makes no difference whether we explain our moral concepts and standards humanistically, as the result of the accumulated experience of our race, or, theologically, as signs of a divine dispensation. True it is that any society which feels no commitment to the moral principles which so far have sustained the evolution of humanity must either correct itself or invite its destruction. Certainly, different interpretations of our moral concepts are possible. In one and the same person they may run into tragic and insoluble conflict, for there is a crucial dialectic hidden even in the permanence of values. Therefore we have an Aeschylus, a Shakespeare, and a Schiller. And, more often than we like, we have to make "resolutions" without knowing the final "solutions." But all this does not gainsay that, in the long run, truth is more conducive to human survival than falsehood, love more productive than hatred, and beauty more inspiring than ugliness. Hence, like the Roman god Janus, the god of gates and doors, those responsible for the policy of education have to look in two directions at the same time. They should look toward society, serving, helping, and willing

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to change. Again, they should look away from all the temptations of our restless and bewildered times. They must ask themselves: "How can the schools help young people, not only to cope with the social demands of our age, but to secure a corner in mind and soul, or an inner sanctum, where the fugitive impressions of life recede before the quiet majesty of that which we may call 'the Abiding'?" REFERENCES

1. ROBERT ULICH, The Education of Nations (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1961). 2. Three Thousand Years of Educational Wisdom (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1965), and History of Educational Thought (American Book Co., New York, 1950).

For Whom We Teach WILFRED R. WEES President (1966), Ontario Association for Curriculum Development

E /ducation is a late-comer

among the pursuits of man's inquiring mind. In Western civilization we can go back to Moses for religion, Thaïes for philosophy, Archimedes for mechanics, Hippocrates for medicine, Herodotus for history—most of the modern disciplines have their ancient origins and their continuity. Throughout the ages, however, one seeks in vain for systematic thought about education. All that one finds are crumbs of thought dropped accidentally into some other intellectual dish. Systematic thinking about education did not appear until Comenius picked up Bacon's cue and wrote The Great Didactic. Even then people had so little regard for the concept of education that Comenius's manuscript disappeared into the educational wilderness and he himself was harried from one country to another until he died. Pestalozzi spoke and demonstrated to the wind, and in the nineteenth century Lancaster and Bell obviously had never heard of Herbart. It was probably the demand for education following the industrial revolution and the failure of the monitorial schools to satisfy the kinds of demands that people were making that brought teachers and others interested in education at least, and at last, to the brink of inquiring into it. From these first few tentative questions of a hundred years ago, inquiring into education proceeded by fits and starts, barely getting up steam when each of two world wars side-tracked it. Then, a few years ago, out of the blue came automation, cybernation, jet propulsion, atomic fission, celestial communication, and other miracles, and educational inquiry was on its way. Since then we have been inquiring at a pell-mell rate of acceleration. Fortunately or unfortunately (it is still too soon to tell which) in our scramble for answers our inquiries seem to be taking us off into so many directions at the same time that many of those for whom we teach feel that we have lost them. Some educators, in their turn, are wondering where they, for whom we teach, have disappeared. There are quite a number of suggestions, even now, that instead of growing into a principled discipline

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designed to help us learn how better to teach children education could easily become, on the one hand, an exercise in abstraction and, on the other hand, an industrial empire for the manufacture of educational hardware. Because we are so new to education and education is so new to us, the search for principles upon which to base a discipline will not be any easier for us than it was for natural science. But we have not got three hundred years in which to do the job. The need is now. Our children's need is now. There are two principles that it seems sensible to try to establish first. To establish the first of the two we must decide for whom we teach. To establish the second we must decide the way to teach those for whom we teach. It is a little difficult to keep these two directions of inquiry separate, but insofar as possible I shall deal with the people for whom we teach first, and ways in which we may teach them second. Oddly enough, there are several categories of people for whom we teach. The first is teachers. It seems to be an innate characteristic of human nature for people to tell people what to do and how to do it. The people who do the telling get a lot of satisfaction out of the intercourse; the people who are being told, somewhat less. The latter may, indeed, recoil completely and sometimes with real contempt for the teacher. This attitude toward people who tell others what to do is quite forcefully expressed in the first recorded teacher-pupil relationship in the Garden of Eden. You will recall that the narrator of this educational story cast the teacher in the form of a serpent. This disparaging attitude toward the teacher did not change very much through succeeding millenia. In Athens, for example, people used to say of a departed soul whom they had disliked, "Either he has gone to hell or he has become a school teacher." At last, however, in our modern age, this compulsion to tell others what to do and how to do it has become very respectable, at least in schools, although it is still not so highly regarded in other social situations. The aura of respectability thus applied to the act of telling others what is what has added a quality of smugness to the teaching enjoyment of those teachers who teach for their own sake. The densest population of teachers who teach for their own sake, and ordinarily the smuggest, is usually found in universities. A humble university professor is a rare gem and when discovered should be guarded carefully. The second category of people for whom we teach consists of the saints and the angels. Historically, the saints and angels lived in the Kingdom of Heaven, and much of the teaching of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries was designed to provide them with companionship, perhaps because it was so lonely up there. There was a dual purpose on the part of

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the Church, however, in which the children themselves could not be disregarded. In directing the minds of the children heaven-ward, the churchmen were also saving them from hell, and to snatch a* brand from the burning was in itself a reward for which, to those completely devoted religious educators, there could be no substitute. We have also with us several new breeds of saints and angels who have beatified themselves with visions of what St. John called "a new heaven and a new earth!" These are the creators of the great ideologies, each with its minor ideological satellites, and all with their devoted proselytizers. As we read the slanted textbooks throughout the world, and as we read about the censorship of textbooks by people who crave companionship in their own special heavens, we can only wonder for whom they would have us teach. The third category of people for whom we teach consists of the disciples of the disciplines, the age-old disciplines, so old that they are now hoary with age, righteousness, and patriarchal authority, but, fortunately, not with decrepitude. Preparing for an archeological expedition to Greece, Cyriac of Ancona is reported to have said, "I go! I go to awake the dead!" And in the five hundred years since the rebirth of the major disciplines, their disciples have come abounding. There is an interesting human phenomenon, however, exhibited by most disciples of most disciplines. Itching with inquiry themselves, intent as they are, not upon the known but upon the unknown, when they apply their minds to education they seem compelled to subdue inquiry and make the known, not the unknown, known. Thus the experience of Christianity in the time of Christ, for example, became the doctrine of Christianity which, in the hands of the Scholastics of the Middle Ages, buried experience alive and tortured inquiry into centuries of coma. Today the doctrinaires of the various disciplines, with that patriarchal authority which we have mentioned, extract what they confidently call the known facts, organize them and reorganize them to suit themselves, and then produce them as "new curricula" in the schemata of "curriculum development." Because of their prestige in the various disciplines these curriculum committees, as they are euphemistically described, are able to apply their authority in an overwhelming majority of classrooms and thus assume the status of oligarchies of education. We mean here only to point out that Francis Bacon founded the modern scientific method on experience, expressed in that aspect of inquiry that he called induction, and that Comenius applied experience and inquiry to the whole broad base of education. May we not then fairly ask why, in education, our disciplinarians in their curriculum activities do not preach what we see them practise in their own disciplines?

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The fourth group of people for whom we teach is us. There are two main groups of us's. The first group of us's is we, the parents, either individually, in pairs, or collectively as in Home and School Associations or associations of tax-payers. The second group of us's is we, the state. We, the parents, apply our pressures from pride and prejudice, the egocentric twins: pride because the child is a part of me and the school must not show me up for what I think I am not; prejudice because education is what I got and therefore anything different cannot be education, and education is what I am paying for. There have been places where three or four loud parental voices have been sufficient to persuade an innovating director of education to withdraw into the sheltering shell of tradition. Compound this power into the power wielded by us as a state and we have a force against which the child may raise his small voice in vain. Plato stated the case for the state with complète candor when he said, "If you ask what is the good of education, the answer is easy—education makes good men and good men act nobly and conquer their enemies in battle because they are good." Aristotle generalized a good deal further and set a somewhat higher tone for nationalistic enterprise in education; he said, "That which contributes most to the permanence of constitutions is the adaptation of education to the form of government. The best laws, though sanctioned by every citizen of the state, will be of no avail unless the young are trained by habit and education in the spirit of the constitution." In today's ideologically bifurcated world, is it possible that the two statements have merged into such a statement as, "Education makes good men who can conquer their enemies in battle and thus contribute most to the permanence of the constitution"? And there is the further question: to what lengths, as a state, should we go to ensure that through education our adult generation today should determine the state of our children's state tomorrow? Each of the four agencies that we have identified involves the child, of course, but treats the child as if he were a manikin, potentially capable of animation. The teacher who teaches for his own sake revels in selfrighteousness when his talking dolls can faithfully play back to him the sounds of his master recording. The ideologists, saints and sinners alike, gleefully report the new census returns as they count the synthetic bodies annually added to their assemblies. The disciplinarians proudly announce that, having boiled down their disciplines to the basic principles, they can now lay them out to dry, then cut the Big Ideas into patterns of any size to fit manikins from the kindergarten to the Ph.D. In this last statement we are, of course (God help us), identifying psychology as a discipline. The fourth agency, we, the state, apparently has four purposes in mind in the manipulation of its plastic models; first to mould them in the image that we have of

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ourselves; second, to perpetuate the social purposes and social organization which we, mainly by a series of fumbling accidents, have created; third, to increase the inventory of material substance which we wistfully call our economy; fourth, to be prepared to defend our self image, our social organization, and our economy by war. These, then, are the categories of man for whom, quite often, we teach our children and formerly quite generally taught them. The educational process has been, thus, a one-way action; we ran the children through the processing machinery of education, hoping to turn them out, like factory products, fully processed finished goods/The child himself had little to say about what happened to him until he was sixteen years of age, and then, as we all know, when the children could legally do it, most of them quite simply but very emphatically said, "To hell with it." The question now is whether we have reached a level of understanding of the educational process that we can use as a base of operations. Can we truthfully, faithfully, and securely state, "He for whom we teach is the child"? If we can make this statement and mean it and stand by it, then we shall have established the first and basic principle in creating a discipline of education. Our main difficulty, as educators, is that we can say it, but when we are confronted with a storm of social pressures and especially when we are confronted with a wad of money, we just tuck our shiny, new principle under the mattress for use some other time. Thus when John Deutsch, chairman of the Economic Council of Canada, says that his economic goals for Canada in 1970 cannot be achieved without more education for more children, for whom do we teach?—especially when his economic appraisal is preceded by a federal gift of six hundred and fifty millions of money to the provinces for the limited goal of job-training to bolster the economy. Add a nought to the Canadian millions and we have the billions that the United States Congress has appropriated for education. All this is very exciting except for those prestigeous doctrinaires who absorb a fair amount of the money prefabricating disciplinary structures to fit the fragile minds of their children. But the pressures and the money are not the only problems that we have in holding to our principle. Our own traditional educational practices make the principle a slippery piece of thinking to hang on to. In the November 1965 issue of Educational Leadership, Agnes Snyder lists a few of these practices: "Evaluation by letter or numerical grades; annual promotions with the dictum, 'passed', or 'failed'; the control over the curriculum exerted by standard tests; ability grouping; ready-made programmed teaching and its accompanying gadgetry; disregard of the uniqueness of the potential

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contributions both of individuals and ethnic groups; slavish conformity to traditional standards." She adds that by such means as these ". . . we are aiding and abetting the use of children as pawns to satisfy the ambitions and allay the fears of an adult generation."1 So, though we may enunciate the principle and announce our conversion to it, holding to the faith is not easy. As the Methodists used to say of a person whose conversion did not stay put, we back-slide. There is a perfectly natural reason for back-sliding, a reason that lies in the very nature of man. Man is a social creature, and mankind is a society. Because mankind is a society, the infant is a part of human society the moment he is born. It is impossible, therefore, to extract a person, child or adult, from his social milieu and treat him wholly as an individual, not only impossible but unimaginable. Thus, when we lay down our principle that we teach the child for the child's sake and try to think of him individually, we are bound to think of him as one of society. But it is so easy to switch prepositions and teach not the children of society but children for society. This was what Rugg and Kilpatrick did in the twenties; and one of their Canadian disciples, a provincial curriculum director whose social bearings were slightly leftish, in his directives to teachers used to say, in effect, "You're going to teach my brand of democracy to those kids if you have to stuff democracy down their throats." We have not changed our educational attitude to the child very much since those days, have we? Training for jobs to maintain our standards of living; adjustment to the status quo so that society does not go to pot; packing books full of knowledge into our children so that the Russians do not get ahead of us—these seem to be the main reasons for what Bascom St. John, of the Ontario Department of Education, calls our current "obsession with education." Add one other, add that vague, undefined, but very holy and utterly lifeless brazen image of "academic excellence" to which we offer up our children as sacrificial lambs to the slaughter. What, then, must we do to hold unwaveringly to our principle that they for whom we teach are our children? By the way, we have not proved that our principle is valid in education. We do not intend to. And if any of the disciplinarians want to cavil at the idea of basing a discipline of education on an unvalidated principle, let me remind them that any principle in any discipline is an assumption. When we state an assumption we say, "Let it be granted that. . . ." In education, then, "let it be granted that" we love our children and by common consent we have our first principle. If we love our children, then for whom must we teach? Obviously them. I suggest that in the history of human thought this principle will be as valid two thousand years from now as it was nearly two

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thousand years ago when Christ said, "Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not." No thinking person would make the same prediction for the longevity of the law of gravitation. To return to our question, what must we do to stand steadfastly by our principle? The answer lies in the assumption on which the principle is based. If we love our children, then we can teach only from love, with love. Thus we hold to our principle by living it as we teach, and I know of no other way by which we can be absolutely certain that we stand by it, on it, and consistently for it. Establishment of our first principle has led us into statement of the second. You will recall that at the beginning we said that to establish the second principle we must decide how to teach those for whom we teach. The answer, as we have derived it, is already off the tips of our tongues. We teach from love with love. Quite a number of people squirm when the second basic principle in education is expressed so flatly, unequivocally, and simply. People who squirm at the use of the word love in education will have to decide for themselves why they squirm. Far be it from us to pry into the secret recesses of their libidos. Whatever their real reasons may be, the reason that they give is that the word smacks of sentimentality. Our answer is, let it smack. With classrooms full of the tensions of competition, fears from threat of error or even failure, the compulsions of enforced discipline and disciplines, the disappointments and anxieties resulting from poor teaching, the angry tears that flow from sarcasm, the loneliness of the impersonal classroom, the clenched lips of frustration when the wings of thought are clipped, the bored, sleepy inconsequentiality of much that goes for education—with such emotions as these crowding so many classrooms we make no apology whatever for proposing to substitute—whatever one may prefer to call it— either the sentiment or the sentimentality of love. For those who squirm for logical reasons, however, preferring the principles stated in a more general way, a way less immediately applicable, we may substitute for the word "love" the word "humanity." "Humanity" as we shall use it here, I have defined elsewhere as "that deep feeling of rapport with mankind that leads us to the strongest persevering effort to ensure for every man a path through life appropriate to his abilities and to his needs." This definition is not far from Derek Morrell's definition of love in education. The dynamic ingredient in the best learning situation, Morrell says, is love. Love is that stance in life that causes the teacher to supply his students' needs rather than his own.2 Well, now that we have our second principle, how do we show that we know how to use it? There can be no complete answer to the question.

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People show their love in different ways, and, using their love for children in the classroom, teachers individually convey their feelings each in his own way. How each one manages to warm the hearts and stir the minds of his children is his own secret which he himself may not be able to describe. Good teaching, like all art, must be a personal experience and the personal expression of experience. For this reason every classroom is unique, and for this reason, too, no matter how loudly people outside the classroom may pontificate about the curriculum, the effective curriculum is what goes on between and among the teacher and his children. There are, however, some consequences of the principle, both logical and experiential, which permit certain important generalizations. The first and over-riding idea is that of a person-to-person relationship between the teacher and every child in his class. Humanity in teaching touches the soul as it inspires the mind; some people even go so far as to say that without that soul-touching experience, learning is likely to fizzle out. As the teacher hopes the child will respond to him, so he must respond to the child, every day and every hour, minute by minute, satisfying at once both the child's hungering heart and his wondering mind. To how many children at once, or one by one, or in the course of a day can a teacher so respond? Sylvia Ashton Warner says that in children's first year of school she can manage only eight or ten. Leland Jacobs, of Teachers College, Columbia University, is said to have complained quite vocally when he walked into his class last semester and found thirty students. How was he going to teach so many? How indeed? In apportioning our financial resources for teacher loading, we count noses. I suggest that we count hearts and minds. The problem of the big class in the elementary school is compounded by the big secondary school in which the adolescent vainly seeks for his identity. Having lost his identity to education, he may go out and topple tombstones just to prove to himself that he exists. For the sake of economy we may have to build two or three acres of roofing to shelter our children, but the roof and walls are not the school—they are just the school-house—and could just as easily house half a dozen schools as one; small schools in which every teacher knows every child, not just by name but by the purposes and values that he is now building and by which he will be known. Our burden of mass education is not the burden of accepting it but the burden of ingenuity, and, unless we put our ingenuity to work to personalize the impersonality of mass education, all of our so-called curriculum endeavors are little more than crying to the wind. The second consequence of an education endowed and imbued with humanity is that in the person-to-person relationship, teacher to child, child to teacher, the teacher's one and only purpose is to nourish the child. To

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nourish him is, on the one hand, to cherish him; on the other, to help him grow. Only now are we beginning to have the faintest glimmerings of what it means to help a child grow in mind and personality. Theodore Sizer, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has recently written, "A curious quality of education is that. . . few study it in any serious way at all. In our hurry to purvey or consume it, we pause infrequently to question what we are up to. We are alternately too brash and too reactionary and always, it seems, too busy to decide which and why. More importantly, we are too caught up with pressing numbers and immediate crises to decide what we should be doing in the first place. So we stumble on, giving and receiving schooling without full reflection on the truly sophisticated and ethically loaded practice it involves." This is a succinct, honest and too true appraisal of all of us who are engaged in education. Exemplifying what Sizer says, the fact is that when we wring the froth and bubbles from our educational practices and hang them on the line to look at them, we discover to our horror that they are almost exactly the same as those of primitive man. The practices were, and still are, mainly three: training for hunting food, fighting, and communication; adjustment to ensure obedience to the tribal and intertribal taboos; transmission of knowledge in which it was the prerogative of the medicine man to decide what was true and what was false, what was to be known and what was not to be known. The methods that primitive man used were imitation for training, punishment and reward for adjustment, memorization for knowledge. In the many millenia since Caucasian man emerged from his primitive state all that we have been able to do, it seems, is to refine our heritage of educational practice. In some ways, indeed, as in the threat and fear that pervade much of education, we do not seem to have done much refining at all—unless you call the threat of error, of failure, of disparagement, of poverty, refined forms of torture. And "so", as Sizer says, "we stumble on." I wonder now if it is possible, in the light of these faint glimmerings of understanding of what we have to do to help a child grow, to move on in our educational practices without too much stumbling. At least we can say, "We hope we can." There are, unfortunately, in addition to all the inherited impedimenta that we are carrying, two very serious stumbling blocks in our way. They are (1) the fifty-year-old stimulus-response theory of psychology, (2) the current educational theory that education is the imposition of various disciplinary structures upon the child's mind. The stimulus-response theory was invented by psychologists as a means of mechanizing their subject in a way and to a degree that would permit its recognition as a natural science.

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Thorndike and his disciples almost immediately grabbed the S-R Theory for education, partly with the thought that they could thereby create a science of education, but mainly for establishing a theoretical foundation for the primitive educational practices still in vogue. With the upsurge of John Dewey's philosophy in the Thirties, most of us had hoped that although the psychologists might continue to twiddle their stimuli and diddle their responses, for education at least the theory had been relegated to the museum. Not so. The theory has been re-animated in education in the even more vicious form of programmed learning. Dr. Donald Snygg, distinguished professor of psychology at the State University of New York in Oswego, in the 1966 Yearbook of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, says that for fifty years the S-R Theory has monopolized the psychological laboratories of North America and in that time has not contributed a single new technique to education. Anybody who thinks that programmed learning is "new" should read the way Donatus taught grammar in the fourth century or the way Priscian taught Virgil in the sixth. And if he affirms that programmed learning, the teaching machine and computerized instruction represent progress in education, he is really saying to himself that we are at last catching up to the Middle Ages. The thoroughly frightening thing is that a recent hard-headed investment letter says that these gadgets potentially represent a forty billion dollar business in the North American educational hardware industry. If the prediction comes true, then we are in the process of setting up a fifth category of those, other than the child, for whom we teach. Our second stumbling block, the structure of the discipline, is a lot trickier than the S-R Theory. We need more light here than the faint glimmerings that we have about how to nourish the minds that we cherish. Many times, in the darkness in which we are trying to make our way forward, we may think we have avoided the structural problem only to discover that we have fallen right over it. This is what one is afraid may have been happening to many of the people writing and re-writing our courses of study, courses that we grandiloquently call curricula. If our disciplinary friends would limit themselves to furbishing up the structure we would not be so worried; but in the form of textbooks they nail on all the boards, install the fittings, even plaster the walls with their own thinking; then they call it the house of intellect, a form and structure which they expect to recreate in the child's mind. It would be pretty hard to blame anybody who sees this theory of education as the primitive educational processes of training, adjustment, and transmission of knowledge all rolled into one. The difficulty with both the S-R and the structural theories is that they

28

CURRICULUM AND FUNCTIONS OF THE SCHOOL

do not seem to be concerned with growth at all but merely bigness, one layer of knowledge piled on top of another, up, up and up. If the structuralists think of the layers in round form, they call the pile the spiral curriculum. If these people contend that they are really concerned with growth, then we can only reply that they go at the task completely backward. The S-R people say that the stimulus causes my response. It does nothing of the kind. It is I who perceive the object. It is I who am the active and activating agent. The S-R people say, "It does me." We say, "I do it." In other words, the child grows himself up, we do not grow him up. Similarly, the child creates the structure of his own mind; the structuralists cannot do it for him. And any of them who think they can need only look at the ruins of their structures in the majority of children's minds twelve months after they have stopped studying a given discipline. Plato said, "Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind." If we cannot grow the child up, if the child himself does the growing, then what is our function in teaching? Basically, it is just about that of the gardener. The gardener cannot make his plants grow, either. All that he can do is to provide the conditions for growth, the rich soil, the right season, and the consoling water. So in school all that we can do is to provide the conditions for growth; and that is a good deal more than most of us are doing now. Settling on the conditions for growth may be what Sizer means when he says that we should "decide on what we ought to be doing in the first place." Providing the conditions for growth is a rather cold way of saying that if we are to teach with humanity, from love with love, then we must nourish the child. But let us look at the problems, if not coldly, at least dispassionately. First we had better say what we mean by growth. For me (and I can speak only for myself) educational growth means progress in the development of ways of thinking, ways of thinking about oneself, ways of thinking about other people, ways of thinking about the universe of animate and inanimate relationships around us. The child's ways of thinking involve the purposes and values that he creates as well as the emotional tones and overtones that color his pursuits. Since thought is what the mind of man is for, it does seem quite sensible, does it not, to assume that the child's mind grows by thinking? And outside of school, as evidence of growth, we judge the child, as after school we judge the man, by the ways he thinks. Does he think objectively about himself? Does he think justly, fairly, kindly about people? Does he think practically, resourcefully, inventively about things? We judge him by his purposes. Does he live for his own meagre self? Is he concerned about the happiness and well-being of others? Has he a pursuit that draws him on and

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29

on in search of more workable ways of doing things? We judge him by his values. Where does the weight on the balance lie? Is it toward sensuality, aggrandizement, the coarseness and the crudity of life? Or does the balance dip in favor of thoughtfulness, sincerity, magnanimity, high-mindedness, and the pursuit of truth? If our definition of mental growth is somewhere near the mark, then what must we do to nurture it? The answer seems fairly obvious. We simply provide conditions within which the child may discover ways of thinking. Since, as we have said, thought is what the mind is for, the experience of relating ideas and things in new ways is rather joyful. You will recall the anecdote about Archimedes who suddenly jumped out of his bath and ran, naked down the street crying, "Eureka! Eureka! I have found it." It is a tingling experience to sit in a thinking grade three classroom and see the light dance in a child's eyes as he cries, "I've got it! I've got it!" It is no less exciting to listen to a graduating high school class inquire into ethics in business, and in the colloquy actually to hear purposes and values emerge. And there can be only deep satisfaction when, in a third year university class, after the students have talked themselves into faith in individual growth as opposed to conformity, to hear a young lady ask, just as the period ends, "But does not teaching for individual growth logically end up in anarchism?" In any discussion of thought as the process of growth, invariably somebody asks the question that is in nearly everybody's mind, "But don't we have to give the child the tools to think with?" The answer is No. The child is born with the only tool he needs. The instrument of thought is inquiry and, as long as the child is awake, inquiring is all that his mind ever does. Even in dreams the mind keeps trying to relate things to one another and comes up with some higgledy-piggledy structures not unlike some of the structures that the child ends up with when the structuralists try to fit their disciplines into his head. "No doubt then," said St. Augustine, "that a free curiosity has more force in our learning these things than a frightful enforcement." To help the child establish ways of thinking, then, all that we need to do in the first place is to give him a direction for his inquiry. Next, we just keep it going. We are concerned also with the rate at which the inquiry makes discoveries that can be used to build new relationships. And, finally, we like to see the new relationships make that nice, clean fit that we describe as precision in thinking. Some of the disciplines have their own little tricks for speeding up discovery and promoting precision, but the basic process does not really change much, into whatever direction we may lead the child's thinking.

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CURRICULUM AND FUNCTIONS OF THE SCHOOL

There are many gratifying aspects of the child's growth in ways of thinking, aspects that seem to flow from the application of our little psychological model, "I do it." Because they, not the teacher, do the thinking the children work with a freedom of mind, a self-confidence, an eagerness, and an application that even the playground could hardly match. Observing inquiry applied to reading in the first year, seeing the room sparkle as if lit by particles of lightning flashes, one wonders whether we slow-pokes could possibly live with the product if the same sort of thing went on through all twelve or thirteen years of school. But there is another consequence that freedom of mind is bound to create. A continuing inquiry becomes a pursuit and that which we pursue, we pursue with purpose. The purposelessness of most of our high school graduates and especially of those who stop too soon is one of the most serious concerns in our expression of humanity. Unfortunately, whether from guilt or ignorance, we usually blame the adolescent for his butterfly mind. But how can he help but flit when in school we have given him nothing to pursue? By our impositions and strictures, by giving him answers before he asks questions, we have even denied him the privilege of finding a pursuit. Let the inquiring mind of the child have its play in those directions in which man has categorized his experience, and we would not have to worry about purposeless youth. A few minutes ago we spoke of ways of thinking, purposes and values in the same breath. We have shown the relationship of purpose to ways of thinking. Value is tied to both. Unless we enjoy a way of thinking we are unlikely to pursue it, and if we do pursue it to the point that it becomes a purpose in life, we value it. Value is an aspect of thinking to which we have not given much attention in education. Mainly we say to the child, "This is good. You must think that this is good too, or nobody will think that you are good." Then we force the child to eat our goodies and boast that we have turned out cultured graduates from our schools. Behind our backs many of our children have thrown our goodies up. They know that they must discover their own values and out of their discoveries create their own culture. They want really to live their values, not just make them into words as they hear adults do; they want to be their culture, not just wear it like an apron of fig-leaves to conceal their nakedness. In this respect, each in his own small way, perhaps each in his own great way, the child is following in the footsteps of all the Greats of history. Thus Socrates re-wrote Homer on the streets of Athens. Even as a child Christ confounded the cultural traditions of the learned men of Israel. After trying out most of the popular paganisms of the time, St. Augustine became the founder of western theology. Chaucer succeeded where others had failed to

FOR WHOM WE TEACH

31

write value into English poetry. Bacon erased the word "argument" as a value in discovery and wrote in its place "experience." In modern times, name your men. I give you the dullard of Harrow who, refusing the classical values of English public schools, used his plain English tongue to bring the British up standing with words like "Blood, sweat and tears." In seeking and finding their own values, demanding the right to create from them their own culture, the children are not really saying to us "We don't like yours"; they are not really labelling us as old fogeys. They are really placing their highest value on that which we ourselves, for ourselves and for all men, value most. That value is freedom of mind, for if we believe in freedom of mind we believe in human worth. For freedom of mind millions of two generations have died. Can we not now give it to our children? If we can, then we can hope, and only then can we hope, that they may find the source of that humanity toward humanity about which we can only dream. REFERENCES

1. AGNES SNYDER, "Ready for What?," Educational Leadership, XXIII (Nov. 1965), 95-97. 2. DEREK MORRELL, "The New Dynamic in Curriculum Development," New Dynamics in Curriculum Development (Ontario Curriculum Institute, Toronto, 1965), p. 39.

