arw s& d^otnell Hniusrsttg SIthrarg Cornell University Library arW38345 Training departments J", sjate "°;fi;,S!,||?,^ 3 1924 032 207 759 olin.anx The original of tinis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032207759 TRAINING DEPARTMENTS In STATE NORMAL SCHOOLS In the United States By LESTER M. WILSON Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia University Published by THE EASTERN ILLINOIS STATE NORMALSCHOOL Charleston [Printed by authority of the State of Illinois.] Springfield, III. Illinois State Journal Co., State Printers. 192 35525—1500 CONTENTS. PAGE. SECTION I. Introduction 5 Participation in the vocation being learned as a feature of vocational education in general 5 Tlie principle applied to preparation of teachers 9 Studies to determine the value of training school work 11 SECTION II. Training Facilities and the Organization oJ Training Departments 18 Arrangements under which public schools are used for training 18 Ideal facilities for training purposes 20 Why public schools are not more generally used for training purposes ... 22 Methods of supervision 23 Standards for training facilities : 24 SECTION in. The Nature and Amount of Students' Contact with the Training Depart- ment 28 Analysis of contact provided for in schools studied 29 Summary and analysis of the facts found 38 Time spent by students in preparation for practice teaching 44 Conclusions 49 SECTION IV. Participation by Normal School Teachers in the work of the Training De- partment and by the Training School Staff in the Work of Other Normal School Departments 51 Necessity for such participation 51 Summary of Types of Cooperation 53 Analysis offaets found 55 Suggested application of types of student contact and cooperative effort found, to selected curricula 66 SECTION V. How Training Departments Try to Teach Students to Teach 79 Lesson plans 81 Conferences 85 SECTION VI. The Guiding Purposes of Training Departments 91 As indicated by statements of aims 91 Determined from standards used in judging teaching merit of student teachers 93 Analysis of teaching merit based upon score cards used by training schools - 99 Analsrsis of teaching merit based upon data collected f ronj critic teachers . . 106 SECTION VTI. Summary: 113 TRAINING DEPARTMENTS IN STATE NORMAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES. I. Introduction. In common with other forms of vocational ediicatioii the pre- paration of teachers requires a CTirriculum made up of subjects of study which will contribute to the development of the desired skill, and for the exercise, under supervision, of the skill in question. Vocations differ among themselves in the definiteness of the sldll involved. In some vocations the conditions under which the skill is to be exercised are relatively fixed and can be so definitely fore- seen that the skill can be made effective by being highly mechan- ized through training. In others the conditions to be met are so variable, so impossible to foresee in detail, that the skill in a large measure cannot be mechanized and the preparation for the voca- tion consists not in definite training but in education which is- designed to prepare the individual to meet and to deal intelligently with variable conditions in the field of his vocation. The vocations commonly called professions involve some situ- ations which may be prepared for in the first way; they involve more which can be prepared for only in the second. Preparation for these professions consists in gaining the wide range of knowl- edge germane to the problems of the vocation, and practice in the application of this knowledge to concrete situations. The purpose of both is (1st) to train the novice in technique through doing in the practice period certain things which will be duplicated in later actual exercise of the vocation, and (3nd) to develop resourceful- ness in applying technical knowledge to concrete situations, and exercise which, it is hoped, will prepare him to meet new conditions similar in only a general way to the conditions encountered during the practice period. 6 Whatever may be the level upon which vocational skill is to he exercised, vocational education must be organized about oppor- tunities for the exercise of that skill. The weakness of existing agencies for vocational education, Dr. Snedden believes, lies in the lack of facilities for giving opportunity for participation in the activities of the vocations. He says -.^ "Modern experience as virell as theory tends to demonstrate that vocational education which ignores or slights this phase of prac- tical training is largely futile. Furthermore, the same experience seems to indicate that the concrete and practical must not follow at a considerable distance technical and general vocational subjects but rather accomapny and in many cases precede the same. * * * So far as the rank and file of students is concerned it is increasingly evident that the more abstract studies, when not intimately correlated with concrete practice, fail to work out into the results expected. * * * It is furthermore becoming more and more evident that the' technical subjects, such as math«natics, drawing, physical science, art and the rest, have a genuine func- tional value in vocational education only when they are closely integrated with the educational results acquired through participa- tion in the productive processes themselves. It is probably psy- chologically true that, for the average person, the study of these applied arts and sciences, quite apart from and anterior to any participation in the productive processes, is futile and unproduc- tive so far as vocational efficiency is concerned. Nothing can be more certain, however, than that the study of these same subjects, in close relation with the productive processes tends to expand rapidly the capacity of the worker. We may then base on these considerations a tentative theory of vocational education. "When th§ time arrives in the development of the boy or girl when he should seriously undertake preparation for a calling, it is necessary that somehow and somewhere he should be able to de- vote a considerable time to actual participation in the concrete processes of the calling itself. * * * Having thus come into contact with reality, he should have time set apart in which to study the more theoretical aspects of the calling. Here again, however, a sound theory would seem to require that mathematics, science, art, history and other related subjects should not require such an order of presentation as to detach them from the experi- ence of the young worker. This has undoubtedly been fhe vice > David Snedden — The problem of Vocational Education, pp. 27fe. of a great deal of the technical studj' carried on in the schools for the purpose of supplemental education." The necessity for the organization of vocational education about actual participation in the concrete processes of the vocation has been recognized in the provisions of the Smith-Hughes act furnishing federal aid for vocational education. Section 11 pro- vides that for persons not already employed in the exercise of their vocation at least one-half of the instruction given under the pro- visions of the act shall be given to practical work on a useful or productive basis. In answer to the question, "What is the policy of the board toward the provision in section 9 for 'Well rounded courses of study'?" the Federal Board for Vocational Education replied :^ "The act requires that a specified time be devoted in day schools to practical work. In addition, time sufficient for proper teach- ing must be given to instruction in related or technical subjects which are also vocational. The remaining time should be given to non-vocational subjects 'necessary to build a well-rounded course of instruction'. "While not making at this time a definite and final ruling, the board points out that the experience in vocational education in agriculture and in trades and industries gained in this country during the last ten years has established the following as the pre- vailing practice: ",(a) In day industrial or trade schools at least one-half the time is given to practical work on a useful or productive basis. "(b) From 30 to 35 per cent of the time in such schools is given to related studies like mathematics, drawing and science. "(c) The remainder of the time (15 to 30 per cent) is given to such subjects as English, civics, hygiene and history. "(d) In day agricultural schools one-half of the time is given to such subjects as agronomy, soil physics, animal husbandry, etc.. including required, supervised practice in agriculture. "(e) The remaining half of the time in such schools is given to non-vocational subjects." In the preparation of physicians and surgeons the last two years of four-year curricula are given almost entirely to clinical and hospital experiences. The most serious defect found in medi- cal schools in the United States by Flexner in his investigation of 1 Second Annual report of the Federal Board for Vocational Education, p. 128. these schools in 1910 was the inadequacy of clinical and hospital facilities and the failure to make adequate use of the facilities even then available. The report of this investigation includes the following statements : "On the pedagogical side, modern medicine, like all scientific teaching, is characterized by activity. The student no longer merely watches, listens, memorizes; he does. His own activitie.^ in the laboratory and in the clinic are the main factors in his instruction and discipline. An education in medicine nowadays involves both learning and learning how; the student cannot effec- tively know unless he knows how."^ • ' "Clinical teaching has had substantially the same history as anatomical teaching. It was first didactic; the student was told what he would find and what to do when he found it. It was next demonstrative; things were pointed out in the ampitheater or the wards, those who got front seats seeing them more or less well.^ Latterly it has become scientific ; the student brings his own faculties into play at close range — gathering his own data, making his own constructions, proposing his own course, and- taking the consequences when the instructor who has worked through exact- ly the same process calls him to account; the instructor no longer a fountain pouring forth a full stream of knowledge, nor a show- man exhibiting marvelous sights, but by turns an aid or an an- tagonist in a strenuous conflict with disease."^ "It is a nice question as to how the student's time in the third and fourth years is to be 'apportioned between patient work, ward work, demonstrative and class exercises, and didactic lectures. * * * The principle upon which division may be made has been, however, very clearly stated by Cabot and Locke. 'Learning medicine is not fundamentally different from learning anything else. If one had one hundred hours in which to learn to ride a horse or to speak in public, one might profitably spend perhaps an hour (in divided doses) in being told how to do it, four hours in watching a teacher do it, and the remaining ninety-five hours in practice, at first with close supervision, later under general' oversight'."^ In the professional preparation of engineers the present ten- dency is toward a reduction of emphasis upon shop and field technique and an increase of emphasis upon the managerial and ^BuUetin Number Pour, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teachmg, p. 53. ' Ibid, p. 93, 'Ibid, p. 99. executive aspects of the profession, involving a corresponding change in the type of practical experience which the engineering schools must furnish. But there is no disposition to decrease the amount of practical experience. In its report to the conference of the British Institute of Civil Engineers on education and training of engineers, the committee said : "No man can be considered fit to take part in the design as well as the control and direction of engineering works, unless there is added to competent scientific knowledge a thorough practical training under actual engineering conditions."* This principle, that active participation in the vocation being learned is the characteristic feature of professional preparation for the exercise of a vocation, shown by theory and by experience to be valid in other fields of vocational education, has been found to be equally applicable to the professional preparation of teachers for American public schools. That its validity has been accepted in practice is indicated by the fact that a training department is maintained by every state normal school in the United States and by a considerable number of private normal schools. It is indicated by the fact that training schools have been organized and arrangements for the use of public schools as training schools have been made by many col- leges and universities which undertake to prepare teachers. Persons responsible for teacher preparation have gone on record repeatedly as believing in the importance of the training department. At the winter session of the Kational Education Association in 1899 a committee appointed in 1895 to investigate teacher train- ing made its report to the Normal School department. In the report appear the following sentences : "The training school should be the correlating center of the normal school; the curriculum of the training school should di- rectly influence that of the normal school."^ "In comparison with other lines of work in the normal school, actual teaching is capable of ranking as the most valuable 'course for the student."^ iNatute, July 13, 1911, p. 49. ^N. E. A. Addresses and Proceedings. 1899, p. 852. 3 Ibid, p. 846. 10 The progress made by this idea in the minds of normal school administrators and teachers in>the course of the ten years follow- ing is indicated by the following quotations from an address made before the Normal School department of the N. E. A. in 1909 by C. B. Robertson :^ "The progress . [made by normal schools] which has been most marked, it seems to me, is the increasing appreciation in which the training departments are held. They are coming into a posi- tion of authority and power because their place, function, and value have been shown. "There is no longer any question in the minds of those com- petent to judge, that the place of the training department is pivotal ; it, is the hub from which should radiate all the activities of the other departments." In 1914 the same idea was reaflSrmed by at least three speakers at the meeting of the Normal School department. W. T. Carring- ton, then president of the State Normal School at Springfield, Missouri, said:^ "We consider the training school work the most important work of the normal school and one of the most difficult to handle." President John W. Cook of the Northern Illinois State Normal School said:^ "The jiosition of [director of training] is second alone in im- portance to that of head of the school, if it is not, indeed, superior to it. The practice school is peculiarly the center of the situation. In a very true sense, the normal school should be built around the practice school." President David Pelmley of the Illinois State Normal Uni- versity, said:* "Where the training school is closely connected with the normal school, where the normal school departments write its course of study and give continuous attention to its work, where the normal school instructors have themselves had experience as public school teachers and see the children beyond the inchoate teachers on the benches in front of them, the training school im- parts to the work of the whole institution a vigor and vitality which can be obtained in no other way." ^N. E. A. Addresses and Proceedings, 1909, p. 561. ''N. E. A. Addresses and Proceedings, 1914, p. 537. = lbid, p. 542. *N, E. A. Addresses and Proceedings, 1914, p. 504. 11 Among the theses "fundamental to the organization and ad- ministration of the suggested curricula" which preface the pro- visional "Curricula Designed for the Training of Teachers for American Public Schools," issued by the Carnegie Foundation in 1917, appears the following:^ "The organization of a teacher training college should repre- sent a thoroughgoing integration of all courses around actual work of teaching as a center. To this end the training department should be the central department of the college, and all courses in the institution should be correlated as closely as possible with the work in observation and practice teaching." In the report of the committee of the National Council of Normal School Presidents and Principals, on Normal School Standards and Surveys, the assertion is made •} "The training school is the heart of the normal school. Around- it and for it is everything else builded and ordered, for in and through the training school is exemplified the idea of education for which the normal school stands and in and through the train- ing school the student's ideals, knowledge and teaching skill are brought into concrete reality." In an article on "Practice Teaching in State Normal Schools" Wm. A. Wilkinson says :^ "It is a well established principle of vocational pedagogj' that the best method of imparting both skill and technical knowl- edge needed in any occupation is through actual participation by the candidate in the vocation being learned. If the normal school accepts this principle, then it must make practice teaching the heart and core of its professional work." Such quantitative studies as have been made to determine the value of the student's experience in the training department of the normal school contribute to the certainty that this principle of vocational education, participation in the processes of the vocation being learned, is valid in the field of teacher preparation. Meriam* found a correlation of + .443 between success in practice teaching as indicated by grades received by student teach- » Curricula Designed for the Professional Preparation of Teachers for American Public Schools — Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1917, Thesis 8. 2 Educational Administration and Supervision, March, 1918, p. 166. = Educational Administration and Supervision, June, 1918, p. 290. ■•J. Li. Meriam; Normal School Education and Teaching Efficiency, 1905. 13 ers, and the teacliing success of the same persons as indicated by the judgment of the principal of the normal school from which each had graduated. This correlation shows that practice teaching success is a fair index to probable success in later teaching> if it is allowed that the measurements of the two facts used in the study are adequate measures. It does not prove that practice teaching contributed largely to later teaching success, since it may be urged that the same preparation and natiye ability which contributed to success in one situation had a similar influence upon success in. the second similar situation, independently of exercise of that prepar- ation and native ability in the practice school. A positive correla- tion was found between other work done in the normal school and both practice teaching and public school teaching, the coefiBcient being somewhat lower in the second case. Meriam's own conclusion from the facts found is : , "The various subjects seem to contribute much to efficiency in practice teaching but considerably less to actual teaching; but the correlation between practice teaching and actual teaching is again comparatively high. This means that there is an element in the former that contributes directly to' the latter. * * * School work is not so closely related to the work the teacher is later called upon to do as it should be. Practice teaching is more closely related to it than are the theoretical studies. * * * The sig- nificance of this is that more practice teaching is needed in train- ing teachers." A study of the value of practice teaching in training teachers for secondary schools has been made by H. G. Childs. Information of two .sorts was collected. Nineteen city superintendents reported upon as many teachers who had done practice teaching as a part of their preparation. The summary of these reports is -^ "Ten of the 19 teachers were decidedly above the average of all teachers in the teaching staff; 17 of the 19 were equal to or above the average for all ; but two were below the average and none were reported unsatisfactory. The comparison with other teachers with no previous teaching experience is still more striking, as 14 of the 19 were rated decidedly above the average; only one was rated below the average and none were rated as unsatisfac- tory.'' 1 Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1917, No. 29, p. 35. 13 The second type of information collected came from the re- ports of 79 teachers who had done practice teaching as to the value of practice teaching a preparation for later teaching. Sixty- nine of these reported that it had much value; eight that it had moderate value; two that it had little value.^ The second study seems to he more trustworthy than the first, since no report is given in the first as to what training, in other respects than practice teaching, had heen given to the persons with whom the group considered was compared, and there was available for comparison no control group made up of persons of compara-ble ability and training equivalent excepting for the omission of prac- tice teaching. In the second case the only persons who could evalu- ate the contribution made to teaching ability by practice teaching were consulted, namely the persons who had done the practice teaching. Data comparable with those used in the second of these two studies just cited were collected from elementary school teachers in the course of the present study. Pifty-two normal school graduates, experienced as elementary school teachers, each distributed 100 points among the following factors : 1. Academic courses. 2. Professional courses. 3. Observation of teaching. 