Research and educational action

Abstract

Early History -The Artisanal PhaseThe history of empirical and scientific research in education and in the sciences which underlie it is relatively short. Less than a century ago began the work of such men as Galton (Anthropometric Laboratory, 1884), Sully and McDougall. One of the first psychological texts for teachers (The Teacher's Handbook o] Psychology by Sully) was published in 1886. It seems reasonable to say that most of tile early work was inspired by the problems which the extension of compulsory education presented for teachers and society generally.The work of the first three decades of the twentieth century in Europe and North America was extremely fertile. Most of our theories of perception, cognition, intelligence, the emotional and social growth of children, of learning and of the impact of environment and experience upon development had their genesis then. So too did the development of the statistical tools of research in the behavioural sciences -correlational techniques, multiple regression, analysis of variance, factor analysis. These brought with them an increasing respect for and subtlety in sampling theory and experimental method applied to complex human data. The first national survey of school children was undertaken in 1932 by Godfrey Thompson and brought unequivocally to light the wide range of differences in ability, the relationship of these to such factors as social class, parental education, family size and geographical location. Educational psychology tended to emerge as an important empirical discipline to some extent divorced from academic psychology by its concern with the realities of human behaviour and learning, with child development, and with the relation between the individual and social groupings ranging from the family to the immediate environment and to society as a whole. It no longer relied uniquely or even mainly upon philosophical introspection and analysis. In the middle and late thirties many universities, in Scandinavia, 1) France, a) Belgium, s) Italy,4) England, 5) and of course the USA 6) established psychological laboratories or institutes for the study of the educational sciences on the Geneva model. 7)However, prior to the 1939-45 war research in education and related sciences was artisanal in character. Most of the empirical work was done by university teachers in time left aside from their lecturing and tutorial duties, and by students, the majority of them working part time for higher

Voyages of Measurement in Education in the Twentieth Century: Experts, Tools and Centres

“…(Wall, 1970) Another spur to collective organisation was an invitational meeting in the United States, the First International Conference on Educational Research, in 1956, jointly sponsored by the new American Educational Research Association and UNESCO (eleven countries were represented) (Noll, 1958, p. 82).…”

“…The very fact that international scientific co-operation in educational research can be effectively organised implies the existence of powerful and highly developed research institutions in the member countries and a much more widespread technical and scientific competence than might have been expected ten years ago. (Wall, 1970) Another spur to collective organisation was an invitational meeting in the United States, the First International Conference on Educational Research, in 1956, jointly sponsored by the new American Educational Research Association and UNESCO (eleven countries were represented) (Noll, 1958, p. 82).…”