A Curriculum Credo THE COMMITTEE ON THE SCOPE AND ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM

Society has instituted,

and supports, an educational system as a means for developing human personality and thus fostering the common good. The worthy ends of all human activity include relief from material and spiritual want, from ignorance, from oppression of body, mind, and soul. Education that fosters the fullest growth of the moral, aesthetic, social, physical, and intellectual aspects of the human being must be available for all, not just the privileged, members of society. We may explain our moral concepts and standards humanistically, as the result of the accumulated experience of our race, or, theologically, as signs of divine dispensation. In either case, society cannot neglect the moral principles which have so far sustained the evolution of humanity. All educators must share in the active commitment of the schools to moral values. People need and desire a system of values in order to govern their lives. The schools cannot ignore that adolescents are vitally concerned with personal and interpersonal problems, with the meaning of marriage and family life, for example, and many other topics which confuse and perplex them. A meaningful moral education "beyond the biological," as Speirs puts it, is a responsibility shared by the school system, home, and other agencies.1 Man has the power to appreciate the beautiful as it exists, and the power of imagination to conceive how life might be. Since many failures of the modern world appear to be failures of aesthetic discrimination and of the creative imagination, an educational philosophy that attaches prime importance to the growth of discriminatory abilities and of a powerful, disciplined imagination is necessary. As long as man must work to supply his material needs, vocational preparation is a valid educational objective. Under today's circumstances the concept of the continuing re-education of the adult must be part of the understanding of "the world of work." Mastery of socially productive skills which are at the same time personally satisfying to the worker seems an ideal end of such education. Physical, mental, and social well-being are fundamental to a purposeful

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33

life in all its dimensions. A sincere conviction of the importance of physical and mental health would be reflected by a curriculum which encouraged the growth of knowledge, attitudes, and practices of healthful living. It is not given to man to see clearly and fully into the future. One constant that can be predicted is change. One purpose of the educational curriculum must be to encourage such growth in the learner as will enable him to live with, create, direct, and control change. The child wants to grow: growth is what youth is for. The function of the curriculum is to stimulate growth. The direction growth takes, the rate of growth, and the quality of growth are important considerations of the schools. Public education has a logic of its own: it must serve two masters, society and the individual—without being the unthinking servant of either. Society and its members are ill-served when human wastage—the premature schoolleaver, for instance—occurs because of the failure of the educational system to bring about the fullest possible growth in those committed to its care. INTELLECTUAL GROWTH

The school shares the responsibility for ensuring growth with many youth-serving agencies. But, by-and-large, almost sole responsibility for that aspect of human development commonly called "intellectual growth" has been laid to the publicly-supported educational system. There are many ways of defining "intellectual growth" and there appears to be no universally-accepted explanation of how such growth takes place. Perhaps this is a way of saying that there is a unity of growth and it is not possible to create discrete compartments for "intellectual growth," "moral growth," "spiritual growth." Perhaps, at the other extreme, there are many types of "intellectual growth" ("moral growth" and so forth) each with its own law of development. The authors of this report believe, however, that further attention might be paid to the views on intellectual growth expressed below, and to the implications of these beliefs. ( 1 ) The process of intellectual growth is essentially the development of ways of thinking. (2) The process of intellectual growth is essentially bi-dimensional: the well-developed intellect has both breadth and depth and both dimensions are nurtured by a variety of experiences which allow for perception of relationships. Breadth without depth results in superficiality of intellect and depth without breadth creates the narrow mind. (3) Intellectual growth is not necessarily a by-product of facts memorized or skills acquired. (4) As the intellect grows, a learner increasingly perceives not only the

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"factual knowledge" needed to solve problems, but becomes increasingly capable of marshalling the required knowledge of specifics. (5) Intellectual growth might be said to occur as the learner develops resourcefulness, the power to observe carefully, to ask critical and creative questions, and to formulate reasonable conclusions without regarding them as ultimate truth. The authors of this creed maintain that these views infer growth of moral resources and a sense of responsibility toward oneself and others. For such growth is interpersonal as well as interactional: it requires the learner to relate to people as well as to things. Schweitzer has observed that the intellectual act by which man ceases to live at random and concerns himself with his actions toward others is the paramount ethical and moral step.2 Similarly, intellectual growth is marked by an increased ability to relate satisfactorily to the material and mechanical world. He who has learned to face without fear the world of rapid change can hope for increased personal productivity and creativity. Intellectual growth, in this sense, is but one way of measuring a complex of human growth characteristics. CHARACTERISTICS OF LEARNING SITUATIONS WHICH PROMOTE GROWTH

Learning does not proceed solely by what is commonly called intellectual processes. To prepare for a continuous process of learning, man's powers of observation, his emotions, imaginative and reasoning powers (whether viewed as a unity or as separate faculties) must develop. By bringing the learner to an awareness of his productive potential (intellectual, emotional, moral, and manual), a teacher helps the learner find his personal "truth" or wholeness. Thus, as the Prophet sees, the learning situation consists not of bringing the learner into the house of the teacher's wisdom, but to the threshold of his own being.3 Man is a complex creature who must be considered as a whole if his true needs are to be met and his integrity preserved. Education is personal development on the broadest possible front: the system is at its best when it makes it possible for the teacher to use his full powers with the learner. The educational system and the teacher who use their power against the learner to suppress his personal identity or to demand conformity with some preconceived stereotype, are arrogant. Similarly, since the future is in many ways unpredictable, it is arrogant to attempt to mould the learner to fit into specific roles in the world of tomorrow. The dynamic ingredient in the best learning situation is that aspect of the teacher's professionalism which Morrell calls "love." Love, an unqualified reverence for mankind, is the bridge between the personal "I" and the social "we." Love is the force that leads to the sense of oneness with all humanity

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35

and to the voluntary harmonization of personal differences. Love is "the fundamental dynamic in education, as in human affairs as a whole . . . that stance in life which causes us to interpret knowledge, and to use power, with other people, supplying their needs rather than our own."4 If growth means that the learner shall become less and less dependent and more and more self-reliant which learning situations best accommodate this development? What sort of things should be happening when the learner is learning independently? When he is part of a group? Growth in independence is fostered when the learning situation brings experience in gathering, recording, presenting, and applying information, as in a library research project related to a real problem identified by a class and researched by one of its members. Growth in independence and interdependence are fostered when the learning situation brings experience in interacting with people, including experience in expressing, receiving, sharing, questioning, and testing ideas, as in a classroom symposium where divergent thinking is encouraged but thoughts are carefully examined. It is obvious that the teacher, in these situations, cannot be a reservoir of "truth" from which "the facts" are poured. Young learners are naturally inquisitive and it is essential to allow the process of inquiry to generate discovery. The discovery of basic relationships lies at the heart of learning. Teaching as "telling" may fail to develop the potential of the inquiring mind: certainly it is never essentially more than the explication of what the teacher has discovered. When "teller's interests" do not approximate "learner's interests," learning may be minimal and the learner's right to have his interests and readiness for learning considered may be seriously abridged. A rhetoric of conclusions is perceived by the auditor only in terms of his own intellectual framework and emotional readiness. Hence the intended message may not be communicated. Often, therefore, "precepts do not, for the mind of man, make percepts." Only when the learner is "tuned in" as the result of his involvement in inquiry can favourable conditions for communication be said to exist. KNOWLEDGE

Man calls the relationships that he discovers among his perceptions "knowledge." Knowledge is a model whereby form and meaning are given to experience. It is perhaps true that the practitioners of the various academic disciplines structure their percepts differently and accumulate unique "bodiçs of knowledge." But this is an act of delimitation and perhaps accounts for the inability of specialists in the disciplines to communicate to others. Knowledge, for any man, is essentially the relationships

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he personally discovers from his encounters with his external environment and his internal milieu. Knowledge may be viewed as both process and content. Content is the vehicle through which the process moves and different kinds of content may colour the process of thought. Jerome Burner's work may be considered in order to illustrate this view.5 He observes that the scientist, the historian— all true scholars indeed—seek means whereby human experience may be comprehended. However, the body of organized knowledge of the physicist is structured differently from that of, say, the social historian. That is to say, the various academic disciplines seek different data, assess their findings, and validate their methods of inquiry according to criteria judged appropriate to their own domain of investigation. But in all instances (biology, biography, and so forth) inquiry is a process of discovery whereby knowledge is to be augmented. The content of the process varies but the constant element, the dynamic element of knowledge, is the process of inquiry. Discovery which arises from fruitful inquiry may be viewed as a catalytic factor which establishes a pattern of relationships, creates an organizing idea or concept. When we say that there is a growth in knowledge in an individual or a "knowledge explosion" for a society, we may mean that some new discovery has caused the development of greater organizing ideas or concepts. The knowledge model has been modified and the new structure gives an augmented meaning to human experience. The implications of this view of knowledge are important for the learning situation. Since knowledge is constantly undergoing modification, teaching for the acquisition of knowledge as if it were a thing rather than a process is absurd. The learning situation must provide for the opportunity to inquire, to experience, to discover. There is an implication for educational evaluation, too. If knowledge is "something that we do, not what we get," how can it be measured? Obviously the sampling techniques used by examiners today are not ideally suited to the appraisal of ways of thinking, of the direction, pace, and quality of thinking. With what degree of accuracy can current instruments of measurement evaluate the process of thinking? The case for the assessment of achievement at the local level (as opposed to external examinations) is strengthened when we admit current limitations of measurement techniques. WHAT DO WE MEAN BY "COURSE OF STUDY"?

Do we need a new concept of "course of study"? Consider the results of substituting "way" for "course" and "thinking" for "study," even though these are not necessarily truly synonomous. Can we not say that "course of

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study" means "way of thinking"? In this context, ways of thinking are not only the process of education but also its product. If content and process are two aspects of the same thing—the learner's growth in ways of thinking —courses of study and teaching methods, as presently commonly understood, are not parts of the curriculum, but aspects of it. Applying this to earlier observations, one would say that the learner needs opportunities to experience "ways of thinking" about interpersonal and social relationships, the relation of man to his environment. If a "way of thinking" is to maintain direction, establish pace, and maintain quality, should there not be serious consideration of continuity in the educational program? To what extent does compartmentalization in the present curriculum result in discontinuity and hinder thinking processes and patterns of quality? If the curriculum is to provide for growth in the learner, the function of the school, that is, of teachers, of supervisors, of administrators, and even of legislators, is to provide maximum opportunities for growth. The values of society play a great role also in determining the direction, rate, and quality of growth. THE ROLE OF THE SCHOOL AND THE TEACHER

Ultimately, the professional educator, in the execution of his commission from society, determines how effectively the planned curriculum functions. If, for instance, "administrative convenience" ranks a higher priority than provision of the fullest possible opportunities for growth, the rate and quality of human development will be sacrificed. If a teacher is concerned only with the nature of the academic discipline or vocational skill he teaches, if he ignores or suppresses the learner as a unique personality, if his mind is closed to the findings of educational studies, or if he fails to examine society's values and expectations, the best conceivable school program will be damaged. SOCIETY'S ROLE Society as a whole determines the climate within which education flourishes or withers. The purposes of a society which concerns itself with the growth of its young are best served by a climate which fosters teacher growth and stimulates all educators to experiment, innovate, learn from mistakes, and try again. Society can support and defend the freedom of the teacher to establish and build a unique personal relationship with the learner. Unthinking stereotypes of teacher behavior are as damaging as stereotyped concepts of acceptable pupil behavior.

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Society has the right, indeed duty, to communicate clearly to the school and to the teacher its social values and interests. Society's involvement is essential to maintain the quality and relevance of the entire educational process to current social problems. At the same time, society must respect the right of the school and the teacher to interpret societal wishes with due regard to relevant data: that data derived from a professional knowledge of the learners as persons; knowledge of modes of learning; knowledge from the academic disciplines and knowledge of vocational skills; and knowledge of the resources which are or might be available to the school and teachers. Society must be prepared, in other words, to reconcile its rights of control with a philosophy of academic freedom if it wishes to be well served by its educational system. This can be accomplished with a minimum of friction when both society and schoolmen understand clearly which are properly society's areas of "decision-making"—and which are institutional levels of decision-making. Similarly, where decisions are properly instructional decisions, neither society nor supervisors must claim blanket rights of veto on the actions of teachers. Society, in the final analysis, has little choice but to delegate the powers needed to carry out the responsibilities assigned to schools and teachers. Everyone must avoid claims to monopoly of wisdom and strive to establish a working relationship based on mutual respect and the firm conviction that the shared objective is an educational system which, above all, aims at the fullest growth of the human personality and thus the common good. REFERENCES 1. N. R. SPEIRS, "Sex Education: Beyond the Biological," Toronto Educ. Quart., IV, 4 (Summer 1965). 2. ALBERT SCHWEITZER, The Teaching of Reverence for Life (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Toronto, 1965). 3. KAHIL GroRAN, "On Teaching," The Prophet (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1953). 4. DEREK MORRELL, "The New Dynamic in Curriculum Development," New Dynamics in Curriculum Development (Ontario Curriculum Institute, Toronto, 1965), p. 39. 5. JEROME S. BRUNER, The Process of Education (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1960).

PART TWO

NEW CURRICULA

INTRODUCTION

41

READING "RECOMMENDATIONS," from A First Look

44 48

"AN EXPERIMENTAL INTEGRATED LANGUAGE PROGRAMME," from

Reading: A Demonstration Project

SCIENCE "OBJECTIVES AND CONTENT OF A SCIENCE CURRICULUM," from Science: An Interim Report "EXPERIMENTAL TEACHING-LEARNING UNITS," from Science: Interim Report No. 2

57 66 69 89

MATHEMATICS "THE WHAT, THE WHY, THE HOW OF A NEW MATHEMATICS PROGRAMME," from Mathematics: Report of the Committee Considering the Mathematics Programme (K-6)

95

STUDENTS," from Mathematics: The Four Year Programme

115

"A SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME FOR NON-UNIVERSITY-BOUND

MODERN LANGUAGES "THE ROLE AND VALUE OF A SECOND LANGUAGE IN CANADIAN SOCIETY," from French as a Second Language "EXPERIMENTAL INTENSIVE TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAMME IN ORAL FRENCH," from The Modern Languages Committee: Interim Report No. 2 "TEACHING THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE," from Third Language Study in the Secondary Schools L'Anglais: langue seconde des Franco-Ontariens à l'école secondaire

98

136 138 143 181 190

THE HUMANITIES AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES "TEACHING THE CREATIVE ARTS," from The Creative Arts: A Survey of Professional Opinion "GEOGRAPHY: A CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR CURRICULUM DESIGN," from Directions: An Initial Inquiry into the Social Sciences Program for the Schools

206 209 221

Introduction A. number of terms are used to indicate the opportunities for learning experiences provided for learners under the direction of a school and its teachers. Curriculum, program of studies, course outline, syllabus, course of study, or similar terms are used to describe anything from a topical outline of content to be taught to descriptions encompassing everything, planned or spontaneous, that happens to the learner in the school setting. A national study conducted a few years ago by D. E. Glendenning indicated that Canadian educators do not agree in their definitions of these terms. Moreover, course outline and syllabus are widely regarded as synonymous as are also program of study and curriculum. Though the growing interest in this field and the ensuing dialogue may have resulted in more precise use of language in recent years, it is still necessary to define one's terms and prepare for some dissent. It is reasonable to expect disagreement as long as the actual processes of stating educational aims and structuring programs to achieve them differ from community to community. In lieu of any arbitrary definition, let us suggest that there are three fundamental issues underlying most current schemes to devise new designs for learning. Curriculum development consists of coping with these issues. Curriculum workers know that each issue is too complex to be expressed in simple questions and answers, but three questions may serve to bring the issues into focus. ( 1 ) How are the aims of education and the objectives of the schools to be determined and communicated? (2) How are opportunities for learning experiences to be designed so that schools may assist their clientele in achieving these aims and objectives? (3) How are the schools' programs to be assessed to determine if the desired outcomes are being achieved? New Designs for Learning is concerned with casting light on these questions and the issues which underlie them. Certainly the questions demand more satisfactory responses than can be given at this time. The selections in this chapter and other parts of the book indicate what the earliest efforts of OCI committees have produced by way of answers to date. The selections are concerned with educational objectives and aims, with the means of

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achieving them, and with checking upon the effectiveness of the new designs for learning. The aims of education are usually conceived as remote or general ends, not as outcomes of any single program, grade, or period of schooling. They are regarded as capacities developed by accretion over a long span of years, as immanencies for the appropriate conduct of life. Aims stated at a high level of generality or in terms of ultimate outcomes are commonplace and it is difficult to relate them to specific aspects of a school program or to assess the effectiveness of any single course in achieving these aims. On the other hand, it is widely supposed that there are specific behavioural objectives of certain activities, for example, school programs in mathematics or physical education, that have values for life for all learners. These objectives are assumed to be more or less identical with the general aims of education. In fact, the purposes of these activities are often stated in terms of general or ultimate outcomes. As a rule, behavioural objectives are implied but not specifically identified. In any case, it is seldom that any assessment is undertaken to discover whether the immediate or remote goals are either compatible or being attained. These issues of aims, objectives, and assessment are dealt with also in the sections "The Curriculum and the Functions of the School" and "Evaluating New Curricula." It is important to understand how the inadequate formulation and communication of society's aims and objectives have left the question of values to the professional educators. Some difficulties in reaching consensus in pluralistic, democratic societies were identified in the preceding section. In addition, it is easy to understand why provincial departments of education and school trustees are pleased to allow royal commissions or others to grapple with politically sensitive value issues. Rather than cope with troublesome questions of values and risk offending groups who could not be expected to accept the values they hold, provincial and local authorities in Canada have often abdicated their responsibility by presenting only the most general social criteria for the guidance of the curriculum planners they employ. The latter have thereupon produced their own values. These have two foundations, their own cultural (or, more correctly, sub-cultural) norms and the values of the subject-matter with which they have been commissioned to deal. Curricula so designed have tended to be concerned with middle class values and with what is significant to the academic disciplines (or trade skills, and so on). Frequently the purposes of the disciplined body of knowledge constituting the subject area become the direct objects of curriculum renewal. Mastery of content becomes both the end of such instructional programs and the means by which this end is

INTRODUCTION

43

achieved. Thus, for example, to learn mathematics is the end; learning mathematics is the means. And the professional educators, in deciding what mathematics should be taught, also decide both objectives and aims of education. If, as is claimed, the life-oriented curricula of the 1930's and 1940's neglected the bodies of disciplined knowledge, perhaps today's reform movement has put the disciplines back into the curriculum without due reference to life-values. Studies of the learner, which should be an important factor in determining aims and objectives, have been largely concerned with what the majority can learn and have yielded few clear guidelines so far. If, by default, the predilections of professional educators and disciplined knowledge have come to determine the values underlying the offerings of the schools' programs, the situation is not likely to go unchecked indefinitely. This is because there is a third fundamental issue involved in designing learning situations, that is, the concern for assessment of outcomes, or evaluation as it is commonly called. Without criteria external to the disciplines or the cultural values of curriculum designers it is impossible to judge the social effectiveness of programs of study. For curriculum development is an applied social science and it is impossible to believe that society will continue to pay so handsomely for the development of new programs, materials and equipment, school plant modification, in-service teacher education schemes, and everything else that goes with curriculum renewal without asking if the changes are relevant to the major social needs of the age. Once society begins to inquire—and educators can be expected to be among the first to do so—it may be found that what is significant to the disciplines and predominantly middle class values does best fulfil society's requirements. But this unexamined assumption and the issues underlying it must, for the time, be considered a spectre haunting the curriculum development field.

READING

There is scarcely any aspect of Western civilization which is not at this moment undergoing some manifestation of that turbulent, largely unperceived revolution of sweeping sociological consequence known, where it is identified, as the communications revolution. To "everyman" this revolution reveals itself through the media which daily touch him at a dozen points—television (colour television now), FM radio, cinemascope (with stereophonic sound), multiplex tape recorders of higher than high fidelity, pop or op art including typographic fashions which have transformed even the want ads into art forms, electronic voicewriters, communication satellites, and so on. Electric technology allows everyman to span oceans in much the same fashion as the print medium allows him to span the centuries. If theorists such as Marshall McLuhan are correct, advances in electric technology have transformed the world, in communications terms, to a global village. The inarticulate villagers, alas, are just becoming aware of their inability to communicate effectively even with those who ostensibly read and write the same language. At second glance it appears fortunate for everyman that the principal means of communication remain speaking, listening, reading, and writing. For is not the reading the first (and foremost) of the 3 R's? And is not reading what the schools teach youngsters almost from the moment they enter classrooms? No one disputes that a paramount task of a teacher is to assist a pupil to learn to read or that reading ability is a prime intellectual necessity not only for success in school and at work, but, indeed, for effective citizenship in today's world. Few question the need to develop skills in comprehending, judging, and remembering what one reads (or is exposed to by other media). And it is generally assumed by everyman that writing, the second R, is second only in importance to reading. Beyond these points it is safe to assert that general agreement cannot be reached among any large group—of reading experts or of everyman and his layman friends—about the state of reading, especially the teaching of reading in the schools. Why Johnny Can't Read, Tomorrow's Illiterates, Reading: Chaos and Cure, and similar books have been advanced by the critics of the schools. Pedagogues and apologists have countered with Fact and Fiction about Phonetics, Common Sense in Teaching Reading, and

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even a scholarly presentation, "When Should and Could Johnny Learn to Read." If the debate among "experts" has not confused him, everyman may find the maze of new primers, basal readers, colour-coded flash cards, and books such as Helping Your Child Improve His Reading and (!) Teaching Your Baby to Read unnerving, if not completely baffling. Everyman may find himself, at his company's urging and expense, attending a speed-reading course or curling up with Faster Reading for Business or Read Well and Remember instead of enjoying his colour television, stereophonic phonograph, or hi-fi radio. Everyman's Johnny, in turn, may be confronted with reading readiness tests, achievement tests, vision and diagnostic tests. Perhaps he may begin to read not with traditional orthography but with Sir James Pitman's forty-four-character initial teaching alphabet. He may find his teacher employing tape recorders and projectors with tachistoscopic controls. Johnny may even be taught to read at the console of an automatic, programmed computer-controlled teaching machine complete with microphone and earphones, electric typewriter keyboard, an illuminated display screen which asks him questions and a light-pen with which he may answer. If his parents or teachers are especially insecure, Johnny may find Read with Speed and Precision, How to Get More out of Your Reading, and How to Read Better and Faster thrust upon him. If there is confusion and anxiety about reading there need not be. The lead article in the April 1964 issue of the Review of Educational Research asserts that "thousands of contributions to linguistics and the psychology of language have been published in the last three years, but this intense activity appears to represent a process of working out, testing, elaborating, and refining the theories and new ideas of the previous decade . . . a phase of consolidating the gains made in previous periods of highly creative activity. The net result for an applied field such as education in the language arts cannot be anything but positive." The fact is that all too often communities have not taken the trouble to assess thoroughly and carefully the nature of the reading program offered in the schools. Without a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the program it has been impossible for parents or educational authorities to commit with full confidence their youngsters to the charge of their teachers, or to take steps to remedy inadequacies in the training of the professional staff or the supply of teaching materials. Without a comprehensive examination of teaching practices, how can it be known whether the benefits of the recent research and development in the language arts are being incorporated into the curriculum?

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Early in 1964, the Ontario Curriculum Institute established a Committee on the Study of the Teaching of Reading and subsequently accepted its proposal for a three-part plan which involved both research study and development of new programs. A first project, a survey of current practice in the teaching of reading, was developed to provide a description of the state of reading instruction in the province of Ontario, no such description being available. The intention was to accumulate information about both stated and actual practice, and to evaluate practice so that improvements could be made. A questionnaire was designed to collect six categories of data: (1) the qualifications and professional experience of the respondents; (2) school and classroom organizational patterns currently provided to accommodate pupil differences; (3) instructional practices used in the teaching of reading and in relating reading to other communications skills; (4) information about facilities and materials available and the respondents' rating of these; (5) the procedures used in measuring and reporting pupil achievement in reading; (6) opportunities for professional training in methods of teaching reading and the respondents' evaluation of the opportunities. The questionnaire was administered in 1964 to nearly 6,000 teachers across the province, and the answers were then analysed. The findings constitute A First Look from which the chapter "Recommendations" has been reproduced below. Other chapters, "Evaluation in the Reading Programme" and "Teaching Materials in the Reading Programme" appear later in this volume, in other contexts. The two other projects dealt with the establishment of a professional course in the teaching of reading designed to provide opportunities for advanced study not otherwise available in Canada, and secondly with the establishment of centres for the demonstration of excellence in the teaching of reading. Both these projects came to pass in 1965 and continue, enlarged, today. It is the report on the first Demonstration Centre that forms the second extract in this section. Since virtually the whole report is included, the only major omission being the two appendices, little further introduction seems required. It suffices to note that the committee's philosophy makes sense in the world of the communications revolution: "The development of the child's power and capability of communicating effectively through listening, speaking, reading, and writing is a goal of the well-integrated curriculum. . . . Developmental learning experiences are active, openended, and designed to evoke the child's best level of responses. Each child's own style of learning is unique. . . . The teacher helps the child to express his own ideas in his own language."

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This may be an age of complex and impersonal technology, of inarticulate and impersonal societies, a world where everyman fears for his identity. It may be a comfort to know that there are educators concerned not only with filling everyman's needs for communications skills but with doing so in a fashion which preserves each person's integrity by respecting his unique mode of learning and of expressing himself.

Recommendations This

survey on the teaching of reading was a first attempt in Ontario to afford teachers the opportunity to express their opinions and attitudes about the methods and materials of the reading programme and professional development in reading instruction. An initial effort, the survey was designed, in part, to collect information about the state of reading instruction with a view to providing a description of its present status. The survey has yielded sufficient data to merit recommendations based on its findings. The evidence as reported in foregoing chapters of this report has revealed some specific areas in the teaching of reading which can be improved now if support is given to the recommendations (listed numerically in italic type) below. In this sense, the purpose of these recommendations will be achieved only to the extent to which they can become a guide for local action. The authors of the report have endeavoured to use the substance of the survey data to formulate recommendations which the Department of Education, universities, administrators, principals, supervisors, and teachers can relate to existing reading programmes with a view to improving the teaching of reading. The evidence on which these recommendations have been based has been interpreted in the light of accepted knowledge about the teaching of reading. The sound attitudes and opinions expressed by the respondents in the survey data on many aspects of the teaching of reading have been supported and endorsed. Hence, some of the recommendations are aimed at sustaining and extending those practices which experience has shown to be fruitful. It should also be pointed out that some of the recommendations are not new. They repeat what has been said before by authorities in the field of reading. These recommendations have been included to focus attention on the real and continuing issues and problems in the teaching of reading. The teaching of reading is open to improvement. The reading programme can be improved if the best present knowledge about reading is used with greater effectiveness. PROFESSIONAL TRAINING OF TEACHERS

The results of this pilot study revealed clearly that the teachers who

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responded to the questionnaire were deeply concerned about the opportunities for professional training in the teaching of reading. In the past, teachers have displayed a continued interest in the enhancement of the opportunities for training and professional development now available in Ontario. The evidence from this survey supports the need of teachers for additional professional training in the teaching of reading. The fact that particular groups of respondents felt unable to reply adequately to the questionnaire is worthy of comment and interpretation. These groups included recent graduates of teachers' colleges, kindergarten teachers, secondary school teachers, and those who indicated that their greatest teaching proficiency and interest lay in specialized fields outside of reading. These groups appeared to lack information about the teaching of reading. The lack of experience on the part of the teachers' college graduates probably accounted for their inability to respond to those parts of the questionnaire on the materials and methods in actual use. However, it was expected that this group would have had sufficient information to reply to most parts of the questionnaire. No plausible reason can be given to explain the fact that the other groups involved here felt unable to reply adequately to the questionnaire. It is known and accepted that the teaching of reading and the other communication arts is a continuous process for which teachers of every grade and every subject throughout the entire curriculum, both elementary and secondary, are responsible; yet the survey revealed that these groups of teachers felt they had never received instruction or training in the teaching of reading. The value of a variety of reading offerings in teacher preparation was recognized by a large number of teachers. In-service training, supplementing previous training, was commended. However, the results from the survey also showed that four teachers in ten among the respondents rated the opportunities they had had for training in certain aspects of the teaching of reading as fair or poor. In the data, on the types of professional courses they would like to see made available, the respondents showed that they recognized the déficiences of the existing opportunities for training. A need and desire for more comprehensive training was very evident. It is well known that those teachers who seek such advanced training in the teaching of reading must do so outside of Ontario. It is recognized, too, that the training facilities now available do not afford the teachers of Ontario sufficient opportunity to up-date their knowledge about the teaching of reading in keeping with present needs. It is essential that practices in the teaching of reading keep pace with present knowledge about child growth and development, learning theory, and methods. There is need for professional action to remedy the existing disparities between our knowledge

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about the teaching of reading and actual classroom practice. The survey data showed the meagreness of our existing specialized resources in terms of personnel and programmes. 1. Pre-service courses for both elementary and secondary teachers should be reviewed and evaluated with a view to providing a training programme in the teaching of reading and the other communication arts that is appropriate to the needs of beginning teachers. 2. Pre-service courses in the communication arts should be designed so that listening, speaking, writing, and reading become integrated components of a total programme. Their treatment as separate subjects in the school curriculum is a denial of existing knowledge about language development and the learning process. 3. Universities should be encouraged to offer undergraduate courses for prospective teachers in areas such as children's literature, mental health, psychology as they relate to the teaching-learning process involved in communication. Post-graduate courses in the teaching of reading should be established. At present education in Ontario has little capability of producing reading clinicians, specialists in methods, curriculum development, and research. SPECIAL READING PROBLEMS

It is the expressed concern of teachers that they help the atypical children to learn to read to the best of their ability. They know that successful teaching of this type of child is accompanied by continuous and careful assessment of his physical, psychological, intellectual strengths and weaknesses, and of his achievement in learning. They know, too, that special methods and materials suited to meet the needs of this type of child should be employed. Whether the child is gifted or a slow learner, whether he has mild or severe difficulty in reading, whether he comes from a home in which no English is spoken, whether he is taught in a special class or a regular class, much attention and energy of teachers must be devoted to teaching him to read. In the survey, teachers generally expressed confidence in their capability to teach the child with unusual reading needs. However, they indicated at the same time that they wished to improve their qualifications for teaching such children. They were aware of the need for better provisions in schools and particularly for more assistance by highly trained specialists so that

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they could more successfully teach children who might come to be regarded as problems. 4. Teachers should be given better preparation for teaching children with atypical reading needs. Pre-service education should at least make teachers alert to the kinds of responses to reading they may expect. A better understanding of the procedures of a continuous diagnostic approach to teaching should be instilled in novice teachers. 5. Better school provisions must be made. These need not follow stereotyped patterns of setting up special classes and remedial programmes. Research may suggest flexible ways of providing instruction for these children. 6. A body of knowledge about teaching children with specific problems, for example, children from non-English-speaking backgrounds, should be developed and publicized among teachers. 7. Opportunities for specialized work in diagnosis, and treatment for children with atypical reading needs should be made available in Ontario. The critical shortage of consultants and supervisors, with leadership ability in the field of reading, is recognized widely among teachers. MATERIALS AND RESOURCES

There appears to be continued general use of basal readers and their manuals. However, considerable confidence was indicated by teachers in the value of library books in the teaching of reading. There appears to be a growing recognition of the need for a variety of materials to suit different instructional purposes. 8. School and classroom libraries should be enlarged to provide for recreational reading and to help children become independent learners. 9. Pre-service education should include courses in children's literature to help teachers guide and develop children's taste in literature. 10. The function of the library and the role of the librarian in schools need clarification. 11. Encouragement and consultant help should be given to teachers who are using trade books in individualized reading programmes, to those using novels in the teaching of more advanced reading skills, and to those who are devising more adequate adaptations of basal programmes. Re-education in the teaching of reading should be given to those who are not keeping up with current developments.

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METHODS

Although there appeared to be some divergence of opinion on methodology there was a large amount of agreement on the importance of the teaching of basic skills. Contrary to popular opinion, teachers indicated in the survey that they taught phonics extensively. In fact there might appear to be an imbalance in the emphasis on skills caused by the great attention placed on phonics. Relatively little use appeared to be made of the language-experience approach which is one of the most promising procedures in current use. 12. Research on methods of teaching beginning reading should be continued so that a sound basis might become generally accepted among teachers. 13. Pre-service and in-service training should give teachers more experience with more sophisticated methods such as those employed in the language experience approach. 14. In higher elementary grades and in secondary school, increasing attention should be given to teaching the reading of texts and other informational material. Teachers' requests for help in using novels in the reading programme should be granted at the pre-service and in-service level. CO-ORDINATION OF READING PROGRAMMES

While the respondents appeared to believe in the unification of language arts including reading, their responses revealed that they experienced difficulty in carrying this belief into practice. 15. Steps should be taken at the pre-service level to emphasize the teaching of reading as one phase of language growth. Curriculum change should discourage subject-oriented, content-dominated programmes carried out in the guise of language development. Co-ordination of the reading programme appeared to be uneven. Almost one quarter of the teachers said that there was no co-ordination of the reading programme in their schools. 16. Those in supervisory capacities should pay more attention to continuity and consistency in reading programmes. This may be initiated by the designating of persons responsible for such co-ordination. The involvement of a school staff in planning and carrying out the language programme is essential.