4. Practice teaching. The points were assigned to the four sorts of work in the pro- portion which the person making the distribution believed that each had contributed to the preparation for teachiUg which he had re- ceived in the normal school attended. These 52 persons included graduates from 38 schools in 14 states. The median teaching ex- perience was 8 years. All had done or were doing, advanced work in preparation for teaching. , >Ibia, p. 34. 14 The following distribution shows the nature of the reports : Median value Range of dis- Average assigned. tribution. deviation. 1. Academic courses 27.5 0—70 11.2 2. Professional courses 22.5 — 60 8.7 3. Observation 12.5 0—35 7.2 4. Practice teaching 35 5 — 75 6.4 The higher median together with the lower average deviation for the estinaates of the value of practice teaching as compared with the value of the other factors, indicates some agreement that practice teaching has a rather high value in preparation for teach- ing. The high average deviations in all four cases seem to indicate two things : (1) A wide difference in the value of the four sorts of work as they are administered in different schools. This is confirmed by the remarks added to the reports in certain cases. One of the four graduates from a certain state normal school who were among the 53 persons, rated the four factors 20, 60, 10, 10 respectively and said: "This particular school was strong in its professional work but formal and rigid in its practice department." A graduate from another state normal school, rating the four factors 10, 0, 30, 70 respectively, said: "The practice teaching was the only work which seemed to me to be vitally connected with preparation for teaching." A graduate from a third State Normal School rating the factors 10, 20, 20, 50, said: "I had the A. B. degree when I entered the normal school. Practice teaching was done in city schools under real, everyday conditions." (3) The large deviations indicate a difference in the needs which different persons feel upon entering a normal school. The last quotation given above illustrates this, as does the following from another graduate from the first school mentioned, who rated the four factors 60, 5, 15, 20 respectively: "Points 2, 3 and 4 would have been valueless without 1. Not worth 40 points stand- ing alone." A graduate from a fifth State Normal School rating the factors 35, 15, 15, 35, said: "It is hard to decide between academic work and teaching; I was so poorly prepared when I went to the Normal School that I needed the first badly but the 15 practice teaching made what I learned useful as preparation for teaching." A study has been made at the State Normal School, Winona, Minnesota, to determine how graduates of that school estimate the value of different parts of the curriculum. The following quotation indicates the nature of the investigation and its results :^ "In order to determine the relative values which graduates of the school attach to difEerent subjects or aspects of the curricu- lum, some 40 women graduates of from six to ten years experi- ence and whose judgment was thoroly dependable were written to (37 responded) as follows: 'Indicate by numerals below your greatest lack when you began teaching, marking your greatest lack number 1, next 2. etc., in the following respects: 'Academic knowledge in the branches you were teaching. 'Mastery of methods of teaching. 'General scholarship. , 'Practical school management.' The numbers by which the graduates indicated the rank of each of the four items were added. * * * The smaller the sum for any of the four aspects, therefore, the greater the lack. The general rankings of the sums and the number of first places (greatest lack) assigned each of the four aspects are as follows : ■ Sum of ranks. No. of firsts. Mastery of methods of teaching 45% 11 Practical school management 49 13 General scholarship 72% 2 Academic knowledge of common branches.. 79 1 "Apparently the normal school does best what it is easiest to do, viz. : to teach the common branches and to give general scholar- ship and should devise means of giving its graduates more free- dom and skill in the art of teaching. "A second request was : 'Check twice the subjects which you regard as especially valuable and check once the subjects which have considerable value in the required subjects of study as given below' (the subjects being listed). The sums of the check marks for the subjects indicate their relative importance in the minds of graduates replying, and are as follows : 'The Winona Normal Bulletin, Feb., 1917, pp. 291-2. 16 Teaching I. .' 53 Sociology 41 Teaching II 53 Theory of Education 40 Teaching III 52 Geography 39 English 49 Penmanship 37 Reading 43 Psychology II 37 Arithmetic 42 Drawing 34 Psychology 1 42 Music 33 School Management 42 Civics 31 History U. S 41 History of Education 28 Literature 41 The very limited range of possible degrees of lack and of value allowed for in this study reduces somewhat the comparative value of the figures arrived at, but the returns do show rather clearly the high value which the persons consulted attached to the experiences afforded by practice teaching and the lack of the sort of training which can be best given ih connection with practice teaching. The high relative value of practice teaching shown by all the studies made does not warrant the conclusion that more practice teaching should be done than is now generally required in tea9her training institutions. What the studies do indicate is that the practice teaching is so important a part of the work in the normal school that the training department should be given every facility for carrying on its work efEectively, and that the normal school as a whole should be so organized and its work so conducted that thie practice work, when undertaken, shall be of the maximum benefit to the student. The amount of practice teaching to be done must be determined by consideration of this importance in connection with the many other factors that govern curriculum making. The results of these studies do very definitely confirm the opinion of persons engaged in normal school administration, as quoted in the preceding pages, that the practice school is the department of the normal school about which the curriculum for the training of teachers should be organized. The purposes of the present study are to find: (1) what the training facilities of state normal schools are and how the training departments' are organized; (3) the amount and nature of the students' contact with the training departments; (3) the relation of the teachers in other departments of the normal school to the 17 ■work of the training department and the participation by the training school stafE in the -work of other departments; (4) what purposes the training departments propose to accomplish and how the training departments are organized and operated to accomplish these ends. The materials for the study have been collected by correspond- ence with normal school presidents, directors of training and critic teachers, and by examination of catalogs and bulletins issued by normal schools. Only state normal schools have been considered. A random selection of one hundred schools was made by selecting from the list in the Educational Directory of the Bureau of Edu- cation for 1917-18, pages 119 ff., the first school for each state, the first and second for each state in which more than one school is maintained, and a third school from the states with the largest number of schools, to make up the one hundred. Data from a fourth school in each of two states ■ are included because they happened to be available. Eeplies to the questions asked were received from fifty-four schools. Catalogs of all of the schools concerned have been avail- able. In each topic discussed in the study, the number of schools represented by the data used will be indicated. — 2 E S N 18 II. TRAINING FACILITIES AND THE ORGANIZATION OF TRAINING DEPARTMENTS. Training departments in state normal sckools .differ from one another in three principal ways: (1) as to whether observation, demonstration and practice teaching are done in schools wholly under the control of the normal school, or in public schools; (3) as to. whether separate schools are maintained, one for demon- stration teaching and observation, another or others for practice teaching; (3) as to whether supervision of practice teachers is done (a) by critic teachers who are also teachers of the rooms in which practice teaching is done, or (b) by special supervisors, the rooms being in charge of regular room teachers who are responsible for the school in its relations to the pupils but who have no respon- sibility for the work of student teachers. These three situations are found in all possible combinations- excepting that no case has been found among the schools studied of two separate schools maintained wholly by the normal school, one for observation and demonstration teaching, a second for stu- dent teaching. When a model school is maintained, practice teach- ing is done in public schools. Of seventy-five schools for which the facts could be ascertained, forty-two have practice schools established and operated wholly under normal school authority ; nine use only city or village schools for observation and practice; twenty-four have practice or model schools under the control of the normal school and also use public schools under cooperative management of normal school and local authorities. In six of these twenty-four cases, the school wholly controlled by the normal school is used as a school for observation and for demonstrational teaching with but little student teaching. The arrangements with local school boards under which nor- 19 mal schools make use of city schools for practice teaching vary. In cases where the normal school is located in a small town the normal school may assume control of all elementary education, organizing the schools to serve the purposes of the normal school. This is true, for example, at G-eneseo, New York, at Plymouth and at Keene, New Hampshire, at Framingham, Massachusetts, at Dillon, Montana, and at Albion, Idaho. In other cases the schools of the town are maintained jointly by the normal school and the local community. At Hays, Kansas, "By an arrangement with the city of Hays, the city school system is used as a pedagogical laboratory for observation, investigation, and practice. The professior of education of the normal school is ex officio superintendent of the city schools, performing all the functions of that ofBce and directing the work of teacher training. The city provides all equipment and pays the salaries of all the regular grade and high school teachers. The board employs teachers nominated by the super- intendent. The services of the superintendent and all special super- visors are furnished by the state.'" Hays has a population of about 3200. At DeKalb, Illinois, a similar arrangement is in force, including the service of the director of training of the normal school as city superintendent, but not all of the city schools are used as training schools. At Greenville, North Carolina, the city superintendent is director of practice in the city schools and the county superintendent is di- rector of practice in the rural schools. At Bllensburg, Washing- ton, "The training school is organized with special reference to the needs and conditions of the local school system, the class-room teachers being under the cooperative oversight of both normal school and city boards of trustees."^ At Mayville, North Dakota, the normal school pays an additional salary to selected teachers in the city schools and to the principals of the schools in which these teachers are employed, and both teachers and principals cooperate with normal-school supervisors in directing practice work. At Providence, Ehode Island, "The training schools are established by contract with the local authorities. * * * Critic teachers are nominated by the Trustees of the Normal School and elected by the School Committees of the towns which they serve."^ iport Hays, Kansas Normal School, Training School Bulletin, p. 5. i" Ellensburg, Washington, State Normal School Catalog, 1918, p. 13. 'Rhode Islana Normal School Bulletin, May, 1918. p. 25. 20 In all but one of the normal schools having their own practice schools and using city schools also, the students' first teaching is done in the practice school and later a part or all of the students are given opportunity for additional practice teaching in the city schools. At Duluth, Minnesota, "All members of the senior class who are assigned to the Training Department for teaching are later assigned to a supervising teacher in the city schools for cadet work."' At Providence, Ehode Islaiid, the school of observation "furnishes under the most helpful and encouraging conditions an opportunity for the young teacher to begin her practice teaching. * * * She is well fitted for the next step in her preparation, the training school."" At San Diego, California, all students are given their prelimi- nary practice teaching in the practice school and the better student teachers are then given assignments to city schools. At Emporia, Kansas, which is the exception mentioned above, only completely inexperienced student teachers are sent to city schools, ' to gain some experience before undertaking practice in the normal school's .practice schools. At Normal, Illinois, some students do their prac- tice teaching in the training school directly connected with the normal school; others receive their training in the Soldiers' Orph- ans' Home, the school of which is under the supervision of the normal school. In the cases of three of the schools studied the Only opportunity for students to teach in city schools is by serving as supply (or substitute) teachers, the opportunity being open to those students whd have already had public-school experience. The most satisfactory arrangement for training school pur- poses is probably (1) a school located on the normal school grounds and completely under the control of the normal school, where demonstration teaching, observation, preliminary participation and first practice teaching may be done, together with such educational experimentation as can be combined with these activities; this (^) supplemented by training facilities in public schools. Either one without the other is unsatisfactory. In schools making no use of public schools for training purposes, student teachers are inadequately prepared to meet the schoolroom conditions of the ^Duluth, Mlnneosta, State Normal School Catalog, 1918, p. 17. ^Khode Island Normal School Bulletin, May, 1918, p. 24. 21 public schools which are not duplicated in the practice school or- ganized primarily for the purposes ' of practice teaching; Ten directors of training with whom correspondence has been carried on in the course of the present study have made unsolicited state- ments to the effect that training facilities in the schools with which they are connected will be unsa,tisfactory until arrangements can be made for supplementary practice in public schools. On the other hand, in normal Schools haTing no conveniently located elementary school completely under the control of the normal school it is impossible to carry on the observation and preliminary participation that should be antecedent to practice, which ought to be a feature of the entire normal school course and a feature in as many as possible of the courses taken in the normal school in all departments. Without such a school close contact in the elementary school work and educational experimentation by the normal school staff are made less easy. Teacher-training institu- tions which have no such school connected with them, or inadequate schools, supply the deficiency as soon as funds are available for the purpose. The principal of one training school complains bit- terly that the lack of an adequate training school building makes it impossible to give more of the practice work in a school wholly under the control of the normal school instead of in city schools. Another director of training says that practice teaching done in schools not wholly under the control of the normal school is prov- ing unsatisfactory in the case of beginning teachers. At the Uni- versity of Wisconsin, the Madison high school was used for a train- ing school only until the University's own school could be built. The new high school building at the University of Illinois has just been completed, arrangement for use of the local high schools for training purposes having been found insufficient and otherwise unsatisfactory. Only nine of seventy-five normal schools have been found to be unsupplied with a practice school wholly under the control of the normal school, and in six of these the whole of the city school system is completely under the management either of the normal- school board of trustees or of the state board of education. Forty- S2 two of the schools make no use of public schools for training pur- poses. Apparently the most imperative need for change in organ- ization in trainiag departments, therefore, is a chajige which will make more general the use of public schools for supplementary practice teaching. That so many normal schools do not use public schools for training purposes is doubtless due, first, to the failure of persons responsible for the administration of the schools to realize the necessity for such public school experience as a part of the prepar- ation of teachers for the public schools. It is due, secondly and probably more frequently, to the unwillingness of local communi- ties to open their schools to normal-school students for practice purposes. In cases where the local school boards are willing to have schools used for training purposes, normal-school boards and principals hesitate to avail themsefves of the opportunity, fearing that the attitude of the commuiiity at large, of a new board, or of a new superintendent may make the arrangement inoperative after it has been undertaken, and that, in consequence, the work, of the training department will sooner or later be disturbed. In attempting to secure the use of public schools of its com- munity for trainiag purposes, a normal school which already has a practice school of its own may safely advance the following argu- ments : 1. That so far as the training of the student tfeachers is con- cerned, they will have had, before doing any teaching in the public schools, more preparation and experience than have eight out of ten of the persons who now enter the teaching profession each year. 2. That a large part of the teaching will be done by critic teachers, supervisors, normal-school subject-matter specialists and carefully selected room teachers. Because the normal school will supplement local funds available for teachers' salaries, the last named group will comprise more expert teachers than the com- munity could hope otherwise to afford. 3. That all of the work of the schools, particularly that of the student teachers, will be supervised with a care which the com- munity alone could not provide for. 23 4. That the educational ■welfare of the community will be under the direct care of the normal school faculty, made up of persons who are specialists in the field of education. Useful material for convincing the people of a community of the advantage to them of such a cooperative arrangement can be obtained from the statement by Dr. C. A. McMurry in the May, 1915, Northern Illinois State Normal School Quarterly,'^ and from the results of tests given in the training school at Madison, South Dakota, published in the Training School Bulletin of that school for July, 1918. It is unwise to make any promises that the arrangement will result in any saving to the community in school taxeS. It should be understood that state funds are to be used to raise the quality of the schools, not to decrease their cost to the town, and the com- munity should enter into the agreement with that imderstanding. If it is to be permanent, the arrangement should be favored by the community as a whole and not simply consented to by the board of education; otherwise a change in the personnel of the board might easily Jeopardize the arrangement. The data obtained give no basis iov, choice between super- vision of practice teaching by critic teachers who have direct re- sponsibility for the instruction of pupils when student teachers are not in charge on the one hand, and supervision by special supervisors with room teachers in charge of each group of children on the other hand. Both systems are found in schools of all sizes, but it is interesting to note that the larger schools use predomi- nantly the latter method while the smaller schools use the former. Other things being equal, the supervision of young teachers is probably more effective when done by one who is, himself or herself, a teacher of children. Bureaucratic supervision is prob- ably less effective and certainly less desirable than cooperative supervision. City school systems with highly centralized and specialized systems of supervision are centers of unrest among teachers who find the supervising oppressive rather than helpful. The New Jersey name, "Helping Teachers," for supervisors of ^ Published by the ' Northern Illinois State Normal School, DeKalb, Illinois. 24 rural teaching is a happy term and the situation is a fortunate one if the name is truly descriptive. LWhen the children of a given , grade are taught for a part of the time by student teachers and a part of the time by the critic teacher who supervises those students, p the teaching can be given greater continuity than when the room teacher takes no part in the direction of student teachers. J Di- vided authority in the conduct of a schoolroom may easily become ^ a source of friction, and as such is to be avoided so far as possible. The administrative plan suggested by the Carnegie Foundation^ provides for no supervision by persons who are not also teachers of children. The considerations which lead to the use of supervisors and room teachers are: 1. The teaching load of a critic teacher who has full respon- sibility both for a group of pupils and for as many student teach- ers as must ordinarily be accommodated in one room is very heavy ; entirely too heavy if more than iive or six student teachers must be supervised at one time. Long hours are made necessary to give time for conferences with student teachers. 