HANSGEN, Ft I CHARD DARRELL an ANALYSIS of the TREND to MAKE a SCIENCE QF EDUCATION
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790 213? HANSGEN, ft I CHARD DARRELL AN ANALYSIS OF THE TREND TO MAKE A SCIENCE QF EDUCATION. THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, PH .D ., 197B University Microfilm s International 300 n . z e e b r o a d , a n n a r b o r , m i 48106 AN ANALYSIS OF THE TREND TO MAKE A SCIENCE OF EDUCATION DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillm ent of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Richard Darrell Hansgen, B.S., M.S.T. ***** The Ohio State University 1978 Reading Committee: Bernard Mehl Paul Klohr Robert Jewett Faculty of Curriculur Foundations For my Mother and Father who made this possible. VITA October 23, 1937 ......................... Born - Portsmouth, Ohio 1 9 6 1................................................. B.S., The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 1961-1964......................................... Teacher, Jones Jr. High School, Upper Arlington, Ohio 1964-1972......................................... Teacher, Wayland Academy, Beaver Dam, Wisconsin 1966 ................................................. M.S.T., Cornell University Ithaca, New York 1972-1975......................................... Teacher, Durham Academy, Durham, North Carolina 1975-1978......................................... Teaching Associate, Faculty of Curriculum and Foundations, The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Foundations of Education Studies in Philosophy and History. Professor Bernard Mehl Studies in Teacher Education. Professor Kelly Duncan Studies in Curriculum Theory. Professor Paul Klohr i i i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page VITA. ................................ ! .............................. i i i LIST OF TABLES................................... v LIST OF FIGURES................... vi INTRODUCTION....................................................... 1 ' CHAPTER 1. THE TREND TO MAKE A SCIENCE OF EDUCATION................................. 4 I I . CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SCIENTIFIC ENDEAVOR ............................. 17 I I I . STUDIES IN EDUCATION......................................................................... 61 The Pygmalion E ffect .................................................................... 61 Effects of Accelerating Bright Older Pypils from Second to Fourth Grade ........................................................ 68 Teacher Influence, Pupil Attitudes and Achievement. 79 IV. SCIENCE AND EDUCATION......................................................................... 85 The Pygmalion E ffect .................................................................... 90 Effects of Accelerating Bright Older Pupils from Second to Fourth Grade ........................................................ 97 Teacher Influence, Pupil Attitudes and Achievement. 99 Summary of Results ........................................................................ 103 Conclusions ....................................... 107 REFERENCES....................... H I APPENDIX................................................................................................................ 114 iv LIST OF TABLES TABLE Page 1. Summary of Differences Between the Accelerated Group and theSix Comparison Groups on Measures Where the Interaction Was Not Significant ..................................................... 73 2. Summary of Differences Between Accelerated Girls and Girls in the Six Comparison Groups on 11 Measures Where the Interaction was S ig nificant......................................... 75 3. Summary of Differences Between Accelerated Boys and Boys in the Six Comparison Groups on 11 Measures Where the Interaction Was Significant .................................................... 76 4. Categories for Interaction Analysis, 1959 .................................. 82 v LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE Page 1. Stellar Parallax ..................................................................................i 28 2. Kepler's Three Law s .......................................................................... 36 3. The Phases of Venus .......................................................................... 40 4. G alileo's Gedanken Experiment ...................................................... 43 5. Gains in Intelligence ...................................................................... 67 vi INTRODUCTION We live in an age where everything must be defined, classified, categorized, and, if possible, quantified. Within the structure of the scientific community there exists a pecking order with the natural scientists and mathematicians perched at the top and the social scientists scratching their way along in an attempt to secure a resting place somewhere on the roost. With mathematics holding the laurels as the queen of the sciences, the physicists have always tried to be as mathematical as possible, and since the time of Galileo have been immensely successful in their efforts. Today we see the biologists with their emphasis on the molecular gene structure trying to be as much like chemists and physicists as possible. Not to pass over the psychologists, we find the behaviorists trying to reduce human behavior to a set of physio-chemical explanations. I am reminded of V o ltaire's zany monologue in Peter Weiss' play Marat/Sade where Voltaire pokes fun at the ultramechanistic world view of Marat, which is in turn simply an image of eighteenth century continental rationalism: We have received from a certain Marat a slim volume entitled Man This Marat claims in a somewhat revolutionary essay that the soul exists in the walls of the brain amd from that strategic point controls the hypodraulic mechanism of the body by means of a network of tin klin g nerve threads 1 2 At the same time apparently the soul is receiving messages from the mechanamism of the body messages conveyed by pistons plugs and wires which the soul transforms into consciousness through separate centimentrifuges operating asimultaneously in other words i t is the opinion of this gentleman that a corn fills the corridors of the brain with pain of the soul and that a troubled soul curdles the liver and ki dneys For this kind of ring-a-ring-a-roses we can spare not even our laughter' The view persists. A ll must be reduced to the fundamental laws of nature which ultim ately are stateable in the form of mathematical expressions. The further a particular discipline has been reduced to these expressions, the more scientific it becomes. No field is exempt. It seems today that any pursuit in order to be considered valid and legitimate must attempt to be scientific. Thus, we have the science of business administration, the science of secretarial work, and the science of football. That educators want to be scientists is exemplified by those schools of education which are modeled a fte r medical colleges. (That is easy to understand, though, for a fte r a l l , i t is out of those corridors and laboratories that today's gods come.) It is the purpose of this paper to trace the scientific movement within education and to make an analysis of that movement. In the firs t chapter we will show that over the past century there has been V e te r Weiss, Marat/Sade (New York: Atheneum, 1972), pp. 67-68. a definite trend to put education on a scientific basis. In the following chapter we hope to indicate why the trend exists, and to throw light on what the nature of the scientific enterprise is. In the third chapter a detailed description is given of three specific studies in education that purport to be scientific. In the final chapter a critical analysis is made of the three studies . described in Chapter I I I with respect to a lis t of characteristics that are both basic and common to the s c ie n tific endeavor. These characteristics w ill be arrived at in Chapter I I through a historical approach. (See the Appendix for two notes on methodology. One is with, regard to the choice of the common characteristics of science and the other is with regard to the selection of the three studies in education.) CHAPTER I THE TREND TO MAKE A SCIENCE OF EDUCATION The trend to make education into a science is not new, but can be traced back at least one hundred years. It is no coincidence that the beginnings of the effort to make a science of education coincide exactly with the beginnings of experimental psychology. Herbart in the firs t part of the nineteenth century proposed that the interactions of sense perceptions within the mind could be ex pressed in mathematical formulas lik e those of Newtonian mechanics, and on such a basis developed a theory of education as a branch of applied psychology. But i t was not t i l l the establishment of the f ir s t laboratory in experimental psychology by Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig, Germany, in 1879 that modern psychology can re a lly be said to have begun. It is interesting to note that much of the experi mental work done between the time of Herbart and that of Wundt was performed by men who were steeped in the methods of physics, e .g ., Thomas Young who wrote a revised and improved theory of color vision based on Newton's work and Hermann von Helmholtz who did experi mental work in several areas of psychophysics and physio-psychology including a study of conduction rates in nerves. Although, as Claparede^ points out, the early work in child psychology and experimental pedagogy was the result of work con tributed by men and women in various countries, we w ill concentrate on the work done in the United States. One of the f ir s t Americans to apply the findings of experimental psychology