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PROVISION FOR INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

The survey results showed that the majority of the respondents had not usually been involved in designing the school organization. One of the basic difficulties limiting teacher involvement arises from the rigidity of the grade system. Although a variety of expediencies are currently in vogue to accommodate individual differences through limiting their range, the grade system continues to be a Procrustean bed for many children. In such a context a teacher is limited in her vision of continuous growth and development because she is restricted by the out-moded conventions of a traditional concept of school organization. It is recognized that the present grade structure militates against productive participation by teachers in a school organization designed to accommodate the varying patterns and rates of learning of children. 17. The present grade structure and the promotion policies that are related to it should be modified in keeping with the varying patterns of development and progress of children in school. There is a need to develop a means of classifying children into instructional groups whereby the insight of the individual teachers into the progress of each child may be used to the child's greater advantage. 18. Studies should be initiated to develop and refine some of the promising innovations being tried in school organization in some school systems. The grouping of children for reading instruction within a class appeared to be a common practice among the respondents, particularly those who taught in the primary division. Although a substantial number indicated that they used more than one procedure for grouping, the "three group" plan based on reading achievement, seemed to be most generally accepted. The survey results also showed that the practice of grouping tended to disappear after Grade 3. This seems to be a curious anomaly, since it is a well-established fact that the range in reading abilities among children increases as they proceed through the grades. There was a substantial difference between the number of respondents who indicated that they believed in grouping procedures and those who actually practised them. This difference was small when "grouping according to achievement" was the criterion. The data showed, however, that few of the respondents used pupil interests, specific skill needs, and the individualized approach as bases for organization for instruction. It may be inferred from these data that greater flexibility in grouping procedures using a variety of bases for establishing the class organization is desirable.

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19. Present grouping procedures should be examined to determine their suitability for their avowed purposes, and a greater measure of flexibility in grouping procedure using criteria other than achievement should be encouraged. 20. A statement on procedures for grouping for reading instruction in grades beyond the Primary Division should be developed so that flexible grouping plans for these grades may be evolved. Pre-service and in-service training should include a more comprehensive treatment of the theory and practice of grouping for instruction at all grade levels. EVALUATION IN THE READING PROGRAMME

There was ample evidence in the survey data to show that a variety of tests were used by a large number of the respondents for a variety of purposes. There was no discernible agreement regarding the use of tests, although a large number of respondents revealed that they favoured a combination of evaluation techniques to assess growth in reading. The survey results did not afford sufficient data to determine any clear picture of the purposes for which tests were used by the respondents. The implications of the high degree of confidence exhibited by the respondents in teachermade and standardized tests have been voiced in the body of this report. While some of the respondents' comments expressed reservations about the value, usefulness, and integrity of such tests, the question remains unanswered as to the extent to which these limitations are understood and accepted by the majority of teachers. For example, it is quite possible that teachers and administrators assign a precision and value to the grade norms of standardized tests which they do not, in fact, possess. 22. A critical examination and study of the role and junction of tests in the reading programme should be initiated, and that teachers be encouraged to interpret test results with a judicious caution. 23. Existing standardized tests should be revised to correspond to present day goals for reading instruction.

24. Pre-service and in-service training programmes and existing Departmental Courses should give greater emphasis to the theory and practice of measurement and evaluation in reading. 25. Materials on measurement and evaluation in reading should be prepared as a guide to teachers in up-dating their knowledge in this area of the reading programme.

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One continuing purpose for testing is to report on pupil progress to the parents. Of itself this purpose for testing can be considered a narrow one. The practice of assigning letter-grades or numbers to show progress is a conventionally accepted ritual that forces many teachers to resort to tests in a fashion that is often harmful to children. Marks or letter-grades based on tests can, at best, yield very limited information to the parents about a child's growth in reading power. It was encouraging to note that a very substantial number of respondents in the survey stated that they supplemented conventional report cards with interviews, letters, inventories, and anecdotal records. 26. Teachers should be encouraged to use parent-teacher interviews as a means of reporting progress to parents, and evidence of progress should be based on other evaluation techniques in addition to test results. Parents should be fully informed of the basis on which progress in reading is determined. 27. Local practice of reporting growth in reading should be examined to eliminate the procedure of breaking reading into parts—oral, silent, literature, etc., and reporting on each of these separately. THE SURVEY

This survey constitutes but a small part of the original proposal submitted by the Committee on the Study of the Teaching of Reading to the Ontario Curriculum Institute. As such it is an initial step in implementing a comprehensive study that could embrace both stated and actual practices in school reading programmes, and in teacher education for the teaching of reading. The results of the experimental survey have demonstrated the necessity of developing a further picture of the condition of reading instruction and of the professional development of teachers. Sufficient evidence has been derived from this pilot survey to merit the implementation of a larger study, as originally proposed by the Reading Committee of the Ontario Curriculum Institute. 28. A study of the teaching of reading from Kindergarten to Grade XIII should be undertaken to develop a comprehensive description of the state of reading instruction in the province. The purpose of the study would be to describe the effects of individual, social, cultural, and other differences upon the purpose of teaching-learning process, curriculum materials, and training programmes in reading. It would provide a mechanism for a continuous and a systematic examination

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and evaluation of current school practices and the professional development of teachers to teach reading. The study would use survey, interview, and observation procedures and be based on a statistically valid sample of the teacher population in Ontario. It is expected that this study would yield knowledge about the teaching of reading in Ontario in such a way as to engender appropriate strategies for improvement on a larger scale.

An Experimental Integrated Language Programme I. THE HISTORY OF THE PROJECT

In February

1964, the Ontario Curriculum Institute established a Reading Committee to examine the state of reading instruction in the province and to make recommendations for improvement. After due investigation the committee presented a Plan for the Study of the Teaching of Reading in Ontario The committee stated:

Centres for the demonstration of reading should be established in the province. At these centres, excellence in the teaching of reading could be demonstrated for various purposes such as: pre-service teacher preparation; in-service professional development; and interpretation of reading programmes to the public. The values of this project are obvious. The work of these centres could be described in reports or recorded on film and videotape for extensive use. The centres would become agencies for bringing about desirable change and continuous improvement in the teaching of reading. The intention of this project is that centres would be developed with the co-operation of local Boards of Education. A first step in the establishment of such centres should include the initiation of a pilot centre that could serve as a pattern for others. The demonstration centres would stimulate the gradual involvement of more and more people throughout the province in the work of improving the teaching of reading. THE PILOT DEMONSTRATION CENTR

In June 1964, the Board of Governors of the Ontario Curriculum Institute agreed to support the establishment of a pilot Demonstration Centre to begin operation in September 1964. The Lakeshore Board of Education agreed to participate in this project. The Reading Supervisor for the Lakeshore Board of Education undertook the co-ordination of the work of the Centre under the direction of a committee of the Curriculum Institute. This committee included, as chairman, a professor from the staff of the Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto the teacher of the Demonstration Class in the Lakeshore Board of Education; the Supervisor of Reading for

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the Lakeshore Board of Education; the Superintendent of Public Schools for the Lakeshore Board of Education; the Reading Consultant from North York Board of Education; a Master from Lakeshore Teachers' College; the Acting Director of the Language Study Centre, Toronto Board of Education; the Boys' and Girls' Librarian, Etobicoke Public Library; and the chairman of the Reading Committee, an Area Superintendent of Public Schools, Etobicoke. The committee was constituted in a way which would serve as a model for other demonstration centre committees. It appeared desirable that the committee would demonstrate how elements in the local educational community could be brought together to bring about changes in the teaching of reading. It was recognized that each local setting would be distinctive. The committee made the following recommendations for the establishment of the pilot centre: The pilot centre should consist of one first grade class; this class should be made up of thirty children representing a crosssection of the Grade 1 population; the teacher should be an employee of the local Board of Education; the teacher should have had experience and should be prepared to take further training; the Committee for Demonstration Centres should provide guidance to the teacher and the local authorities regarding the development of the reading programme; this committee should meet regularly at the school housing the class, to plan and evaluate the proposed programme; the committee should describe the work of the pilot centre; the cost of certain materials required for an effective beginning reading programme would be assumed by the Ontario Curriculum Institute. In implementing these recommendations for September 1964, selection of the children and teacher were made by the local board in consultation with the committee. Physical changes in the classroom were carried out by the local authority with assistance from the Ontario Curriculum Institute. The children in the pilot class were chosen to represent a typical Grade 1. Ten of the children appeared to be ready to move rapidly in the reading programme, ten seemed of average ability, and ten were not communicating freely either orally or pictorially and were considered to have less than average ability with language. No children with emotional or neurological problems were included. The number of pupils in the classroom was limited to thirty in order that adequate working space would be available and so that appropriate opportunities would be provided for the teacher to give individual help. The teacher was chosen on the basis of her understanding of children, her knowledge of the reading process, her awareness of the thinking skills

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involved in reading, her successful teaching experience, and her interest in continuing to make teaching a career. The physical organization of the room was altered. Chairs and tables replaced the desks and seats that were in the classroom. Library shelves were built in one corner of the room. Display panels were moved to positions on the cloakroom door. Mobile book shelves, with magazine racks in one side and storage space behind the racks, were built. The round table already in the room was moved to the library corner. The counter along the windows was converted to a painting centre with space under the counter divided to hold paintings and paper. Additional shelves for text books were built. Items of additional equipment that were considered to be essential were a filing cabinet and a primary typewriter. More library books were obtained. These were carefully selected to encompass a wide range of interest and difficulty. A minimum requirement of ten books per child was set. The materials added to this classroom were to supplement the standard equipment, creative materials, and basal readers, usually found in Grade 1 classrooms. The committee recommended that the room be set up without excessive expense so that it could be used as a minimum standard by other areas. II. THE ASSUMPTIONS OF THE INTEGRATED LANGUAGE PROGRAMME ADOPTED IN THE CLASS

The following are some of the basic considerations used by the committee as a continuing guide for the development of the programme. Language functions throughout the entire curriculum and pervades every activity and experience. The development of the child's power and capability of communicating effectively through listening, speaking, reading, and writing is a goal of the well-integrated curriculum. The language programme is concerned with the intellectual and personal growth of each child. Developmental learning experiences are active, openended, and designed to evoke the child's best level of responses. Each child's own style of learning is unique. "For young children, English is not a subject at all but an activity permeating their lives: it enters into individual experience and social relationships . . . and provides us with opportunities of finding or creating the most alive, poignant and energetic expression we can of our experiences, and in so doing forms an essential part of the experience itself. It is not just an instrument.''" The nature and quality of the child's experience are crucial factors in the

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beginning stage of reading. The content of the child's experience and his interests lead him into the world of printed language. The child's ideas and his manner of expressing them become the source of reading material in the initial stages. The children enter into simple group experiences that stimulate them to discuss their ideas, plan together, gather information, ask questions, make comments, look at and comment on pictures, explore natural phenomena, and try out things. The teacher helps the child to express his own ideas in his own language. Children at the beginning stages of reading require a learning environment that is rich in language and reading resources. Some of these resources may be created through daily classroom activities, both group and individual, both informational and creative. Other resources may include a variety of reading materials, diverse in nature and at varying levels of difficulty. There is a dynamic relationship between learning to read and learning to write. Early attention to this reciprocal relationship between these two faces of literacy appears to be appropriate. Factual learning is not an end in itself. How the children feel about what is learned, and how they feel about learning become important. When the child's interests are involved he becomes receptive and productive because he is personally and emotionally implicated in what is being learned. III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROGRAMME A ROOM FOR LEARNING

Learning was facilitated by a new flexibility in the classroom. Tables were rearranged for discussion and work activities. Floor space was created for construction activities, movement, dramatization, and play. Learning centres were created in the classroom. Some of these became permanent, while others were disbanded as the programme developed. The library centre was permanent. Because the typewriter and tape recorder were often in this area it became a focal point for discussions, dictating stories, and reading. The large work surface along the windows became a centre for painting, modelling, and constructing. This centre, too, was permanent. Other centres emerged from time to time. A science centre was built around a table of rock and mineral samples, and included charts and other informative materials. It became a place where children gathered for discussion of their interest in minerals, for experimenting with and handling the materials. Often four learning centres were operating in the room at

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one time. In all these areas the simultaneous development of all aspects of language was stimulated. THE TEACHER WORKED WITH SPACE AND TIME

The teacher in this situation could operate with freedom in arranging time and space for learning, and in using clues from the children to determine content. Her day was made up of decisions about the relative importance of interests expressed. She had to predict to herself some of the possible outcomes if a certain curiosity were to be pursued. She had to be constantly alert to those "needs to know" that children expressed. She had to decide what resources in school and out could be used in problem-solving. When children had been studying the gathering of maple sap, they revealed that they had no idea of how holes were drilled. The teacher asked the caretaker in the school to bring his brace and bit into class to demonstrate how it worked. Children were able to try the tool themselves to see how it worked. The teacher used her ingenuity in bringing children and resources together in a productive learning environment. Her control of time and space arrangements was essential. FLEXIBILITY

In this demonstration classroom the flexible use of space was paralleled by a flexible use of time. The rigidity of the conventional timetable with its fixed time demands was abandoned. Blocks of time were made available for meaningfully related activities. Time arrangements permitted children to develop ideas that were important to them. Curiosities and concerns were allowed to guide the apportioning of time. The children were involved in planning co-operatively their schedule of work. They came to understand that every day presented opportunities to explore, create, and express ideas. The teacher's judgements about the use of time were based on continuous evaluation of what was going on. MOMENTS WERE CAPTURED

One day when the word "prunes" was used by a pupil many questions arose. "What are they? What do you do with them? Where do they come from?" The teacher identified a need for information. The children went to the store, bought prunes, tasted them, cooked them, and discussed their origin and use. Language learning took place when a kitten strayed into a classroom. A flood of interest swept the class when a child brought some

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NEW CURRICULA

mercury to school. A series of learning experiences emerged when children inquired about certain people in the school. Interviewing and reporting followed. Day after day it proved to be possible to capitalize immediately on the language that arose as events happened in school and out. The environment was such that children's interests and problems could be identified. They could be guided to frame questions, to go to resources, and to report on findings. There was an immediacy about learning that made it both relevant and personal. IMAGINATIONS WERE KINDLED

In the demonstration classroom the element of imagination was not overlooked. The teacher was as aware of the children's interests in fantasy and make-believe as she was in their concern for factual information about their world. Children heard stories that had an instant emotional appeal. They learned that their library contained many such books. At the same time they came to know that their fanciful ideas could be expressed by painting a picture, making a model, acting, dictating, writing, and telling a story. The teacher recognized and encouraged poetic and imaginative ideas. By the end of the year children were telling and writing stories that were highly inventive. They had moved from the simple declarative sentences "This is me on my way to school" to narratives that had plot and style. PROBLEMS WERE SOLVED

In this integrated language approach there were opportunities for problems to arise and to be expressed. Children gained experience using language in solving their problems. The solving of one problem usually brought information that fostered more questioning and more searching. When children undertook to find out about their school, they had to ask many questions in interviewing adults and other children. They also had to count and measure. They expressed their solution to the problem by building a model of the school in their classroom. When children encountered problems as they arranged a display of vegetables, they discovered sources and techniques for solving problems. When they attempted to classify vegetables whose edible parts grew under or above the ground, they were encouraged to suggest how they might find the information. Children went to their own gardens, to their parents, and to books for answers. They recorded questions and answers in order to get a solution.

EXPERIMENTAL INTEGRATED LANGUAGE PROGRAMME

63

Tommy brought a piece of mercury to school saying that his mother had broken the thermometer and she had given him this piece of mercury. The teacher let him tell the story of how he had got it, and, while he was telling it, he dropped it on the floor. The mercury rolled away in many pieces. The children saw one of the qualities of mercury and asked many questions about it. Curiosity about mercury led into a six weeks' study of metals, minerals, and mining. The children lived in a community where a brass works is located, and many of their fathers had information to contribute. They could get samples of raw materials and finished products. Each child learned a great deal from what other children contributed. Groups of children made collections of metals and minerals, and labelled them. They learned about the qualities of minerals. They learned about magnetism. They did extensive experimenting with all the materials that were brought in. When they held a sample of metal to see how heavy it was, they explored concepts of weight. When they compared metals they learned ways in which things were similar and different. The search for knowledge and for ways of organizing it through language was constantly elaborated. What did the teacher do to foster exploration? How did she capitalize on this obvious interest? She approached experiences saying, "Let's find out the questions." She helped the children to get to the sources of information. The usefulness of language in this exploration was obvious. SPEAKING, LISTENING, READING, AND WRITING WERE DEVELOPED SIMULTANEOUSLY

It was recognized that the child attempted to communicate in art media just as he did in the use of words. Some children seemed to learn to organize their world in paint or crayon or clay before they were able to put ideas into words. Some maintained a preference for art media even after they had gained some skill with words. In encouraging communication, pictures sometimes were completed before the child appeared to know what he was trying to put down. On the other hand, some children told in words what they intended to tell with paint. One child needed to do considerable drawing and modelling on the topic of animals before he seemed able to tell or write. Other children who became extremely competent with words used illustrations less in their attempts to tell a story. Children were allowed to operate at various stages. Language as a means of describing and interpreting experience became a part of the actual experience itself as the children spoke, listened, read, and wrote about their daily activities. Each child was constantly encouraged to express his ideas at his own best level of performance and in a style suited to his own way of learning. As the Grade 1 year progressed the

64

NEW CURRICULA

children became familiar with letter writing, interviewing, and other forms of communication as these arose naturally out of their pursuits. No limit was placed on the variety of ways of communicating with which the children could have experience. THE EMPHASIS WAS ON THE IDEAS

The children in the classroom were allowed to move through stages in developing skills in language. Early in the year the teacher printed the captions for children's pictures as they dictated them to her. She accepted their words as they were spoken and recorded their idiosyncracies or curious syntax. At the same time she demonstrated good patterns of expression in her speech and writing and in the stories she read. She commented on good expression. The emphasis on oral language development made it possible for children to have many opportunities to hear themselves and to refine their attempts to express themselves. Often children made evaluative comments about each other that resulted in correct usage. There was evidence in the classroom that children were helped to grow out of unacceptable language patterns, but this was done gradually so that it did not dampen the enthusiasm to speak, read, and write. When children began to print their own stories, correctness of form in making letters was not demanded. The children realized that it was most important to get the ideas out because these ideas were valued. At the same time, the teacher was demonstrating and teaching correct form so that the children could move to present their ideas in good form. READING MATERIALS

Children in this classroom came to select their own personal reading at an early point in the Grade 1 year. The books in the classroom library offered opportunities for reading at different levels. The personal or individualized reading became a shared experience when children told the teacher or other children about the books they were enjoying. The typewriter seemed to provide a kind of motivation and satisfaction in the classroom. The teacher typed children's stories and some children attempted to type by themselves. Where children's stories became reading material for the whole class it seemed satisfying to have these well presented in type. While the children's initial experiences were with materials developed from their telling and writing activities, they also used a series of readers. When they came to read the basal readers, they generally found they could

EXPERIMENTAL INTEGRATED LANGUAGE PROGRAMME

65

read them with ease and therefore could use the material as a point of departure for discussion and writing. The teacher used the reader as part of her procedure in consolidating basic word attack and thinking skills. She also used it as an evaluative device to sort out children who were at different levels of reading ability. The reader provided patterns for discussion so that at times children could read and discuss a story with a child taking the role of chairman. The children were encouraged to react to stories in the basal reader just as they did to stories they created themselves. MOVING TOWARDS INDEPENDENCE IN READING THROUGH WRITING

Children moved through the stage of dictating to that of putting ideas in print for themselves. Different children accomplished this at different times and in different ways. They developed packages of words that they remembered especially well. At first the teacher printed the word before the child copied his word in a book. Children often found these words stimulated story-telling and picturemaking. Few children went through the labelling stage where they printed one word on their pictures—although this was permissible. Most began printing sentences using their ingenuity and the resources supplied by the teacher to find out how to put down the words they needed. It was quite respectable for the child to print "We went to the Jim to play." CONCLUSION

The foregoing report describes an experiment that has its genesis in the wide-spread concern over the nature and quality of the reading programme in the schools in Ontario. The intent and purpose of this project is to demonstrate that, if present knowledge about the teaching of reading, the learning process, and child development were actually put into practice, considerable enhancement of the programme for beginning readers could result. It should be noted that the committee has attempted to incorporate recent advances in the field of reading, and, to this extent, the pilot Demonstration Centre could be said to include some innovations. The local Demonstration Centre Committee is gratified with the results to date, but hastens to add that conclusions and observations expressed in this report are tentative only and are therefore open to further examination and study. REFERENCE

1. English: A Programme for Research and Development in English Teaching (Schools Council, London, 1965), p. 1.

SCIENCE

JVlany people, among them educators, believe that the launching of Sputnik I in the early autumn of 1957 marked the true beginning of the current curriculum reform movement in North America. It is worthwhile looking at this date for although historically speaking the foundations for many major science curricula renewal projects pre-date Sputnik—the wellknown Chemical Bond Approach Project began in the summer of 1957, for example—the launching of the satellite was, as a chemist might put it, the catalyst which sped and directed curriculum reform. However, the first phase of the many recent efforts at the regeneration of instructional programs, especially in secondary school science and mathematics, can be traced to World War II. If North America was then "the arsenal of democracy," a prime need of that arsenal was a supply of pure and applied scientists and engineers, technologists and technicians— men who could bring mathematics and science skills to the design and production of the weapons of war. High school graduates, who might have been expected to supplement and support the efforts of university graduates, were found dangerously lacking in basic mathematics and science understandings. In the post-war years university scholars were shocked by the continuing deficiencies in the quantity and quality of college entrants' science background. Some professors began to meet with high school teachers to revise courses of study or plan in-service programs to present teachers with the new knowledge generated in their field since they had left university or industry. In the U.S.A. two other major forces helped the nascent movement: the Cold War, with its hot spells as in Korea; and the encouragement and financial support which began to flow from private philanthropy, from the public purse, and from learned societies as well as from far-seeing universities. The Cold War situation spawned massive federal support, such as that found in the National Defence Education Act. The Carnegie, Sloan, and Ford foundations, the National Science Foundation, the American Institute of Biological Sciences and the American Chemical Society, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, these are but a few of the curriculum reform benefactors active from the early 1950's. In Canada, in the 1960's, the University of Toronto, the

SCIENCE

67

Atkinson and Laidlaw foundations, and others filled similar roles, linking their resources with teachers, supervisors and administrators, public education authorities and trustees, business and industry in the common pursuit of new and better designs for learning. What is not always recognized is that the pursuit is often long (six years of writing and testing to produce the Chemical Bond Approach textbook, for instance); expensive (the National Science Foundation put about $1.3 million into the Chemical Bond Approach Project) ; difficult to introduce (not only must teachers be retrained, but extra preparation time is often needed for the new lessons, and this time is not always readily found) ; and productive of ambiguous results when the new programs are evaluated by conventional yardsticks. While it is true that our society can probably always find the resources to do what must be done, resources are not so abundant that many communities will want to mount significant pioneer efforts in science education. However, many schools can afford the cost of equipping a classroom for the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study program or for the Science Curriculum Improvement Study materials: less than $300 is involved. But comprehensive, laboratory-oriented programs include microscopes and delicate balances and run the costs to $800. For some school districts this is a lot, even though the equipment may serve many classes and for many years. The real issue associated with costs is the cost of developing the articulated, sequential, highly sophisticated programs that encompass the kindergarten to high school graduation cycle, as called for by the National Science Teachers' Association in the U.S.A. In England, the Nuffield Science Projects employ, full-time, forty scientists and teachers; between 1961 and 1968 the Nuffield Foundation will have spent

APPRECIATION AND UNDERSTANDING OF A LEVEL VALUES:

Implies that integration, synthesis association, has taken place and variations in patterns observed are grasped at the value level,

B

APPRECIATION AND UNDERSTANDING OF B :

Interconnections, relation­ ships, and interactions that characterize an area, com­ munity or any other unit: these may have been discovered or inferred, therefore selection and discrimination have taken place..

Although the objectives listed may be more rele­ vant to the particular level indicated, it is not to be inferred that they be con­ fined to these levels. Level A may be reached from B or C, though the achievement of a value from C will necessarily be based on a very limited experience. Skills and techniques may differ from level to level or be repeated or modi­ fied. 2? may be achieved from A may require movement to C.

C:

Park flowers are there for the enjoyment of all. Immigrant status does not mean inferior persons. Expropriation may affect the group and/or the individual. A "set" of phenomena which can be selected as significant for understanding problems i n the area/community.

An example of the rela­ tionship of the three levels The phenomena may be selected singly, or grouped. Phenomena chosen w i l l vary with the age group handling the problem. (X—

partial concept of a river

The total "set" of phenomena which may characterize an area or community.

ELABORATION

The local study (area/commun­ ity) is not restricted to any one age group. The values which it will discover or develop will be more or less difficult depending on the intellectual maturity of the student.

The solution (reality) of any problem is a personal and in­ dividual discovery. The reality changes with increasing local factual knowledge and the acqui­ sition of skills to manipulate them. As ability to generalize increases with age ana experience, inter­ pretation will change and there­ fore details (phenomena) may assume new significance; the set may change in composition. The balance which is seen (reality) will also change as other areas are studied.

This set can exist as experienced facts or be those which can be acquired incidentally. For ex­ ample, incidental facts for a tribe living in the interior of New Guinea will be both differ­ ent and more restricted than those available in Toronto, On­ tario. These phenomena make up the "total" world in which the individual may perceive only a. certain number.

C

Discrete phenomena, both observed at first hand and acquired incidentally. Implies collection, selection, and agglomeration. 5

SPECIFIC EXAMPLE OF T H E VALUE LEVEL:

C may be acquired at A or B.

Forest fire (C) Economic repercussions and future ecological change (B) Conservation (A) APPRECIATION AND UNDERSTANDING OF

ELABORATION ABSTRACT EXAMPLE OF T H E VALUE L E V E L :

Appreciation of the dignity of the individual and rights of the group.

O C R @

= concept = partial concept = relationship = concept of lake

Other Communities or Areas, Increasing i n Complexity and Scope

UNDERSTANDING OF A N O T H E R AREA/COMMUNITY

might be the mountain might be the cow might be the rain might be the smell

There may be an identity of values despite apparent differences of behaviour and vice versa.

A "set" of phenomena which is drawn from the "total", and which varies from the "set" i n the local area and with each prob­ lem or topic to be studied.

It will begin to be obvious that geographic principles are not absolute, and therefore the values formed from few exam­ ples will be held as "non­ proven".

With increasing familiarity with the development of concepts the "sef drawn from level C wilt be more complex though not necessarily larger. It is to be hoped that as relationships, asso­ ciations, and concepts increase in number, discrete phenomena will be absorbed, and reduced in quantity.

Globalism

Spatial

Brotherhood of man

?

Effect of Kennedy's assas­ sination on Canadian politics Desegregation Etcetera

Problem-solving will begin to draw both from the total set of two concepts "held" this and other areas/communi­ as a . relationship; ties studied. What were partial concepts may be transferred as wliich^has \em' such or as complete concepts, or obtained from the total set below and in relationships and/or associa­ from B level of tions. local area. Total "set" of phenomena which characterizes this area or community.

is a concept or an urban landscape. is a partial concept derived from "see­ ing" the same but different phenomena: " the mountain 8 a mountain

Phenomena signified X are com­ mon to both areas or communi­ ties. However, quality or quanti­ ty may vary. Phenomena with­ out:* are not found in the first local area and may or may not be peculiar to this area/com­ munity. Each total set gives the area/community its uniqueness. However, it is possible that a few or even one phenomenon may be responsible for the "uniqueness."

Methodology of Inquiry

FIGURE 1. A conceptual model for curriculum design

Assassination of Kennedy

Spacecraft

Shipment of wheat from Canada to China

"Canals" on planet

Etcetera

Gases found near certain planets Etcetera

GEOGRAPHY: A CONCEPTUAL MODEL

225

vidual versus the group and therefore its effect on rezoning that has taken place in other and larger/smaller and more complex or less complex areas/communities will require a more or less systematic examination of the problem through selected units across level A. Similarly, it should be possible to start the inquiry at level A of the local unit, move to level A at places across the grid, and return to levels B and C of the local unit and move again to level A. This latter example combines a regional and a topical or systematic approach. Both the skill and knowledge of the teacher and the age of the group conducting the inquiry will impose a control on the types of problems chosen and on the complexity of the sequence chosen by the teacher or developed by the group. The study of the local area may be undertaken by any age group, but it is suggested that one study should be undertaken at an early age. The criteria which are acquired through this study will inevitably be added to and modified, but they will be criteria which have the strength of experience. Whatever combination or sequence of units is chosen, careful planning should enable the teacher to decide more easily where and when certain concepts can or should be developed. It is not suggested that too much stress should be placed on a logical but separate development of concepts at a young age, but the design would allow this for older students or for review (re-view, as distinct from recall) purposes, if desired. For example, isolated perceptions of land forms such as mountains, valleys, whether acquired at first hand or not, will gradually give rise to concepts. A student might acquire the concept of "valley" after observations are made within an areal context, but it might be desirable at a later stage to provide a systematic study of the landscape processes within which the concept has developed in time as well as space. Similarly, some idea of how immigration can create a culture gradient might have been acquired through a study of Toronto. It might be desirable to develop this as an abstract concept. The plan is designed to allow learning at any level of a problem, and although it shows development from the local and particular to the distant and general, it is not to be inferred that learning must follow this sequence. The children in lower grades can and do pursue the phenomena of space, perhaps mostly through the particular, but they are interested in the possible change in values which may result if life is found on other planets. Therefore they may begin a study at the right-hand side of the chart either at level C or A or B. It is assumed that the more intellectually mature student will be increasingly interested in global or spatial phenomena and in abstract values in these contexts. Moreover, the design allows the child the apparently unconnected excursions into the total field such as he or she experiences through TV and other media. These isolated experiences within the curriculum, perhaps the best

226

NEW CURRICULA

Student

Inquiry and Experiences

in Breadth

x - Unconnected Experiences FIGURE 2

examples of which are to be found in the study of current events, may be illustrated graphically as in Figure 2. A third dimension can be thought of as that of application evaluation (see Figure 3). Child A may acquire a field of experience which has great width with a concentration of isolated experiences within a small compass. Child B may have developed a very specialized field of experience but have unconnected experiences which are widely scattered. It is hoped that the use of such a curriculum design would enable the teacher to structure the learning situation so that the field of experience expands in all dimensions. Inquiry, observation, experience, applications, and evaluation could occur at any one place or time, with isolated experiences/observations "built in" where appropriate (see Figure 4). Just as the sequence of units will depend on the problems to be solved, the ability of the students, the experience and education of the teacher, and so on, so the use of the whole plan and the details of any one unit will vary.