2. If the number of student teachers assigned to one room be made sufficiently small, the number of rooms used for practice teaching must be correspondingly large, and the expense of em- ploying so many room teachers who are also competent critic teach- ers becomes very great, ever assuming that a sufficient number of such competent teachers are available which is not often true. Only the enlargement of practice facilities can meet these difficulties, with such increased appropriations as will make pos- sible a large critic staff and make possible the offering of salaries which will attract competent persons to the business of critic teach- ing. Standards for the number of pupils to be enrolled in the train- ing schools in proportion to the number of student teachers have been worked out by Bagley and by Judd and Parker. Bagley ^ Curricula Designed for the Professional Preparation of Teachers for American Public Schools — Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1917. 25 , 15 s e m 4 proposes the formula: n = 1.30 . , t 3 in which n is the proper enrollment in the practice school; s, the number of student teachers to be accommodated during the school year; c, the number of recitation' units during which the student teacher is in charge each week; t, the number of recitation units in the training school classes per week; m, the fraction of the total school year during which teaching is required. This formula is based upon the principle that in no case should more than three- fourthg of the work, of training-school pupils be in direct charge of student teachers. Bagley strongly recommends that this pro- portion be reduced to one-half. The standard suggested by Judd and Parker^ is that in a training school where two-thirds of the teaching is done by student teachers, each group of twenty children will accommodate two- thirds times four to nine practice teachers; that in a public school where one-half of the teaching is done by student teachers, each group of forty children will accommodate one-half times four to nine practice teachers annually. On the basis of data gathered from sixty-eight normal schools Kelly and Scott^ make the following summary: "The Institution giving about the median amount of emphasis to training school work is one which, "1. Has about 1.6 times as majiy students in grades 13 and 14 as in grades 1 to 8; "2. Has about 2.2 times as many children in the training school as students teaching during the year; "3. Has about five and a half times as many members in the entire faculty as in the training school faculty; and "4. Requires about one hundred sixty hours of student teaching for graduation." It is very diiBcult to get all of the items of information neces- sary for the application of Dr. Bagley'B formula, but from the figures given in the report of the Commissioner of Education and from data given in catalogs it has been possible, by assuming that the number of recitation units in the training school each week »C. H. Judd and S. C. Parker "Normal School Standards," Bui. No. 12, U. S. Bur., Ed. 1916. 2 Educational Administration and Supervision, 1915, Vol. 1, p. 591. 26 is forty (Bagley suggests that it will ordinarily be thirty) to esti- mate the adequacy of the training school enrollment in fourteen of the forty-two schools studied, having all practice teaching done in their own training schools. In only three of these fourteen schools is the number of pupils enrolled in the training school as reported to the Commissioner of Education in 191'?' as large as the figure resulting from the application of the formula. In three cases the number actually enrolled was less than one-half of the theoretical- ly proper number. This fact, together with the fact that four- teen is the median number of children in a group taught by student teachers as reported by twenty-two schools not making use of public schools for practice teaching, indicates that there is a de- ficiency on the side of quantity as will as of quality in the training facilities of schools not making use of public schools for training purposes. Such a lack of sufficient practice facilities was reported by Judd and Parker in 1916. They report^ : "As a matter of fact, many of the normal schools do not actually enjoy such facilities as would be indicated by these theo- retical calculations, owing to the fact that they have training schools with relatively few children, or they have not succeeded in making arrangements whereby they can utilize half of the time in the public schools for practice-teaching purposes." ^^ An item of major importance in the' organization of the train- ing department is the provision for associating with that organ- ization members of other normal school departments, especially of the department of education. The usefulness of the training department depends in large measure upon the use made of its facilities by the whole normal school staff, but the extent of this use depends rather upon the disposition or attitude of the teach- ers concerned than upon details of organization. In one school the organization of which shows close organized relationship be- tween the department of education and the training department, — the same man being head of both, — a personal visit showed that the relationship was far from close; indeed, the nominal head of the training school, by his own statement, had not been in the 1 Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 12, p. 55. 27 training school building for some weeks until he accompanied the visitor there. It is only fair to add that a change has been made which transfers this teacher to other work and places a new man at the head of the training department. The supervisor of train- ing in another school says : "Of all departments, that of education is hardest to cooperate with, chiefly because their criticism has been destructive, generally, rather than constructive." The nature and extent of actual and possible integration of training school work and work of other normal school departments is discussed in detail in Section IV. Section III will describe the use which is made of existing training facilities as indicated by the amount and nature of students' contact with the training de- partment. 28 III. THE NATURE AND AMOUNT OF STUDENTS' CONTACT WITH THE TRAINING DEPARTMENT. If the work of the normal school is to be completely profes- sionalized, the students in the normal school should be in very defi- nite contact throughout their entire course, with schools similar to those in which they the preparing to teach. Every principle of vocational education to which we have already referred implies that the curriculum should provide for such contact from the very beginning. This assumption is supported by the emphasis which persons engaged in normal school work have placed upon the importance of the training department as indicated in the preceding sections. It is the assumption upon whicji the "Curricula Designed for the Professional Preparation of Teachers for American Public Schools" provisionally suggested by the Carnegie Foundation, are con- structed. Section 10 of the theses which preface these curricula "Observation of class work and participation in the activities of the training school should be required from the earliest practicable mo- ment." The proposed curricula put this earliest practicable moment at the beginning of the first term, in connection with the course "Intro- duction to teaching" which is common to all the curricula. The description of this course includes the statement : "* * * Instruction should be correlated with numerous visits to the respective departments of the practice school." It is the purpose of the present section to discover by analysis of curricula and of courses, supplemented by statements from persons connected with ,the schools concerned, what the varieties of contact are which the normal school student now has with the training department. So far as is possible, the amount of such 29 contact is indicated as well, but as Judd and Parker pointed out in 1916, it is impossible to make, from published data, any accu- rate estimates, either of the total amount of work required for graduation in many schools, or of the amount of credit assigned to any given subject of the curriculum.. To make a quantitative comparison of schools in the present study would be additionally difiBcult since the contact with the training school which is inci- dental to the normal school courses in methods, psychology, and similar subjects, can Ije indicated simply in the two degrees, "present" or "absent", and varies widely in amount in different cases. There may also be contacts with the training school in connection with courses the catalog description of which gives no indication of such contact, since these descriptions vary widely in their completeness for different courses within the same school and even more widely as between schools. Wherever possible in the analyses the total amount of credit required for graduation is indicated and the amount of credit assigned to cotirses which clearly involve constant contact with the training department. The amount of credit given to courses which involve some undeterminable amount of contact with the training school is also indicated but has low value as an index ' to the amount of contact involved. It will be unwise to attempt, from the figures given, to make comparisons df one school with others as to the amount of contact. The comparison which can be made is as to the varieties of contact afforded. The data from catalogs come from those published during the spring and summer of 1918. The data from letters were gathered during February and March, 1919. Analysis of the kinds of contact whicli students in normal schools have with the training department; with such indices of the amount of contact as the data make possible. CALIFOBNIA. Fresno. Practice teaching: 12 weeks, one period a day in training school con- nected with normal school; 12 weeks, half day; in city schools for better prepared, in training school for others. Observation: Approximately 20 lessons in connection with work in principles of teaching; one-half given by supervising teachers; one-half, observation of student teachers. 30 Other Contact: Students supervise playground activities of training school children before undertaking practice. San Diego. Practice teaching: Total of 300 hours; ln<^slngle periods in training school connected with normal school, 180 hours; whole or half day teaching in city schools, 120 hours. Observation: Special course of 60 hours. GEORGIA. Athens. — Four year course only. Practice teaching: 4 45-minute periods a week for four months, in school connected with normal school. In fourth year. Observation: In connection with general methods course (2 points . required) ; in connection with course in teaching of literature (2 points required) ; in connection with course In methods and man- agement (3 points required). IDAHO. Anion. Practice teaching: 36 weeks, one hour a day, in city schools. Observation: One term, one hour a day; demonstration lessons given by critic teachers for normal school teachers who wish to have lessons seen in connection with courses given; some observation carried on in connection with a course in elementary education, preceding practice teaching. Levnston. Practice teaching: 36 weeks, 1 period a day in school connected with normal school; some practice teaching in city schools in manual training, home economics and physical education. Observation: In connection with courses in psychology, teachers courses in English, arithmetic, geography, science and history, primary methods, junior high school methods. ILLINOIS. ' Oardondale. Practice teaching: Three terms, one hour a day in school connected with normal school. Observation: In connection with practice teaching. Charleston. Total credits for graduation 10. Practice teaching: 1 credit (10%). 1 hour a day one year in school connected with normal school. Observation: In connection with psychology (1 credit required) ; in connection with course in reading (2/5 credit, required); "The training teachers * * * teach special lessons for observation by classes in methods in special subjects in the normal school proper." Catalog, p. 54. 31 Macomb. Total credits for graduation 26. Practice teaching: 3 credits (11.5%). 1 period a day for 3 terms. One term in Junior year; two terms in Senior year; both in prac- tice school connected with normal school. Observation: In connection with principles of teaching (1 hour, required). In connection with 1 hour required courses in arith- metic, English, geography, history, drawing, all in Junior year; in connection with 1 hour elective courses in household arts and manual training. In connection with course in class-room manage- ment (1 credit required Senior year) there are "One or more visits to well managed schools in nearby cities." Catalog; p. 86. Nornval. Total credits for graduation (2 year course) 26. Practice teaching: 3 credits (11.5%). 180 40-minute periods. In school connected with normal school. Senior year. Observation : Each practice teacher sees one demonstration lesson a ' week and spends a second hour discussing it. "The teachers of 'Teaching Process', Greneral Method and Reading Method frequently take classes to the training school to observe work with the children. The same is done occasionally by other teachers." (These courses are 1 credit each, required In Junior year.) Other contact — "Certain students * * « supervise the children at noon recesses and during study periods." Catalog, p. 85. INDIANA. Terre Haute, and Eastern Division at Muncie. Total credits required for completion of degree course 48; for comple- tion of two year course, 25. Practice teaching: 2 credits in either course (4.2% and 8% respec- tively). In school connected with normal school. 1 hour a day. Observation: Course of one credit offered for college curriculum students who wish to apply for teaching license. ,KANSAS. Emporia. Total credits required for B. S. in Education 128; required for life certificate 66. Practice teaching: 4 credits in degree course (3.1%) ; 6 credits in life certificate course (9%). In an elementary school connected with normal school and, for teachers without previous experience, in city schools. Observation: Carried on in connection with conferences, 2 hours a week, which have taken the place of special methods courses. Simultaneous with practice. In connection with general methods courses (3 to 8 hours required). Other contact: "The director of teacher training and the professor of rural education act as chief advisers to candidates for the life certificate In electing their subject-matter courses." (Director of Training, H. G. Lull, in Educational Administration and Super- vision, -Nov. 1918, p. 489.) 33 Fort Hays. Total credit required for degree 124 hour credits; for life certificate, 62 hour credits. Practice teaching: 8 and 4 hours respectively. (6.4%.) In city- schools. Ohservation: In connection with methods courses and In connection with practice teaching. Some observation required in connection with course In Methods and Management; emphasis upon class demonstrations in course in primary methods. (Former 2 hours, latter, 4 hours credit.) KENTUCKY. Bowling Green. Practice teaching: 20 weeks, 5 periods a week. In an "Elementary school largely supported by the Normal School." Observation: 4 weeks, 5 times a week. Methods. classes In language and method classes in reading also observe in the training school. LOUISIANA. Natchitoches. Practice teaching: 1 period a day for one school year in practice school connected with the normal school. Observation: In connection with certain of the methods courses. MAINE. Farmington. Total required for graduation 180 hours. Practice teaching: 24 hours credit (13.3%). Full time teaching for one quarter of second year while student carries courses in ob- servation, methods and history of education. Most of practice teaching done in school connected, with the normal school. Some students practice in town schools. Observation: A regular course as Indicated above; some observation in connection with psychology. MARYLAND. Towson. Practice teaching: 3 hours a day for 12 weeks, in a practice school connected with normal school. Observation: Is carried on in connection with practice teaching. General methods courses are 20% demonstration lessons. In special methods courses there is almost as much (20%) of demon- stration lesson observation. MASSACHUSETTS. Bridgewater. — Three year curriculum. Practice teaching: Half day for 13 weeks in the training school; full day for 13 weeks in town schools. (16.6%.) Third year. Observation: 13 weeks, 2 periods a week in the second year. 33 FramingJiam. Practice teaching: Full time for 12 weeks; 8 weeks in practice school ; 4 weeks in town schools. Senior (second) year. Observation: In connection with practice teaching. MICHIGAN. Ypsilanti. Practice teaching: 2 hours a day for 3 months, in school connected with the normal school. Observation: "Classes in the various methods courses are brought into the training school under the direction of the teacher of methods. Members of the Normal School Faculty bring their classes to the training school " for observation and occasionally teach a class of children themselves." MISSOURI. Cape Girardeau. Total credits for graduation 60 hours (2 year course). Practice teaching: 6 credit hours (10%). 1 hour a day, in practice school connected with the normal school. Observation: "We give no separate course in observation because we have not the teaching force. Some observation is done in courses in school management, principles of teaching, special methods and school supervision. Students do not participate in the work of the training school until they take up their teaching." WarrensTyurg. Practice teaching: Three terms, one hour a day. (2 year curricu- lum). In practice school connected with normal school. Observation: A course in observation given by the principal of the training school precedes practice teaching. Some observation is carried on in connection with normal school classes, both in the training school and in public schools. MONTANA. Dillon. Practice teaching: 6 hours a week for 30 weeks. In the school sys- tem of Dillon. Observation: "Follows lectures on the theory and art of teaching. Six weeks of work * * * are given to students in groups of from five to eight and such observation is made under the direc- tion of the supervisor of the division (primary, intermediate or grammar grade). Courses in methods follow. Members of the collegiate staff give demonstration lessons as well. This latter is true particularly of the departments of Eng- lish, history, science and mathematics." Participation: "During the six weeks devoted to otiservation, the prospective cadet teacher assists the critic with board work, seat work, movement of pupils about the room, halls and playground and thus becomes familiar with the routine of management." — 3 E S N 34 MINNESOTA. Duluth. Total credit (or graduation 1,410 hours. Practice teaching: 180 hours (12.8%). One term in practice school connected with normal school; a second term In city schools. Observation: In the term preceding practice teaching, three observa- tion lessons a week connected with two class hours devoted to school economy and psychology of the common branches. In con- nection with normal school course in reading the class observe work in reading both in practice school and In city schools (60 hdur required course). In connection with class in music, demon- stration and observation in training school. (60 hour required course.) Winona. Practice teaching: 240 hours. 180 hours In training school connected with normal school; 60 hours in city schools. Observation: "Carried on slightly in connection with methods courses and Theory of Education." NEBRASKA. Ohairon. Practice teaching: Two class periods a day for one year, in a prac- tice school connected with the normal school. Observation: In connection with methods courses taught by training school staff covering branches taught in first ten grades. Peru. Total credits for graduation 64. Practice teaching: 4 credits (6.25%). One period a day one semester. -Practice school connected with normal school. Observation: Combined with methods courses — 4 credits required. "Principles of Education" illustrated by model lessons in different subjects and grades. NEW HAMPSHIRE. Plymouth. Total credits for graduation, 100. Practice teaching: 18 credits (18%). Full time last half of second year. Village school organized as practice school. Observation: 4 credits required — 2 in Junior year; 2 in Senior year. Observation is carried on in connection with the following re- quired courses in the Junior year. 2 credits each: English literature and grammar; reading; history; physiology and hygiene; arithmetic. Other contact: "Normal school students are constantly on the play- ground and in the gymnasium with children of the practice school." Catalog, p. 39. 