SCHEFFLER'S REPORT

Last year the Graduate School of Education appointed a senate committee to study, in Dean Sizer's words, "how this faculty..., with its own set of strengths and weaknesses, could best use its resources to illumine and improve the quality education." Financed by a $25,000 grant from the Carnegie Fundation, the committee conidered everything from the mild-reforms to the most radical. After it had reached a consensus, German Israel Scheffler drafted a report that was released last week now it will be debated by the faculty. Excerpts from the Scheffler Report appear below.

Abolishing the Ed School

It might be argued, to begin with, that the very existence of independent Graduate School Education is unwarranted, that the effort to form a broad conception of educational study the basis of an institutional unit of the university had best abandoned in favor of a deliberate fragmentation of such by and its absorption by other branches of the university. The various scholarly and research disciplines now represented the School could well, it might be thought, be returned to several Arts and Science departments with which they are naturally affiliated and could continue, from there, to apply themselves to the sphere of education. The preparation of pacers is a function that might also, in certain respects, be allocated to departments (e.g. guidance to psychology or social relations; teachers' methods courses to the various subject departments) and, in other respects, be made the province of a all interdepartmental committee (e.g. to administer practice thing and supervise the satisfaction of certification requirements). Such an arrangement, it might be pointed out, has an obvious superiority over the present one in point of economy of art and money: The enormous energies required to organize, staff and administer a graduate professional school would no longer need to be expended.... The university could discharge responsibilities to education (so it might be concluded) in a much more economical way, by splintering the study of education and reassigning the fragments.

Such an argument seems to us fatally defective for a variety reasons. The projected alternative would utterly destroy the opportunities for continuous confrontations between educational-relevant academic specialties, educational technology, professional practice, and the living problems of school and community. Such confrontations constitute the major channel through which university research and scholarship are linked with the practical enterprises of men. To destroy this channel would, no doubt, result in economies; it would also, however, surely prevent the university from a proper fulfillment of its responsibilities.

To abolish the School would effectively remove the university from engagement with the profession as well as from any serious enterprise of professional training. Such training simply cannot be properly conducted by one or two designated persons or by a small Arts and Science committee, nor can such a Committee command the requisite energy and range for maintaing relationships with schools and school people. To fragment the School and absorb it into the departments would, moreover, change the whole quality of the enterprise. In the Arts and Science fram-work, where the dominant ethos is that of advanced research and scholarship, the outlook of professional education would be relegated to a lower rank. Nor is it clear that the departments would welcome the newer responsibilities which the projected arrangement envisages for them, quite apart from the question whether they are equipped to discharge these responsibilities effectively. It is unlikely, in our view, that even the natural applications of the scholarly disciplines to education would be adequately fostered by the departments alone, much less that methods courses for teachers would be seriously undertaken; it is, in our opinion, fantastic to imagine that abolution of the School would diffuse educational interest throughout the university. Nor would there be a provision of opportunity for conversation and cooperative work between specialists separated by departmental walls, though severally interested in educational applications. Without a School, finally, there could be no coherent and independent policy of staffing, of recruitment of students, nor of long-term research planning, nor would there be room for an independent administrative initiative for which the concerns of education were primary...

Challenge, Orientation, Priorities

...The need for universities is to be inventive in defining the future before it is upon us: to create new fundamental ideas adequate to the times, while fostering and disseminating the old virtues of critical thought in dealing with them. We cannot, in short, think of the School of Education as simply training functionaries for an ongoing system. We need rather to relate the School bodly to the strangenesses and opportunities of the new world: to encourage it to create new patterns and roles of endeavor, to educate the public and raise the standards of the profession, while holding fast to the tried values of critical humanism that form the core of university life.