GEOGRAPHY: A CONCEPTUAL MODEL CHILD A

227

CHILD H

FIGURE 3

FIGURE 4

Development of a Unit and Research into Concept Development This unit is only in preliminary development stage: (1) The age group chosen for the units will probably be 7-8 years and 15-16 years; (2) The concept which has been chosen is slope. This is to be examined in as many contexts as possible. It is not suggested that concepts should be isolated and taught separately. Their development and understanding will take place within the whole design through a variety of experiences in different contexts. However, it seemed important that some research be conducted as to the where, when, and how of concept learning. It is hoped therefore to expose a design of learning such as perhaps that sketched in Figure 5. It is hoped that this will: (a) aid in the clarification of change from percept to concept;

228

NEW CURRICULA Illustrations and implications from whole field, i.e., from other "disciplines" Techniques to develop skill (ability) in concept manipulation within context of geography

FIGURE 5

(b) suggest appropriate places in the plan of curriculum design where a concept might be best developed; (c) illustrate the abstract as well as physical connotations of concepts, that is, that slope can be physically non level surface such as valley side, or a value, or an idea slope between two different cultures or between an urban and rural way of life; (d) suggest the interdisciplinary importance of basic concepts, and perhaps enable the child to go beyond our own knowledge of what can be achieved. REFERENCES 1. MARSHALL McLuHAN, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (McGrawHill, Toronto, 1964), p. 4. 2. M. LONG, "An Investigation into the Relationship between Interest in and Knowledge of School Geography by Means of a Series of Attitude Tests" (unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of London Institute of Education). 3. RICHARD HARTSHORNE, Perspective on the Nature of Geography (Rand McNally for the American Association of Geographers, Chicago), p. 179.

PART

THREE

NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE CURRICULUM

INTRODUCTION

231

"OVERVIEW," from Technology in Learning

233

"TEACHING MATERIALS IN THE READING PROGRAMME," from A First Look

241

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Introduction F

ew can remember when the Bible, the blackboard, and the birchrod were the only respectable teaching aids. However, most teachers today began their careers when the unholy trinity of book, chalk, and talk dominated classroom communications. The technological revolution now promises to put into every school "learning resources" ranging from simple handheld slide-viewers to total systems capable of programming simultaneously the learning activities of many students. The communications revolution, for all its disruptive characteristics, promises dynamic solutions to a paradoxical problem. Ours is a world beset by a knowledge explosion and, at the same time, an unprecedented shortage of persons educated or trained to the level necessary to bring quality to their public and private lives, to their worlds of work and personal fulfilment. If education is essentially "being in touch," how can educators make use of both old and new technologies to help people come in touch and remain in touch both with each other and with the common stream of human evolution? First, it must be obvious that the leaden army which, since Gutenberg's time, has conquered the world, will not abandon the field for some time to come. But books are no longer the unique force for classroom learning that the teacher automatically turns to in most academic campaigns. Books must learn to march with magnetic tapes, phonograph discs, television, radio, films and filmstrips, and complex computerized mufti-media systems. Print technology is a powerful force in shaping modes of thought, but linear typography is only one way of stimulating learning. If teachers are to be able to respect and provide for the other modes of learning, they must have access to many media, including those which do not organize stimuli in linear patterns. Secondly, it follows from the first point that traditional organizations of space and traditional facilities will not suffice for the classroom (or "learning centre," or whatever it will be called). This is true even when the more traditional products of technology are employed. The Ontario Curriculum Institute Science Committee, reporting on its current experimental, laboratory-oriented program aimed at involving elementary school pupils in scientific inquiry, wrote: Difficulties are to be expected in classrooms lacking flexible seating

232

NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE CURRICULUM

arrangements: the lessons call for adaptability. A flat-topped desk is better than a sloping one for holding equipment and is necessary for the operation of a balance. Most classrooms have too few electrical outlets for the operation of a set of microscope lamps. The handling of liquids is a continual problem and the provision of safe heating devices will arise in the preparation of future units. Finally, it may seem that an unmanageable burden of containers, balances, microscopes and many other pieces of equipment are being thrust upon the classroom. Much organization will be required as well as space for storage. Inquiry, however, is an individual affair and if a child is going to practise it in science, pencil, paper and crayons are not enough. The learner must have material to see and feel and measure, and simple equipment necessary to carry this out. There is no other way to do it!

The need for flexibility will be more pronounced when the new technologies gain wider acceptance. Technology means change. Technologies create new environments. Thirdly, if an educator is to help learners be in touch, he must himself learn to live with the results of technology. To cry out against environmental technologies is futile: one cannot hope to demonize the allembracing forces of change. James P. Finn observes that: You must face the consequences of the generation in which you have been born and the world in which you live. You cannot deny technology on arbitrary, literary, uninformed grounds. If you deny the teaching machine, the computer, television, and the motion picture, if you deny new ways of teaching and learning, you cannot stop until you deny yourselves fire, the wheel, and even the very language which you speak. For as Karl Jaspers so well put it, "A Denial of technology's last step is equivalent to the denial of the first."

In the first extract below, the OCI Committee on Instructional Aids and Techniques approaches the question of the possible impact of the new technologies with the optimistic bias of men actively studying the implications of the communications revolution. It is unfortunate that it was not practical to include in this volume the filmstrip, the slides, or the other novelties in format that made their 1965 publication, Technology in Learning such a compelling argument for their viewpoint. Some of their illustrations have been included, but not as tellingly placed as in the original, larger volume. One only of the two vinyl discs of the original book, that prepared with the co-operation of the Minister of Education, has been reproduced. It has been inserted in the pocket on the inside back cover of this book. The second extract, "Teaching Materials in the Reading Programme" from the survey reported in A First Look, details the rating of teaching materials actually used by Ontario teachers. The findings make possible the interesting "Recommendations" reproduced elsewhere in this volume. The survey also infers that, in 1964, despite the favourable rating of audio-visual learning aids, the print medium materials still dominated at all levels of the elementary school reading program.

Overview EVIDENCES OF INTEREST AND CONCERN

the possibilities

and implications inherent in large-scale use of technological developments in education are so staggering to the imagination that one can scarcely avoid coming into frequent contact with someone's opinions, well-founded or otherwise, as to the benefits or dangers of any widespread introduction of media into the formal learning situation. Suggested applications of technology range from the continued utilization of the book and the blackboard to complete control of the learning programme of large numbers of students by centrally-located computers. At the recent Third Commonwealth Education Conference, Prime Minister Pearson expressed a concern of many thoughtful persons when he warned that, though the use of electronic media can become the most significant method ever devised for closing the educational gap, it could also become the most frightening of all the results of modern technology in its tendencies to dehumanize society. In the recording which has been bound into this section,* the Minister of Education for the Province of Ontario makes some interesting predictions regarding the introduction of the new technology into the schools. THE COMMITTEE'S POINT OF VIEW The committee feels that no potentially useful method, device, or system can or should be ignored in the hope that it will go away, and believes that the danger of dehumanization will not become serious as long as education is concerned with the learning process and not with the training and production of students to fit a mould. Consequently, a need is felt for a continuing programme of experimentation that will include not only such complex mechanisms as the computer, but also the scores of less dramatic though possibly more immediately useful devices that are included in the "Checklist of Learning Resources" which appears in this section of the report. At least the motto to be adopted by experimenters in the field of learning should not be "Surely there is a harder way of doing this!" *In this edition the questions asked in the recording are at the back of the book and the recording is on the book's web page on the University of Toronto Press' website: http://www.utppublishing.com/

v CHECKLIST OF LEARNING RESOURCES Q Aquarium & Terrarium D Book - Bound - Looseleaf D Booklet - Album - Clipping - Diary - Publicity - Scrapbook Q Bulletin Board P Campaign D Cartoon O Catalogue Q Chalkboard D Chart O Club or Society D Collection D Competition D Computer n Costumed Figure D Cut-Out O Data Processing Equipment D Demonstration O Diagram D Diorama Q Display Device - Animated Display - Display Board — Combination — Flannel — Magnetic - Peg — Plastic — Velero - Easel - Showcase - Stand £) Dramatic Presentation - Costumed Play - Marionette - Mask - Miniature Stage - Pageant - Pantomime - Puppet - Radio Play - Role Playing - Shadow Play - Tableau Q Drill Device - Drill Card - Flash Card D Duplicator • Blueprinting - Carbon Paper - Diazo - Gelatin - Glue Plate - Offset - Photographic — Contact — Optical - Rubber Stamp - Sjpirit - Stencil - Sensitized Matrix - True-to-Scale - Xerography n Electrical-Mechanical Device - Electric Map - Electric Questioner D Exhibit D Experiment D Exploded View D Facsimile D Feltboard

D Field Trip - Excursion - SchoolJourney D Filing System n Filmstrip - Silent - Sound Q Game D Globe n Graph D Information Storage & Retrieval System OK" D Laboratory D Lettering Device - Brush - Cut-Out - Embosograf - Felt Tip Pen - Guide - Hot Press - Mechanical System - Photographic System - Printed Alphabet - Rubber Stamp - Speedball Pen - Stencil Q Library O Magazine O Map O Microfilm D Mock-Up D Model Q Motion Picture - 8 mm. & 16 mm. - Silent or Sound — Analytical — Animated — Highspeed — Single Concept — Stop -Motion — Time Lapse D Mould D Museum D Newspaper D Notebook D Object Q Optical Instrument - Binocular - Micro-Projector - Microscope - Telescope O Pamphlet D Photography - Still - Motion Picture D Pictorial Card O Picture - Drawing - Frieze - Mural - Painting - Photograph - Poster - Sketch D Postage Stamp Q Presentation Device - Mechanical Writing Tablet - Presentation Unit - Status Board n Printing Press O Programmed Learning Device D Projection Equipment - Projector — Cartridge Loading — Combination -- Continuous — Filmstrip

d

- Projector (continued) — Micro — Opaque — Overhead — Silent Film — Slide — Sound Film — Stereo Q - Screen — Front Projection — Multiple — Rear Projection — Wide D Publication - Class Paper - School Paper - Yearbook Q Quotation D Radio D Realia D Recording - Audio — Disc — Magnetic — Tape — Disc - Video — Kinescope — Kine Transfer — Magnetic — Thermoplastic tn Routine Device • Marking System - Response Indicator - Seating Plan - Visible Record System O Sandtable D Sign n Silk Screen Q Slide O Sound Equipment - Amplifier - Distribution System — Induction Loop — Oscillator — Wired - Headphones - Loudspeaker - Microphone - Radio - Record Player - School Sound System - Stereophonic Equipment - Tape Recorder p Source Material D Specimen Q Stereograph - Stereoscope - Telebinocular n Storage Equipment - Modular Storage Units D Study Carrel n Tachistoscope O Teacher D Teacher Aide D Team Teaching D Telephone n Television - Broadcast - Closed Circuit O Test D Textbook D Toy D Transparency D Typewriter D Workbook

OVERVIEW

235

GENERAL CONCERNS

During the many hours spent in discussing various aspects of the committee's assignment, several important matters of concern related to the serious use of technology in the learning process were identified. Among these are: (1) Although every thinking person pays lip service to the need for increased effectiveness in the field of learning, no one is sufficiently aroused about the critical nature of the present situation to mount a large-scale effort designed to meet the needs of today and tomorrow. We can face up to a serious situation in wartime and institute appropriate action—but not in a time of peace. (2) Despite the fact that all indications point to the absolute necessity of looking upon education as a continuum—something that requires the "cradle to the grave" kind of coverage—not enough is being done to co-ordinate the planning of those in charge of the work, at various levels and in various regions. (3) Similarly, there is a deplorable lack of any concerted effort to conduct a planning and action programme at the national level. Research has been mentioned1 as an area where this lack is particularly evident. The field of technology in learning presents a similar situation. The committee has had the temerity to recommend an extension of one aspect of its work to provide national coverage. (4) While there is a general acceptance of the fact that technology has some place in the schools of today and tomorrow, there is not sufficient realization that use of the machine can multiply the individual teacher's effectiveness. Happily, the adoption of some new techniques—team teaching, for example—makes the use of technology mandatory. (5) Educators, who should know better, and lay persons, who can hardly be expected to understand the complexity of a situation that involves working with thousands of developing minds, exhibit an almost pathetic belief that there will be developed some single method or device that will solve all the problems of mass education. It is the committee's belief that there always will be a need for a variety of methods and for a multiplicity of devices, unless one is aiming at a standardized product. (6) In some instances, lack of progress in the use of technology in schools is being rationalized on the basis of a need for modern building facilities. The committee feels it must point out that the most modern of methods can be initiated and carried on in old buildings, given a sincere desire on the part of teachers and administrators to increase the effectiveness of instructional techniques.

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(7) Many teachers profess to have no need for technological developments in their work, when, as is pointed out very clearly in a recent book2 on the psychology of learning, the teacher himself is "an audio-visual aid of the first order." There is real cause for concern regarding the lack of awareness on the part of some teachers and supervisory personnel that carefully selected "teaching aids" are basic to effective learning, not merely a kind of peripheral gadgetry. (8) Perhaps most serious of all these concerns is the failure to put the emphasis on learning, rather than on teaching. It was suggested— facetiously, we hasten to add, that the term "teacher" be superseded by the more realistic, albeit somewhat cumbersome, title "he-who-makes-itpossible-for-others-to-learn." The suggestion is put forward with no real expectation that it will be adopted! SPECIFIC CONCERNS

The committee spent some time in a discussion of its concerns with respect to each participant in the learning process. For example: (1 ) The learner, whether child or adult, has a right to a "fair deal," and his problems and point of view must be given careful consideration when a system for effective learning is being devised. It is obvious that the learner learns in many situations, most of which are located outside the school. It may not be quite so obvious that some in-school situations actually inhibit learning. Anyone who doubts this statement should read the delightful— and disturbing—article entitled "The Poor Scholar's Soliloquy,"3 originally published in 1944, but just as pertinent now as it was twenty years ago. It has been charged that the schools of today are in large measure set up on the basis of administrative convenience. If this system of operation is a factor which contributes to problems such as that of the drop-out, then clearly some improvement is needed. After all, no adult could stand up for long under a continuous feeling of failure; yet this is the daily experience of those pupils for whom the traditional grade system is not suited. Technology can help here by making possible a greater degree of flexibility in the organization of the learner's school day. By an intelligent combination of resources which can be marshalled right now, a repertoire of learning situations can be set up to enable each pupil to work in these settings: (a) in a class group of 30 or so—still a most useful procedure, despite assertions to the contrary from those who consider traditional classroom procedures to be outmoded. In this connection, there may be something of

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237

a moral in the following extract from a récent report on the college building of the future: One story making the rounds of faculty dining rooms, concerns the bright young instructor of 25 years hence who becomes appalled at the cost of equipping each student with an electronic carrel, each classroom with automated audio-visual systems, and each building with computers and color television receivers and transmitters. One evening, adding up all the costs and dividing them by the number of students at the college, a startling idea strikes the young teacher. The next morning he rushes in to see his dean and announces: "Look, instead of spending all this money on operable walls, revolving stages, coaxial cables, why don't we just divide up the student body into groups of 25 or 30 and put each group into a small room with a live Ph.D.? I don't know how the faculty will like the idea, but it's worth trying."4

(b) in smaller groups of any desired size—working under a group chairman; using books, duplicated materials of many kinds, recordings heard through headphones, audio-visual materials projected on small screens, and so forth. (c) in large groups—team teaching methods are being used to good advantage and are proving effective if backed up with adequate presentation facilities and followed up with small-group discussion. (d) individually—using programmed instructional materials, visual aids together with small individual viewers, recordings heard through headphones, and so on. Ideally, this type of activity would be carried on in individual study carrels with equipment ranging from simple viewing and listening devices to the most sophisticated of systems employing an electronic screen and provision for calling up any desired information merely by dialing the required code number. Practically, the old-fashioned type of carrel called a pupil's desk will serve very well, especially if it is movable and is moved! (e) individually with the teacher—thanks to modern technology, the teacher conceivably could organize the class work so time would be available for personal contact with individual pupils. (/) individually at home—it seems inevitable that technological developments ultimately will provide visual and auditory materials at a cost low enough to permit their use as "take-home homework." Some school systems already make filmstrips and inexpensive plastic recordings available for use in the home. There have been many plans devised in an attempt to provide at least some of the flexibility envisaged in the preceding suggestions—the Winnetka Plan, the Dalton Plan, the Contract Method, to mention some examples from the 1920's and the 1930's. Of late much has been written and said

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NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE CURRICULUM

about team teaching,5 programmed instruction,6 the Trump Plan,7'8 and other developments that exhibit much promise. Implicit in all of these plans is the assumption that some part of the responsibility for learning should devolve upon the learner, and that the school is sensitive to his varied needs. (2) The teacher must become an administrator rather than remain a jack-of-all-trades. He must learn the difficult and painful technique of delegating increasing amounts of the learning process to others, while at the same time evaluating, guiding, counselling, and directing as needed. This delegation might take several forms, among them: (a) to the pupil—small assignments at first, with frequent check-points established to ensure adequate follow-up on progress and direction regarding the next assignment. (6) to machines—for presenting, to individual pupils or to small groups, materials prepared by the teacher himself, by other teachers, or by commercial producers. Machine presentation can be effected by mechanical equipment such as record players or tape recorders fitted with headphones; filmstrip and slide viewers; cartridge-type motion picture projectors, devices for the use of programmed instructional materials. (c) to other teachers physically present—team teaching, for example. (d) to other teachers actually removed in time or space, but called up via television, motion pictures, records, tapes, etc. (e) to teacher aids—clerical work, marking, preparation of graphic materials. In other words, the teacher must assume an administrative role similar to that of the manager of a business department employing 20 or 30 persons. He must have the same clerical, stenographic, and secretarial assistance that the department head in a modern business establishment requires. He must be backed up with the technological equipment needed to conduct the business of learning, and he must have the authority to make decisions connected with the learning process as it applies to his classroom. Given these requisites, he must then accept complete responsibility even to the extent of denying himself the luxury of indulging in rationalizations such as: "I haven't time to use films [or TV, or filmstrips, or anything but talk]"; "That TV programme didn't do a thing that I couldn't do." (But would he have done it?) (3) The school principal must give more than lip service to the cause of improving the learning processes in his school. He, too, must become more of an administrator and less of a highly-paid clerk. He must become an educational leader, encouraging all evidences of a desire on the part of his staff to effect improvements in methodology. He must realize that one key

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239

to consistent use of instructional aids is ready availability of equipment and materials. He must make every effort to schedule each teacher's assignments so that there will be some opportunity during the day for preparation of work, for analysis of results, for planning. He, too, must forego the pleasure of indulging in such clichés as: "We already have a completely-equipped AV room"; "Nobody uses the school's equipment without coming to me. I have it all locked up"; "Filmstrips aren't of much value. Some of the ones in our school library are shown only once a year." (4) The school inspector must realize the effect of even the most casual comment. One inspector, who came into a classroom as the teacher was preparing to show a film said, "Don't take time to show that film now. I want to see you teach." Consider the inference that would be drawn by that teacher! (5) The chief administrative official in a school system must realize that his active support and evident approval are essential if any programme involving the use of technology in the schools is to succeed. He must reconcile himself to the fact that since he is dealing with hundreds or even thousands of human minds—pupils, teachers, and administrative personnel —it is most unlikely that any single simple solution to the problem of facilitating learning will be found. Television will not be the complete answer; neither will programmed instruction, nor the most elaborate of computers. If he decides that the best attempt to work out a solution involves the provision to his teachers of a multiplicity of technological aids, he still cannot hope to discover one single simple method of utilization or even a single location within the school system to house the hardware. Some things will best be located at a central point; others can be kept in the school library; still others must be instantly available in the classroom; and undoubtedly some aids, filmstrips, recordings on inexpensive plastic discs, for example, will be used by the pupils in their own homes. (6) The school trustee must be aware of the contribution that can be made by technology, and must be prepared to stand up to the protests that will come his way from the public, who will belabour him no matter what he does but who in large part want the most efficient and effective methods to be adopted in the schools. (7) The Department of Education must take the lead in giving official sanction to the increased use of technology in the schools by encouraging the acquisition of approved equipment through grants to cover part of the costs involved, by increasing its support of the Audio-Visual Branch, and by extending the work presently being done in the training of teachers to use the various media as learning resources.

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NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE CURRICULUM

REFERENCES 1. J. A. TURNER, Address to the Annual Convention of the Council for Exceptional Children (Oct. 1964). 2. B. R. BUGELSKI, The Psychology of Learning Applied to Teaching (Bobbs Merrill, 1964), chap. 11. 3. STEPHEN M. COREY, "The Poor Scholar's Soliloquy," Childhood Education (Jan. 1944). 4. MEL ELFIN, Bricks and Mortarboards (Educational Facilities Laboratories, New York, 1964). 5. MEDILL BLAIR and RICHARD G. WOODWARD, Team Teaching in Action (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1964). 6. GABRIEL D. OFIESH and WESLEY C. MEIERHENRY (eds.), Trends in Programmed Instruction (Dept. Audiovisual Instruction, National Education Association, Washington, B.C., 1964). 7. DAVID W. BEGGS, III, Decatur-Lakeview High School: A Practical Application of the Trump Plan (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964). 8. J. LLOYD TRUMP, Images of the Future (National Association of Secondary-School Principals, National Education Association, Washington, D.C., 1959).

Teaching Materials in the Reading Programme TEXTS, AUDIO-VISUAL AIDS, TESTS

This section

of the questionnaire called for the rating of a wide variety of teaching materials for the reading programme: printed and hand-prepared reading materials, audio-visual aids, and tests of reading achievement. In addition to rating the materials and specifying some others, the respondents have in many cases submitted comments where none were anticipated. Some of these have been included in the report. The items on page 15 of the questionnaire were clearly directed to teachers with primary experience only. Since approximately 50 per cent of the respondents were known to have had experience in the primary grades, about 3,000 might have been expected to complete these items. But it will be seen in Table I that between 3,606 and 4,023 responses were recorded under the heading "Primary Grades." This meant that a group of 20 to 30 per cent beyond those with primary experience rated the designated materials. This did not destroy the usefulness of the data, but it reduced the differences anticipated between the ratings under "Primary Grades" and those under "Grades I to VIII." Similarly it appeared that some respondents with primary experience only have completed items dealing with materials used at higher grade levels. The tabulation revealed that library books related to pupils' needs and interests were the most highly rated materials at all levels. Since it was previously reported that teachers did not use trade or library books extensively for individualized reading programmes, it must be assumed that such books were used as reference material and supplementary reading. The acknowledgment of the value of library books should be kept in mind when later comments on the availability of library resources are considered. The second most highly rated item in the combined levels was the manual to accompany the basal reader series, and the third was the workbook to accompany the basal series. Lowest in the ratings on both sides of the table was the "single basal reading series at different grade levels for one class."

242

NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE CURRICULUM TABLE I RATING OF TEACHING MATERIALS FOR THE READING PROGRAMME Rating Primary grades Excellent, very good, good Fair

Materials (a) Commercially-prepared reading readiness books (b) Teacher-prepared materials (c) Teacher-recorded pupil experience charts (d) Booklets and material prepared by pupils (e) Single basal reading series at different grade levels (f ) More than one basal reading series at different grade levels (g) Workbook to accompany basal reading series (h) Manual to accompany basal reading series (i) Individual library books related to the pupils' needs and interests (j) Picture dictionaries—commercial —pupil made (k) Simple reference books (1) Commercially prepared phonics skill-building materials (m) Commercially prepared practice exercises in silent reading Texts in Arithmetic, Social Studies, etc. Magazines A novel

Grades I-VIII

Excellent, very good, good Fair Poor

Poor

2837 3567

866 304

130 16

4872

451

61

3612

261

31

4575

584

72

3144

553

107

4072

930

206

2065

1084

636

2892

3575

244

83

4997

270

77

3047

763

185

4153

1020

236

3727

241

38

5068

345

50

3934 2787 3513 3549

68 676 213 237

21 143 33 41

5446

66

12

5176

247

41

3081

744

119

3962

2893

680

121

4255 4556 4719 4179

756 741 573 693

161 115 89 191

Audio-visual aids Filmstrips and films Tape recorder Opaque projector Others

3347 3071 2195

209 295 424 35

27 29 55 7

4437 4394 3131

367 312 617 42

46 35 104 13

Tests Standardized Word Analysis Standardized Comprehension Teacher-made Word Analysis Teacher-made Comprehension Informal Inventory—Word Analysis Informal Inventory—Comprehension Other

3219 3363 3430 3400 2628 2607

347 294 283 263 541 503 35

45 42 22 26 62 65 21

4547 4543 4357 4286 3449 3312

363 305 483 422 753 686 84

45 43 51 48 96 90 18

342

140

560

295

1363

1032

798

167

TEACHING MATERIALS IN READING PROGRAMME

243

The "more than one series" was rated sixth in each of the grade-groups. In the poor ratings, the "single basal reading series" was most heavily indicated. "Workbook to accompany basal reading series" was rated "poor" by 185 and 236 respondents in the two sides of the table. Comments on teacher-prepared materials suggested that they were preferred because they were "often nearer to what she wants," and were "most suitable." The great demand on a teacher's time in preparing materials was noted in a number of the comments. In the grades above the primary level there seemed to be an awareness of the value of textbooks other than readers for the teaching of reading. However, a considerable number of respondents (856) indicated that they felt such materials to be poor for the purpose. It may be noted that considerable value was attached to the use of magazines and the novel as instructional materials for the teaching of reading in Grades IV to VIII. General recognition of the value of audio-visual aids in the reading programme is apparent in the statistics. SCHOOL LIBRARIES

The next section of the questionnaire dealt with school libraries. Respondents were asked to state whether there was a school library and to rate the purposes served by the library. The responses showed that 3,647 respondents taught in schools with libraries. It should be noted that more than one teacher from the same school would likely be taking summer courses and so this figure does not indicate the number of school libraries but rather the number of teachers for whom library resources of some kind were available. A discrepancy among the numbers of persons responding to different items under this heading may be noted. Only 2,410 responded to a question on the purpose of the library. This section of the questionnaire suffered from an inadequate definition of library. The respondents used the types of library materials as shown below:

Teachers' magazines Professional texts Children's magazines

Excellent, very good, or good 2426 2088 1662

Fair 588 702 702

Poor 601 762 959

The third item "children's magazines" was not highly favoured. The number who felt that they were "fair" or "poor" was equal to those who felt

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NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE CURRICULUM

that they were "good." The rating seems somewhat inconsistent with that given in a previous item on the value of magazines in the reading programme. The teachers were asked to indicate who had responsibility for the school library. The responses showed the following pattern: Teacher librarian Part-time librarian Other Teacher and part-time librarian Teacher

2185 541 1187 6 57

Only 67 per cent of the respondents completed this item. The rating of the value of the school library in the total reading programme in the next section of the questionnaire showed that 3,590 respondents rated it "excellent, very good, and good," while 612 rated it "fair" and 242 rated it "poor." These statistics seem to confirm teachers' statements concerning the great value of library books in teaching children to read. CLASSROOM LIBRARIES

Respondents indicated that there were libraries in 4,581 of their classrooms, but that 735 classrooms had no libraries. The size of classroom libraries was investigated next. The greatest number (2,584) had fewer than 100 volumes, the next highest number (1,409) had 100-200 volumes, and 503 had 200-300 volumes. Approximately 200 had more than 300 volumes. In rating the value of the classroom library, 3,991 responses indicated that the classroom library was "good" to "excellent," 694 indicated it was "fair," and 245 rated it "poor." It may be noted that an almost identical number of responses rated the classroom library and the school library "poor." The problem of choosing books for the classroom library was indicated and rated by the respondents. In by far the greatest number of cases (3,713) the books were chosen by the classroom teacher, and the responses of 4,108 (68 per cent) indicated that they rated this procedure as "good" to "excellent." The number who indicated that books were selected by a teacher-librarian, or by the principal and a committee was small; and 588 respondents felt that this method of choosing books was "fair"; 179 felt it was "poor." These statistics should be kept in mind for later comparisons with opinions on professional preparation of teachers. It may be noted here that 2,196 respondents felt they had not had adequate preparation for

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245

selecting children's literature; yet the choice of library books appeared to be a responsibility that most teachers must assume. There appeared to be a tendency on the part of the respondents to rate as adequate library services that have an insufficient number of books. The American Library Association publication, Standards for School Library Programs 1960, suggests that ten books per student be a minimum requirement.* Few of the schools from which the respondents came appeared to satisfy this standard. REFERENCE

1. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, Standards for School Library Programs, 1960 (American Library Association, Chicago, 1960).

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PART FOUR

EVALUATING NEW CURRICULA

INTRODUCTION

249

"EVALUATING THE CURRICULUM," from Science: An Interim Report

252

"EVALUATION IN THE READING PROGRAMME," from A First Look

259

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Introduction

A. newspaper article recently observed that 200 specialists had been set to the evaluation of plans submitted to the U.S. government for the construction of supersonic aircraft. It is surely comforting to travellers to know that their safety (among other things) will be the object of careful consideration by such a large task force. It would be comforting to learners to be able to report that the programs in the schools, especially the new curricula, were so arduously examined or even that a more modest evaluation had been or would be undertaken. Unfortunately, very few curricula, old or new, have been systematically appraised. Even if it were decided to undertake such a task and suitable resources were found to underwrite evaluation studies, the work might be in vain if the word of a highly regarded expert in this field, Michael Scriven, could be taken at face value. In early 1966, Dr. Scriven wrote that the prevailing concepts of evaluation of new curricula, materials, and methods are inadequate "both philosophically and practically." What is meant by curriculum evaluation? Two eminent educational psychologists, Benjamin S. Bloom and Lee J. Cronbach, have—in separate articles—offered definitions which might be synthesized as: "Evaluation is the systematic collection and appraisal of evidence of the effectiveness of an educational program, or part of it, so that we may make decisions about the program." Significantly, this hybrid definition does not preclude consideration of the inherent value of the program; the extent to which a course achieves its goals tells little, in itself, of the intrinsic worth of the program. In her masterful book, Curriculum Development, Theory and Practice (1962), Hilda Taba points out that evaluation can be used to cover many meanings and describe many processes, and because of this, much confusion arises: "one can evaluate anything about the schools' curriculum: its objectives, its scope, the quality of personnel in charge of it, the capacities of students, the relative importance of various subjects, the degree to which objectives are implemented, the equipment and materials, and so on." Evaluation may consist of "a rendering of a value judgment based on sheer opinion." Opinion surveys may provide fairly systematic descriptions (see, for instance, the Creative Arts Committee survey extract above).