35 NEW MEXICO. Las Vegas. Total credits required for graduation 96 (2 year curriculum). Practice teaching: 10 credits, second year (10.4%). One hour a day for 24 weeks. Training school connected with normal school. Some substitute work is done in city school by students. Observation: In connection with courses in special methods for 12 weeks preceding practice. NEW TOEK. Fredonia. Credits required for graduation 2,420 hours. Practice teaching: 600 hours (24.8%). Practice school connected with normal school. Observation: In connection with practice teaching. "Connected with all professional work." Oeneseo. Credits for graduation, 2,220 hours. Practice teaching: 600 hours (27%). Second year. In practice school connected with normal school. Observation: "The course in observation follows rather closely that in psychology with which it is intended to be correlated." Catalog, p. 21. "English II. is related directly tp the elementary school and its problems through observation lessons in the practice school." Catalog, p. 21. "English ill and IV; Observation classes in the practice school are conducted in connection with both composition courses." Catalog, p. 22. "Reading, phonics and spelling: Throughout the course oppor- tunity is offered for the observation and discussion of type les- sons." Catalog, p. 23. Each of these courses, 100 hours required. "History classes for observation are taught in the practice school by the critic of the grade. The methods class observe such work under the direction of the methods teacher." Catalog, p. 27. 80 hours required. Oneonta. Practice teaching: 550 hours, Senior year; practice school connected with normal school. Observation: 50 hours immediately preceding practice. Normal school teachers teach occasional observation lessons in connection with their courses. NORTH CAROLINA. Greenville. Credit for graduation, 153 hours. Practice teaching: 16 credit hours (10.'4%). 16/25 full time for one term. Practice school connected with normal school. 36 Observation: Carried on in connection with practice teaching. Some observation in connection with methods courses. OHIO. Bowling Green. Practice teaching: 3 50-minute periods a week for 36 weeks, in prac- tice school, connected with normal school and in city schools. Observation: In connection with psychology. One lesson a week is observed for 18 weeks. A second period is devoted to discussion of lesson seen. Two 50-minute periods a week of observation in connection with course in principles of education; nine or ten demonstration les- sons in one term in connection with course in the teaching of arithmetic, in addition to regular hours of the course; three to six lessons each in courses in geography, history and English. Kent. Units required for graduation, 25. Practice teaching: Combined with observation and discussion, 3 units, (12%). One 45-minute period a day for 36 weeks. In practice school controlled by normal school, serving as one city ward school. Observation: In connection with methods courses in English, history, arithmetic and reading. In connection with course in principles of teaching. OKLAHOMA. Ada. Practice teaching: One period a day for 24 weeks, in school con- nected with normal school. Observation: One period a day for 12 weeks paralleling practice, in training school and public schools. Some observation in con- nection with English, arithmetic, history, elementary science. Other Contact: Some assistance is given by students in Junior year in music, drawing and penmanship in training school. PENNSYLVANIA. Bloomsiurg. Practice teaching: 200 40-minute periods in practice school connected with normal school. Observation: Each critic teacher gives six demonstration lessons preliminary to practice teaching. Some observation in connec- tion with psychology. RHODE ISLAND. Practice teaching: 5 credit hours in practice school — single hour teaching; full time one semester in city training schools; half year as regular teacher under normal school supervision. Observation: In connection with all methods courses. 37 SOUTH DAKOTA. Madison. Total credits rectuired for graduation, 122. Practice teaching: 25 credits (20.5%); one hour a day for 12 weeks in Junior year; 2 hours a day for 12 weeks in Senior year; in practice school connected with normal school and to a limited extent in city schools. Observation: A course in observation and school economy recites daily for 12 weeks. Demonstration lessons are given in connec- tion with an elective course in story telling. S^iearflsh. Practice teaching: Three semesters, one hour a day. Practice school connected with normal school. Observation: Carried on in connection with courses in psychology, general method, methods in arithmetic and methods in English. Other contact: Students supervise playground activities of practice school pupils. TENNESSEE. Johnson City. Practice teaching: Combined with observation, 100 hours. Practice school connected with normal school. Observation: "Courses In observation are given under the direction of the observation school director and critic teachers and are con- nected with the normal school courses in methods. Normal school teachers give occasional demonstration lessons." TEXAS. .Canyon. Practice teaching: 3 hours a day for 3 months in practice school connected with normal school. Observation: Given in connection with courses in education. Demon- stration lessons given by department of education teachers and by training school supervisors. Other contact: Students assist in recess supervision and in keeping student records. VIRGINIA. East Radford. Practice teaching: 12 weeks, 15 hours a week. Practice school con- nected with normal school. Observation: 2 lessons a week given by critic teachers in Junior year. One lesson a day in senior year under direction of director of training. Of these lessons, 30 each term are taught by critic teachers; 10 by teachers of special subjects; 10 by student teachers. 38 WASHINGTON. Bellinffha/m. Practice teaching: 10 credit hours. Begins in practice school con- nected with normal school. For one term half day or full day teaching in city schools. Observation: In connection with courses given by department of education. Demonstration lessons taught by teachers in the normal school departments. Ellensiurg. Credits required for graduation, 96 credit hours. Practice teaching: 9 credit hours (9.4%). Practice school connected with normal school. 6 hours in Junior year; 3 hours Senior year. Observation: AH methods courses are also observation courses. 12 hours required. Other contact: Students in psychology give standard tests in schools in nearby towns. 3 hours required. WISCONSIN. Platteville. Practice teaching: One hour a day for one year in senior year; for the greater number of students entirely in practice school con- nected with normal school;' for a few, a part of the time in city schools. Observation: Connected with courses in psychology and in educa- tion; in connection with courses in music, arithmetic and geog- raphy. Stevens Point. Practice teaching: 18 to 36 weeks, one period a day.' Senior year. Training school connected with normal school. Observation: "We have one room in our training school set aside for the purpose of conducting demonstration lessons and attempt to have some class in process there at all hours of the day. Some students take advantage of the opportunity to observe work in the demonstration room and observe every day for weeks before attempting to teach, but such students are the exception." Bach of these forty-six schools has one type of student con- tact with the training department definitely provided for, namely, practice teaching. In the nineteen schools for which the propor- tion can be definitely ascertained, the practice teaching varies in amount in the two-year curricula from 6.35% to 37% of the total credits required for graduation, the median for the nineteen being 11.5%. Forty-two of the forty-six schools have definite provision for the observation of teaching and the discussion of the lessons seen. One of the remaining four provides demonstration lessons at all 39 hours of every day which students may attend voluntarily. The three others carry on observation only as an incident to practice teaching. Beyond this, the amount and nature of the contact of students with the practice schools depends upon the interest of particular teachers in using the facilities of the training schools in connec- tion with their courses. If the number of teachers having such interest happens to be large in a school, the variety of courses which involve contact with the training department is correspond- ingly large; if such teachers are few, the contact of the students with the training department is less. The normal school courses which involve, some in one school, some in another, among the forty-six schools studied, direct con- tact vrith the kind of school in which students in the qourse are preparing to teach are : Psychology Algebra Theory of teaching Drawing Principles of education Manual Arts Educational measurements Physical education Arithmetic General method History Special methods Geography School management Grammar and composition Latin Literature Story telling Reading Household arts Science Music The contacts found may be summarized under four heads: 1. Practice teaching with the accompanying conferences; vary- in amount from 6.25% to 27% of the student's work in the two years spent in the normal school. 2. Observation varying in amount from such observation of teach- ing as is incidental to practice teaching to full year courses, with widely differing amounts of observation in connection with the courses listed above. 3. Participation in the work of the training school before prac- tice teaching is undertaken by assisting teachers in school- room routine, by supervising playground activities and study rooms. 4. Testing results by use of standard tests in connection with courses in psychology and in education. The striking fact brought out by the data considered is the wide variation in the sorts of contact afforded and in the amount of practice teaching, which is the only sort of contact common to 40 all of the schools. As Sanders^ says in conclusion to his study of eighty-one normal schools: "There is among normal schools no recognized best way to develop a student teacher." He reports a variation in the amount of practice teaching required from 30 to 400 teaching hours. Judd and Parker^ report a variation, among the thirteen schools studied, from 4% to 27% of the total curriculum requirements. A change toward greater uniformity in respect to the practice- teaching requirement may well be brought about by an approach to the median amount from both extremes. The curricula of the schools offering the very small amounts are certainly too little pro- fessionalized ; purely academic courses occupy too prominent a place; the professional aspects; are too little emphasized. In the schools where the largest amounts of practice are required the curricula are too narrowly professional; "review courses" and "methods courses" are prominent and other types of professional courses on a collegiate level are lacking. For a part of this long practice period might well be substituted professional courses on a higher level and preparatory participation in the work of the training school which would make a shorter period of practice, when undertaken, more effective than is the longer period now required. \ / Practice can be and is being made more effective by such par- ticipation ; but itis jdear that no form of participation can take the place of responsible practice teaching. The attempt to make it do so in the teachers' training department of the University of Wisconsin under the name of "Directed Teaching" as reported, in the Eighteenth Year Booh of the National Society for the Study of Educatidn does not sound convincing, but it does suggest a type of profitable participation which may be substituted for a part of the long practice teaching period in certain of the schools studied. The following quotations indicate the essential features of this so- called "Directed Teaching": "Bach college senior in this course * * * participates in the high-school class in the "Wisconsin High School approximately forty days for one hour a day. Each of these seniors writes each *W. H. Sanders, Pedagogical Semenary, March, 1918, p. 55. 'Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 12, p. 85. 41 day three to four pages (300-500 words) on the 5x8 cards already described, which are provided for these daily reports."^ "It should be remembered that throughout the class hour the stafE teacher is always directly in charge * * *_ ijij^g pig-nifi- cant point is -that the college senior is a member of a class group, admitted on a clearly recognized basis of participation.'" "The first practical responsibility of the college senior is to become the best pupil in the class, not always an easy task for the majority of college seniors. After demonstrated fitness to lead the class, many and varied opportunities are given to assist the staff teacher. As noted above, this is not a privilege reserved exclusive- ly for college seniors in the Wisconsin High School; pupils enjoy the same privilege as a part of their educational development under the doctrine of self expression and development of personal in- itiative."^ A period of training-school experience which makes the teacher-in-training "a member of the class group" in the sort of school in which he is preparing to teach; which makes him "the best pupil in the class" and gives him in common with the better pupils in the class "many and varied opportunities to assist the staff teacher" who is "always directly in charge" with the result that there are written "300-500 words of daily comment" by the student upon what he has seen and done in the training school, represents a valuable type of participation. It needs to be sup- plemented, however, by some opportunity for the student to meet a situation where it is not true that there is a staff member in direct charge, and where his responsibility for directing the work of the class is unequivocal. This example of teacher preparation cannot safely be followed by normal schools. |f The important problem is to increase oppor- tunity for completely responsible teaching as a final type of pro- fessional preparationr^ The new curriculimi of the Ehode Island JSTormal School, which' went iato effect after June, 1919, represents the more desirable direction of change in normal school curricula. N"o student is to be graduated from that school who has not first, after completing all other normal-school requirements including 'Eighteenth Tear-book of the National Society for the study of Educa- tion, p. 104. "Ibid, p. 15. »Ibid, p. 20. 43 the period of apprentice teaching, completed also a half-year of fully responsible teaching as a regularly employed teacher in a school system, under the supervision of the normal school. I^The conclusion is justified from the analysis of the work done in these forty-six schools, that there is no sort of work carried on in normal schools which cannot be and is not being made to have its direct relation to the work of the training department and to bring students into contact with the children of the train- ing schools.'J There are certain limitations which prevent such cor- relation. Eive have been mentioned by training-school directors and normal-school presidents in connection with this study. They are : 1. Lack of disposition on the part of normal-school teachers to cooperate with the training department. 2. Lack of the sort of ability and training on the part of normal-school teachers which would make such cooper- ation effective. 3. Overloaded programs for normal-school teachers due to inadequate financial resources. 4. Overloaded programs for training-school teachers due to the same cause and to lack of appreciation on the part of normal-school administrators of how heavy the critic teachers' and supervisors' load is. 5. Overcrowded curricula. There is not time for the normal- school student to do all that he should do in the time in which he tries to get his professional preparation. The first four of these will be considered in section four. In cohnection with the fifth, the curricula of four schools have been examined which offer both two-'year and four-year curricula, for the purpose of discovering what additional contact with the train- ing department the addition of two years to the period for prep- aration involves. 1. Macomb, Illinois. . Curriculum leading to degree B. S. in Edu- cation. For preparation of High School teachers. Program A. First two years identical with two year curriculum. In the two additional years one term additional of practice teach- ing is required in the student's major subject. If Edu- cation 33, Psychology of School Subjects, is chosen as one of the additional subjects in education, some observation 43 is done. The minor electives may be, but need not be, so chosen that a term of practice teaching in those sub- jects may be taken. Program B. The major and miuor subjects are chosen and begun in tlie first two years and the practice teaching deferred until the third or fourth year. It is then the same in amount as in the two year curriculum. 2. Cape Girardeau, Missouri. "College curriculum leading to a college degree that contains courses in education as part of the requirement for graduation." One course offering contact with the training department in addition to that required in the two year curriculum is offered in the four-year curriculum, a course in the teach- ing of Latin, in connection with which demonstration lessons are observed. 3. Indiana State JSTormal School. Curriculum leading to the degree B. A. in Education. No discoverable additional contact with the training depart- ment involved in the longer curriculum. 4. Normal, Illinois. Degree curricula for the preparation of High School teachers. No discoverable additional contact. Practice teaching, in the same amount as in the two-year curricula, is deferred until the fourth year ordinarily but may be taken for two of the three requiredJ;erms, in the second year. If normal schools are to offer four years of work, as it is to T'pe hoped that they may in large numbers in the not distant future, the justification for suchextended^ curricula must be that they '"<3ffer a kind_ofj)rofessional_ training not now offered by other ii^stitutions or offered by too few of them to meet the demand for the preparation .o|_teaci^rs_on_aJiigkJ£2£l-4-This distinctive feat- ure must be the intimate contact which the work is made to sus- tain throughout its four years with whatever grade or type of work the student is preparing to teach. The j,ddition of two ,Ygg£S_oj_ really prof essional_work_iii. the pre paration of teachers r il. all-grades. . ^wiH— sireagthen the normal schools. The_j;d^tion^jjLtwo_,iears which are le3S~p'rofessionir~fcan the two years alr^^_^ijgaJft.- most jof the_jiormal s^chooj^cannot bu^ weaken the whole profes- sional work of the school. It will do this by diversion of funds 44 and diversion of faculty and student interest from purely profes- sional work. The addition of longer curricula for the preparation of high-school teachers only will tend to continue the stratification of the teaching population which must be done away with before the profession as a whole can be put upon a sound basis either economically or professionally. In the minds of both normal-school men and of persons outside of normal schools, the question of whether four-year curricula shall be offered by normal schools is now so confused with the question of whether or not normal schools shall prepare high school teachers that it has never received fair consideration on its own merits. The question of length of curricula must be settled on the basis of whether four profitable years of i prepara- tion for teaching can be offered. The question of what grade of teachers shall be prepared is an independent question and it is to the detriment of the normal schools that the two issues have been confused. A factor which must be considered in estimating the amount of student contact with the training department is the amount of time that the student teacher spends in preparing for his teaching each day. If the time spent in preparation for an hour of teach- ing is longer than the time spent in preparation for an hour of recitation in normal-school subjects, an hour of training-school work in the student's program represents more than does an hour of other normal school work. An inquiry into this subject has been made at Winona, Minne- sota, and the following report made^: "Forty five hours per Tyeek of study and class discussion is ex- pected from each student. That is, each teacher is desired to re- quire on the average not more and not less than an hour and twenty minutes of preparation for each class exercise scheduled for five recitations per week. A student carries four subjects at once and so meets for 30 periods a week. With this student load the class periods are properly limited to 45 minutes in the clear. "An inquiry into just what demands are being made by the instructors of each class is made from time to time. The average minutes of study for each subject as reported by students are listed > Winona Normal Bulletin, February, 1917, pp. 281-2. 45 for all subjects and distributed among the teachers for their in- formation. Such inquiry shows that among the subjects and teach- ers the variation is as follows : TABLE 8— THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF DAILY HOURS AND MINUTES OF STUDY GIVEN BY CLASSES IN NORMAL SCHOOL SUBJECTS AT WINONA DURING TWO TERMS; FALL 1914 AND SPRING 1916. Subject. Fall 1914. Spring 1916. Advanced woodwork 1 : 31 Arithmetic 1:10 1:36 Chemistry 1:38 Child Study 1:07 Civics 1:34 1:30 Cookery '. 1:31 2:22 Drawing 1 : 11 Economics 1:00 1 : 29 Elementary Hand work 1:30 1:35 Elementary Science 1 : 15 1 : 11 English 1:02 1:20 Geography 1 : 14 1:19 History of Education 1:38 1:25 Manual Training 1:21 1:48 Music :36 1:03 Pedagogy 1:06 1:28 Physics 1: 45 Physiology 1:48 1:13 Primary Methods 1: 01 Psychology 1:10 1:14 Public Speaking 1:30 1:18 Reading 1:03 1:26 Rural Sociology 1 : 45 School Management ' 1 : 01 1 : 20 History of U. S 1:43 2:02 Household Administration 1 : 22 1:30 Kindergarten Principles : 58 : 51 Literature ■. 