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EVALUATING NEW CURRICULA

Goodlad suggested (1964) that four means of evaluating a program were generally in use: observation of the progress of students for whom new programs were designed; casual or systematic quizzing of teachers of new programs; periodic achievement testing of students undergoing new programs; comparative testing of students in both new and old programs with traditional and specially designed tests. Several difficulties often arise from such evaluation procedures. The major bar to effective evaluation design is the vague or general terms of the stated objectives. The handbooks of the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, beginning in 1956, have promoted precision in the statement of course aims in terms of recognizable student behaviour. So also has the development of programmed instruction with its emphasis on unambiguous terminal behaviours. The second major problem which arises from current evaluation practices is the failure to distinguish among course evaluation, individual diagnostic testing and measurement of progress, and measurement of the degree to which students meet standards (external or internal, relative or absolute). Many teachers confuse evaluation of a program of study with examination of the pupils. Teachers' mistrust of externally devised tests may stem from former or present abuses, but most certainly these attitudes hinder carefully designed evaluations of curricula. In recent years much attention has been focused on this field, and curriculum designers have grown somewhat more sophisticated in the quality control procedures they must employ to convince themselves, or prospective consumers of their products, or their sponsors of the worth of their innovation. Agencies such as the Educational Testing Service have devised comprehensive strategies for evaluation, with clearly enunciated principles that oblige curriculum developers and evaluators to work together from the very beginning of a project. In England and Wales curriculum development and examinations are jointly the raison d'être of the Schools Council. Curriculum conferences have incorporated seminars on evaluation, as did the Second International Curriculum Conference in Toronto, 1966. Later in the same year the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development held two research institutes, "Developing Evaluation Skills," as sequels to their 1964 conference, "Assessing and Using Curriculum Content." The two extracts below treat different aspects of the evaluation question. The first, "Evaluating the Curriculum," illustrates how, in its early days (1963), the OCI Science Committee thought through their first confrontation with facets of the evaluation question. The second extract "Evaluation in the Reading Programme" (1964) illustrates how it is possible to get a

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251

clear picture of practices employed by teachers and school authorities in evaluating aspects of existing programs in a given subject. In terms of what we know today, these seem somewhat naive efforts, even though both the collection of evidence and the thinking are systematic. Retrospective reflection leads to acceptance of Scriven's judgment: current conceptions of evaluation are still inadequate both philosophically and practically. The point is to have recognized the limited state of the art and to have taken steps to remedy the inadequacies. The same efforts that are supported to assess aircraft plans can and must be mounted to evaluate the new designs for learning.

Evaluating the Curriculum Hw to know what the child knows was posed as a problem in the section

on experimental schools. Again we have barely entered this subject which needs considerable discussion not only in the light of our suggestions, but with respect to present practices in Ontario. As we noted before, the problem is not an acute one in the early years when the small range of knowledge and the openness of the child combine to allow a teacher to know when understanding is there. It is in the higher years that more formal evaluation becomes necessary and here there are sticky questions. A point of view on one of these, the matter of external examinations, is quoted here from Sir Richard Livingstone.1 I am speaking here throughout of external examinations, not of those set by the school, as tests of progress, which are useful and necessary. Examinations are harmless when the examinee is indifferent to their result, but as soon as they matter, they begin to distort his attitude to education and to conceal its purpose. The more depends on them, the worse their effect. For disinterestedness is the essence of all good education, and liberal education is impossible without it. It is not suggested that nothing is learnt and no education received in working for an examination; that would be obviously untrue. But, to recur to my previous metaphor, the examination system is a poison which slows down education in most cases and in some paralyses it, and no one wholly escapes its bad effects. The slow or stupid child suffers most, since preparing for the ideal occupies more of his time and mind; and for some intelligent but nervous children examinations become an obsession. But the keenest student knows the sense of relief when he finishes his last examination and feels himself free to read and study what interests him simply because it is interesting, without any thought of what he is "expected to know" or "what may be set". The blinkers are gone; he can look around with unrestricted eyes; and he knows how the young Athenian felt who answered Socrates' question whether they should pursue a certain intellectual inquiry: "Should we, do you say? Are there any pleasures worth living for like these?"

One may couple this with Bruner's statement2 to the effect that, since grades, like carrots, are offered as rewards for learning, when a student leaves school and the source of the rewards learning ceases. But this does not dispose of the problem. It is a large one and intimately bound up with other aspects, standards of teaching to mention only one. One member of our committee took on the task of a literature search in

EVALUATING THE CURRICULUM

253

order to present the opinions of various authors on the subject of examinations and thereby aid in the formulation of a committee opinion as to the limiting effect of examinations on the development of a science curriculum. The term "curriculum" embraces all curricular processes aimed at evaluating the learning of the student. The results of this are presented here as a series of pros and cons. They relate not just to science but to all subjects, and the conclusions are left open. As a group we have not been able to reach them and we had not time to call upon the experience of the Ontario Department of Education in these matters. In much of the literature there appears to be no doubt of the inevitability of examinations. All authors accept the idea that teaching without testing is unthinkable. The conflict of ideas revolves about the questions "What kind?" and "How many?" and "By whom?" It seems reasonable to assume that some answers to these problems may be found in consideration of the function of examinations. Marshall3 proposes three functionally different categories of examinations: (1) Progress testing of students actively pursuing a course of study. These students are maturing in comprehension and are developing understanding; their examinations should test for association of ideas, reasoning and concentration; the principle of examination should be teaching and guidance. (2) Achievement testing of persons whose specific training is supposed to qualify them for future work. Such tests are impersonal, probing, positive (know or do not know), authoritarian. The subject matter is all-important; the examiners are necessarily set apart from the teachers. The results, though traditionally ranked, are primarily pass/fail options. The chief concern of the examiners is the small borderline group. (3) Employment testing of persons of widely varied backgrounds with a view to determining their general qualifications and from this knowledge to decide their suitability for certain specific fields of employment. Ideally, oral examination by a board of experts making pertinent, courteous inquiry into the total knowledge of the candidate is preferred. The validity of the test queries is essential; mere presentation of hurdles is deplored. Marshall considers that the progress tests are the main concern of teachers and that oral or at least varied types of tests are best. He further states that these tests are inherently incapable of measurement in terms of comparability, reliability, and validity. THE OB JECTVE TEST

The type of tests to be employed is a subject of great concern to many

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EVALUATING NEW CURRICULA

authors. In this context, the term "objective test" appears to be equated with "short answer test" or "unqualified answer test" and the term "subjective test" appears to be equated with "essay test" or "complete answer test." It also appears that the champions of the "objective test" go to great lengths to show that their tests are capable of as much subjectivity as are the "essay" tests. Conversely, the opponents of the "objective" test concentrate upon the idea that such tests can test only for retention of isolated facts and are incapable of testing for association of ideas, generalization, or concept formation. Another argument advanced commonly in support of the "short answer tests" is that the vast increases in numbers of students have increased the teaching load to a point where it is physically impossible to cope with the volumes of material produced in an essay type of examination. It is felt that the argument is not well sustained, on the following grounds. ( 1 ) the number of students per teacher has, if anything, decreased and will probably continue this trend; (2) the increased funds available to external examining bodies makes possible the hiring of more examiners so that the ratio of papers per examiner is unchanged; (3) other factors such as increased administrative loads on teachers or changing concepts of how much work a teacher should do may be as pertinent as the simple population factor. It is obviously impossible, in a paper of this nature, to quote extensively from the literature. What appear to be the main points of dissension in the question of "objective" versus "essay" examinations are summarized below. Nash,4 Hoffman,5 and the American Association of School Administrators6 are the principal opponents, while Fleming7 and Ebel8 are strong supporters of the "objective examination." OBJECTION

DEFENCE

1. Even the best authorities prepare test questions which are ambiguous, misleading, improper, and irrelevant—how much more so the average teacher.

1. No examination system is free from error. The "objective" test minimizes this by having so many questions that the bad ones are of little effect.

2. These tests put a premium on quick, superficial, retentive memories, reward the "parlour-game" student, and penalize the deep, constructive thinker.

2. There is no sound, experimental evidence that students, adjudged "good" by any other method, are placed at a disadvantage by objective tests. Culled examples of such "bad" questions can be produced but should not be allowed to condemn the whole.

EVALUATING THE CURRICULUM

255

3. Important educational outcomes are unmeasurable. No standardized test can measure traits not susceptible to quantification.

3. If progress toward a goal can be demonstrated, that progress is measurable. If progress cannot be demonstrated, there are serious doubts of its existence. The fault lies in our commonly exhibited vagueness as to what these names of traits stand for. Commonly we do not know what we are trying to measure but a quantified, scalar measurement may be made of any trait that can be defined.

4. Knowledge of trivia is equated with education. Schools have the responsibility for appraising their pupils' progress in areas of behaviour, citizenship, family life, and personal character.

4. No defence is offered for trivial questions but substantive knowledge may be measured by nontrivial questions. No rational choice of behaviour can be made unless knowledge of the factors has been gained.

5. The most pernicious effect is that on teaching. Our students are encouraged to concentrate on factual knowledge, isolated, unrelated, and dead facts.

5. It is agreed that objective or any tests may be poorly constructed as to produce these effects. The effects are not, however, inherent in the objective test.

6. Validity of testing is sacrificed to administrative convenience, not only in the test but in the unjustified use of the prestige of science as an excuse for the drawing of weighty conclusions from weightless material.

6. No defence is offered in the literature. Everyone has seen instances of misapplied, amateur statistics. It is the considered opinion that the evaluation of tests is a job for highly qualified statisticians, preferably having no interest in or connection with the outcome.

A practice not mentioned in the literature, but familiar to most teachers is the production of rigid marking schemes for essay type examinations. This practice appears,to have the effect of introducing most of the objectional characteristics of "objective" examinations without obtaining the breadth of examination and administrative facility of this type of test. It also appears that the defenders of the "non-objective" tests and also those who decry the existence of external tests tend to overlook the following hard facts of education: ( 1 ) No examination system is free from error; (2) No teacher is free from areas of ignorance, administrative pressure, and personal professional pride—any of which traits exerts at least as great

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256

effect upon the process of examination as does the type of examination used; (3) Human nature being what it is, a considerable number of both students and teachers are led to greater effort by the stimulus of examinations of any kind. THE EXTERNAL EXAMINATION

Despite the weighty argument of Livingstone (see above) this matter is a continual source of discord in the literature. The arguments presented here come from papers by the British Ministry of Education,9 the University of Queensland,10 Conway,11 and others.12'13

FOR

AGAINST

1. They provide a tonic effect, a goal, a stimulus, the discipline of achieving a given standard in a given time to both student and teacher.

1. They pervade the consciousness of both teacher and student: they dictate curricula, confine experiment, hamper treatment of the subject, and encourage wrong values.

2. The student is required to attain knowledge in a form which he can reproduce. He gains, from the necessity to acquire knowledge for a definite purpose, in both perseverance and steadfastness.

2. Students tend to assess education in terms of success in the examination, to assign a utilitarian value to study, to absorb what will pay, and to absorb secondhand knowledge of momentary value.

3. The student is enabled to measure his own attainments against those of other students and other schools.

3. Examinations aimed at the majority are of such low standard as to be of little value.

4. External examinations are indispensable to standards, avoid prejudice, favouritism, and special interests, and constitute a hallmark of universal quality.

4. In order to put a hall-mark of dubious value on a student, teaching is directed to a narrow examination and neglects valuable qualities.

5. The teacher is put in a difficult position if asked to examine his own students. He is deprived of the opportunity of estimating the success of his work.

5. A certificate of real importance, free from the illusion of uniformity, is best provided by a combination of examination by the teacher and reference to the school records.

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257

6. External examinations are responsible for an increased emphasis on academic achievement, and their value amply offsets any small deficiencies.

6. External examinations may control the curriculum altogether.

7. By scaling, external examinations provide strictly competitive standards, prevent unfair fluctuation from year to year and subject to subject, make possible the equating of different subjects (alternatives or options) for the purpose of awarding bursaries and scholarships.

7. Even scaling does not make good examinations out of bad ones, improve the reliability or validity of examinations, establish how much the student should know, or cope with unexpected variations in the quality of the student population. Scaling appears to undo the value of a well-chosen curriculum and of most carefully set examinations by establishing standards based on student performance. How does an examination set by qualified persons and adjudged fair suddenly become unfair because the failure rate is high?

This is where we have left the matter of evaluation, admitting it is quite incomplete and on the whole a short-term look. How does one evaluate a science curriculum as a process of inquiry? By the rise in curiosity of the general public, by the increase in demand for adult education, by an increase in the number of people entering higher levels of scientific endeavour? Whatever we do about evaluating the effect of a curriculum we must be prepared for the long-term study of what becomes of children who are exposed to changes in their education. REFERENCES

1. SIR R. W. LIVINGSTONE, Education for a World Adrift (Oxford Univ. Press, 1954.

2. JEROME S. BRUNER, The Process of Education (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1960). 3. M. S. MARSHALL, "Examinations, Examinations," Phi Delta Kappan, XLIII, 8 (1961). 4. PAUL NASH, "The Assumptions and Consequences of Objective Exams," Can. Educ. and Res. Digest, I, 1 (1961). 5. B. HOFFMAN, "Toward Less Emphasis on Multiple Choice Tests," Teachers College Record (Dec. 1962). 6. Testing, Testing, Testing (American Association of School Administrators, National Education Association, Washington, D.C.). 7. W. G. FLEMING, "In Defense of Objective Testing," Can. Educ. and Res. Digest, 1,4 (1961).

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8. R. L. EBEL, "External Testing: Response to Challenge," Teachers College Record (Dec. 1962). 9. Secondary School Examinations other than G.C.E. (Ministry of Education, H.M.S.O., London, 1960). 10. Techniques of Examining at the Secondary School Level: Research Study No. 8 (Faculty of Education, Univ. of Queensland, Australia, 1958). 11. C. B. CONWAY, "Understandable Standards: The Scaling of University Examinations," Can. Educ.t I, 4 (1956). 12. Testing, Testing, Testing. 13. EBEL, "External Testing."

Evaluation in the Reading Programme TESTING READING ACHIEVEMENT

i

n general, evaluation is the process of assessing the child's needs, his growth in learning power, and his progress toward stated educational goals. Practices in evaluation should reflect the philosophy of the school and/or system, and should be considered an integral part of the teaching-learning process. Good practices in evaluation involve a continuous planned assessment of progress and growth. Such practices foster the development of data that can provide guidance in a variety of ways, for the pupil, the teacher, the principal, the parent, and the administrator. Evaluation data assist in the diagnosis of learning problems, provide guidelines for school organization, and foster the establishment of appropriate standards of accomplishment. Good practices in evaluation facilitate communication since they encourage the use of significant information for counselling and educational guidance. The questionnaire did not attempt to investigate evaluation in any comprehensive fashion. Rather it attempted to gather information about existing patterns in the use of conventional measuring instruments and the attitudes and opinions of the respondents towards such tests. FREQUENCY OF TESTING

The frequency of testing in the reading programme was investigated first. Table I shows very clearly that there was a close relationship between TABLE I PATTERN OF TESTING FREQUENCY Frequency (a) Weekly (b) Bi-monthly (c) Monthly (d) Each term (e) No pattern Weekly and monthly Weekly and each term Bi-monthly and each term Other combinations

Oral reading tests

Silent reading tests

1607 764 1191

1572 928 1189

787 880 21 16 9 198

585 716 11 20 13 205

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EVALUATING NEW CURRICULA

the pattern of oral and silent reading testing. It is evident, also, that patterns of combined time-periods were so little used as to be negligible. The "no pattern" category may include the practice of some respondents who commented that they gave tests at irregular periods so that the pupils did not know when tests were coming, and also those who indicated that they tested as each unit of the work was completed. "Other" frequencies, as indicated in the comments of respondents, include the type of testing which consisted of daily checks and records, especially in beginning reading. Although no criterion exists regarding the frequency of testing for progress and achievement, it would appear from the statistics in Table I that there is little agreement in existing patterns of testing reading. TYPES OF TESTS IN USE

The next item of the questionnaire attempted to discover what testing instruments were used by the respondents, and in what combinations they were used. The results appear in Table II. TABLE II READING TESTS IN USE Type of test (a) (¿0 (c) (d) (e)

Standardized Teacher-prepared Co-operative* Basal reader Oral

Standardized and teacher-prepared Standardized and co-operative Teacher-prepared and basal reader Teacher-prepared and co-operative Five other combinations of two of above Any three combined

Number using

253 527 36 45 99 632 98 234 497 361 2556

*Used throughout a school district

Respondents were also asked to indicate which three of the types of tests listed in Table II they found most useful. These statistics are shown in Table III, and should not be considered reliable because the order of choice was not specified in the wording of the item. While the uses of each of these types of test were not specified, it may be assumed that they met the testing needs of the respondents within the context of the individual's own particular situation. If only the totals are considered in Table III, it would appear that the respondents placed a somewhat greater confidence

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in teacher-prepared tests than in standardized reading tests. This interpretation must be accepted with some caution, since the structure of the item imposed limitations on the respondent's choices. Furthermore, it should be recalled that 2556 respondents favoured a combination of three TABLE III MOST USEFUL TYPES OF TESTS Type of test (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (/)

Standardized Teacher-prepared Co-operative Basal reader Oral Other

First choice

Second choice

Third choice

Total

2391 1845 173 185 222 31

526 1981 598 845 622 30

535 336 710 972 1483 55

3452 4162 1481 2002 2327 116

of the types listed in Table III. A total of 5252 respondents indicated their use of silent reading tests in Table II, and 5249 are shown in the silent reading frequency statistics of Table I. In extension of the first section of Table III, respondents were requested to specify other materials used in their testing of reading achievement. Apart from several interesting variations of teacher-prepared tests, the following were listed: questions from manuals and reading workbooks, progress charts from certain reading books and exercises, self-testing, inventory tests, reviews of library books, teacher observation, and old high school examinations. USEFULNESS OF TESTS

The respondents were also asked to rate the usefulness of types of tests listed in Tables II and III. These ratings are shown in Table IV. Table IV seems to provide some evidence of the difference between the respondents' beliefs and their practices. This may be noted in three types of tests: co-operative, basal reader, and oral. It has been noted, in regard to (e), oral tests, that the total number using them is about half the number that rated them good to excellent. Part of the difference may, of course, be due to the unavailability of the tests. Two major concerns merit comment. These arise from an alternative interpretation of the statistics on teacher-made and standardized tests in Tables III and IV. The consistent support given to teacher-made tests in these tables may be interpreted as an expression of confidence in this type

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EVALUATING NEW CURRICULA TABLE IV RATINGS OF USEFULNESS OF TESTS

Type of test (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (/)

Standardized Teacher-prepared Co-operative Basal reader Oral Other

Excellent, very good, good

Fair

Poor

4538 4843 3187 3324 3441 96

509 464 623 867 939 17

95 57 136 124 182 5

of test by the respondents. This degree of confidence, however, is not compatible with existing knowledge about the effectiveness of teacher-made tests. The limitations of teacher-made tests in terms of reliability and validity are well known. This point is supported by both research evidence and authorities in the field of educational measurement. Whatever limitations and restrictions might be imposed on the data gathered by this section of the questionnaire, it still remains clear that further study is required on the effectiveness of teacher-made tests. The second concern arises from the support given to standardized tests. The statistics from Tables III and IV may again be interpreted as an expression of confidence in standardized tests. Here again, however, the degree of confidence expressed in standardized tests is unwarranted in the light of existing knowledge tests. A recent study1 of reading achievement tests may be used to illuminate this point. This report says in part: "many of the tests in current use in Metro Board areas have serious weaknesses: and some of them are of little value because of uncertainty as to what they measure, and how accurately they measure. . . . Perhaps the most frequent criticism of our tests is applied to their superficiality. . . . Very few test authors (three in the tests examined) have designed their comprehension items on the basis of extensive research into the nature of reading comprehension, the core of reading ability." The questions of validity and reliability are also examined with the conclusion that many of the standardized tests, particularly the older ones, are not supported with sufficient technical data to merit any confidence in the results that such tests yield. The results of the questionnaire indicated the need for a more critical examination of the nature and function of such test instruments as valid measures of reading achievement. Respondents' comments expressed some reservations about the value, usefulness, and integrity of such tests. The fact that so many (3,000+) use standardized tests in combination with

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other measures of achievement indicated that these respondents, in actual practice, used various evaluation techniques to assess growth in reading. USE MADE OF TEST RESULTS

The use made of test results in the classroom will normally depend on the purposes of testing, and it was the clarifying of these purposes that determined the design of this item. The four designated uses did not include, separately, all the recognized purposes of the testing of reading. The evaluation of the teaching, for example, is not included specifically, but it is implicit in all four of the uses named, and especially in "diagnosis" and "determining materials for further teaching." These two uses implied the deeper purposes in testing theory, while the other two, "marks" and "promotion," revealed the more superficial, mechanistic attitudes to testing. The data in Table V A revealed the respondents' consciousness of the relationship between "diagnosis" and "determining materials for further teaching." It is possible that, when respondents indicated "diagnosis" as the use made of results, they considered that diagnosis also involved the evaluation of the methods and materials. TABLE V A USE OF TEST RESULTS IN THE CLASSROOM

Use (a) (¿0 (c) (d) (e)

Diagnosis Marks and letter grades Promotion Determining materials for further teaching Other

Diagnosis and marks and letter grades Diagnosis and promotion Diagnosis and determining materials for further teaching Marks and letter grades and promotion Marks and letter grades and determining materials for further teaching Promotion and determining materials for further teaching Any two involving other combinations Any three or more

Number 247 139 29 161 5 633 150 1140 185 269 52 50 2671

Another aspect of the use of test results was their use beyond the classroom. This was studied in relation to the four groups of people who might make use of them: principals, inspectors, reading consultants or supervisors, and central office officials. The principal and the inspector are shown in Table V B, and elsewhere in the responses, to be most closely involved in the reading programme. Respondents' comments showed that tests were often administered by either the principal or the inspector. The

264

EVALUATING NEW CURRICULA TABLE V B USE OF TEST RESULTS BEYOND THE CLASSROOM Used by

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

Principal Inspector Reading consultant/supervisor Central office officials Other

Principal and inspector Principal and reading consultant/supervisor Principal and central office officials Inspector and reading consultant/supervisor Inspector and central office officials Reading consultant/supervisor and central office officials Any two including principal Any three

Number of instances

1797

375 268 50 182

1226

483 93 50 9 13 94 479

interest of the reading consultant or supervisor in the reading test results should be obvious, and the smaller number of responses showing that they studied the test results merely reflected that few of these experts were available to the respondents. Those who studied the pupils' reading achievement test results did not always report back to the teacher. While 3,550 respondents indicated that they received reports, 996 indicated that they did not. In rating two combined factors, the reporting-back procedure and the resulting information, 826 respondents regarded these as of "little help" or "no help." But 2,122 respondents regarded them as "very helpful," and 1,843 regarded them as of "some help." The general direction of these responses may be of some use, but there were difficulties in interpreting the data, because it was impossible to determine which factor was being rated. REPORTING READING ACHIEVEMENT TO PARENTS

The questionnaire investigated two aspects of teachers' practices in reporting reading achievement to parents: frequency and method of reporting. Responses as to the times at which reports were made to parents produced the following information: (a) after every test (if tests are more frequent than once per term)—541; (b) at the end of the term—3675; (c) at the end of the year—65; (d) other—273; (e) never—72. The limited information yielded by this item did not justify any interpretation other than to point out the majority practice, which was very clear.

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The method of reporting reading achievement to parents was investigated under three suggested procedures: report cards, interviews, and letters. It should be remembered that the largest single group of respondents (40 per cent) was teaching in the primary grades. Hence the procedures most favoured will be those most commonly practised in those grades. The majority practice in reporting reading achievement is very clear in Table VI. Although the respondents' comments revealed a number of TABLE VI METHOD OF REPORTING READING ACHIEVEMENT Method

Number using it

(a) Report cards with marks with letter grades (b) Interviews (c) Letters (d) Other

528 690 311 49 38

Report cards and interviews Report cards and letters Interviews and letters Report cards and interviews and letters Any two including other Any three including other

3013 203 96 523 63 188

variations in the practice, it appeared that at least 50 per cent of the respondents supplemented report cards with interviews. Comments indicated that there is a wide acceptance of the interview as a normal procedure in the earlier grades. The comments emphasized that parent-teacher cooperation is very important. The observation that parents can be very helpful if they understand the problem was typical. The time of the interviews was indicated in some comments: "When a child improves, or fails to improve, the parents are consulted," and "If a child is having difficulty, more than one interview is necessary." There appears to be a continuing difference of opinion about the use of marks or letter-grades on pupils' reports. The tendency seems to be to use marks in senior grades, and letter-system for younger pupils. IMPORTANCE OF VARIOUS FACTORS IN THE EVALUATION OF READING

ACHIEVEMENT

The attaching of degrees of importance to the ten aspects of reading development listed in Table VII requires an understanding of reading as a developmental process and as a language art. The objective of this item was to probe the depth of that understanding. In one respect, the ten aspects of

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reading development listed in Table VII are, in actuality, among the major goals of reading instruction. They should not be construed as a comprehensive outline of the major goals in the reading programme. In this sense, these statistics revealed the extent to which these goals were understood and accepted by the respondents. TABLE VII RATING ACCORDING TO EMPHASIS GIVEN TO CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE READING PROGRAMME Aspect of programme (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (/) (g) (h) (0 (/) (*)

Oral reading Silent reading Comprehension Word analysis skills Vocabulary development Enjoyment of literature Personal growth through reading Desire to read Oral language Written language Other

Strong and moderate emphasis*

Some emphasis

No emphasis

4739 5527 5796 5248 5415 5182 4758 5251 4961 4711 122

973 220 40 460 318 516 798 447 742

54 15 1 8 5 30 74 56 71 95

803 17

*Ratings in original table for strong and moderate emphasis have been combined.

If the respondents' ratings are used to rank these aspects of the reading programme, the following priority among them can be established: (1) comprehension, (2) silent reading, (3) vocabulary development, (4) desire to read, (5) word analysis skills, (6) enjoyment of literature, (7) personal growth through reading, (8) oral language, (9) oral reading, (10) written language. The ratings given these items show that, on the average, 5,148 of the respondents give strong or moderate emphasis to each aspect listed. In this sense, over 80 per cent of the respondents considered these aspects of the reading programme to be important instructional goals. Within this limitation, it is possible to point out that the respondents gave first priority to such elements of the reading programme as comprehension, silent reading, and vocabulary development, and lowest priority to oral language, oral reading, and written language. WHO EVALUATES THE READING PROGRAMMES

The question of the evaluation of the individual teacher's reading programme was dealt with in the final item of this section of the questionnaire. It is a question of the greatest importance, since the person who evaluates the programme exercises control over its quality and effectiveness. The

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five suggested possibilities and the pattern of the responses are shown in Table VIII. TABLE VIII EFFECTIVENESS OF READING PROGRAMME Evaluated by (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (/)

Only myself Consultant/supervisor Principal Inspector Co-operative assessment by all Other

Only myself and consultant/supervisor Only myself and principal Only myself and inspector Only myself and co-operative assessment by all Consultant/supervisor and principal Consultant/supervisor and inspector Consultant/supervisor and co-operative assessment by all Principal and inspector Principal and co-operative assessment by all Inspector and co-operative assessment by all Any two including other Any three

Number

1126 113 380 288 437 20 180 438 325 30 176 85 16 824 52 23 233 983

The striking fact that emerges from these data was the heavy responsibility placed on the individual teacher for the quality of the reading programme. She alone was responsible in 1126 classrooms—almost onefifth of the cases. She acted with advice from the principal or inspector in a further 763 instances, and in concert with others in 467 more. The influence of the principal and the inspector was shown to be strong in evaluating the reading programme, although neither of them carried full responsibility for such evaluation in many classrooms. REFERENCE

1. J. C. WILKINS, A Study of Reading in the Schools of Metropolitan Toronto, Part 1: Evaluation of Reading Tests in Use in June, 1964 (Metropolitan Toronto Educational Research Council, Toronto, 1964), pp. 20-28.

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PART FIVE

CURRICULUM RESEARCH

INTRODUCTION

271

"SUGGESTED RESEARCH TOPICS," from Theory of Instruction and Cognitive Development: A Survey of Research Needs

273

"NEEDED CURRICULUM RESEARCH," Floyd G. Robinson in New Dimensions in Curriculum Development

276

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Introduction W at is curriculum research? A seminar group which met during the

1966 convention of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development could neither agree on a definition of curriculum research nor adequately describe its nature and functions as distinct from their other research activities. What then is the state of those research activities which are associated with curriculum development? The June 1963 and June 1966 issues of the American Educational Research Association's Review of Educational Research, devoted to "Curriculum Planning and Development," sound very much the same pessimistic note. In 1963, James B. Macdonald and James D. Rath maintained that there had been "both a lack of coherent direction in curriculum research and a failure to provide adequate frames of reference for assessing progress in the field or for correlating research efforts." David A. Abramson (1966) put the situation this way: "Clarification of the specific role of curriculum research and evaluation is a continuing problem in the field because of lack of agreement as to the distinctions to be made among curriculum, instructional organization, teaching, and learning. The result is the continuing paucity of studies which can serve as models for curriculum research." Because curriculum research has evolved neither special theories nor distinct research methods, it has been common to ask if it exists as a field apart from educational research. Further, curriculum research has often taken the form of evaluation studies, especially pupil testing. It has not, as yet, produced the conceptual tools or the processes for the construction of researchable hypotheses founded on clear theoretical formulations. Until this happens, curriculum research has limited power for understanding, predicting, and controlling curriculum phenomena. The recent but unevaluated suggestion of Macdonald, in Theories of Instruction (1965), deserves the serious attention it sought to evoke. He suggested that the roles of curriculum content, instructional organization, teaching, and learning must be dealt with separately, but within a systems approach. Research in each subsystem would identify the relevant input-output structures to be assessed.

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Meanwhile, the analysis of new materials and content may proceed along the lines of conventional research design for evaluation of effectiveness in meeting stated.objectives, by following the leads of the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, or possibly through the development of the suggested project on national assessment of the Exploratory Committee on Assessing the Progress of Education in the U.S.A. Development of "a theory of instruction" as advocated by Bruner, and continued investigations of the factors in implementing innovations aimed at the formulation of a rational model for change, may make it possible to put Macdonald's proposal to the test. In Ontario, the absence of comprehensive strategies for curriculum research as related to curriculum development meant, until 1965, that the Ontario Curriculum Institute, which did not have its own research staff or facilities, had to turn to several sources for guidance. These, in the main, consisted of (1) the Department of Educational Research of the Ontario College of Education; (2) the subject matter specialists who served on the various committees; (3) and the learning psychologists drawn from Ontario's universities who served as a Committee on the Theory of Instruction and Cognitive Development. In May 1965, this committee of psychologists published its survey of research needs, an extract of which appears below. Among their recommendations was the establishment of an intramural research bureau, facilities for a research information centre, and facilities for recruiting and productively employing the best developmental psychologist that could be found. Another OCI Committee recommended, at about the same time, the establishment of a new institute of education which would incorporate these and other functions, including graduate instruction in pedagogy. While the committees meditated there was already proceeding, behind the scenes, a plan for just this sort of institution through the merging and enlargement of agencies already in existence. In the last selection of this book, Dr. R. W. B. Jackson, then Director of the Department of Educational Research, describes the concept and history of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the vehicle for realization of these recommendations emerging from the OCI committees. Intended to complement the "Suggested Research Topics" of the OCI Committee on the Theory of Instruction and Cognitive Development, the second extract, "Needed Curriculum Research," is an address to the Second International Curriculum Conference by Dr. Floyd G. Robinson, who had been appointed to create and to head the Department of Applied Psychology in the new Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Suggested Research Topics Because the gaps in our knowledge are so glaring, and the basic questions

to which answers are needed are so numerous, there is little point in our singling out particular research topics for detailed discussion. When we say that we need to know very much more than we do about the mechanisms that constribute to school learning, about ways of determining its effectiveness, about the particular range of situations in which particular learning experiences bear fruit, about the ways in which motivational, attentional, ideational, perceptual, and motor processes can best be organized to optimize the effects of instruction, this statement may seem so broad as to be banal. But nothing less comprehensive would adequately depict the task in front of us. In order, however, to supply some concrete material to facilitate understanding of the kinds of subject-matter that we have in mind, we append a few research topics suggested by individual members of the Committee. It must be understood that these topics are offered simply as examples. There is no implication whatever that these would be mor fruitful topics than any others or that these should be taken up first. So ne of them are ones on which some research has been done and others are close to topics that are at present under investigation. Several of them have, however, been entirely overlooked in the research literature, as far as we are in a position to ascertain. They are, however, all topics that need to be illuminated. They are all eminently amenable to empirical methods of inquiry, and they aU have a bearing, directly or indirectly, both on crucial decisions with respect to classroom practice and on basic theoretical issues. ( 1 ) What notions about the physical world are established in the young child before he ever reaches formal education? To what extent do these preconceptions dictate the content and methods of science education? (2) Analysis of the sensori-motor deficiencies that underlie bad handwriting and drawing, their relations to personality traits, to attitudes to academic achievement, and to emotional disturbance. Investigation of possible remedial measures, based on a precise experimental examination of the motor skills required, the role of corrective mechanisms in the nervous system, and the development of motivational factors, and attentional responses.