1 : 08 Sewing and Textiles 1:18 :50 Sociology 1:50 1:12 Teaching 2:20 2:33 Technics 1:20 1:33 Zoology 1:22 1:27 Average for all 1:21 1:26 From this study it appears that practice teaching represents, for every hour scheduled, a total amount of time spent of three hours and twenty minutes or three hours and thirty-three minutes compared with an average of two hours and twenty-one minutes or two hours and twenty-six minutes represented by a scheduled 46 hour of all normal school subjects averaged together. The devi.i- tion of the time spent in preparing for one hour of practice teach-» ing from the average time spent in preparing for an hour of recitation in all normal school subjects was, for the fall term, 1914, 59 minutes, or 73.8% of the value of the middle measure (average), and for the spring term, 1916, 67 minutes, or 84.3% of the value of the average. Sixty-three seniors in the Eastern Illinois State Iformal School who were doing an hour of practice teaching and carrying three other subjects each day were asked to report how many inia- utes were spent on the average in preparation for one hour of reci- tation in each subject and how many minutes in preparaion for one period of practice teaching. The median time reported as spent in preparation for each of the following subjects is as indicated. Certain subjects, — ^required Junior work being made up, — are omitted. Belated subjects in which but a few students are en- rolled are grouped together. Subject. Practice teaching History of education , Philosophy of education . , Literature Mathematics: Trigonometry Analytics College Algebra Physiology Economics Science : Physics Zoology Botany French Domestic Art Manual Arts Public school music ■ Median for the 11 subjects or groups other than teaching, 40-49. The evidence from these two studies shows that a scheduled hour of practice teaching means more work in teaching than a scheduled hour of normal school work does in the subject concerned by a margin of 75% at Winona, of 100% at Charleston. If the Median number of minutes spent in preparation for one recitation. 100 to 109 50 to 59 50 to 59 40 to 49 80 to 89 40 to 49 50 to 59 1 1 30 to 39 40 to 49 30 to 39 30 to 39 20 to 29 47 situation in these two schools is typical of the condition in normal schools generally, "credit hours" of teaching required do not give an adequate index to amount of work involved in teaching in com- parison with the work required in other subjects. Of this fact per- sons who make normal-school programs and administer normal school credits should take cognizance. In 23 of the 46 normal schools studied, practice teaching is done entirely in single hour periods, and in 18 of the 32 the groups taught include 15 children or fewer. Such teaching is valuable but needs to be supplemented by teaching for longer periods with larger groups of pupils, to be undertaken after the beginning teaching has been done in shorter periods with small groups. The large number of untrained teachers who enter the school systems of the country every year has made necessary an elaborate, expensive, but as yet ineffective system of supervision. The value- of supervision varies directly with the preparation of the teachers. So long as facilities for the professional preparation of teachers are inadequate and large numbers of untrained teachers must be employed the necessity for elaborate directive supervision will con- tinue. But as' the number of professionally prepared teachers increases, the burden of directive supervision should be lightened, and largely shifted to the normal schools. The teacher-training curriculum should include teaching under such conditions that the graduating student is prepared to undertake fully responsible teaching and to carry it on successfully under a minimum of super. vision, and under supervision which is more clearly cooperative rather than directive. Single-period, small-group practice teach- ing does not give this preparation. The Ehode Island State Normal School plan already referred to promises to accomplish the desired result of shifting the respon- sibility for supervision of teachers where they are just beginning, which is the time when there is the greatest need for supervision, from the public-school system to the normal school. During a jfifth half year, following the two years spent in residence at the normal school, students in this school teach full time in city training schools under the direction of critic teachers who are members of 48 the normal school staff. After June, 1919, a sixth half year was added to the curriculum, during which the student is to be a regularly employed teacher in a school system, but will be under the direct supervision of normal school teachers. Several states now grant life certificates to graduates of nor- mal schools only after a period^one year or two years — of suc- cessful teaching following graduation. But this teaching is not done under the supervision of normal school authorities, and in many cases is not even inspected by these authorities, the Judgment as to whether the teaching has been successful being based upon the report of the principal of the school or the superintendent of the system where the teacher is employed. The small area over which the graduates of the Ehode Island Normal School are distributed makes close supervision under the plan described easy. But the wider distribution of graduates of normal schools in other states does not make such supervision and extension of training impossible. No other half year could be added to the normal school curriculum so cheaply; probably no other could be more serviceable both to the graduating students and to the communities to which they go as teachers. A very important type of contact with the training depart- ment which is not listed as a separate one in connection with any of the schools but is present in all is the contact through confer- ences that are incidental to practice teaching. Every student teacher has at least one hour of conference with critic teacher or supervisor each week at which all students working under the direction of the critic or supervisor are present. Many of them have short daily conferences with additional longer ones at irregu- lar intervals. Sixty-three seniors in the Eastern Illinois State Normal School report daily conferences of from three to fifty minutes, the median being eleven minutes. What purposes these conferences serve and their importance in the training school work will be discussed in detail in section five. The returns from the forty-six schools studied show that the separate courses in "Observation" are giving way to observation in connection with specific subject-matter courses, courses in psy- 49 ehology and education; observational work is also being required in connection with practice teaching. Only one school reported unsupervised, volunteer observation; fourteen submitted detailed directions for observation which are given to students yho are to discuss the lessons seen with the teacher who teaches them or witli the instructor in charge of' the course in connection with which the observation is carried on. The more concrete the purpose with which the student goes to the demonstration lesson the more of value that lesson will have. The low median value attached to observation of teaching as a factor in preparation for teaching in the study reported in section one, — 13.5 out of 100 points dis- tributed among academic courses, professional courses, observa- tion of teaching and practice teaching, — is probably due to the observation having been carried on in general observation courses instead of in connection with specific courses which would direct the observation toward very much more specific details of the teach- ing observed. This is indicated by an examination of the catalogs of normal schools published ten years ago, which represent the normal school curricula as they were when the larger number, of the persons who contributed to this study were in normal schools as students. CONCLUSIONS : 1. Normal schools differ among themselves more widely in the amount of student contact with the training department for which they provide than they do in the facilities which make such contact possible. 2. A very large number of the courses offered in all normal schools studied are, some in one school some in another, ma,de to involve such contact. What is done successfully and profitably in one school can with certain limitations, be done equally well in an- other. More attention and effort should be given to making the excellencies of one school common to all. 3. The largest single element which reduces the amount of such contact is the lack of disposition and training on the part of — 4 E S N 50 normal-school teachers which would lead them to make such con- tact an important part of the work in their courses. Such con- tact to be profitable needs careful planning and supervision. Be- cause poorly conducted observation is unprofitable it is easy to assume that observation is not worth while and that discussion of teaching problems can be made concrete and effective without the students actually "sensing" the schoolroom situation involving the problems. 4. Too little attention has been given to devising sorts of participation which will provide more active contact with the train- ing school than does observation without the degree of responsibil- ity involved in practice teaching, for which students are not yet adequately prepared. 5. In too many schools practice teaching ends with the teach- ing of a small group of pupils for a single period. { It should be extended to include teaching with more nearly complete responsi- bility for longer periods with larger groups. ' fThis may be done without increasing the total number of hours of practice teaching required if that requirement is already as great as the curriculum will allow. 6. The possibility of student contact with the training de- partment is reduced by the overcrowded program of normal-school teachers, particularly of members of the training school staff, and by lack of adequate training school facilities. The remedy for these conditions lies within the power of governing boards but a first step toward their improvement is the preparation, by the faculty, of a very definite program of what the school believes can be profitably undertaken with more adequate facilities and larger staff. 7. The administrative arrangement of more extended cur- ricula in normal schools is underemphasizing the importance of adding courses which give additional contact with 'the training department. If normal schools are to justify the extension of their curricula to four years they must provide a sort of work in the last two years which is more valuable as professional prepara- tion for teachers than are two years in a standard college or uni- versity added to two years of normal school preparation. 51 IV. PARTICIPATION BY NORMAL SCHOOL TEACHERS IN THE WORK OF THE TRAINING DEPARTMENT AND BY THE TRAINING SCHOOL STAFF IN THE WORK OF OTHER NORMAL SCHOOL DEPART- MENTS. In the process of making the training school the central feat- ure of the normal school, an indispensable step is the arousing of interest in the work of the training school on the part of members of the normal-school faculty who are not on the immediate train- ing-school staff. As a means of arousing and sustaining such interest, or as a result of the interest already existing, normal- school teachers may properly be expected to participate in some very active way in the work of the training department. John W. Cook, until lately president of the ISTorthem Illinois State Normal School at DeKalb, Illinois, said before the Normal- school department of the National Education Association in 1914 : "There are few things that will do so much for a normal school as the teaching of children daily for all or at least for a good part of each year by the teachers in the normal departments. * * * It will be found that nothing else will have so potent an influence upon the character of the instruction in the normal classrooms. Theory will soon reduce itself to u.sable form and will test itself by its value as a schoolroom procedure. There will be little talk about method ; but there will be a deal of think- ing accomplished in the way of getting material into shape for use with children."^ In the report of the . Commissioner of Education for 1915 a report appears on "Progress of Teacher Training" by Charles Hugh Johnson, from which the following extract is taken : "A letter was addressed to presidents of normal schools re- questing accounts of recent progress. 69 very full and satis- factory replies were- received from 33 different states. * * * ^N. E. A. Proceedings and Reports, 1914, p. 547. 52 Nine normal schools report an increase in student hours required to be devoted to practice teaching. Fourteen schools report plans whereby there may be closer affiliation and cooperation between the regiiilar stafE of teachers and the practice work. These reports indicate a shifting of emphasis from the scholastic development of pedagogical theory and educational science to the development of that theory and science which the instructor can illustrate in the model school.'" The movement for such correlation was started in a definite way at the meeting of the normal school section of the National Education Association in 1899, by the report already referred to. In that report it was recommended that: "Heads of departments in the normal school should be super- visors in fact of their subjects in the training school as follows: 1. They should propose in writing to the principal the sub- ject matter for the curriculum in their respective stud- ies. 2. They should propose to the principal w^iat seem to them the leading points in method involved in the presenta- tion of the subject matter suggested. 3. They should assist the principal in supervising instruc- tion of critic and student teachers in their respective duties, oifering suggestions and exchanging ideas freely. These duties should be performed by the heads of departments for their own good as well as for the good of the training school." Whether or not the methods proposed in the foregoing are acceptable, the principle is beyong question a sound one. It has been restated repeatedly iu the twenty years since the report was made. In furnishing the material for the present study sixteen principals of normal schools, directors of training and principals of .training schools have made unsolicited statenjents of the sound- ness of the principle. It is not less important that members of the training school staff should take part in the teaching of normal school classes. The same end is accomplished, namely, correlating the work of the training school with that of the other departments of the normal school, and the additional benefit follows that the status of the critic teacher and supervisor is raised both in the eyes of other teachers and in the estimation of students. It also mobilizes much ' Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1915, pp. 525 and 530. 53 expert teaching ability. It is safe to assert that the percent of critic and supervising teachers in training departments who can conduct classes of adult students successfiiUy is much greater than the percent of normal-school teachers who can conduct classes of training school pupils with an equal degree of success. It is not implied that every teacher should be able to do both sorts of teach- ing equally successfully. But it is urged that, in so far as people who can do so are available, it is greately to the advantage of a normal school to have such persons on its staff. The data for this section come from the replies made by, prin- cipals of normal schools and of training schools to the two ques- tions : "What members of the teaching staff of the normal school participate in the work of the training department? What is the nature of the participation in each case? "What members of the staff of the training school participate in the work of the normal school other than in that of the train- ing department? What is the nature of the participation in each case ?" Usable replies were received from 43 of the 100 schools to which the questions were sent. The following states are repre- sented in the replies : Georgia Missouri Oklahoma Idaho Montana - Pennsylvania Illinois Michigan South Dakota Kansas Nebraska Tennessee Kentucky New Hampshire Texas Louisiana New Mexico Virginia Maine New York Washington Maryland North Carolina Wisconsin Minnesota Ohio The following table gives the summary of the types of par- ticipation reported and the frequency with which each was re- ported : SUMMARY OF TYPES OF COOPERATION BETWEEN NORMAL DEIPARTMENTS AND TRAINING DEPARTMENT IN FORTY- THREE SCHOOLS. Schools so reporting. 1. Training school staff part of general normal school faculty for all purposes 23 2. Training school supervisors, but not room teachers, part of normal school faculty for all purposes 5 54 Schools so reporting. 3. Entire training school staff part of normal school faculty only for consideration of matters of training school policy 3 4. Head of training department gives courses In department of education 35 5. Principal of training school (a separate person from director of training) teaches classes in normal school 4 6. Normal school teachers supervise practice 8 7. Normal school teachers determine methods to be used in various subjects in training school 2 8. Normal school teachers act as advisers to training school staff in some definite way 4 9. Normal school teachers make course of study for train- ing school, in whole or in part 7 10. Normal school teachers teach demonstration lessons .... 6 11. Normal school , teachers of drawing, manual arts, do- mestic science and art, physical education teach their subjects in training school also 19 12. Normal school teachers of other than special subjects mentioned above give instruction in training school . . 7 13. Critic teachers give instruction in normal school during regular terms 15 14. Critic teachers give courses in normal school in summer session 6 15. Standard tests are given in training school by members of normal school faculty 5 16. Normal school teachers and critic teachers give joint courses in observation .' 11 17. Teachers in normal school and training school visit one anothers classes systematically 3 18. Normal school instructors hold conferences with training- school staff upon invitation 2 The list is not an exhaustive one for the schools concerned. There can be no question, for example, that there is much more mutual visitation between the training department and other nor- mal school departments than the list indicates. It is probable that in schools where it is carried on extensively it is so clearly taken for granted that no special mention of it was made in the reports. In one of the cases where it was mentioned, it was spoken of to call attention to the limited degree in which it takes place. That it is not universal, however, is indicated by the statement of a training-school principal who reported that, in the school with which he is connected, some normal-school teachers who have been in the school for ten. years have never set foot in the training school. The figures for the eighth, sixteenth, and eighteenth items 55 are- probably very much too low to give a fair picture of the situa- tion in the forty-three schools concerned. Other items may also be present in more schools than the data show. Nor can mere enumeration of definite items of participation give an adequate idea of the situation in a school. President Bo- hannon, of Duluth, writes : ' "The training, experience, and ambition of those who work not only in the training department but in the normal school, are of much greater importance than the organization itself. * * * Given people who know what the problem of dealing with children of the elementary school is, and who are interested in the problem as they should be, and who are willing to give their best to it, most of the questions relating to organization become, relatively speak- ing, minor questions." The value of such a list as is here given, obviously incomplete in the number of items and even more incomplete in the numbers of schools which the available data show to have cooperation in the ways listed, is to give suggestions as to possible ways in which there may be cooperation. Not only the disposition to cooperate, which President Bohannon mentions, is essential, but also some degree of skill in cooperation and knowledge of ways in which to cooperate.' The officers of twenty-one schools from among the fopty-three with whom correspondence was carried on in making this study state that they are seeking for a solution for the problem of bringing about a closer relation between the training depart- ment and the academic and professional departments of the schools with which they are connected. Only three say that they believe that the problem has been satisfactorily worked out in their schools. The interest attaching to any one of the eighteen items listed de- pends upon the organization of each particular school which may contemplate that item as a possible new means of attack upon the problem rather than upon the number of schools which have al- ready attempted to make use of that means. Of the twenty-three schools reporting that the training school staff as a whole are a part of the general normal-school faculty for all purposes, all state definitely that there is no distinction of status between training school teachers and other normal-school teachers. In only six cases is the reservation made that there is 56 a distinction made as to salary. What the other seventeen ■ an- swers mean is, probably, that there is theoretical equality in spite of salary differences. But so long as considerable salary differ- ences exist there is, of course, a very real difference of status. That there is a distinction as to salary is indicated by all available figures. Judd and Parker^ give, as a typical salary distribution, an instructors pay-roll in which the median salary, for all teachers, administrative officers not included, is $1,600; for critic teachers, $1,000. They cite as a typical salary scale for a larger school, a pay- roll showing a mediam for salaries in departments other than the training department of $1,400; for critic teachers, $1,300. For one Illinois school they report : president's salary, $5,000 ; salary of director of training, $4,500; salary of professor of pedagogy, $3,455; salary of one critic teacher, $3,000; salary of other critic teachers, about $1,000. In suming up the relative salaries of critic teacher and teachers in other normal-school departments they say: "The point of departure for our consideration here is the fact that every normal-school graduate who has had the good fortune to teach for 100 hours under the careful supervision of a superior critic teacher has probably profited more in terms of efficiency from this experience than from any 1000 hours of departmental instruction in the normal school. * * * We shall not attempt to give a precise answer to the question which we have raised, but shall say in general that some normal schools would greatly in- crease their concrete effectiveness by subtracting money from the salaries of departmental iastructors and using it to increase the effectiveness of the supervision of practice teaching."^ The salary scale for teachers in the training department and for teachers in other normal school departments can be equalized by other means than reducing the salaries of departmental teach- ers ; but the essential thing is that the salaries should be equalized if persons of adequate ability and training are to be secured for the ciritic positions. It is to be regretted that President Keith, in an address before the Normal-school department of the N. E. A. in Chicago in 1919 proposed a salary schedule for normal schools ^ Problems Involved in Standardizing State Normal Schools, 1916, p. 71. "Ibid, p. 72. 57 which contemplates substantially lower salaries for critic teachers than for other normal-school instructors. The single item reported most generally from the schools from which data have been gathered, whereby the training department and other normal-school departments are brought into relation, is through having the director of training a member of the depart- ment of education, giving instruction in that department; so re- ported from thirty-five schools. In nineteen of these thirty-five the head of the training department is also head of the department of education. In five schools all members of the training school stafE are members of the department of education. This represents an encouraging approach to the standard sug- gested in the "Curricula Designed for the Professional Preparation of Teachers For American Public Schools" where, in section nine, it is stated in regard to correlation of training departments with other normal school departments : "The correlation above suggested should be particularly close between the courses in psychology and educational theory on the one hand and the courses in practice teaching on the other. To this end, all of these courses should be coordinated under the general control of the director of the training department." The most conspicuous failure to reach this standard is in con- nection with the courses in psychology. In only eight of the thirty- five schools in which the director of training gives courses in the normal school is the course in psychology one of the courses given. History of education is taught by the director of training almost as often as is psychology (seven cases). The courses most fre- quently given are methods courses (nineteen cases) ; courses in theory of education (eleven cases) ; philosophy of education (five cases). The same director of training is counted more than once in these figures where he gives more than one course. In three other schools the teacher of psychology participates in some way in the work of the training department. A possible solution for the present pressing problem of making the teaching of psychology in normal schools more effective is to be found in establishing in- timate relations between the teacher of psychology and the training department. Detailed suggestion for bringing the teaching of psy- 58 chology into relation with the training department are given in the Mter part of this section. (The degree to which normal school teachers mav advantage- ously superivse practice teaching is hard to determine^ Supeftyision is a difficult matter under the most favorable conditions and to divide the responsibility for supervising any single group of prac- tice teachers between critic teacher and normal-school instructor makes it even more difficult. One normal-school president states definitely that it does not work. Barton, in an unpublished history of normal schools in the United States, submitted as a master's thesis at Columbia University, says of the Ypsilanti, Michigan, normal school : "An attempt was made to have the teachers in the normal supervise the teaching of their own particular branches in the training school, but this was found impossible and it was urged that special competent critic teachers be employed for supervision and criticism." The plan reported by one school furnishing information for the present study has much of merit in it. Each department holds itself responsible for making available for practice teachers, and seeing to it that they avail themselves of it, the material which can be made use of in the training school in the subject for which the department is responsible. The responsibility of the departmental teacher is to see to it that the practice teacher is making use of the material provided. The method of its use is in the hands of the critic, teacher. This brings the departmental teachers into a very intimate relation with the practice teaching without encouraging at all upon the duties of the critic teacher, and at the same time relieves the critic teacher of a task which she ordinarily has to perform in addition to her other duties. The construction of the curriculum and writing of the course of study for the training school by normal-school teachers has the advantages which President Felmley points out : "The curriculum of the training school was written by the vari- ous departments of the normal school and is by them from time to time revised in consultation with the training school teachers. We make this requirement * * * ^^ order to keep the teach- 59 ers of the normal departments in constant touch with the train- ing department." This advantage is in addition to the benefit to the training school of having a weir made curriculum and course of study, the importance of which Dr. C. A. McMurry points out : "A training school requires a definite and well organized course of study. Inexperienced teachers cannot be allowed to wan- der at will through a haphazard course of study. The important topics in each study should be well selected and arranged before- hand by the most experienced and competent teachers. * * * This is indeed a fundamental problem for the whole faculty of a normal school, including heads of departments and critic teachers. The heads of departments, each in his special field, should be the best qualified people in the world to show up the full and adequate treatment of topics needed in the training school in geography, history, mathematics, literature, etc. This is the hardest problem we have to meet in the training school. People have taken it for granted that anybody (even young teachers) could do this, and nobody has done it. In fact, nobody has yet demonstrated the full ability to do it. The extent to which it has been attempted has shown its extreme value for securing training school eSiciency."^ In many schools some contributions have probably been made by normal-school teachers, in an incidental way, to the course of study of the training school; in few has there been a systematic and thorough-going attack of the problem. It is one of the most promising of all of the means suggested for correlating the work of the training department and that of the other normal-school departments. Opinion expressed in the letters received is very much divided as to the importance of having normal-school teachers able and willing to teach demonstration lessons. One president says : "They do not teach demonstration lessons but there is no rule forbidding them to do so." Another says: "Every teacher in the normal school can and does teach children in the training school occas- ionally, some of them very frequently." A third writes: "None of our normal school teachers give demonstration lessons. It is not necessary that they should since critic teachers are always ready to teach for observation." Dr. Bagley includes among the 'Northern Illinois State Normal School Quarterly, May, 1915, pp 4-5. 60 qualifications of a normal-school teacher the two items of teaching skill and experience in teaching children. It is possible that a normal-school instructor might qualify in both and yet be unwill- ing to undertake to teach a demonstration lesson, and it might be a useless expenditure of energy on his part to undertake to do what a critic teacher could do equally as well and more easily. That the ability to teach children is one which can be used effectively by a normal-school teacher is beyond question. Dr. Bagley reports as an impressive experience the teaching on one day, by the teacher of history in the Ypsilanti normal school, of certain facts in his- tory to his normal school class, and the teaching by the same teacher of the same facts on the following day to a group of children, in the presence of the same normal school students. Every student who haS' worked in history at Teachers' College has been impressed by the ability of Professor Henry Johnson to teach history to chil- dren with the same skill with which he teaches his classes of adults. In addition to keeping normal-school teachers in contact with the problem of teaching children, the teaching of demonstration lessons adds to the weight which the normal school teacher's in- struction carries with students who know that the teacher has such skill in teaching' children. It dignifies skill in teaching children in the eyes of normal-school students to see normal-school teachers making use of such skill. The relatively large number of teachers of special subjects, (drawing, manual training, music, household arts) who teach both normal-school and training-school classes is explained by Judd and Parker, who found the same situation in 1916, as follows: "The teachers of the so called special subjects * * * serve in both the normal school and in the practice school. In almost any small normal school, one teacher to teach each of these subjects in both schools ought to be sufficient. Each teacher, as a rule, should be required to do this instead of using a part of his or her time in the very expensive instruction of small groups of normal-school students in special curricula."^ Doubtless the suggested economy is in part the motive for this dual function on the part of these special teachers, but this * Problems Involved in Standardizing State Normal Schools, 1916, pp. 68-9. 61 explanation does not cover the several cases reported where the schools have a number of such teachers ; — seventeen in the case of Normal, Illinois. The possible supplementary explanations that suggest themselves are: 1. That there is less difference between teaching children and adults to draw, to cook, to sew, than there is between teaching English, science, history on the lower and higher levels. 2. That there are no traditions back of these departments which differentiate sharply between elementary school work and work with adults. There is no feeling of condescension in teach- ing children. Whatever the explanation for the fact may be, the situation as. it exists calls for a review of reasons why teachers of "academic" subjects cannot participate in the work of the training school as do the teachers of these special subjects. An example of what may be done in making normal-school teachers active advisers in the training school is the plan put into operation at Platteville, Wisconsin, by President Asa M. Eoyce, described as follows by Edgar P. Eiley, director of the training school : "In addition to the special teachers we have what are known as 'Consulting Supervisors'. These include regular teachers in the normal school, of arithmetic, geography, English and history. These people are assigned one hour a day to the training school. * * * These consulting supervisors visit classes and are then supposed to confer with the regular critic in charge and with the assistant principal or with the principal. The term 'consulting supervisor' suggests the character of their work. * * * Oc- casionally the principal has one of these consulting supervisors talk to the practice teachers or conduct a model lesson, or criticize a model lesson, or take a group of practice teachers for conference, the history teachers going to the history teacher, etc." It must be a rare situation where critic teachers and normal school teachers cannot be of mutual help; it is almost equally rare when anything like the maximum of help is given where there is no definite provision made for supplying situations in which help may be mutually given. There are probably no schools in which teachers from the normal-school departments will not confer, upon invitation, with the members of the training-school staff. But 62 there are many where such invitation is never given. It is quite possible that there might be some feeling of constraint and a lack of topics to confer upon if regular conferences were scheduled be- tween normal school teachers and training-school staff. But both conditions would unquestionably be changed if there were real dis- position to be mutually helpful. The courses given by critic teachers in the normal school are, for the most part, methods and observation courses. Even in eases where no such courses are scheduled, the weekly conferences between critics and student teachers are practically equivalent to such courses. It is quite as important that there should be nor- mal-school courses given by critic teachers as that normal school teachers should participate in the work of the training school. Critic teachers get as quickly out of contact with the work of the other normal-school departments as do normal-school teachers with the work of the training department. To give courses to adult students is a stimulus to jgrowth on the part of the training school teacher. Director John C. Werner of the training school at Albion, Idaho, says: "Each of the critic teachers, at some time during the year, gives at least one course in the normal school. We feel that there is great need for all normal-school teachers to come in close contact with the children in the training school by actual teaching eonie time during the year, and we feel that it is also vitally important that each critic teacher be closely related to the work of the normal school and its students by teaching classes in the normal school occasionally." President Black, of Ellensburg, Washington, tries to get for critic positions, persons having some specialty which they can teach in the normal school. By so doing he accomplishes the double purpose of keeping them in close touch with the normal school, and of being able to pay higher salaries than he could pay for critic work alone. The fact that critic teachers give courses in the normal school in the summer session in five schools where they do not do so dur- ing the regular term indicates that the courses which they offer are considered to be of especial value to teachers in service, since it is 63 such teachers who make up the larger part of the summer attend- ance. The condition which prevents regular courses being given by critic teachers during the regular term is the overcrowded pro- gram of those teachers. Any change which lightens that program will make possible the giving of some time by the critic teacher to instruction in the normal school. For normal-school teachers to determine the methods of in- struction in the training school, as two schpols report that they do, seems, as stated, to be an undesirable imposition of theory upon practice. The more desirable situation would be a determination of methods by teachers of the normal-school departments and of the training school working together in the same manner in which the course of study for the training school should be worked out. A field of common interest and activity for normal-school and training-school staff, which centers about the work of the training school, is the use of standard tests and scales. Only five schools report any cooperative activity in the use of these devices. Few schools will find it possible to undertake work in the research as- pect as is done at Emporia, Kansas, or to attempt the very wide service in the use of the tests in communities of the state as is done at Emporia. But every school should be very much alive to the development of these useful means for determining the attain- ment of pupils and the cfBciency of teaching. In most normal schools, interest in these tests is confined almost wholly to the members of the department of education. The critic teachers are probably more familiar with them than are most of the normal- school teachers. At Madison, South Dakota, a very thoroughgoing survey was made in 1917-18 of the work of the training school, under the direction of Miss Candis Nelson, director of training, with the ■cooperation of the training school staff. The results are published as a bulletin of the normal school under date of July, 1918. No member of the normal-school faculty other than the training-school teachers took part in the survey, which involved the use of many of the standard tests. But it suggests a sort of undertaking in 64 which a niun'ber of teachers hoth withiri and witnout the training school might very profitably take part. While the derivation of these standard tests should be pri- marily a function of department of education in universities and normal colleges, they should be given to the students in normal schools as part of the courses in the various subjects to which they apply rather than in a single course given in the department of education. This means that each department will be familiar with the tests that have been devised for its special subject and will in- clude in the subject-matter courses (or in the methods courses,, if they are given separately) exercises which will give sufficient experience with the tests and their uses to enable the student to use them intelligently and to be guarded against their misuse. Cooperation of normal-school teachers and critic teachers in giving courses in observation, as reported by eleven schools, serves both to bring the normal-school teacher into contact with the train- ing schooland the critic teacher into contact with normal-school students, provided that the normal-school teacher and critic ar- range the observation jointly and both take part in the discussion of the lesson seen. Under any other conditions observation repre- sents considerable waste. The discussion, under the leadership of one teacher, of a lesson taught by another, the teacher who taught the lesson not being present, is unfair to the absent tedcher and less profitable to the observers than is a discussion in which that teacher takes part, since only she can know the "why" for the de- tails of the lesson and because she will be willing to point out the weak points in the lesson seen as another teacher might hesitate to do. The ability to undertake these cooperative enterprises which bring training-school teachers and teachers in other normal-school departments into closer relations, is an important qualification for normal school teachers. Judd and Parker said in 1916^ : "Among the most important characteristic of a normal-school faculty from the standpoint of serving the purposes of the state in training teachers are (a) the degree of cooperative interest manifested by the faculty in the training of prospective teachers for the real, con- crete, detailed tasks which they will undertake when they begin to > Problems involved in Standardizing State Normal Schools, 1916, p. 65. 