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(3) The problem of identification in the young child. It might be argued that the few male teachers available for the nursery to primary grades should be reserved for the potential delinquent. For which children are female and male teachers most beneficial? (4) The relative importance of independent discovery and intrinsic motivational factors in such successes as "discovery methods" have had. (5) Research on the effects of varying "feedback" on assignments. This might be combined with research on extinction of wrong responses in "programmed-instruction" material, etc. (6) Effects of delaying knowledge of results on children's learning. This research would have relevance to educational practices in which "feedback" is frequently delayed after exercises have been given. The value of immediate "feedback" may vary for different types of tasks and for different individuals; these possibilities have not yet been fully explored. (7) Comparison of the efficacy of material rewards, verbal approval, and knowledge of results for maintaining achievement-oriented behaviour among children. Practices vary from school to school and teacher to teacher with respect to the use of different types of positive reinforcers, dispensed singly or in combination to individual students. Although some research has been done on these topics, much still remains to be done. (8) Punishment as a disciplinary technique. The widely held assumption that punishment is ineffective for modifying behaviour in socially approved directions is currently being questioned. In the school system, punishment usually takes the form of deprivation of privileges or material goods or of verbal rebuke. Experimental paradigms need to be developed for testing the relative effectiveness of these disciplinary techniques. (9) The role of observational learning in education. Theoretical analyses of the learning process have largely neglected the importance of learning from demonstration. Comparisons need to be made of the relative effectiveness of differing methods of demonstration, for example, by audio-visual aids, in comparison with "shaping up" methods that rely mainly on verbal instructions followed by reinforcement in the form of knowledge of results. (10) Research directed to evaluating alternatives to motor performance as indicants of such things as comprehension. This research would result in the development of radically new exercise material. (11) A study of emotional effects of literature, music, and visual art using psycho-physiological indices, among others. (12) What evidence is there for the use of the spiral method, of repeating subject matter at increasingly higher levels of complexity? How does it compare with presenting the "whole truth" only, and restricting it to topics that the child can handle? At different age levels, new topics rather

SUGGESTED RESEARCH TOPICS

275

than more complex treatments of the same topics would be introduced. This is an ideal subject for fundamental research since it relates directly to current efforts and evidence on the early learning of syntax. (13) Much speculation is abroad about the best way to organize the teaching of several different subjects. Should full days be devoted to a single subject matter? Are units of the traditional hour reasonable or defensible? At the level of basic knowledge we need to know how best to cut up time for the six-year-old, or for the seventeen-year-old. Under the best possible conditions, what is the optimal period to insure attention and maximal learning at different ages. By what methods can subjective time be extended? (14) Sensori-motor practice and transfer effects as they apply to writing skills. This would be particularly important with reference to the printingwriting sequences presently employed in the kinds of exercises given. (15) Relations between the level of education of the teacher and the degree of education achieved by his pupils. (16) Psychological effects of streaming: (a) on the emotional health of the children affected, and (è) on their social inter-action with children in other streams.

Needed Curriculum Research FLOYD G. ROBINSON Head, Department of Applied Psychology The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

M

y predecessors as luncheon speakers both referred to the conference co-ordinator's urging to be brief. For me, a call for brevity will not provide the occasion for wit, but rather offers an invitation to indulge in a certain amount of uninhibited generalization. For if any of my statements are thought to lack appropriate qualification, or to neglect exceptions, I will merely plead lack of time. THE MANY TONGUES

I speak as a person who is charged with the responsibility of attempting to apply psychology—the so-called "science of behaviour"—to the problems and practices of education. From my particular point of view, a curriculum might be thought of as a deliberate manipulation of the child's natural environment, carried out under public auspices for the purpose of producing or shaping behaviours thought to be desirable. Straightforward analysis of this definition suggests that a curriculum results from an interaction between two sets of factors. First, there is a set of goals which lay out, no matter how imprecisely or incompletely, the set of behaviours to be produced, shaped, nurtured, or brought into being. Second, there is a means-ends technology, a set of prescriptions for producing the desired behaviours by bringing to bear the forces or experiences over which the school has control. In order to emphasize properly the interaction between these two kinds of factors, one might well say that a curriculum is a technology enveloped in a philosophy or a philosophy implemented by a technology. The kind of curriculum research in which I am particularly interested has to do with improving the technology of education. In this respect, I will now fire off one of the generalizations which I warned you about earlier. I feel obliged to comment that the curriculum reform in evidence in various parts of the world during the past decade or so has produced a great abundance

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of activity, ingenuity, and honest effort; but I think it has yielded little improvement in our understanding of the basic processes involved in learning or in our knowledge of how these processes might be influenced by means which the educator has at his disposal. I feel that the major cause of the out-distancing of understanding by sheer activity has been the difficulty of bringing together the different disciplines or arts which have something to contribute to such understanding. For example, since the purpose of a curriculum is to change or shape behaviour, the psychologist feels that his opinion must be pre-eminently valid. But at the same time, since the school attempts these behavioural changes by working with organized bodies of knowledge, the subject matter specialist must be considered the ultimate authority on the concepts and larger organizations which comprise the structure of his field. And yet, since the teacher is the central vehicle for implementing behavioural change, her involvement in the discussion seems crucial. But when we attempt to generate fruitful discussion among these parties semantic problems arise which pose a considerable obstacle to curriculum research. For example, because mathematicians and psychologists use different language systems, the discourse about the mathematics content appropriate for students up to the middle high school years has become a kind of semantic "no-man's land" in which it is difficult to say whether a particular issue is being debated in mathematical or in psychological concepts. It is a rare event to find any discussion of modern mathematics which does not refer to its enhancement of "understanding"; this is contrasted to the rote learning which, it is argued, is characteristic of "traditional instruction." But "understanding" is one of those vague terms which acquires concrete meaning only in reference to a secondary set of concepts. Thus, writers with a mathematical background seem to equate a child's relative understanding of a particular kind of number—the integers, say —with the degree to which he can enunciate or give other evidence of recognizing the formal properties of the number system in question. The reference point here is the content of mathematics itself. The psychologist, on the other hand, would almost invariably relate the "understanding of number" to the conservation or non-conservation of the cardinal and ordinal properties of a set of physical objects (as in the classical Piaget experiment). The reference here is to an inferred mental process. Since psychologists for the most part are not well versed in mathematics, and mathematicians seem to have active disdain for psychology, there is seldom much useful communication between them. My sympathies do not lie with either of these groups, but rather with the classroom teacher who, if our limited evidence is valid, finds extreme difficulty in understanding either side. I would go so far as to suggest that the inability of educators at all levels

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to comprehend either the subject matter specialist or the psychologist has had two important consequences. In the first place educators have all but given up their attempt to bring together the three relevant groups at the secondary level, so that this field is almost entirely dominated by the university subject matter specialist. The second consequence has been the invention of a third "curriculum language," a language which stresses the centrality of the child and his natural development, which argues the minimal importance of subject matter ("it's not what you teach but how you teach it") and which tends to discredit the theory of learning while enshrining the art of teaching. I am not questioning the legitimacy of this language, although I have a vague fear that it does not really come to grips with the concepts of the "two primary tongues of curriculum." In fact it seems to have arisen as a sort of reaction to these incomprehensible languages, in order to give educators and laymen some place in the curriculum debate. AN ATTEMPT AT RECONCILIATION

The problem which we must face, then, is how to bring together the teacher, the psychologist, and the subject-matter specialist. As the head of a Division of Applied Psychology I might perhaps be expected to say that the fault has resided in the educators' and subject matter specialists' ignorance of psychology. However, I am more inclined to believe that academic psychology has been the major offender, and that the language problem is only one symptom of a more basic difficulty in utilizing the science of behaviour to provide insight into curriculum construction. The fact is that there is a sizable gap between the kinds of behaviour dealt with by academic psychology—as it is undertaken in the university pyschology department—and the kinds of behaviour of concern to educational practitioners. As you well know, the theories and hypotheses of psychology have been developed under rather special conditions so that their application to education frequently does not come to grips with the circumstances and constraints which exist in actual school settings. I suppose that a classical example can be provided by programmed instruction, which arrived on the educational scene fresh from the psychological laboratory and couched in terms of a neat theory of learning. As it turned out, programmed instruction in this raw form was not noticeably successful because its assumptions did not quite fit the school situation; for example, hungry pigeons could not be equated (in motivational terms) to overfed children. Small step approximation to complex physical movements did not seem to capture the essence of the open-ended thinking

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characteristic of problem-solving or creative performance. The pigeon's attempt to maximize his acquisition of food pellets had no immediate counterpart in the grade-locked system where a student's rapid progress through a program is often rewarded by a lengthy sentence of boredom. Experiences of this kind convinced those concerned with decision-making in education that we should perhaps be thinking in terms of a somewhat more sophisticated relationship between psychology and education. In the new relationship postulated, psychological theory would remain the starting point and decisions about curriculum would remain the end point, but between these—so our thinking goes—there must be a sequence of activities intended to eliminate the risk inherent in a direct application of psychology to education. As we see it, these intervening activities would consist of: (a) the translation of psychological hypotheses into a form linking variables which the school can manipulate to behavioural outcomes thought to be of value in the school's philosophy; (6) the testing of these hypotheses on a sample representative of the situation in which they are to be applied to see what they imply in terms of that situation; and (c) the incorporation of any insights discovered by this process into a deliberate program of curriculum design. SOME EXAMPLES OF NEEDED CURRICULUM RESEARCH

Perhaps some examples will serve to bring this discussion down to the concrete level. It seems to us in The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education that our basic research program must respond to and tie in with the curriculum development which is now in progress in the province. This ferment is bringing with it a variety of new concepts and a determination to move existing content downward in the age-grade sequence. Already the mathematics writing committees established jointly by the Ontario Mathematics Commission and the Ontario Curriculum Institute, in the course of attempting to relocate old content or to place new content in the agegrade sequence, are faced with such questions as, "What is the optimum age for teaching the concept of fraction?" or "What is the earliest age at which it is possible to teach the concept of fraction?" Frankly, the psychologists and curriculum researchers in the Institute prefer to shy away from the problem of optima because we recognize that it drags in questions of value with which we are not, of ourselves, capable of coping. We do, however, feel some responsibility for attempting to determine the youngest age at which a child may be brought to comprehend a concept, as well as the consequences of teaching him the concept in question at this age. Now one cannot, of course, think very long on this problem before being confronted by Piaget's conservation phenomena, for it would seem

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obvious that a child's ability or inability to conserve number must influence his grasp of the concept of fraction. A first task for us, then, must be to inquire into the limits of accelerating the appearance of the fundamental conservations which comprise a child's internal map of reality. This we regard as a fairly basic kind of research. Moreover, it is our opinion that such basic research can best be conducted by a central agency which has the resources to develop new kinds of apparatus and to study children on an individual basis over a long period of time. We recognize that others have looked at the possibility of speeding up the appearance of these conservations, but we would respectfully suggest that— because of the separation between psychology and education—most of these studies have employed a more or less intuitively derived manipulation of instructional variables, and that they had not really extracted all the fruitful leads from contemporary psychological theory. We believe, for example, that Smedslund's success with the conceptual conflict approach begs an explanation in current arousal theory. If one adds to this some neuro-physiological insight into the nature of the internalization and reversibility processes which lie at the heart of conservation, one comes up with—in addition to a theoretical hash, perhaps—some hypotheses concerning rather different methods of attempting to promote acceleration than have yet been applied. In fact, if you want to let your imagination run wild, you might ask what current studies of brain functioning will reveal about ways of operating directly on the electrical and chemical processes involved in thinking. Already there are drugs available which are thought to improve memory; there are known chemical means for speeding up the firing of brain cells; and experiments have been proceeding in which motivation and attention are artificially manipulated by a direct electrical input to the brain. All of this suggests that our present notions about the degree to which human behaviour can be modified may be rather pallid when contrasted with the conceptions we will have even ten years hence. We realize, of course, that our investigation of the possibility of speeding up the conservation of number will not provide us with a direct answer to the question of the earliest possible age of teaching fractions. For the concept of fraction is derived from the concept of number and our basic research is limited (in the example under consideration) to finding ways of influencing the latter psychological "benchmark." There will still be required a substantial program, centred in the classroom, in which teachers are invited to relate the child's grasp of fractions to the existence or nonexistence of these benchmarks.

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In other words, we would hope that teachers who are trying out new units of curriculum material would expose some of their students to Piaget-type tests to see, for example, what limitations the child's inability to conserve number actually places upon the teaching of arithmetic. We see here, then, the possibility of providing teachers with an opportunity to view new content from the vantage point of learning process concepts and within the context of the continuing classroom drama. Here we feel may be one of our best opportunities to fashion the three languages of curriculum into a coherent educational communication; moreover, it is only when an organized program of such classroom-based studies has been carried on for some time that we can expect the kind of evidence which is essential if we are to put large scale curriculum planning on a rational basis. Let me observe that an enormous variety of this kind of classroom-based study is possible and necessary. Even to link the conservation phenomena enumerated by Piaget to specific items of curriculum content would be a sizable task. Moreover, there is the whole question of language development, which many people feel is not adequately dealt with in the Piaget scheme; here again, there appear to be critical stages in the child's use of language to form a viable, concept from a surplus of perceptual data, and to free conceptual thinking from the limitation of specific situations. Consequently we must again think of the possibility of accelerating the appearance of these stages and of relating their existence to performance on particular curriculum tasks. So far, I have spoken only of concept development, since individual concepts and their relationships are the natural concern of the curriculummakers in any subject matter field. However, there is also a need to look at the broader kinds of cognitive performance which cut across a number of curriculum fields. For example, there is much discussion today about "cognitive style," a term used to describe idiosyncratic ways of dealing with conceptual data. Possibly the most widely known example resides in the distinction between "convergent" and "divergent" thinking. As you know, the school is accused of fostering reward and generally rewarding convergent production; that is, the efficient production of the single, conventional answer by the accepted method. Conversely, we are charged with ignoring divergent thinking, which stresses originality and fluency of ideas. Again, we can see the need for, and possibility of, a two-pronged research approach, one part aimed at getting a fundamental hold on the psychological processes which underlie and facilitate the appearance of this attribute, and the second involving a sustained attempt to incorporate these insights into the day-by-day procedures of the classroom.

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EVALUATION

What I have been describing is a kind of research which proceeds on a small scale and precedes the construction of a curriculum sequence. However, the term "research" is also associated with the evaluation of a new curriculum once it is in fairly wide use. The reason why we require such evaluation is that while one may fashion a curriculum by determining when individual concepts may be taught, and what therefore their sequence might be, one still has to examine the broader effects of a new program to see how the outcomes measure up against the global purposes of education. This is obviously a long-term project and cannot be accomplished in any kind of satisfactory way until the program has been in effect for a number of years. Let me now advance another generalization. Considering the quantity of writing and innovation there has been comparatively little formal evaluation of most of the new curriculum projects. In Canada, the lack of evaluation can be attributed partly to the coolness of subject matter specialists to the idea that evaluation can yield information more valid than their personal convictions, and partly to the tendency of educators to judge the success of a new program by the enthusiasm of the students or teachers involved in it. I do not consider myself a fanatic on evaluation; for example, I would acknowledge that large scale reform cannot await the millenium when we shall have final answers for all the relevant questions. But on the other hand, there is no point in saying, as some people do, that "one really cannot evaluate" since the judgement that a new program is required at aU or that it is better than the old one, constitutes an evaluation—although of a somewhat subjective sort. A more sensible question is: Where can formal evaluation procedures add to the reliability of our judgements and how should they be conducted to yield the maximum return? Admittedly, it is impossible to make a final pronouncement on the respective merits of, say, "modem mathematics" as opposed to "traditional programs" on the basis of a single criterion test. However, if we want to say that one is "better" or "worse" than the other—and know what we are talking about—we will have to construct a broad set of criterion tests which allow comparisons in areas where goals are common and, further, which will allow each approach to show its particular strengths in areas where aims are different. The end point of the evaluation comes when someone looks at the range of scores on different tests and makes a judgement as to which outcome is most desirable. No one pretends that value judgements can be removed from evaluation, but judgement should be exercised on solid factual data which relates to student performance on describable criteria.

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It may be, as some contend, that we should stop making these "better" or "worse" comparisons, and should concentrate our efforts on trying to determine what the new courses are really accomplishing in the way of desired behavioural change. Frankly, though, we are not going to get very far in this (or in our comparison of the old and the new) unless we put far more imagination into our evaluation instruments than we have up to now. For while our statement of aims always reaches outside a particular discipline itself (in other words, we are not prepared to believe that the only purpose in teaching a subject is to understand that subject), our tests are invariably inwardlooking. If we, in fact, believe that the "modern" mathematics approach makes the students better problem-solvers in fields which employ mathematical concepts, then we should construct test items which require the student to ferret out the mathematical elements in such problem situations. If we think that mathematics has even broader contributions to make to the student's ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate in non-mathematical fields, then we should construct test items which will require him to do so. It seems obvious, then, that we should construct evaluative tests on the basis of a taxonomy which reflects the higher reaches of the professed aims of instruction, rather than continuing to give tests which only measure knowledge of the field itself. We have a long way to go here and I suspect that we had better get started if we are really interested in knowing whether our innovations constitute improvement. ROLES My final comments have to do with the roles of various parties— particularly the research community—in the curriculum construction process. It seems to me that there are two inaccurate views of research which are sometimes voiced at conferences such as this. There is one class of person who seems to have a remarkably naive faith in the power of research to settle all issues and come up with an unequivocal course of action. If you doubt that this attitude exists, I suggest you look in the many reports of curriculum groups which call upon research to find the optimum age for doing this, or the best method of doing that. Now no one knows better than the research person that research can provide no unequivocal answer concerning what is "optimum" or "best." There are several reasons for this. In the first place, our judgement of what is best will depend to some extent on what we think possible, and our knowledge of what is possible changes as we learn more about ways of influencing behaviour. For example, the question of the optimum age of

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teaching reading has been reopened with the discovery that it is possible for children to read at a much younger age than was previously suspected. A second reason why research is limited in helping the decision-maker determine what is best is that research must take place in a finite period of time. Consequently, while research is able to provide fairly reliable data on what is likely to happen over the short term if a certain course of action is followed, we can offer only informed guesses as to what the long range effects of our programs will be on the child's total mental and emotional growth. But since the decision-maker must take the long view, he will always find himself faced with a deficit of relevant information, and with no possibility therefore of obtaining certainty. Finally, the research person becomes humble, if not mute, in the face of questions of optima because the term "optimum" implies the invoking of a system of values. The function of research is to find out what is possible, and one can proceed from a knowledge of the possible to an educational decision only by bringing in a personal philosophy. The second misconception is related to this last point about values. It is frequently argued that the researcher imposes his own values upon the curriculum by means of the problems he chooses to study, the way he reports his data, the conclusion he arrives at, or the enthusiasm with which he promotes what he has discovered to be possible. I do not believe this is true; in fact, the research person is in a position where he, more than others, is forced to make and observe a distinction between what is possible and what is desirable. No group at the present time is more concerned than the research community about our failure to formulate a coherent set of purposes for education. The research person believes that human behaviour is modifiable in ways not even comprehended by the layman and he fears, therefore, that unless we have a clear image of the kind of person we want our schools to fashion, our behavioural technology may become more of a threat than a blessing. It is not good enough simply to emote on the subject of aims. I have for some time believed and maintained that the creation of a body (such as our Institute) for developing the technology of education must be balanced by the creation of a structure to set goals. Such a structure must be housed in the public sector where it can listen to and adjudicate the many discordant voices which are urging the schools to move in a variety of conflicting directions. This body must be continuously re-creating our social philosophy, and it is this philosophy which curriculum research must serve.

PART SIX

NEW DESIGNS FOR LEARNING

INTRODUCTION

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"CURRICULUM CHANGE," Sir Ronald Gould

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"INSTRUCTIONAL TRENDS IN THE UNITED STATES," Robert M. McClure

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"A NEW MODEL FOR EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT,"

R. W. B. Jackson

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Introduction T his final section brings together

three addresses originally delivered to the Second International Curriculum Conference. In brief, they might be described as (1) an Englishman's assessment of where we are today; (2) an American's analysis of the directions in which we are purposefully gravitating; (3) a Canadian's blueprint for a vehicle that may move us expeditiously on our way. The literate, provocative, and forceful wit of Sir Ronald Gould, the comprehensive, penetrating examinations and imaginative prescriptions of Dr. Robert M. McClure, and the breadth of vision and practical experience brought to bear on the complex problems of building for the future by Dr. R. W. B. Jackson together offer an international synthesis with which to close this book. Exciting and rapid changes can everywhere be noted. These changes, even with their sometimes disturbing, sometimes disruptive features, have created not just a society affluent beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors, but a society largely ready, willing, and able to support massive educational reforms so that we learn to live in harmony with change. In such circumstances, it is important that we remember the quotation from Oliver Wendell Holmes singled out by Gould in his speech: "I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving." In what direction are we moving, and in what manner should we behave towards each other on the journey? Morrell, in his address to the First International Curriculum Conference in 1964, noted that research and development, organized on the scale to which we are now committed, are instruments of power. The good teacher, he observed, uses the power of his position and personality with pupils, helping them to develop that which is latent in them, not against them to suppress their identities in conformity with a stereotype. So must the new and powerful agencies charged with assisting in the design of new curriculum strategies, materials, and machines use their great resources with teachers, must assist them in developing the art and science that they can bring to those dynamic interactions which we call the processes of teaching and learning.

Curriculum Change SIR RONALD GOULD President, World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession

F or the first time in history, three groups of people from three

countries, with a common interest in curriculum reform, are meeting together. We are innovators, originators, pioneers, trail-blazers. Yet it is only the fact that we meet internationally for this purpose that is new. Individuals and groups have often made the curriculum the subject of discussion and even controversy. Listen to this: "What does it profit a student to spend his days in these things which neither in the army, nor at home, nor in business, nor in the cloister, nor in politics, nor in the church, nor anywhere else are any good to anyone—except in the schools?" The style is a little archaic, perhaps even episcopal, but to the sentiments, many of us in the British Schools Council, the Ontario Curriculum Institute, and the N.E.A. Center for the Study of Instruction would say "Amen." But it was written in 1200 by one Peter of Blois. Clearly, though there is nothing new in curriculum reform, there must be powerful reasons to make us so preoccupied with it, and to cause busy people to travel thousands of miles to compare notes and to try to learn something of each others' work. So I shall begin by asking: Why change? Then, if there are adequate reasons, what change? And lastly, who effects the change? I warn you, however, that though I am the head of the English and Welsh delegation, I am an ex-teacher, a secretary of a teachers' organization, and that I think and feel like a teacher. This may colour my remarks, but it will not make them invalid, for the key figure in curriculum reform must be the teacher. First, then, why change? Historically, society was divided into a small well-educated elite who held power and staffed the liberal professions, and the masses who worked in unskilled and semi-skilled callings that demanded only a basic grounding in literacy and numeracy. But in our societies the "rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate" have disappeared. The poor man wanders round the castle and the owner takes the gate.

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Industrial development, scientific discovery, technological innovation, new and rapid communication, the spread of democracy, total war in which the effort of every individual counted, and the rise of mass cultures have dealt the "two nations" concept a mortal blow. All these changes cry loudly for education systems and curricula that provide equal opportunities for all, that produce more individuals able to carry more responsibility and to acquire new skills more rapidly, and that will enable tomorow's prosperous citizens, who will be preoccupied but a fraction of their waking time with making a living, to direct their energies into satisfying and worthwhile leisure-time pursuits. In short, higher educational standards are imperative. Years ago, change in my country was resisted and feared, for it was thought any change must be for the worse. Fervently many people sang: "Change and decay in all around I see, O Thou, Who changest not, abide with me," worshipping a changeless God and a changeless society. Now one of the most popular secular songs of 1965 gaily declares: "The old order is rapidly fading, for the times they are a-changing." I doubt whether the pop singers understand how or why, but they are right. The times they are a-changing, and rapidly, too. But is curriculum changing as rapidly? I call in evidence Harold Butler, who said: "Learning always lags a generation behind life," and Paul Mort, formerly of the Columbia University Teachers College, who declared that there was a fairly constant "50-year adoption period" between the discovery of a new educational technique and its final acceptance into the curriculum, by which time, I would add, not cynically but realistically, the technique is really obsolete because a better has been found. But can we afford learning to be a generation behind life or improved teaching techniques to wait fifty years before being adopted? There is another reason why curriculum reform is needed. It is needed because we know so much more of children, of their psychology, development, and possibilities, that we can do better. This knowledge ought to be harnessed to the work of the classroom to make the learning process more effective. In a recent article, Clarence Smith of the University of British Columbia stated: "Dewey presented education with new tools, which in the hands of old men have proved disastrous." I do not know whether all the old men knew exactly what the tools were or what they were intended to do. I do not know whether the new tools were not equally disastrous in the hands of some young teachers. I do not even know whether all Professors of Education knew exactly what Dewey was driving at. But I know this: Dewey's ideas of promoting learning through the interests of children, of encouraging active participation rather than passive acceptance, have profoundly affected classroom practice in all our three countries. I know, too,

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that though many useful educational tools may be misused, just as many and perhaps more are not used at all. Many still travel by horse and buggy when they could use jets. The classroom teacher, however, is not wholly to blame. In New Curricula, edited by Robert Heath, Director of Research of Educational Testing Service, Berkeley, California, Jerrold Zacharias of MIT and Stephen White of Educational Services Inc., wrote: "Over the past six years, major curriculum revisions have been undertaken in the United States over a wide range of subjects. . . . The purpose of these activities are much the same. They reflect, in the first place, dissatisfaction with the gulf that has been permitted to open between the professional scholar or research scientist, on the one hand, and the schoolroom on the other."1 Put bluntly, that means the new ideas do not always reach the classroom. And Sterling McMurrin, of the University of Utah, wrote: "Over the past few decades we have given much attention to the methods of education, and important advances have been made in both methodological theory and practice, but we have seriously neglected the problem of the ends of education and have at times thereby permitted the means to dominate the ends."2 Put bluntly, that means teachers do not always see clearly why changes are necessary. What is the use of being equipped with a formidable array of new ideas without being certain of the purposes they should serve? "If only we knew what we were about," said Abraham Lincoln, "perhaps we could get about it better." That is the right order—ends first, then means. What, then, are the ends? "I find the great thing in this world," wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes, "is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving." Where is society moving? This is the $64,000 question. Towards greater integration nationally and internationally; towards more automation, more efficient methods, more changes in techniques; towards using more brain and less brawn; towards greater leisure. Education must move in the same direction. It must respond to society's changing needs. That is why curriculum as well as patterns of educational administration must change. And it is this that councils like ours must impress upon parents and teachers. It is our first and major task. Now I turn to the question, What educational change? Clearly it is not possible to explore all the rich variety of suggested curricular reforms in one speech, nor indeed in one conference. So I hope you will forgive me if, instead of attempting the impossible task of scaling Everest in thirty minutes, I merely wander around the foothills and describe the mountain from various vantage points. In a recent report on education in Europe, the Council for Cultural

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Cooperation defined seven areas of study for primary schooling. I want to look at these, though I do not quite know why they should be regarded as appropriate to primary schools alone. Of course, in practice, someone must decide what actually can be done within certain buildings catering to a certain age-range, but to effect a complete re-direction of schooling from the age of primary-secondary transfer is to fall into the error condemned by Sterling McMurrin of "allowing means to dominate the ends." Curriculum planning should begin by determining the knowledge and the skills which need to be imparted through schooling, and then, and only then, of scheduling how and when these can be achieved through the grade or school structure. It is equally folly to begin with reforming the superstructure without examining the base. The primary school is no less important than the secondary. Indeed, it has often been more progressive. It has been influenced more universally by the great contemporary educationists. It has pioneered new methods. Only recently have many in secondary schools awakened to the possibility of using these now well-developed techniques. There may be many reasons for this delayed reaction. In Britain, it can be explained by the rigidities of secondary school external examinations, which tend to inhibit experiment, and by the pattern of teacher training ensuring that virtually all primary teachers have some understanding of educational problems and methods, while some secondary teachers, being untrained, do not have an equal understanding. But to remodel curricula assuming primary education can be sharply differentiated from secondary is to give the barrier between the two undeserved educational merit. The barrier is there because of historic accident and administrative convenience, not because it is educationally sound. So if you base educational policy on this, you might just as well, as Byron said: Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff Believe a woman or an epitaph, Or anything else that's false. The broad curriculum for primary schools laid down by the CCC, however, consists of ( 1 ) command of the mother tongue; (2) initiation into foreign languages; (3) knowledge of basic arithmetic operations; (4) initiation into observational study, such as geography; (5) initiation into history, civics, and ethics; (6) practice of handicrafts; (7) physical education. Except for three of those which need expansion, this list could well stand as a broad outline of a liberal education for all children and as the base on which specialized higher education could be built. The three which I would

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question are "command of the mother tongue," "knowledge of basic arithmetic operations," and "initiation into observational study." "Command of the mother tongue" is too sterile a concept. On leaving school a child ought not only to have command over the language, but a genuine feeling for it. For language is more than a means of communication: it is a means by which thoughts can be expressed imaginatively, subtly, powerfully, beautifully; it is an instrument by which thought can be refined. Sir Alec Clegg, one of England's leading directors of education, has demonstrated the alarming tendency for rigid disciplining in "command of language," punctuation, spelling, and grammar, to destroy the young child's creative ability and his capacity for thinking, Children who at six, seven, or eight could produce vivid and imaginative writing, appear to lose this skill in their preoccupation with making subject and verb agree and avoiding ending sentences with prepositions. Correct English, no doubt, is important socially and in business, but vital English is at least equally important as a means of quickening the intelligence and imagination of the writer or speaker, reader or hearer. We must neglect neither. Possibly, as the title of a recent book, English Versus Examination suggests, some of the over-emphasis on correct English stems from examination requirements. It may also stem from the fact that command of language is easily taught and assessed. To teach children to develop imagination, to gain new insights, to see new relationships and express them well in vigorous language, is very difficult to do and very difficult to assess. Both forms of expression are needed. We do not want lab notes that read like love letters, but equally, and heaven forbid, we do not want love letters that read like lab notes. I am sorry I cannot quote a love letter from a man trained only to write lab notes, though I did hear of a new professor in science at London University who, when asked for his signature, signed with a cross, I will, however, quote Allan M. Laing's "A Civil Servant's Sonnet to his Love," to illustrate the inadequacy of formal but grammatically correct English in certain situations: In the enforced leisure of the hour when tea And biscuit sweet (supplied in duplicate) The schedules of the mind co-ordinate, Some higher rule directs my thoughts to thee. Then do I register sheer ecstasy, For thou all loveliness integrate With charms, but too redundant for thy fate That meets small charm reciprocate in me.

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O might our ways bilateral twine in one, And requisitioning one domicile Share one inclusive coinciding view! The tea-cup's twinkle dies. Once more begun The high and changeless round, and here, in file, These lines for note and comment passed to you. After this awful warning no more need be said. I believe, too, that a curriculum which is content with skill in arithmetical operations is now inadequate. I have no doubt such skill is necessary, but, alas, it can be achieved by sheer drudgery and repetition, even when the child knows nothing of mathematical relationships. I met someone the other day who had visited a school where, to her astonishment, backward children used with facility the binary system and bases other than 10, and for the first time in her life she understood the basic mathematical concepts behind computers. This was sound teaching. It may easily be that many are poor at mathematics because they see little sense in merely juggling with numbers. At any rate, I believe all children should be introduced at an early age to basic mathematical concepts. And just as I think the concept of command of language and knowledge of basic arithmetical operations should be enlarged, so too should environmental studies. These should include not only traditional subjects like geography but the whole range of applied sciences. Even the non-scientist in the modern age must possess what the Crowther Report called "mechanical commonsense." This, too, must form part of a contemporary curriculum. Thus command of and feeling for language, knowledge of some foreign languages, command over mathematical concepts, an understanding of physical, social and technological environment, knowledge of history and ethics, handicraft, and physical education must be the constituent elements of a modern curriculum for all children. The reformer's task is to fill in this outline, answering such questions as, What knowledge will a child need when he grows up? How much of this is it reasonable to ask the school to attempt? What priorities should be established between the subjects? What can children of varying ages and capacities absorb? Answering these would require the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon, and the energy of Hercules. Indeed, no one man and no committee can answer them au, for every child in every circumstance. Much must be decided by the teacher. This subject cannot be left, however, without referring to a major problem—to specialize or not to specialize. Specialization is practised in

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Britain to a degree which finds no parallel on the North American continent. This is one of the big differences between us. But while nonspecialization is under attack hi the Americas, specialization is under attack in Britain. The Crowther Report, after condemning British specialization as coming too early and being too narrow, continues: "the broad curriculum of Europe and America is almost equally under fire. . . . In America the burden of the complaint is, not that too many unrelated subjects are studied, but that they are not studied seriously enough."3 Thus your danger is lack of depth; ours is of a cultural division between narrow specialists. But today's disputes tend to produce tomorrow's compromises. The Americas will probably move towards greater specialization and Britain towards less. Sherlock Holmes said of his chief adversary: "Other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience." Alas, omniscience is no longer possible. The explosion of knowledge since the beginning of modern industrialization makes it highly unlikely that there will be successors to men like Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, and Humboldt, who was described by his biographer as "the last of the great all-round thinkers." No man today can master all fields of knowledge. But the age of narrow specialization is also departing. It has hampered human development. It has falsely divided lue into water-tight compartments called subjects. It has produced the innumerate humanist and the illiterate scientist, both equally out of place and ill at ease in modern industry and modern life. The young themselves in many cases are rejecting narrow specialization. University two-subject and joint honours courses and courses involving fields of study which cross subject barriers are all vastly popular. "Nor is this trend confined to universities," said J. C. Dancy, one of our leading public school headmasters, to a meeting at the National Union of Teachers' Conference in 1964. "It is part of the spirit of the age: the young of all countries are impatient of traditional divisions of race, religion and class, and they are beginning to extend this impatience to the single-subject honours course or to the traditional groupings of sixth form subjects. They are more interested in the wood than in the trees, even if the tree is the tree of knowledge." This, then, is the broad answer to "What curriculum?" It is scientific and humanist. It enables many bridges to be built between subjects. The technician can be taught design. The pure scientist can be given a technological slant to his study of geography, civics, and history. It promotes combinations of study through options. It adapts for secondary education the technique well-developed in primary schools and now being developed in universities, the "centres of interest" method which relates subjects and treats them as but interdependent facets of life. It is relevant to life today.

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Or if I could be allowed to answer less seriously, I would say: "Love letters and lab notes." For if men and women are to be adequately prepared to grapple with the human problems of life in the second half of the century, and also to take their place in an ever-changing technological society, they must have some facility with love letters and lab notes. It will be a difficult balancing act for teachers, but as the British trade union leader, Jimmy Maxton, used to say (I quote the Bowdlerised version out of respect for your tender ears) : "The man who cannot ride two blankety horses doesn't deserve a job in the blooming circus." Perhaps, too, I ought to add something about method, which is as important as curriculum content. A satisfactory education should never be measured by what a child knows, but by his capacity for growth. How many people have we met whose intellectual growth ceased years ago! Such people are out of place in a world in which knowledge quickly dates. A young compositor told me the other day that all the techniques learned in his apprenticeship were now useless, and he had to learn completely new ones. An honours graduate in mathematics told me he was incapable of teaching sixth formers certain aspects of mathematics that are now necessary because he knew nothing of them, so he is returning to the university to bring himself up to date. In the world of today, when knowledge and techniques constantly change, what we learn of printing, maths, plumbing, building, engineering, teaching, or anything else will quickly become inadequate or obsolete. Thus, since it is not existing knowledge that is important, but adaptability, a curiosity about knowledge, knowing where it can be found, and how it can be used in various changing circumstances, methods should ensure that children go on growing after they have left school. For all these views on what curriculum changes are needed I alone am responsible. There is nothing authoritative about them, and nothing final. They need to be tested by discussion and above all by trying them out in practice. Similarly, from time to time the councils we represent may express their views on these or other curriculum matters. These views, too, are not ex-cathedra pronouncements of final and absolute truth. They are but the best distinguished thinkers and researchers can provide at the moment. And they, too, need to be tested by discussion and application. No council should ask for more. Now I come to the third question: Who effects the changes? Faced with all the questions already discussed on the reasons for and the nature of educational change, and more, the individual teacher must sometimes feel he is walking like Bunyan's Pilgrim "through the wilderness of this world," seeking an Everyman to go with him and be his guide. Possibly some even

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think the councils we represent are guides to go with them all the way. Like those in the Charge of the Light Brigade, they say: "Ours not to reason why," and rely on the judgement of the staff officers. But any teacher is less than a professional if he wants someone else to think for him and tell him what to do. "If only you'd tell me what to do, Mr. R.," said a schoolmistress to one of Her Majesty's Inspectors, "I'd do it." What a touching faith in the Inspectorate! But what spinelessness, incapacity and shuffling out of responsibility too! My dear woman (or should I say "my dear puppet"?), inspectors can advise; councils and researchers can publish their findings; philosophers, parsons, politicians, and journalists can elucidate the aims of education; publishers and educational suppliers can offer you new equipment, but unless you ponder their meaning and usefulness, unless you are convinced that they help to realize your ideals and objectives, and that they are right for you and your children in your circumstances, you should not apply them. If you do, you will be a traitor to yourself, your children, and your profession. Indeed, if it is accepted that the curriculum must be fitted to the child, not the child to the curriculum, the teacher cannot dodge the responsibility of choosing. The Report of the Council for Cultural Cooperation says: "The only legal requirement for secondary education in England and Wales is that it must accord with the age, ability and aptitude of the pupil. It is undoubtedly the British educational system which takes the greatest care to adapt curricula to different types of intelligence." But why? Because it is accepted that no central body, no matter how high-powered, can prepare syllabuses and prescribe methods adapted to the age, aptitude and ability of every single pupil—that can only be done by the teacher. This teacher's freedom, however, is never absolute. No teacher, indeed no man, has ever enjoyed complete freedom. The area of choice allowed the teacher will always be circumscribed by parental pressure, external examinations, university entrance requirements, the availability of labs, rooms, and audio-visuals, and the wishes of the community. In Britain, in the past, the government greatly limited the teacher's freedom. In 1862, Robert Lowe decided that children should be examined annually by the Inspectorate on a dictated syllabus, and that the result would determine the teachers' salaries. In 1902 a 76-page Code was issued to teachers, specifying the work to be done at each age level. But the teacher gradually asserted his right to be in control, so much so that only a few years ago the local authorities and the teachers successfully resisted a government proposal to set up a government-controlled Curriculum Study Group because it was feared the teachers' freedom might be endangered. And so we have a Schools Council, independent of the government, supported by local

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authorities and teachers, with teachers in a majority, with the officials employed by and responsible to the Council, not the government, and with terms of reference which safeguard the teacher's freedom. Were it otherwise I should not be here today, for like my colleagues in the NEA, whose slogan this year is "Free to Teach," I regard the teacher's freedom as fundamental to professional status and social well-being. However, I see three threats to this freedom. The first I have mentioned —the teacher's failure to recognise that freedom and responsibility, like love and marriage (so the song tells us), or Sodom and Gomorrah (so the parsons says), are inseparables. Freedom implies choosing, and choosing implies responsibility. Fearing responsibility, some exchange freedom for chains. The second is treating the teacher as less than a professional. In Room at the Top, John Braine's hero says: "He left us to our own devices. He did not give a damn how the work was done as long as it was finished when we promised, and he refused to be bothered with details. . . . We were a team of professionals, not a collection of adding machines." That well defines the relationship that should exist between lay and professional administrators and the teacher. "Refusing to be bothered with details" is the hallmark of good administration. Administrators need "to bear all naked truths and to envisage circumstances all calm," but who can bear all naked truth or envisage circumstances calmly if he is continually worried about the minutiae of who is doing what, and how, and why? Nor can the teacher practise his profession successfully if he is treated like an adding or a teaching machine. The difference between a good teacher and a teaching machine is that the former can choose how to carry out his duty. Freedom to diagnose, to prescribe, to advise, to choose, marks the professional, whether in medicine, law, or education. Let us beware, then, lest we curricular reformers, in our enthusiasm try to fasten our ideas on teachers, and infringe their freedom. Should this happen, the curriculum remedy will prove worse than the disease. For real improvement, the teacher must not be driven, but persuaded, convinced and allowed to choose. The third danger is putting too much reliance on research in curriculum development. G. K. Chesterton once said there was nothing wrong with a dog as long as the name was not spelt backwards. Some people approach research as if it were godlike, taking their shoes from off their feet as if the ground on which they stand were holy. They give it an authority not only in its own objective, statistical, scientific field, which it should have but also in the realm of values, which it certainly should not. I do not doubt the value of soundly-based educational research. It can help us immeasurably in hundreds of ways, but it has validity only within its own field.

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Bernard Crick, in his book In Defence of Politics (he is probably better known in North America for his American Science of Politics*), says this of technology, and it could just as well refer to the technology of schooling: "Technology is, of course, simply the activity of applying scientific principles. . . . But it has also become perverted into a social doctrine. Technology' holds that all the important problems facing human civilization are technical, and that therefore they are all soluble on the basis of existing knowledge or readily attainable knowledge, if sufficient resources are made available."5 But despite the scientists, not all the important problems are technological; they are human. Do not tell me, for example, that technology or research alone can solve the problems of race relationships—they can be solved only by actions prompted by a belief in equality. I remember a prominent exponent of educational research exuberantly declaring: "All educational questions are capable of statistical measurement." To which I reply, "Poppycock!" You can provide an educational system on the basis that the elite should be well cared for and the masses treated indifferently, or another on the basis of every child getting the fullest opportunity, but these bases are not found by research: they spring from belief and values. Similarly, research can give us fairly efficient means of selecting children for various forms of secondary education, but it cannot determine whether we ought to select. Not all problems can be solved by research or statistical measurement. It would help us, would it not, if we knew something about the causes that lead men and women to forget the skills they were taught in school. A scientific investigation into such human behaviour is valid academic research. If the researcher discovered and isolated the causes and stopped at that point, this would be a valuable addition to our store of knowledge. But if he stepped over the line and attempted to indicate the precise steps to be taken in the classroom to remove the causes, his judgment would have no greater value than that of anyone else with an interest in schooling, and a good deal less than that of the classroom practitioner. Researchers may offer prescriptions, even wise ones, but research in itself cannot be prescriptive, only descriptive. I submit that the application of the results of educational research must rest with the teacher. In his "Secret of the Sea," Longfellow writes: Wouldst thou the helmsman answered Learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery. That parallel is fitting. You would not feel too happy on an Atlantic liner if

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you were told the ship was being steered by the shipwright or by the man who designed the compass. You would prefer a sailor. Similarly, only those who have braved the dangers of the classroom can comprehend the mystery. That is why I believe teachers should help councils by indicating suitable lines of research. That is why teachers should be involved wherever possible in the actual carrying out of research. That is why adequate communication between curriculum councils and teachers is so important. That is why, in the last analysis, teachers must decide. Now I must conclude. If the schools are to succeed in equipping boys and girls for work and leisure in tomorrow's world, there must be curriculum change. The economic, political, social, and personal objectives must be clearly defined, and the means to those ends must be indicated. Above all, if the change is to be effective, the attitude of the teachers must not be piano, pianissimo, but enthusiastic involvement, individually and collectively. Otherwise there may be no change, or change and no progress. We may find, as Havelock Ellis did, that "what we call progress is merely the exchange of one nuisance for another." I have one final point. George Bernard Shaw was once billed to speak (or, as you would say on this side of the Atlantic, slated to speak) on "What's Wrong with English Education." By some mischance he arrived very late, and when called upon he began: "I had intended to speak on 'What's Wrong with English Education', but as I have only five minutes I will change the subject and speak on 'What's Right with English Education'." Perhaps some will conclude from this speech and this conference that there is something seriously rotten in the education of Ontario, England, and the U.S.A. The conclusion would be false. Think for a moment of these places. All are affluent, technically advanced, confident of increasing prosperity. All are democratic, and their democracy works. In all aspects of education that are measurable, and I assert in those that are not measurable, advances are being made. I put it to you: could Ontario, the U.S.A., and England and Wales be so prosperous, and the machinery of government work so well, and would educational results improve, if the education systems had failed? Indeed, they have not failed; they are more effective than they ever were. So we are not here to rescue weak, ineffective, and inefficient systems from collapse, but to find ways of helping each other to strengthen even further virile, strong, and progressive systems of education. There is enough similarity in the societies we represent to find much common ground in the purposes education must serve, the means by which the purposes are achieved, and the part that administrators and teachers play to make this conference most fruitful. May it enliven our organizations,

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clarify our minds, and strengthen our resolve to provide for children the quality of education needed for a full and satisfying life in the complex world of tomorrow! REFERENCES 1. ROBERT W. HEATH (éd.), New Curricula (Harper and Row, New York, 1964), p. 68. 2. Ibid., p. 262. 3. Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education, England: 15 to 18 (H.M.S.O., London, vol. I, 1959), p. 384. 4. BERNARD CRICK, The American Science of Politics: Its Origins and Conditions (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, 1959). 5. In Defence of Politics (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1962), p. 88.

Instructional Trends in the United States ROBERT M. McCLURE Associate Director, Center for the Study of Instruction National Education Association, Washington, D.C.

U ique contributions to human welfare from single nations are rare. When the history of the world is written, the Greeks will be remembered for liberty, the Romans for law, the British for parliamentary government. In America, we hope we will not be remembered for our industrial might, our scientific achievements, our ability to mass-produce material objects. We would rather have it noted that from our very beginning as a nation we took seriously the idea of universal public education. Soon, I hope, we can add the word "equal" to that phrase. Schooling in the United States is a vast enterprise: one fourth of the nation—almost 54.2 million persons—is enrolled in some kind of school or college; 5.4 million Americans are college students; high schools enroll 12.9 million students; elementary schools have 35.9 million students; dollar expenditures for all schools in the United States total 39 billion dollars or 6.3 per cent of the gross national product; there are approximately 2,400,000 teachers in United States schools and colleges. Though we are proud of the contributions made by our private schools and colleges, a majority of the students and teachers in the above complex are in institutions supported by public funds. But statistics do not tell the complete story. Most of you are well aware of our struggles to provide quality education for all of our citizens. Many of you may know of the various schemes to support public education for young children and for adults. Life-long education is a theme for the 1970's. To review all of this now is not possible. Let me limit my remarks to a discussion of two movements more manage^ able and more directly related to our interests. The first, and by far the most visible, has become well known as the curriculum reform movement. The second force is just gaining momentum and is focused on the rational planning of curriculum and instruction. To

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divide these two movements is, perhaps, too simple an analysis of the many highly complex efforts to transform the American school. In order to examine innovative activities with greater clarity, however, these two categories will be used. Unfortunately, many deserving efforts will be omitted. THE CURRICULUM REFORM MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

The curriculum reform movement is made up oí an increasing number of national curriculum projects. During the 1950's, a pattern emerged among these projects in the ways in which they were developed and the kind of competencies employed. This pattern shows many of the characteristics of a real reform movement. I shall use the term curriculum reform movement but remind my audience that there is no one national autonomous body in the United States which controls school programs. Financial support for many of the programs and, indeed, some of the ideas for them originated in the private philanthropic foundations and in the National Science Foundation. Funding has more recently come through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (Public Law 89-10) passed by the Congress last spring. The five parts of this landmark legislation relate to improving educational programs for children of low-income families (Title I); strengthening school library resources, textbooks, and other instructional materials (Title II); developing innovative and exemplary programs in Supplementary Education Centers (Title III); creating new institutions through National and Regional Educational Laboratories (Title IV); and strengthening State Departments of Education (Title V). Titles III and IV have great implications for the continued strength of the curriculum reform movement. Sand introduces his discussion of the movement as follows: Illinois math . . . PSSC . . . SMSG . . . the FLES program . . . the Economic Task Force—these and a bewildering number of other new terms are finding their way into the educational vocabulary. The projects to which these terms refer are major curriculum studies that merit thoughtful consideration. They have grown, in part, out of the need to bring the content of the school curriculum up-to-date so that new knowledge in specific disciplines can be incorporated and obsolete content can be eliminated. Most of the projects have focused on the development of materials for the secondary schools; few have given attention to the elementary school program.1

A major characteristic of this movement is its emphasis on primary structural elements of the disciplines. The academic scholar returned to the lower school. There he and the high school teacher constructed a new course. The new math, new science, and, more recently, new English have literally made newspaper headlines. The contributions of these national

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projects are noteworthy. They brought about the return of academic scholarship to the schools; new ways of organizing knowledge with emphasis on its structure—the guiding conceptions that delimit the subject matter and control the methods of inquiry; comprehensive instructional materials packages; and retraining of teachers. These were great contributions. But the reform movement also had its limitations and liabilities. Educators, refreshed by the changes of the moment, often lost the hard-learned truths of the past. We forgot the lesson of the thirties—that individuals learn individually; the lesson of the forties —that the strong society flourishes with diversity. Worse yet, few if any were able to relate one change to another and put all of the pieces of the "new" educational program back together. Two writers have recently identified some of the critical issues that restrict the movement. Goodlad2 suggests to us that the curriculum reform movement needs to become truly experimental in nature, to close the formidable gap between the intent of curriculum projects and what actually happens in classrooms, to avoid exclusive use of pre-packaged curriculum materials, to clarify ends. Goodlad proposes four kinds of activities for the resolution of these four problems: (1) a national colloquy to clarify the aims of American education; (2) a commitment by state and local school districts to rigorously defined priorities stated as educational goals; (3) development of techniques for assessing the attainment of whatever goals are chosen; (4) vigorous trial and experimental comparisons of alternative ways of achieving the goals. Cremin3 also gives several considerations to be faced if the contemporary curriculum reform movement is to achieve maximum effect. He cites the urgency of asking Spencerian questions more insistently than ever. What knowledge is of most worth? What priorities ought to be taught to children at any given stage of their development? He agrees with Goodlad about the need for systematic testing of all new curricular programs and continuing experimentation with a variety of approaches to each field of study. He warns against the unfortunate conclusion from Bruner's dictum that knowledge does not have to be recast for purposes of teaching. The various national curriculum projects addressed themselves to a specific set of problems. These problems had to do with closing the gap between funded knowledge and what was being taught in classrooms and to provide instructional materials designed to effect rapidly this updating of content. In order to make curriculum more consonant with existing knowledge, a model of change was adopted almost universally by the projects. Academic scholars and media specialists developed highly original materials for classrooms. Teachers, usually meeting in summer workshops,

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reacted to these materials and were trained in their use. After an initial try-out period, publication and distribution took place. Projects continued field testing of the materials if funds were available for this purpose. In effect, every effort was made to change what took place in classrooms through these new instructional materials implemented by retrained teachers. William S. Gray, decades ago, accomplished a similar revolution through his reading manuals and student readers.4 Gray's success and the impact of materials produced by the national projects have led some to conclude that curriculum change and implementation occur chiefly through the preparation of materials that are "teacher proof." Today, the best reading programs have moved forward and departed markedly from the foundation laid by Gray and others. These programs demand that the teachers make creative adaptation of them for each student. Effective individualized reading programs have come about partly because teachers as well as curriculum specialists thoroughly understood the fundamental skills developed and described by the early reading researchers. In short, the teacher has moved from being a passive direction-taker to an active decision-maker. Too often wholesale adoption of "teacher-proof" materials by schools is the order of the day. The exciting ideas that went into the new materials are being diluted by this practice. As Phase Two of the curriculum reform movement gets underway, it is essential that all decision makers play their appropriate role in closing the knowledge gap. The best kind of curriculum and teaching revolution results when a soundly educated teacher can make wise instructional decisions based on the work of his curriculum-making colleagues. STUDIES IN RATIONAL PLANNING OF CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION

Let us turn to a second force which must play a part in transforming the American school. We prefer to call this avenue to change "studies in rational planning of curriculum and instruction." As you will soon see, a different set of questions about curriculum and teaching are addressed by participants in this movement. This movement finds its genesis in the writings of Tyler5 and its implementation through the works of such people as Sand,6 Goodlad,7 Taba,8 and the precursor to our Center for the Study of Instruction, the Project on the Instructional Program of the Public Schools (Project on Instruction). The Project was one of the major efforts of the National Education Association to upgrade the quality of American education and to give it direction. The

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Report of the Project joined a small but distinguished group of NEA publications which included the "Seven Cardinal Principles" of education,9 The Purposes of Education in American Democracy,10 and The Central Purpose of American Education.11 The Project Report was discussed in some detail by Ole Sand12 at the International Curriculum Conference held in this city in November 1964. The four-volume Report of the Project and its several auxiliary publications raised twelve questions and made thirty-three recommendations in two major decision areas—deciding what to teach, and planning and organizing for teaching. With reference to the critique previously made of the curriculum reform movement, the Project was notable in three respects. First, it dealt with the entire scope of the curriculum from kindergarten through grade twelve. In retrospect, it should have dealt with the school program from nursery school through grade fourteen, but its recommendations also apply at these levels. Second, it focused on the stubborn question of educational priorities by asking the right questions about educational ends: "What are the distinctive responsibilities of the school in contrast to those that properly belong to the family, the church, industry, and other youthserving agencies? What responsibilities should the school share with other institutions and agencies? What should be included in the school program? What should be excluded from it?" Finally, the Project on Instruction stressed the importance of educational objectives, curricular sequence, and sound judgements about when to teach what. It provided guidelines to help local schools and other agencies develop comprehensive instructional programs. It preceded the federal legislation previously mentioned and set the scene for what was to follow. One significant new enterprise that resulted from the Project was the establishment by the National Education Association of its Center for the Study of Instruction (CSI). As a relatively new institution in this time of ferment, CSI has been steadily attempting to clarify in a number of ways the nature and extent of its own possible contributions to the improvement of education. The Center's first function was to follow up in disseminating the report of the Project on Instruction, and to help groups to study and use its recommendations. The basic goals of the Center are to provide a setting for the continuing study of educational issues, to search for new ideas, to help public and private schools and colleges establish priorities, and to initiate and assist in innovations. The CSI Advisory Committee,13 which came together for the first time in October 1965, provided the staff with additional alternatives. Briefly, these directives were: (1) to add to curriculum and instruction theory, refine and test it, and use it in exploring new

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issues; (2) to work with those legally responsible for educational programs using the theoretical bases we are formulating; and (3) to appraise new developments in American education and disseminate value judgments about them to the schools and other agencies. Among its many activities, CSI is planning for a major project designed to identify more clearly the nature of the theoretical base that guides decision-making, to close the gap between theory and practice, and to refine the theory. Essentially, this project will involve us deeply in real-life situations in real schools. Another example of the so-called rational approach is concerned with studies of the relationships among curriculum, teaching, and learning. Bellack,14 Gage,15 Smith,16 and Suchman17 are representative of these researchers. In their view, an understanding of the theoretical base of teaching is essential if the practitioner is to maximize student learning. In summary, the characteristics of the rational approach to curriculum making and teaching include: (1) Relying on a number of people in formulating and developing curriculum—the academic scholar, the curriculum theorist, the school administrator and supervisor, the teacher, the informed lay citizen. (2) Understanding that the school is only one of several institutions concerned with education and, therefore, that the school has to be very clear about its role and purpose.18 (3) Assuming the validity of a variety of approaches to curriculum reform including re-education rather than retraining of teachers, better instructional materials, and improved ways of calling up teacher competencies. (4) Viewing the school as a total institution that must constantly pay attention to curricular scope, continuity, sequence, and balance. (5) Understanding that constructive change is predicated on a clear delineation of the scientific base of curriculum and the art of instruction. The rational approach to curriculum planning has had much less impact on schools than the national curriculum projects previously described. Why? It is an infinitely harder task to build a total program. It requires a great deal more time and self-discipline. Rewards are sometimes delayed for years. To be fully effective, the rational approach calls for a re-education of the total establishment. What we now need in our schools is a clearer understanding of the purposes, shape, and means of a complete program truly designed for the twentieth century. In criticizing today's philosophers, Time magazine asks the question: "Will philosophy ever again address the heavens? Will it contribute anything to man's vision, rather than merely clarifying it?"19 Indeed, we now ask the same question of our schools.

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INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION

The President of the United States has, this week, added his voice to the purpose of this Conference. In introducing to the Congress the proposed International Education and Health Acts of 1966, he said: Schooled in the grief of war we know certain truths are self-evident in every nation on this earth: —Ideas, not armaments, will shape our lasting prospects for peace. —The conduct of our foreign policy will advance no faster than the curriculum of our classrooms. —The knowledge of our citizens is one treasure which grows only when it is shared. International education cannot be the work of one country. It is the responsibility and promise of all nations. It calls for free exchange and full collaboration. We expect to receive as much as we give, to learn as well as to teach. Let this nation play its part. To this end, I propose: —to strengthen our capacity for international educational cooperation. —to stimulate exchange with students and teachers of other lands. —to assist the progress of education in developing nations. —to build new bridges of international understanding.20

Ten of the eighteen programs proposed by President Johnson are: (1) establishing a Center for Educational Cooperation; (2) appointing a Council on International Education; (3) creating a corps of education officers to serve in the United States Foreign Service; (4) stimulating new programs in international studies for elementary and secondary schools with funds earmarked from Title IV of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965; (5) encouraging the growth of school-to-school partnerships; (6) establishing an Exchange Peace Corps; (7) expanding the U.S. Summer Teaching Corps; (8) stimulating conferences of leaders and experts; (9) increasing the flow of books and other educational material; and (10) improving the quality of U.S. schools and colleges abroad. The President's strong plea and imaginative programs, if enacted into law by Congress, will stimulate the kind of cooperation at the international level with which we are concerned this week. Our Special Seminars at this conference have a common thread—fostering international cooperation. To accomplish this end, to make certain that something happens after this conference, I propose one kind of administrative vehicle, the establishment of an International Center for the Study of Curriculum and Instruction (ICSCI). We already have three prototypes for this new institution—the Schools Council, the Ontario Curriculum Institute, and CSI—the cosponsors of this conference.

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Obviously, in terms of the possible, even if resources are assured to support all that President Johnson has outlined, the order of the programs to be launched will have to follow some sort of staging priority or ordered sequence. An editorial in the New York Times21 also calls our attention to the practical problem of realizing the President's objectives. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 holds great promise for education in the United States but suffers from lack of qualified personnel, particularly at the administrative level. All of us here have an opportunity to make the International Education Act of 1966 work to fulfill its promise. In our Seminars, I hope we can consider my proposal for an International CSCI as well as other suggestions you may have. I had written the first draft of this paper before the President's message. Our predecessor, the NEA Project on Instruction, also had recommended all of the titles in the Elementary and Secondary Act prior to its introduction. We have some reason to believe that the White House gets advance copies of our proposals even though theirs are secret. While the President included most of my ideas in his message, he missed three that I should like to develop here. International Scholars and Interns (People Who Sing and Swing) Attached to ICSCI I would hope to find a group of academic and pedagogical scholars to strengthen the permanent staff, to bring new understandings to the seminars and other programs, and to provide an international campus for their work. The medical and scientific fraternity is truly international, and the cancer researcher is as apt to meet his Japanese counterpart in New York as not. It is superfluous to say that this has been beneficial for all concerned. We find, at least, many educators visiting other countries, but too few have the opportunity for an exchange of some duration and lasting effect. There should be a way to tap the experience of those who have taught in other countries. Several of President Johnson's proposed programs obviously are based on the need for people. He has said that the best brains and ideas must be marshalled in the service of government and the Great Society. Education needs them too, and we all know that at times throughout our history it has not been the first choice of the gifted—the schools too frequently used to get those who failed in funeral directing. Perhaps an experiment should be conducted in our new ICSCI in which outstanding undergraduates can actually participate in the schools. You might help to select a few sophomores or juniors who could be attached to the office of your school superintendents, as well as in your classrooms. Could each of us identify young stars—older mature ones, too—and

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work with them? Central to this idea is the need for overcoming the intellectual barrenness, the rigidity, and the formality that permeates too much of education. As Sir Ronald Gould reminded us, however, the strengths of the countries represented here testify to the vigor and quality of our educational programs. To maintain the quality, we do desperately need IDEAS THAT SING. To get those ideas, we need PEOPLE WHO SING AND SWING. To this end we should really be dedicated in our new ICSCI. Studies in Rational Planning of Curriculum and Instruction in Schools and Other Institutions Why should our new ICSCI identify itself closely with school systems? The answer is easy. To pretend that any national or international organization, even with the help of the best scholars in the world, could possibly develop theories—which should be one of our tasks—without testing their validity in all the complexities of real situations would be a disservice. In selected schools and school systems throughout the world, ICSCI could make a significant contribution by constructing models and testing them and by identifying among many sources and countries ways of developing the models. All of the resources of our new Center could be brought to bear on these situations in order that others could learn with the Center about how viable school and other educational programs can be built and maintained. Ministries of education, whether they directly or indirectly run the schools, have great influence on what happens in individual classrooms. It may be that a parallel exists between our 50 state departments of education and your ministries. ICSCI could reasonably work with a selected group of ministries and state departments of education in order to test, refine, demonstrate, and disseminate the process of system-wide school improvement. This kind of program would provide a needed breadth aspect to the ICSCFs operations while the school-based study would add the dimension of depth to its work. Another kind of possible program is to influence other existing agencies that affect international education. Two come immediately to mind—the World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession (WCOTP) and UNESCO. Power to influence for the good of the world's school will come only when there is a high degree of cooperation among the many groups concerned with international education. One unit within ICSCI might be a permanent international structure for the exhibit and effective use of instructional materials, new media, and new concepts of space utilization. The purpose of this unit would be to reinforce the work in field settings, seminars, and other programs. A second unit

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might be an Office of Roving Reporters which would prepare an annual catalog of people and places and what they are doing. This information might also be disseminated through our various popular and professional journals—thus, incidentally, improving their quality and helping to put the E back in our educational associations. International Consultant Team Network Finally, though, people are needed—people with ideas and the intellectual power to bring ideas to fruition—as we said before, "People Who Sing and Swing." Our NEA Center for the Study of Instruction has been working for three years to build a national network of consultants who have these qualities. With limited resources, sixty outstanding scholars and educators have associated themselves with our work. In addition to their activities in schools, colleges, and other institutions, they have become CSI's arms in the field. These consultants have taught us, and we have provided them with a new kind of framework within which to generate ideas and put their great talents to work. Ideas and people are increasingly hard to locate. An international network of consultants attached on a parttime basis to ICSCI would provide the world's schools with a wealth of human resources. SUMMARY

In this paper, we have attempted to summarize the curriculum reform movement in the United States, to describe another kind of movement which we called rational planning of curriculum and instruction, and to propose the establishment of an International Center for the Study of Curriculum and Instruction. It is desirable that at this Conference we explore many ways of international cooperation. But even more important is that we act on at least one program and decide on next steps. This is my challenge as we return to our Seminars and as we return to our homes. If we do not get action, probably that eminent philosopher Pogo has stated the reason. "We have met the enemy and he is us!" REFERENCES

1. OLE SAND, "Current Trends in Curriculum and Instruction," Comprehensive Musicianship: The Foundation for College Education in Music (Music Educators National Conference, Washington, D.C., 1956), p. 80. 2. JOHN I. GOODLAD, "The Curriculum," The Changing American School (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1966). 3. LAWRENCE A. CREMIN, The Genius of American Education (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1965).