65 teach, and (b) the competence of teachers to give such training. Normal-school teachers should be more interested in the regular daily work of public schools than in anything else, and they should be willing and able to cooperate heartily in giving students training for such work. The most important measure of the efficiency of a faculty that is composed of competent individuals is the extent to which this cooperative interest dominates the work of the normal school." These writers go on in the same paragraph to say: "Neither the competence of the individuals composing a faculty nor its cooperative interest in normal-school tasks can be fairly judged, as a rule, from printed catalogs or reports or from answers to questionnaires." It is 'because this impossibility is fully realized that there is no table given here in which schools studied are listed each with the type and amount of participation which have been reported. The purpose of this section is not to find out what each school is doing and to compare one school with another as to the degree in which cooperation of departments is present. The purpose is to suggest a list, based upon what is being done in as many schools as it has been possible to study, of types of coSperation which are being used, in the hope that such a list may be useful in suggest- ing to persons iiiterested in this problem, ways not yet tried in the particular school with which each is connected in which fuller cooperation may be brought about. Dr. Bagley summarizes the case for participation in training school work by normal-school teachers and in the work of other normal school departments by training school teachers, as follows : "The great advantage of a professional school lies in the fact that it can concentrate its work upon a single objective or upon a group of related objectives. In other words, it can organize all Its activities into real curricula. It can articulate and integrate its courses, it can insure from every instructor and every department of study a maxi- mum contribution to the common problem; it can even capitalize the life of the school itself in the interest of the purposes for which the school exists. If the professional school does not do these things, it misses a golden opportunity." These efforts made by normal schools to professionalize the courses which make up their curricula by so administering them that they bring the student into constant contact with the training department have been found to be scattered. No one school is doing everything that is being done somewhere among the schools studied. It is unreasonable to expect that every school shall do — 5 E S N 66 everything as well as any schbol does anything, but it is reasonable to expect that every school shall attempt to do as well as it can the things which other similarly situated schools have found it profitable to do in accomplishing the purpose which is common to all. There should, however, be less difference in the sorts of things done in normal schools than there now is. Individual differ- ences among schools are inevitable and in some degree desirable, but it is time that some degree of agreement was reached as to w];Lat is the best way to accomplish the task that normal schools have undertaken. Upon the basis of the review just made of what various schools are doing, it is proposed to suggest in detail how the varieties of student contact with the training department and of participation by normal-school teachers other than the training-school staff, in the work of the training school, which have been found among the schools studied, might under favorable conditions be put ipto oper- a,tion in a single' school. Let it be assumed that this school is located in a city of 10,000 people; that it graduates from two year curricula 130 students a year; that it has a school for observation and practice connected with it and that the schools of the city are available for apprentice teaching. Let the curricula offered be assumed to be the three two-year curricula outlined under sections twelve to thirty-two of the Car- negie Foundation "Curricula Designed for the Professional Pre- paration of Teachers for American Public Schools." The first term of work is identical for aU the three curricula. During this term, contact with the training department is inci- dental to the work of the course "Introduction to Teaching." Students will see teaching in the primary, intermediate, and gram- mar grades. The teaching seen will be discussed under the jdirec- tion of whoever has charge of this course and of the teachers who teach ihe lessons seen, particular attention being given to analysis of the qualities which these teachers find essential in persons who undertake work in their respective departments. During the second half of the course students should make tentative election 67 of the curricula which they intend to follow and should then be given assignments under the direction of the critic teachers in the corresponding departments of the training school, for the purpose of becoming acquainted with pupils of the particular age which it is their intention to prepare to teach. Assuming that one half of the first-year students take the course "Introduction to Teaching" at one time, there will be sixty students for whom to provide forms of participation. Let it be assumed that one of the city schools is near enough to be used for this purpose as well as the observation and practice school of the normal school. All of the participation is to be arranged for and reported back to the person in charge of the course "Introduction to Teaching," who may well be the head of the training department; but it may be work connected with some one of the other courses that the student is carrying during the same term. Students in the course in school and personal hygiene may be made responsible for the lighting of all classrooms in the elemen- tary schools for certain hours of the day, and for ventilation, if heat and ventilation are not cared for by an automatic system. They may be made responsible for the oversight of the children's clothing, wraps, rubbers, and lunches in the lower grades. The cloakrooms may be put in their charge. If medical or dental ex- aminations are going on. students may act as assistants to the ex- aminers, doing nothing more important, perhaps, than taking children through the halls to and from the examiners' office as they are wanted, or recording data for the examiners. Students from the course in physical training and games may be used in the supervision of playground activities of children. If each room has its own recreation period, sixteen students could be so provided for in each school each day if no other form of partici- pation could be provided. Intramural sports could be arranged and carried on under the supervision of these students, acting under the oversight of the physical-training director. Students in the course in music could take part in the music work in the grades. Those able to play the piano could act as 68 accompanists for room singing if a piano is available for this sing- ing; could play for gymnasium work and kindergarten plays. The course in English could arrange participation. Classes in the eleme:ptaiy school should be observed by students for the purpose of listing errors in oral English and their frequency. These should be reported to the English teacher and plans made for campaigns for more correct English, such as a "Better English Week," and the plans carried into effect when perfected. Students in library technique could be made responsible for helping upper grade pupils in finding material upon subjects con- nected with their school work, or could be. asked by teachers to place in the schoolroom on certain days appropriate material for use in the study of the topic that is to be taken up on that day. In the same way students in biology could be called upon to pro- vide materials for nature study work and to arrange for and to carry out simple demonstrations. Students from the course in handwriting could do blackboard writing for the room teachers in the elementary schools. The upper part of the blackboard in primary rooms is not available for pupils' use and may be kept filled with stanzas of poems with which the children may well become familiar; these should be changed frequently. In the upper grades there are rather ex- tended assignments and occasional outlines to be written on the board. , These same students may be given pupils' written exer- cises to grade by use of one of the standard handwriting scales and may do individual work with pupils whose writing needs par- ticular attention. It must be fully understood that this student "assistance" in the training schools does not mean any lightening of the work of the teachers' "assisted." The students concerned will be im- mature and inexperienced.^ Their zeal may be great but their skill will be slight. Even when more mature students are concerned it is safer to assume that' every additional student who goes into the training school increases the work of the training-school staff. It will be an unwise administration which considers that by "re- lieving" the critic teacher of the necessity for doing a part of the necessary blackboard writing, of some recess supervision, of some 69 care for materials, her work is being really made easier, for the work of the student should be primarily educative to him, and should, in consequence, be carefully supervised. To carry out such a program as is being here outlined would require a large training-school staff, and not fewer than two eight-room city schools in addition to the school for observation and practice con- nected with the normal school. In the second term of the first year, psychology will be given as part of all curricula. This course should involve a maximum of contact with the children of the training schools. Unless the position of psychology in curricula for the professional preparation of teachers is to become as precarious as that of history of edu- cation, some very decided changes from the sort of work which is being done in the larger number of courses in psychology must be made. A course in psychology whose organizing principle is the list of chapter headings in a textbook in general psychology will present little occasion for the observation of teachiug or of child activities outside of the classroom. The course which should be given is one which will be illuminated by observation of children and will in turn illumiaate such observation. The way to become acquainted with children is to be with children. Psychology can analyze, interpret and make significant the data gathered by obser- vation but cannot serve as a substitute for it. It is being found worth while to bring psychology courses into close relation with training-school work where it is being tried. More teachers of psychology in normal schools need to be stimulated to make the experiment. The first topic listed for consideration in this course as out- lined in the curricula being considered, is instinctive tendencies. Students should observe children in the classroom, on the play- ground, in as great a variety of situations as possible for the pur- pose of discovering common, apparently spontaneous ways in which children behave apart from training, which may be made the basis for class discussion of unlearned tendencies. They should try to discover in the observed behavior of children the modified forms of these tendencies which have resulted from ^training. They should try to discover in the teaching of the critic teachers the 70 use which the teachers are making of their knowledge of the in- stinctive tendencies of children. The second topic in the course is habit, ioxma|ion. The work of the elementary school is full of illustrative material for this topiq. Drill lessons should be seen and the method discussed in respect to how the laws of learning are taken advantage of; draw- ing lessons and writing lessons, ma,nual arts and certain games will illustrate the acquisition of manual dexterities; schoolroom routine will show habits in various stages of formation. Memory, association, and economy of learning, the third topic of the course, will find as ample illustrative material as that avail- able for habit formation. To the student already familiar with the laws of learning any lesson that is well taught will show these laws in operation. He should try to find how the child tries to remember when unassisted, what sort of associations he forms, how he studies and how the teacher helps him to study different sorts of material more economically. He will find that, what is commonly spoken of as "teaching the child to study" must be an- alyzed into "teaching the child to study arithmetic," "teaching the child to study geography," "teaching the child to read a book," and giving him special skills in working with all of the different sorts of material which make up the elementary-school curriculum. Observation should be carried on over so extended a period that the rate of learning and the pauses in improvement — the "plateaus" — may be observed. Losses due to incidental absences in the cases of individuals, and in the case of the whole class, over a week-end or after a holiday should be observed in subjects where the measure- ment of attainment before and after the interruption is possible. If different classes are doing similar work under different condi- tions as to distribution of learning periods, a comparative study may be made. The presence of these students of psychology in the training school may serve as a stimulus to training-school staff and department of education to attempt simple experiments in learning which would not otherwise have been undertaken. The fourth topic is the affective life. The same observations which gave data for the discussion of instinctive tendencies will ri furnish material for the discussion of this topic. A study of the books which boys and girls of various ages read from j:hoice will give an interesting index to the things which make an emotional appeal to them. Members of the psychology class who are also taking the course in children's literature during the same term should be able, in connection with telling stories to children, to get data upon the emotional life of these children, of interest to the class in psychology. Topic five is the thought processes. Students may set for themselves the task of finding the answer in specific instances to the question which teachers ask at times with some degree of irri- tation, — "How did you happen to think that?" — ^when a pupil has given expression to what is, by adult standards, a wild idea. Students should become habituated to thinking of lesson procedure in terms of what stimulus-response bonds are being formed and to analyzing thought processes in terms of the bonds concerned. They will get material to be so analyzed by observation of lessons where thinking and learning are going on. A third grade class reading "Alice in Wonderland," reading perfectly so far as correct pro- nunciation and expressive inflection are concerned, will give inter- esting and instructive insight into what goes on in the minds of children as they read, when questioned as to the significance of the descriptive words of which the story is full. A more scientific type of data on thought processes may be obtained by the use of the simpler completion tests and of appropriate tests from the Binet scale, which the class should see used, although the course is too short to make it possible for students to acquire the tech- nique of testing for themselves. In addition, much of interest and of value can be contributed by students who, because of a combi- nation of personal aptitudes and opportunity, become so well ac- quainted with particular children of various ages that these chil- dren talk freely of what they are thinking about. "Observation and Participation" in the first term of the sec- ond year may become the correlating center for participation in the work of the training department as the course "Introduction to Teaching" was the center during the first term of the first year. 72 The forms of participation will be determined in part by the work being done in connection with the subject-matter courses. The participation should be pointed very directly toward practice teach- ing. The observation and discussion groups should be arranged to separa,te the persons following the different curricula. Students will be assigned in groups of two or three to particular grades and subjects for at least a part of the term ; they will prepare the lessons as if for teaching and observe the class as taught by the critic teacher or, on some occasions, by student teachers. They will sit in the class as members of the class, being called upon at times to contribute to the class discussion and to lead the discus- sion, as is done in the Wisconsin "Directed Teaching" plan.^ On two or three occasions each should teach the class, after carefully supervised preparation, with every condition that can be controlled made as favorable as possible, so that the first actual teaching experience shall be a successful one. If possible each student should do a week or more of such carefully supervised teaching for one hour a day in preparation for the more extended practice teaching to follow. Bach may do as much work as can be arranged for with individual pupils who need help or with very small groups of pupils. In the second term of the second year practically the whole of the students' time and energy is to be given to practice teaching, the courses in class management and the technique of teaching and in the technique of tests and scales being so conducted that they become a part of the teaching conferences. Each student teacher will have two hours of teaching daily from the beginning of the term and before the end of the term will teach a complete half day for a week or more.^ The department of education will , contribute to the practice teaching by supervising the testing of results; by participating in conferences with practice teachers where particular problems of teaching are discussed and current literature of education reviewed. All members of the department should keep such office hours that practice teachers who find themselves confronted by any peculiar *18th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. 73 difficulty in their teaching, or are in need of help in planning a particular piece of work, may avail themselves of expert help. ' In the plan for the "Administration of the Suggested Cur- ricula" which accompanies the curricula from which are chosen the three which the school under discussion is assumed to be offering, it is planned that "each department of instruction would be held responsible for certain phases of training-school super- vision." This would insure the maximum contribution by all of the normal-school departments to the work of the student, teach- ers. The distribution of responsibility between critic teachers and department teachers has been reported, by the schools studied, to be difficult. The most promising arrangement found is that in which the normal-school departments devote their principal at- tention in connection with practice teaching, to making available all the material possible in their respective subjects for the use of student teachers, leaving to the critic teachers the supervision of the use of this material in teaching. In addition to this service, the appropriate departments will be called upon to give assistance in correcting defects which the student may show in his preparation. If the student is handi- capped in his teaching by a poor voice or faulty enunciation he will be sent to the teacher of reading and voice training for special corrective work. If his posture before the class is bad the physical training department will be called upon to help- in correcting the defect. Each student teacher will be kept continuously informed as strength and the weaknesses of his work, , by means of score sheets which contain detailed analysis of the factors that contribute to good teq,ching. Students should be required to score their own work as an encouragement to self-criticism. Critic teachers in conference with student teachers will try to develop this ability in self-criticism and will point out and commend the excellencies of work done; will point out weaknesses which the student has failed to realize; and will by advice, by suggestion, and by demon- stration show how defects are to be overcome and teaching prob- lems met. The student will be led to discuss his teaching in terms 74 of its eifect upon pupils^ and to watch carefully for the results which his teaching is producing in "accessory and concomitant" learning as well as in "primary" learning. The special courses of the different curricula will occupy most of the students' time during the second and third terms of the first year and a part of the time during the first term of the sec- ond year, each having to do with specific problems of certain grades of the elementary school. They will be conducted, through the cooperation of critic teachers and subject-matter teachers, in close relation with the work of the appropriate grades. Both observation and participation will be provided for in these courses. Students in industrial art will take part in primary hand work; students in art courses for intermediate and primary grades will make blackboard drawings illustrating reading and literature work for these grades and will give assistance in pupil projects in the carry- ing out of which drawing can be made useful. The literature course and the reading and voice-culture courses will combine in preparing students to read and to tell stories to small groups of training school pupils. Geography and nature-study courses will give opportunity for collection and arrangement of materials for use in training-school classes in these subjects. In the work of the teachers' courses in upper grade work, par- . ticipation will be less easy to arrange and observation of expert teaching of the subjects will form a more prominent part of the contact with the training school afforded by these courses. Here the "Directed Teaching" plan of participation already "referred to can be used especially effectively. Courses such as "Types of Industry and Occupation" and the "summarizing" courses of the third term of the second year will involve little or no direct contact with the training depart- ment. The general objection to putting into operation such a pro- gram as that just outlined is that it would mean that the train- ing schools would be completely overrun with normal-school stu- dents. The only aspect of this objection which deserves serious consideration is whether the presence of these students in the 75 training school would seriously interfere with good work on the part of pupils. The training schools are conducted for the benefit of two groups : the pupils, and the students of the normal school. The welfare of the second must not be allowed to jeopardize that of the first. Unless it can be definitely shown that the work of pupils in the training school suffers by reason of the presence in the school of many normal-school students, the objection that the training school will be "overrun" is not a valid objection. It may be objected that the training school cannot take care of so many students. The answer to this is that training-school facilities must be increased. Tlf normal-school administrators and teachers really believe what lEey have repeatedly asserted, namely, that the training school is the center and heart of the normal school, they should spend more effort in making the training-school facilities fit the work that is to be done instead of being content to cut the work to fit the facilities that happen to be easily avail- able. 1 A campaign of educaion will have to be carried on to change the situation described by the director of the training department in one of the Wisconsin Normal Schools. He says : "The training school is not the factor in the normal school that it should be, and one of the reasons for that fact with us Is ; it is not the advertising proposition that other departments of the school are. It is much easier to get money for a football field than it is to get money for needed furniture and apparatus in the train- ing school. "We need a training school building here to house the grades and junior high school, but we can get $100,000 for a science hall easier than we could get $25,000 for a training school." \The public, from whom must come the funds for the support of teacher-training institutions, must be stimulated to look upon the itraining department as the one part of the normal school which above all others must be well equipped, as it now looks upon the clinic facilities of the naedical school and upon the laboratory and shop equipment of the engineering school. If more funds become available for the preparation of teachers, a generous share should , be devoted to providing heeded training facilities with adequate ' ; staff paid adequate salaries. / ( It may be urged that normal school teachers would be little inclined so to conduct their courses that such contacts with the 76 training school as have been outlined would be involved. The president of a New England normal school says: "This school, with some teachers who have been here thirty- five years, finds it necessary to employ normal-school teachers in the training school in over-limited ways. As new teachers take the place of older ones they ■ are taking up the training-school work." The evidence of the preceding sections shows that there are teach- ers to be found who are willing and able to carry out the sort of program outlined above. In too many schools of all grades the welfare of pupils and students has been too ofteji sacrificed by administrators who find it easier to bear responsibility for having reduced the educational opportunities of students and pupils than to bear the emotional strain of removing or very sharply, stimu- lating inefficient teachers. Normal schools need teachers who have particular abilities and interests, and it is essential that competent persons be sought and offered such inducements that they will come into and stay in normal school work. Any hardship or in- convenience involved for persons already teaching in normal schools, who cannot do the sort of work that needs to be done in a school for the professional preparation of teachers, is to be re- gretted; but, while such suffering may be acute at the moment, it will be an economy of suffering to have it concentrated rather than to have it long continued in the form of irritation and dis- taste attendant upon remaining in the sort of work for which one is not well fitted. To the program proposed it may be objected that to have so many persons giving courses which involve contact with the train- ing department would bring about duplication, confusion, and congestion of work in the training school. Such need not be the case if the work is planned carefully well in advance by all teach- ers' and departments involved. There is too much completely in- dependent departmental work in most normal schools; too little occasion for interdepartmental conferences and joint planning. The objection is sure to be made that normal-school teach- ers are already so overloaded with work that the additional con- ference hours and the oversight of students who undertake work 77 in the training department would be impossible. Available sta- tistics do show that normal-school teachers very generally teach more than eighteen hours a week^, but there is no available evi- dence that the teaching week iavolves over forty-five hours of work, which would be the normal amount if it is assumed that fifteen hours is the maximal teaching load and that each hour of teaching involves two hours of preparation or other related work. Normal-school teachers do comparatively little research work. Their tenure is long. Teachers who teach the same courses for a number of years tend less and less to revise and add to the courses as they are repeated. If each teacher who is now devoting forty- five or more hours a week to school work were to be excused from taking any part, it is not improbable that there would still be, in many schools, teachers available with a sufficient margin of un- assigned time to carry out the proposed program. If not, then governing boards must be convinced of the desiralaility of some such program and of the necessity for more teachers with more free time to carry it out. A large number of administrative problems would be involved in putting into eflEect such a program. "Administrative difficul- ties will be encountered in operating any set of specific and pre- scribed curricula when these curricula are constructed with the educational needs as the central feature to which everything else must be subordinated."^ School administrators have two iniport- ant tasks. One is, to fit the work of the school to the facilities provided by governing boards and by legislative bodies. The second is, the preparation of programs of procedure for the guid- ance of these boards and legislative bodies in the appropriation of fimds. To know that certain sorts of work are being done better in other schools than in that for which he is responsible may be but a source of irritation to a normal-school president discharg- ing the first duty under the serious limitations that inadequate resources impose. The same knowledge is the most helpful that the president can have in carrying out his second responsibility. Governing boards need to be informed of better ways of carrying •Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 12, p. 18. ' Curricula Designed for the Professional Preparation of Teachers for American Public Schools. Carnegie Foundation, 1917. 78 on normal-school work. Most of these boards are anxious to make of the school or schools under their care the best professional schools possible. It is not an impossible ideal to set up, that every school shall try to do everything toward the professional prepara- tion of teachers as well as any school of its class does anything that has been found to have value in such professional prepara- tion. 7!) V. HOW TRAINING DEPARTMENTS TRY TO TEACH STUDENT TEACHERS TO TEACH. Every person who has any ability to communicate with other persons has some ability to teach. Small children teach one an- other. Primitive people teach each rising generation the tribal skills, ideals, beliefs, and modes of conduct. Adults of all levels of culture develop, without specialized training, considerable abil- ity to teach. Shop foremen and stage directors, nurse maids and sales managers, do much teaching without having had special teacher preparation. Any experience through which an individual adds to the skills or knowledge which he possesses adds to his ability as a teacher in the sense that it increases the range of things that it is possible for him, in some fashion, to teach to others. Certain special experiences may add to the ability to impart skills and knowledge to learners. Any discussion of addition to teaching ability must take into consideration the fact that such additions are never, in the case of normal adults, additions beginning at zero and bringing the ability up to an amount which is equal to the sum of the additions made, but are increments to an already possessed ability to teach, of an amount which may be widely different in two persons, neither of whom has made any conscious effort to acquire teaching skill. The controversy as to whether it is sufBcient for a teacher to know his subject-matter in order to be prepared to teach may be reduced to two questions: (1) Has the person in question, by reason of experiences through which he has passed before under- taking the study of a subject, already developed considerable abil- ity to teach to others what he knows? (3) Will his value as a teacher be more greately increased by giving him acquaintance with more things which he may teach with such skill as he already 80 by chance possesses, or by giving him some experiences which will increase his ability to teach what he already knows ? Normal schools attempt to increase teaching ability both by adding to the range of knowledge which the student possesses and by increasing his teaching skill. The departments of the normal school other than the training department have practically entire responsibility for the first of these; they have responsibility fori the second in so far as instruction in the ways in which teaching should be done can be made to operate when teaching is actually being done and in so far as ideas can be given and ways of think- ing established which will work themselves out in certain desirable teaching acts. The training department is coiicerned almost wholly with the second attempt. It takes the student with what- ever degree of teaching skill he had when he entered the normal school, increased by certain experiences in the normal school, and places him ifl situations which will bring about such further ad- ditions as are possible. The present section is an analysis of the means whereby the members of the training-school staff attempt to improve the teach- ing ability of the students who come to the training department i as practice teachers. The data have been gathered by inquiry addressed to heads of training departments and to critic teachers. TJsable material has been contributed by thirty-seven heads of training departments and by forty-eight critic teachers, represent- ing a total of thirty-nine schools. Simple exercise of an imperfect skill — ^mere repetition or practice — does not make perfect. Thorndike says: "The law of habit is supposed to be that 'practice makes per- fect,' or that the nervous system 'grows to the modes in which it is exercised.' But practice without zeal — with equal comfort at success and failure — does not make perfect and the nervous system grows away from the modes in which it is exercised with resulting discomfort."^ The training school is organized not merely to give the normal-*, school student some experience in teaching. It is entirely possible.) for a teacher to become poorer and poorer as a teacher the more 'E. L. Thorndike/ Educational Psychology, Vol. Ill, p. 22. 81 he teaches, provided that good teaching gives him no satisfaction or that he lacks ability to discriminate his good from his poor teaching. Or, having this ability to distinguish the excellent from the poor teaching, and being satisfied by the better, iinprovement might be very slow unless conditions were such that multiple re- sponses were encouraged and the situation so weighted in favor of the more satisfying responses that they would occur sooner than by pure chance. The situation is supposed to have been so weighted in the case of the normal-school student by the courses in theory of education, by courses in methods, and by the excellence of the teaching which he has himself received in the normal school. His judgment of good in contrast with poor teaching has been developed in some degree by exercise in the discussion of observation lessons. To these students, possessed of some degree of teaching skill, able to judge with some degree of accuracy what teaching is good and what is poor, predisposed in some degree toward doing the correct thing in a teaching situation, more or less familiar with the ma- terial of the school curriculum and, supposedly, eager to become good teachers, it is the business of the training school to give the sort of experiences in actual teaching which will do most to add to that teaching ability. All of the schools furnishing material for this study mention lesson plans as, a means whereby they try to help the student teacher to teach successfully. The least elaborate of these involves three heads: 1. What I am going to teach. 2. Why I am going to teach it. 3. How I shall proceed. Such a lesson plan has the merit of simplicity and involves the answering of one very essential question which is omitted from most other types of plans, namely, why the lesson is to be taught. But a plan requiring a more detailed ordering of method and ma- terial is probably a greater help to the student in preparing for the lesson, and, what is equally important, gives a form of lesson outline which is more easily checked by the critic, teacher. — 6 E S N 82 Six schools report that they use Strayer's form for lesson plans. Six others also use two-column plans; outline of subject matter in one column, outline of proposed methods in the second. The following instruction sheets for writing plans, used at Stev- ens Point, Wisconsin, indicate the nature of these plans in their more elaborate form. The two pages represent the two pages of especially ruled paper upon which the plans are written. This side for subject matter. Do not write in this space. 1. 4. 6. 8. 10. 13. 15. 17. 2. Subject Grade Date Name of Textbook 7. Page Illustrative material; maps, pictures, specimens. Preparation. See McMurry's Method of the Recitation Chapter VI. You should write here the outline of material that you plan to call up in the mind of the pupil in order to enable him to understand the new subject you are to presefat. The outline should be arranged logically. Subject matter. Here you should write out the subject matter that you are to present. All new material should appear here in logically arranged order, the order In which you are to present it. Generalization. State the generalization you expect the pupils to reach, in the exact language you will have them use. Application: use. State here the material you intend to 83 3. 5. 9. 11. 12. 14. 16. Name of practice teacher Name of critic teacher Teacher's aim; both general and specific. The general aim should be given on first outline and the specific aim should be given each day. Opposite the outline of Preparation should be written the questions you intend to use in order to call UP the known which will assist in un- derstanding the known and unknown. These questions should appear in the same logical manner as in your outline. Pupil's aim. See McMurry's Method of the Reci- tation for characteristics of pupil's aim; pp. 107-115. Presentation. Here should appear your method of presenting the subject matter outlined on the opposite page. Enough questions should ajjpear here to indicate the kind of questions you in- tend to ask. As nearly as possible keep the questions on this side opposite the matter on which they are based in your outline. Write the questions you will ask to get the pupils to state the Generalization. This side for method. Do not write in this space. 18. Assignment. Write the assignment. 84 Aeeompanying the directions for making plans is a list of sug- gestions by the principal, Mr. Hyer, from which the following paragraph is taken : "It should be remembered that the lesson plan is not a 'sacred thing* and no harm will come to the teacher who violates the most carefully made 'lesson plan' in the interests of his pupils. That 'the best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft a-gley* should not be forgotten by the teacher. A well organized lesson plan is evi- dence that the teacher has thought through the lesson which he intends to present and has planned his method of attack and pro- cedure, but when he comes to present the lesson to his pupils, they become a very vital factor in the matter, and many changes may be demanded in the plan. A wide awake class will present many teaching opportunities that the best teacher cannot foresee, but the fact tha,t one has to change his subject matter or his method does not in the least lessen the value to the teacher of careful thought and planning in preparation of the lesson. A carefully thought out, well organized lesson plan is worthy of the best efforts of any teacher, and will repay in intellectual stimulus and develop- ment every honest effort put forth in preparing the plan." The suggestion that the lesson plan is not a "sacred thing" needs emphasis in training departments. Among the factors which are taken into consideration by one of the schools studied in grading the work of student teachers is "Fidelity to lesson plan." This item might be a proper one, representing a check upon the young teacher's tendency to wander into wasteful digres- sions, were it balanced by a second item, "Ability to deviate from plan when occasion arises." A difficult element in the practice teaching situation which the critic teacher has to deal with is to require a plan sufficiently detailed to enable the student teacher to know very definitely, before he meets his class, what he intends to do, without allowing the student to be so committed to his plan that he cannot vary from it as conditions warrant. In the schools studied, plans are submitted for the approval of critic teachers from two days to a week in advance of the teach- ing of the lesson. In three schools it is reported that, during the advanced stages of practice teaching, plans are not required. One director of training adds, "Unless teaching becomes disjointed, in which case the writing of plans is resumed." 85 One school reports the use of plans involving the five formal steps. Two others use a modification of these steps. The fol- lowing form of lesson plan is fairly representative of those used in many schools. FORM FOR LESSON PLAN. Lesson No , Date Subject of day's work. I. Aim: (In definite statement not topic form.) IL Basis assumed: (That which the teacher assumes the pupil must know and does know as a basis for comprehending the new lesson.) III. Preparation: (Recall of facts, creating atmosphere for particu- lar work; stimulating class by giving incentive for day's work; statement of pupil's aim by teacher or pupils.) IV. Presentation: 1. Thought steps, in statement forms, logical order, and general summary. 2. Methods or devices; pivotal questions and special devices numbered to correspond with parallel thought steps. v. Assignment: 1. For class study period. 2. General statement of problems for next teaching lesson. Since students, when they take regular teaching positions, will probably not write lesson plans it is doubtless wise in the later practice teaching to reduce plan-writing to a very simple statement of what is to be done from day to day. But it will be a very im- portant contribution to the improvement of teaching in schools in general if students can, while in normal schools, be so impressed with the necessity and the helpfulness of writing careful plans that they will, after leaving school, continue to write some sort of plan for every lesson. The simpler the form of plan used in the normal school the greater the possibility of habituating stu- dents to such plan-writing as will be continued after graduation. The characteristic feature of the practice-school effort to im- prove student teaching is the conference. Every school furnish- ing information reports at least one regular conference between student teachers and critic teachers each week. Fifteen mention daily conferences and probably in other schools there are consul- tations for at least a few minutes between student teacher and supervisor before or after the lesson is taught, or both, which are not dignified by the name of conference but which constitute, in the judgment of at least two critics, the time when the most 86 effective work in criticism and suggestion is done. The length of these iaformal daily conferences as reported by sixty-three seniors in the Eastern Illinois State JSTormal School varies from ■ three to fifty minutes, the median length being eleven minutes. ' It did not require a special investigation to bring out the fact that conferences are hfeld between critic teachers and student teachers. The number of hours given to such conferences does'not vary significantly in the different schools, and may safely be esti- mated as being aU that the critics can possibly find time for. The interesting item for investigation is what happens in the confer- ences. In an attempt to find out what goes on in the conferences the heads of training departments were asked to request critic teachers to state as definitely as possible how they attempt to im- prove the work of student teachers. Many of the directors of training considered that they were giving satisfactory information when they reported the number of conferences that critics had with student teachers but detailed replies have been received from forty-eight critic teachers.' The following is a summary of the methods used in trying to modify and improve the work of stu- dents : 1. When the student is assigned to a class he observes the teaching of the critic for some days, writes plans as if he were to teach the lesson each day, and after each lesson, discusses his plan and the plan used by the critic. 2. When the student begins teaching, in a conference before the lesson is taught suggestions are made as to desirable changes in the plan. Additional material and alternative methods are sug- gested. The student teacher is reminded of the weaknesses of the pupils as shown in the work of the preceding recitation and of the necessity for strengthening these points before proceeding. Faults in the teaching of the preceding lesson are brought to the atten- tion of the student by means of a ■\ »v; >> ; «> Av*^^^ ^v^w "^tt*^ .jft** \ CS«w«v¥f» Asss^v^sS^'^ 'v