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4. WILLIAM S. GRAY and EDNA B. LIEK, Teacher's Guidebook for the Elson-Gray Basic Readers—Preprimer and Primer (Scott, Foresman, Chicago, 1936). 5. RALPH W. TYLER, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1950). 6. OLE SAND, Curriculum Study in Basic Nursing Education (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1950). 7. JOHN I. GOODLAD, "The School Scene in Review," School Review, LXVI (Winter 1958), 391-401. 8. HILDA TABA, Curriculum Development: Theory and Practice (Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1962). 9. Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education (Rept. of the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Appointed by the National Education Association, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1918. 10. EDUCATIONAL POLICIES COMMISSION, The Purposes of Education in American Democracy (National Education Association, Washington, D.C., 1938). 11. The Central Purpose of American Education (National Education Association, Washington, D.C., 1961). 12. OLE SAND, "Education for Quality," New Dynamics in Curriculum Development (Ontario Curriculum Institute, Toronto, 1965), pp. 7-24. 13. John I. Goodlad, Chairman; Lois V. Edinger, John H. Fischer, J. Steele Gow, Jr., S. P. Marland, Jr., and Lester W. Nelson. 14. ARNO A. BELLACK et al., The Language of the Classroom (Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, 1963). 15. N. L. GAGE, "Paradigms for Research on Teaching," Handbook of Research on Teaching (Rand McNally, Chicago, 1963), pp. 94-141. 16. B. OTHANEL SMITH and MILTON O. MEUX, A Study of the Logic of Teaching (Bureau of Educational Research, College of Education, Univ. of Ilinois, 1963). 17. J. RICHARD SUCHMAN, "Inquiry Training: Building Skills for Autonomous Discovery," Merrill-Palmer Quart., VII, 3 (July 1961), 147-69. 18. See From Bookshelves to Action and Recommendation 10 (2) of the National Education Association Project on Instruction. 19. Time, Jan. 7, 1966, p. 24. 20. Message to the Congress of the United States, Feb. 2, 1966. 21. New York Times, Feb. 3, 1966.

A New Model For Educational Research and Development R. W. B. JACKSON Director, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

My assigned task, Mr. Chairman, is to discuss research and development

in education and, in particular the new structural model we have tried to develop in Ontario. You may think it strange to find such a topic, provincial in scope, on your agenda. I think our common interests must stem from a shared belief that the whole educative process should be continuously evaluated and improved, and that changes in the massive structure of public education not only should but can be made. Your primary concern obviously lies in the field of curricular reforms, in both instructional techniques and materials; my interests are broader in scope but include yours, and I readily admit that the real heart of education lies in the program, in the methods and materials by and through which learning is facilitated. We also share a common problem: changes in education are singularly difficult to effect. This seems strange at first sight, since the process itself is designed to foster change and growth in the child, and the whole setting of the school system in society today is characterized by the rapidity and extent of both technological and social changes. But we must remember that institutions and practitioners naturally resist change, and not only in education; not simply to obstruct for the sake of obstruction, but because there may well seem to be no obviously compelling reason why any fundamental changes should be made—only a few minor adjustments to solve everyday problems, perhaps? Of course, change may also require new knowledge, new skills, and a different organization, all of which must be learned or developed, and the process may be both difficult and painful. The process of change, consequently, to be successful, must involve a clear demonstration of the need as well as of the ways and means. The impact of the first Sputnik on American educational thought and practice is often cited as a dramatic illustration of demonstrating the need for change. The major problem in effecting change is undoubtedly that of com-

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munication, and it is here that we have generally failed, as researchers. (We may glean some small comfort from the fact that others, also, frequently fail to communicate effectively, even politicians, actors, and publicity agents!) As a matter of fact, the communication system in educational research has generally failed in both directions: in the communication of ideas and problems from the field to the researchers, and in the communication of ideas and findings to the field. It is almost as though a vital link in the system were either missing or malfunctioning, so that contact is lost between the basic studies and the applications to practice in the field. This was clearly recognized in the Third Annual Phi Delta Kappa Symposium on Educational Research (1962), devoted to the topic Dissemination and Implementation,1 and in the study by Lazarsfeld and Sieber on Organizing Educational Research.2 The other aspects of the problem of disseminating and implementing research seem much less serious (for example, lack of staff and money, resistance to change, and confusion about the meaning of the term research), or at least easier to remedy. Certainly, from the point of view of the new structure in Ontario, the emphasis will be on communication, from and to the field, so that schools may become more responsive and translate the new knowledge arising from basic studies very rapidly into changed policies and practices. Those of us who have been closely associated with the development and implementation of government policies, whether municipal or provincial, are probably more keenly aware of the gap which exists between the basic studies and the implementation of their findings. I know from personal experience over nearly a quarter-century, for instance, that to ensure successful communication someone must take responsibility for carrying the process through from the first stage of idea or hypothesis to the last stage of direct implementation (which may involve activities which range from drafting an Act or set of regulations, even the preparation of a draft statement of government policy, to, in some cases, direct involvement in the operational stage of the process). The point I wish to emphasize is that this series or sequence of stages must be recognized and provision made, in the organization or otherwise, for an orderly and effective progress from one stage through the next, from one end of the process to the other. At present, neither the researchers nor the practitioners have accepted responsibility for the efficient operation of such a communication system. Perhaps both teachers and researchers have each left it to the other, or perchance to the politicians? Researchers, on the one hand, seem content to drop the task at the point of publication of the findings in learned journals, using too often a jargon which will by itself alone almost guarantee nonacceptance of the findings, or at least guarantee that action ceases at the point of publication. The practitioners, and more particularly the classroom

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teachers, on the other hand, seem to expect that the findings of educational studies will be laid on for them in the form of "instant lesson plans," if one may borrow a concept from the commercial food interests, translated into their own particular jargon (with textbooks, workbooks, achievement tests, and all). The gap is far greater than any that Kipling ever contemplated (incidentally, by definition the East must at some point meet the West, but not so the researcher and the practitioner in education). And I conclude that the fault lies with neither party, but with the system, or lack of it, which does not ensure communication and implementation. In this connection, I have found most helpful the stages of the process described by Campbell3 and by Clark4 in the 1962 Phi Delta Kappa symposium referred to earlier. Campbell describes four stages which he thinks essential as one moves from the conduct of basic research to implementation in the classroom: (1) basic studies; (2) field testing and demonstrations; (3) information and promotion; and (4) application to practice in the classroom. You will observe that the last two stages, above, have traditionally been the function of provincial departments of education in this country—often, alas, without any reference to the first two stages. Clark, interestingly enough, subdivides some of these stages but omits the fourth, although it is clear from his discussion of the process that he does assume a further stage—in the use of the phrase "commensurate improvement in the steps preceding the point of implementation," which I think would be equivalent to Campbell's fourth stage of application. The "six-step sequential process" which Clark proposes is as follows: (1) Basic scientific investigation (content indifferent); (2) Basic scientific investigation (content relevant); (3) Investigation of educationally oriented problems; (4) Classroom experimentation; (5) Field testing; and (6) Demonstration and dissemination. The two sets of steps or stages are remarkably similar, and certainly our own concept of the process is much the same, as you will see from the actual provisions we have made to ensure orderly progress along such a series of stages or steps. One of the reasons for the lack of communication between the researchers and the practitioners can be found, in my opinion, in the inadequate provisions for the training of research personnel and of specialized personnel to work in the field and to assist in the implementation of research findings. In both Canada and the United States, our efforts to expand, to the extent required, not only basic research but applied research (Clark's "Investigation of educationally oriented problems"), are severely handicapped by the shortage of competent personnel trained in research methods and in the disciplines related to education (for example, psychologists, sociologists, economists). Particularly noticeable in Canada in the past has

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been the lack of opportunities to specialize in specific aspects of educational theory (for example, finance, measurement, learning theory, planning) at the graduate level. Our ablest and most ambitious young men and women have been forced to seek such specialized instruction in other countries— most of them go to the United States to study and, not surprisingly, the majority remain down there after graduation. I believe, however, that we have not been exporting "brains" in sufficient numbers to meet the American demand, and that the extraordinary situation is developing in that country where there exists a surplus of funds for educational research, more especially now with the massive programs financed with federal money. If ever a "crash program" of graduate training, and of upgrading and updating of specialists or consultants were needed, it is in this field and now. The situation is little better, possibly even worse, when we turn to the field and seek the vast numbers of specialists (for example, guidance counsellors, school psychologists, reading consultants, mathematics consultants) required in the promotion and implementation stages of the process, to form the "missing link" in the communication system. It is these persons of specialized knowledge, freed from classroom teaching, who, with the administrators, can take the basic research findings and the results of field trials, interpret them properly, and through demonstrations and active promotion see to it that the necessary changes and improvements reach the front lines of the classrooms. While many of these specialists, perhaps the majority, will require study at the graduate schools of education, or in their own discipline in other graduate departments, many must be educated through workshops, extension courses, and special summer and winter courses. I feel very strongly that the provision of such re-education must be pursued vigorously and immediately. Of what use would be a vast body of research knowledge at one of of the process without the channels and the personnel to carry through to the teacher in the classroom? We cannot expect that every classroom teacher can or will do this job of interpretation and implementation unaided, although some can and do, and our ranks of competent researchers are too thin (and possibly ill-equipped) to attempt to spread them over this vast battleground. One is tempted to use the analogy of the engineering field, or of agricultural research and development efforts, but one could easily be misunderstood if the terms, for instance, of engineer, technologist, and technician were translated into the educational equivalents. I wish to mention only two more points, of the many which should be discussed, before I describe the structure we have set up in Ontario and how we think it will overcome the deficiencies outlined. TThe first concerns the

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professional preparation of teachers: both academic and professional qualification of teachers, and I refer particularly to those in elementary schools, must be vastly improved before we have much hope of weaving continuous evaluation and change leading to steady improvement of teaching and learning into the structure of public education. For those now in the classrooms, despite the substantial number who are highly qualified, a huge program of in-service education must be provided extending over many years. Recognition in the form of study-leaves must be provided by school boards, in addition to increases in salaries for those who secure higher qualifications. As for pre-service education, I sincerely hope the day is drawing near when we can require a university degree, or the equivalent, for all teachers. I would only add that some basic training in research methods and related techniques must obviously be a key item of any such program of teacher education, if changes in classroom practices are to be effected continually. My second point concerns the researchers and the manner in which they have too frequently in the past selected research problems and conducted their investigations. Our educational problems are so complex that we must recruit interdisciplinary teams of experts to attack them, moving on a broad front and taking into consideration all the relevant factors. The manner in which a child learns is the end product of the interplay of many forces: of his genetic inheritance; of his social heritage; of the environment of his family; of the intellectual climate of community; of the attitudes and expectations of his peer group; and of his previous learning experiences, to mention only the more obvious and important items. I need not press the point; the picture of the disadvantaged child has become painfully clear— from the Negro child in an urban slum of the "deep south," to the Indian or Eskimo child of what have now become our rural slums of the forests and plains of the "far north." Can we hope to help the child learn to read, for example, unless we see him as a whole and as he is today, the resultant of all these forces? At the same time, I classify as completely unrealistic and generally futile our disorganized attempts to make progress in developing the required body of research knowledge by forcing each student, or professional researcher, to select his own problem, to delimit it by whittling away all the factors but one, or perhaps two or three, and to battle away on his own, independently and without the essential supporting services (for example, clerical, data processing). No; we must attack the larger problems, as a team, and with field workers, graduate students, and professors attacking on a broad front and utilizing all the resources in a common effort.

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At this point, you may well ask me to show you how we mean to enter such a brave new world in Ontario, and specifically how we intend to organize and utilize our forces at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education to attain these ends. The background of our efforts is of the greatest importance in this context: changes in the educational system designed to meet better the needs of today and tomorrow have been included as part of the provincial government's policy to adapt to and profit from the social and technological changes of this age. Research and development in education, consequently, are only one aspect of an over-all provincial program, for which the general policy was laid down by our Premier, Mr. Robarts, one year ago this month, and the details of which each Minister spelled out for his own Department (education being one of the most active, under the vigorous leadership of the Minister of Education and Minister of University Affairs, Mr. Davis). Ours is not a lone nor an individual effort, as an Institute, then, sponsored solely by impractical and idealistic intellectuals! In fact, I would conclude that we have in this province (and in Quebec, too) satisfied Clark's basic requirement to "re-think . . . responsibilities in the dissemination and implementation of educational research findings."5 We intend, as you will see, to complete the second part of his proposal also, namely, to "establish cooperative programs which will result in a province-wide network of experimentation and demonstration centres employing the best that is known about the ways in which change in practice can be effected."6 Incidentally, we accept as a self-evident fact that the practitioner (the classroom teacher) will in the beginning be resistant to change, or at best passive, and we welcome the challenge to bring research to the point where there is something worthwhile to be disseminated and implemented in practice. Personally, I fear far more a non-critical and eager-to-changeeverything mood on the part of the practitioner: we will be doing real things to real children, and I feel we should be required to demonstrate beyond any shadow of doubt that the new is in fact better than the present, be it teaching method, course, or textbook. To ensure adequate and continuing financial support, obviously the new Institute had to be financed mainly from government funds, although given power to solicit and receive funds from other sources also. But independence is perhaps the essential feature of any research and development organization which would command public respect and secure acceptance as being free from partisan political influence. Consequently, our new Institute was established by a special Act of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontario, and the affairs of the Institute placed completely

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under the management and control of a Board of Governors, constituted as a body corporate, the members of which are appointed by the LieutenantGo vernor-in-Council and consist of representatives of the following: (a) the teacher-training institutions; (b) the University of Toronto, nominated by its President; (c) the provincially assisted universities of Ontario, nominated by the Committee of Presidents; (d) the Department of Education; (e) the Ontario Teachers' Federation, nominated by its Board of Governors; (/) the Ontario School Trustees' Council, nominated by its Council; (g) the directors of education, superintendents, and inspectors nominated by the associations; (h) persons who are residents of Ontario; (/) members of the administrative and instructional staff of the Institute, in addition to the Director. The Board of Governors is obviously independent and powerful, representing as it does all those in the Province interested in education. Moreover, by its very composition, not only will the Board be sensitive to the needs of the field, but each of the members will have a responsibility to ensure cooperation and to see that channels of communication to and from the field are opened and kept functioning. In addition, the Institute must report annually, through the Minister, to the Lieutenant-Governor-inCouncil and to the Legislative Assembly. Consequently, not only is the Institute independent, but it is directly responsible to the people of Ontario, through their elected representatives. The freedom of the Institute to investigate is practically unlimited; the objects or terms of reference are stated in the following unqualified fashion in the Act itself: (a) to study matters and problems relating to or affecting education and to disseminate the results of and assist in the implementation of the findings of educational studies; (6) to establish and conduct courses leading to certificates of standing and graduate degrees in education. You will have observed, of course, not only the breadth of the terms of reference, but the corresponding responsibilities imposed, at least implicitly. While I frequently refer to the latter, that is, the responsibilities, in brief as research, development, and instruction, it is worthwhile (in light of the steps or stages set up by Campbell and Clark) to set them out in detail: (1) to conduct studies (both basic and applied research); (2) to disseminate the results of educational studies (including publication, classroom experimentation, field testing, and demonstration) ; (3) to assist in the implementation of the findings of educational studies (including promotion and application to practice in the classroom); (4) to provide instruction (including specialized courses leading to

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graduate degrees as well as short courses, workshops, conferences^ and whatever else may be necessary to ensure an adequate supply of properly qualified personnel to conduct studies as well as to implement their results). Obviously any aspect of education may be brought under review, and at any level of the system, from nursery school to post-graduate programs. A merger with the Ontario Curriculum Institute is to be effected this summer, to assist in the development in our new Institute of one strong centre wherein all the resources will be available for each aspect of the work. The granting of its own degrees is not contemplated for the immediate future, although the Institute is established as a college in its own right, but affiliation with the University of Toronto has been sought for the establishment and conduct of programs under that University's School of Graduate Studies (subsequently, as the occasion may warrant, similar agreements of affiliation may be made with other universities). Concurrently, every effort is being made to set up interdisciplinary teams of experts, drawing from related fields, in the research program—with very encouraging and promising results. Some of the basic studies of more theoretical than practical interest may, in fact, be conducted primarily in the relevant department (for example, psychology, in the case of learning theory) of one or more universities, with assistance from the staff of the Institute, but other basic studies will be conducted within the Institute with the assistance of staff from various university departments (some of the arrangements are informal, others formal to the point of actual cross-appointments being made). In one sense, all the necessary resources of the universities could be made available for any study, and indeed such cooperation is being actively encouraged and has been welcomed by members of staff of all universities with which we have been in contact. Structurally, for purposes of internal arrangement on the basis of functions performed, we are organized under a Coordinator of Studies (Dr. W. G. Fleming),7 a Coordinator of Graduate Instruction (Dr. G. E. Rower), a Coordinator of Curriculum Projects and Special Services8 (Dr. K. F. Prueter), and Administrative Services (Library and Information, Editorial, Data Processing, General Office or Internal Administration) which serve all sections. There are no "watertight" compartments, however, and integration into a single unit is our goal. For instance, the graduate instruction (and much of the other instruction) will always be provide by the staff of the Study Departments, and these members of staff will serve also as resource personnel, or otherwise, on the curriculum development committees. Similarly, all staff members will be engaged in one way or another in research studies, and involved in interdisciplinary or inter-institutional teams or committees for studies or liaison purposes. The instructional

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program includes special courses leading to certificates of standing, as well as those leading to graduate degrees (M.A., Ph.D., M.Ed.); the research or studies activities are subdivided into nine Departments, each under a Head holding professorial rank, in the Institute and in the University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies (departments are Educational Administration and Finance, Educational Foundations, Educational Planning, Continuing Education, Applied Psychology, Field Services, Information and Data Systems, Measurement and Evaluation, Instructional Techniques and Curriculum Research); the curriculum projects and special services include special responsibility for promotion and implementation as well as demonstration, and within the area of curriculum have ten projects, some of which are subject-oriented but others of which are general and directly related to the activities of the Study Departments (English, Reading, Creative Arts, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Physical and Natural Sciences; and School Needs, School Progress, Education for Industry and Commerce, Adult or Continuing Education), and the whole program will, of course, be more completely integrated when the Ontario Curriculum Institute merges with the new Institute.9 To assist in the dissemination of results, we shall have a series of publications of our own and shall also utilize the periodicals of professional associations, in addition to popular media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Public addreses, workshops, and conferences will also be a feature of our activities. We are, of course, well aware of the findings of recent studies which indicate how ineffective are the written and spoken words (see BrickelPs report on the situation in New York State,10 and the recent (Dec. 1965) report by Kong and McMurray on a study of communication advocating educational change in the schools of North York in Metropolitan Toronto). The personal contacts needed are being sought in a number of ways, through formal and informal committees formed with teacher training institutions, with professional groups, with associations having similar objectives (such as the Ontario Educational Research Council and the Ontario Association for Curriculum Development), and with Home and School and Parent-Teacher groups. With some of these organizations, we shall also conduct studies under joint sponsorship, as empowered to do under our Act, hopefully (as in the case of one project with school trustees) to secure involvement of those best qualified and in the best position to put the desired changes into effect. I do not doubt that we will succeed in the task of disseminating information, singularly reluctant though I am personally to use some of the modern media, and certainly the field trials and demonstrations used so successfully by the Ontario Curriculum Institute indicate that we can, even with present resources of

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personnel, assist very satisfactorily in the final stage of implementation of the findings in the schools and classrooms—the real measure of our success in the over-all task assigned to us. I believe that our best means to ensure implementation of changes, and consequently desirable improvements in our school system, will be through demonstration and workshops, and more particularly through the training of research personnel and school specialists (which we may term consultants), in the graduate program and in special courses. Within a matter of a few years, we hope to be preparing these essential personnel in substantial numbers, sufficient to man our research teams and to supervise the field trials and demonstrations, as well as to work with local boards and schools (as local employees or as officials of the Department of Education) in the actual process of effecting massive changes in the school program and allied services. I am willing to stake most of our hopes on this development of key personnel, and I must pay tribute to the generosity of our provincial government in providing funds for large numbers (in our terms) of research assistantships and scholarships. The next move is to persuade school boards, and the Department of Education, to invest directly in the human resources of their own personnel through sabbatical and other study leaves, and to send to us for training and internship as many as possible of their ablest young men and women. Our teachers and other school personnel in Ontario do have the ability and the will to learn, but they must be given the means. The rewards will be beyond price: with trained personnel within the Institute and in the field, knowing and trusting each other and their professors, working on projects of common concern and interest, we could transform education into something of the ideal experience it should be for our children. I am not unmindful, Mr. Chairman, that with the Minister and his senior advisers rests the power to decide upon changes in our school system; I would not have it otherwise. But, knowing these men and women as well as I do, and realizing very clearly the nature of the process which underlies political decisions (in the best sense), I am confident that when we have discovered or developed something which is good, and have through field trials and demonstrations convinced others of its value, then we will be given all the assistance and support needed to promote the new and to ensure its application in the classrooms of this province. As one trained in mathematics and research, I should perhaps not thus reveal my feelings but remain coldly and calmly objective. But how can one become other than excited over the opportunity we have been given to be of real service in the growth and development of our children in Ontario? I

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hope you will be patient: we have but started on the process of building the structure. Our task will be difficult, but that does not matter; it is not impossible; it only requires time and effort. The effort I can guarantee; your patience (and your help) I must beg. REFERENCES 1. KEITH GOLDHAMMER and STANLEY ELAM (eds.), Dissemination and Implementation (Third Annual Symposium on Educational Research, Phi Delta Kappa, Bloomington, Indiana, 1962). 2. PAUL F. LAZARFELD and SAM P. SIEBER, Organizing Educational Research (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964). 3. ROALD CAMPBELL, "The Role of School Study Councils and Local Districts in the Dissemination and Implementation of Educational Research," in GOLDHAMMER and ELAM (eds.), Dissemination and Implementation, pp. 79-104. 4. DAVID CLARK, "The Function of the United States Office of Education and the State Departments of Education in the Dissemination and Implementation of Educational Research," in GOLDHAMMER and ELAM (eds.), Dissemination and Implementation, pp. 105-28. 5. Ibid., p. 111. 6. Ibid. 7. Dr. Fleming was succeeded by Dr. J. H. M. Andrews in Nov. 1966 (ed. note). 8. In January 1967 these offices were re-titled as Coordinator of Research, Graduate Studies, and Development respectively. Several departments have also reorganized and altered their titles. 9. The union was completed in Sept. 1966 (ed. note). 10. HENRY M. BRICKELL, Organizing New York State for Educational Change (State Education Department, Albany, N.Y., 1961).

GOVERNORS OF THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM INSTITUTE, 1963-1966

NAME

POSITION AS ON DATE OF FIRST APPOINTMENT

Bartlett, Professor F. L. (1963, 1964,* 1965,* 1966)

Trustee, Kingston Board of Education

Beriault, Mr. R. (1963, 1964,* 1965*)

Administrateur, L'Association des commissions des écoles bilingues d'Ontario, Ottawa

Conway, Rev. J. H. (1963, 1964, 1965, 1966)

Principal, Catholic Central High School, London

Cozens, Mr. R. A. (1964, 1965)

Principal, General Amherst High School, Amherstburg

Crawford, Dr. D. H. (1966)

Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, Queen's University

Duhaime, Miss Marie (1964, 1965, 1966)

Teacher, Central School, Welland

Elborn, Dr. H. E. (1963)

Deputy Minister, Ontario Department of Education

Evans, Dr. Taylor H. (1963, 1964,* 1965,* 1966*)

Trustee, Guelph Board of Education

Frye, Dr. H. N. (1963,* 1964*)

Principal, Victoria College, University of Toronto

Fyfe, Dr. J. W. (1966)

Trustee, Sudbury Board of Education

Gordon, Mr. A. P. (1966)

Registrar, Waterloo University

Grossberg, Mrs. Elise (1964,* 1965,* 1966*)

Trustee, Forest Hill Board of Education

* Member of Executive Committee.

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NAME

POSITION AS ON DATE OF FIRST APPOINTMENT

Hall, Mr. K. H. D. (1966)

Superintendent of Public Schools, East York Board of Education

Harris, Dr. R. (1964)

Principal, University College, University of Toronto

Harrower, Dr. G. A. (1964, 1965)

Professor, Department of Physics, Queen's University

Henderson, Mr. J. J. (1964)

Assistant Superintendent of Public Schools, Scarborough Board of Education

Hodgins, Miss Nora (1963,* 1964,* 1965,* 1966*)

Secretary, Ontario Teachers' Federation

Houghton, Mr. T. D. (1966)

Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education, Ontario Department of Education

Holmes, Mr. M. W. (1966)

Superintendent of Public Schools, and Secretary-Treasurer, Leaside Board of Education

Hume, Professor J. N. P. (1965, 1966)

Professor, Department of Physics, University of Toronto

Inman, Dr. M. K. (1964, 1965*) Irvine, Mrs. Florence (1964, 1965, 1966*) Jackson, Dr. R. W. B. (1963, 1964, 1965,* 1966*)

Dean, Department of Arts and Science, University of Western Ontario Teacher, G. L. Armstrong School, Hamilton Director, Department of Educational Research, Ontario College of Education Superintendent, Technological and Trades Training Branch, Ontario Department of Education Curriculum and Standards Officer, Technological and Trades Training Branch, Ontario Department of Education Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education, Ontario Department of Education Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Ottawa Principal, Grace Street Public School, Toronto

Johnston, Mr. L. M. (1964) Judd, Mr. H. D. (1965, 1966) Kennedy, Mr. J. H. (1964, 1965) Lavigne, Rev. Rene (1964, 1965) Longmuir, Mr. E. Cecil (1963, 1964,* 1965,* 1966*)

GOVERNORS OF THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM INSTITUTE NAME

325

POSITION AS ON DATE OF FIRST APPOINTMENT

Mackintosh, Dr. W. A. (1963)

Vice-Chancellor, Queen's University

McCaffray, Mr. C. J. (1966)

Vice-Principal, Champlain High School, Ottawa

McCarthy, Dr. J. R. (1963,* 1964*)

Superintendent of Curriculum, Ontario Department of Education

Morgan, Dr. J. R. H. (1963*)

Superintendent of Secondary Schools, Toronto Board of Education

Murray, Professor A. L. (1965, 1966)

Professor, Department of History, York University

O'Neill, Mr. C. P. (1964, 1965, 1966)

Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education, Ontario Department of Education

Parnall, Mr. M. B. (1965,* 1966*)

Superintendent, Curriculum Branch, Ontario Department of Education

Partlow, Dr. H. R. (1965)

Superintendent of Public Schools, North York Board of Education

Prueter, Dr. K. F. (1963, 1964)

Superintendent of Public Schools, Etobicoke Board of Education

Pullen, Dr. H. (1963, 1964,* 1965,* 1966*)

Superintendent of Secondary Schools, Ottawa Board of Education

Ritter, Mr. A. C. (1964, 1965, 1966)

Director of Education, Kingston Board of Education

Saint-Denis, Professor R. (1966*)

Associate Vice-Dean, University of Ottawa

Sequin, Mr. G. E. (1965, 1966)

Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education, Ontario Department of Education

Sharp, Mr. Roy C. (1963*)

Former Trustee, Toronto Board of Education

Smith, Mrs. W. D. (1963, 1964, 1965,* 1966*)

Trustee, London Board of Education

Steinhauer, Mr. D. (1964, 1965, 1966)

Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education, Ontario Department of Education

Stiling, Dean Frank (1963)

Former Dean of Arts, University of Western Ontario

326

GOVERNORS OF THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM INSTITUTE

NAME

POSITION AS ON DATE OF FIRST APPOINTMENT

Sweetman, Mr. N. A. (1964,* 1965)

Superintendent of Public Schools, Toronto Board of Education

Tessier, Mr. J. M. (1964)

Secondary School Inspector, Ontario Department of Education

Torrens, Professor R. W. (1966)

Head, Department of Romance Languages, University of Western Ontario

Welch, Mr. Robert S. (1963)

Trustee, St. Catharines Board of Education

White, Dr. T. Gordon (1964, 1965, 1966)

Trustee, Sault Ste. Marie Board of Education

Wilson, Mr. D. J. (1965, 1966)

Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Schools, Toronto Township Board of Education

Wright, Dr. D. T. (1964, 1965)

Dean of Engineering, University of Waterloo

"ROLE OF T E C H N O L O G Y IN T H E SCHOOLS"

O n this recording the M I N I S T E R O F E D U C A T I O N

HON.

W I L L I A M G . D A V I S answers these questions: 1. What place do the new media have in schools? 2. What effect will the new media have on our present schools? 3. What impact will the new technology have on our organizational structure? 4. How should the schools be responding to the new technology?

This recording is on the book's web page on the University of Toronto Press' website: http://www.utppublishing.com/