What then, in sum, do we recommend, as to orientation? The guiding conception of educational study to which our school has in recent years been committed seems to us fundamentally sound, its broad interpretation of education superior to any alternative that we have considered. The policy of cultivating diverse approaches and outlooks seems to us healthy, and indeed essential for continued health. Such features of the School need, however, to be strengthened and further developed; they require our continuing efforts to support and expand their application in all phases of the School's work, for they represent; ideals which we have, unfortunately, hardly realized fully in practice. We believe, moreover, that the attempt to provide advanced scholarship, training, and professional leadership of the first importance in the future orientation of the School, and requires a reevaluation of its main priorities....

...To devote our energies to the project of producing large numbers of teachers for the lower schools seems to us an inefficient use of our capabilities.... We recommend a substantial reduction in the number of Masters' degree candidates....

The bulk of our efforts should thus be devoted to doctoral training, and the general climate of the School according shifted in the direction of advanced studies. We propose that the Ed.M, in the scholarly or disciplinary fields and the general Ed.M. be given up, or else radically restricted, since they are, at best, stepping stones to doctoral study, and do not, in themselves, generally represent a clear and "terminal" level of professional competence. The exploratory function which they sometimes fulfill for students who are as yet undecided about doctoral study can be equally well fulfilled by graduate study without matriculation for a degree. The presumption should then be, as it is generally understood to be in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, that in the academic or scholarly fields, the Masters' degree is insignificant, and it is rather the Doctors' degree that sets the operative goals and standards.

Is Education a Science

We reject the notion of a special science of education as a basis for integration. Such a notion has, on occasion, been looked to as the basis for an independent status for Schools of Education, or, at the least, as providing the common core of the work of such schools. Such hopes for a science of educations seem to us to rest on quicksand.....

A science is counted by its peculiar ideas, instruments, and procedures but, most importantly, by its distinctive laws and theories. Education has no such distinctive laws and theories. To be sure, educational phenomena may be studied in a scientific manner, but the current attempts to study education scientifically proceed from a wide variety of directions, and utilize a multiplicity of concepts, procedures, and research styles. It is unlikely in the extreme that they will all coalesce into, or be superseded by, a unified educational science.

On the other hand, any advance in these general approaches is likely to benefit the enterprise of studying education scientifically. It is the latter enterprise, after all, that is, and should be, our basic concern. Whether we have one or many sciences, whether or not any of these is specifically a science of education, is irrelevant to the possibility of studying education in a scientific spirit. And the fact is that this possibility can be, and is being, realized in diverse ways, in accordance with various research models and investigative styles....

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...Instead of seeking integration through a common science, or through a common body of formulated knowledge, we seek integration, both for our students, and our faculty, through common discussions in which disciplinary and clinical out-looks are represented. Such an approach can, however, succeed only if discussion is serious and thorough-going. We propose, then, as a further principle of integration, the strengthening of critical thought and dialogue in all the work of the School. Our impression is that we probably ask our students to read too much and too fast; we ask them to listen passively too much of the time, and to think not nearly enough. We suggest, therefore, a greater attempt to elicit the critical thought, discussion and reflective writing of students, and an increased experimentation with seminars, case discussion, tutorials, and similar methods.

We are dissatisfied also with the clinical components of current Masters' programs at the School. It is not merely that the quality of our clinical training, such as it is, could be improved, as was urged in several responses to our alumni questionnaires. It is rather that the whole conception and scope of such training seem to us to require radical revision. To prepare a student for teaching on the basis of one year's work, a fraction of which is devoted to apprentice teaching, seems to us simply inadequate. To graduate him at the end of such a year is, furthermore, to abandon him at the critical stage of entry into practice, a stage in which his academic training is being joined to the experience of full clinical responsibility, and in which his personal style of work is being shaped.

We propose, then, a general design in which a new academic sequence is to be method with a revised and expanded clinical experience, the whole program to extend beyond the single year. Briefly, we suggest a year's academic residence, preceded by a summer of clinical initiation, and followed by up to a year of supervised, paid internship. The academic year...would include...a new experimental full course [Introduction to Education], developed on a case and tutorial model, and designed to facilitate realistic entry into the educational profession. Full-time supervised practice with pay would be undertaken at the end of the year's residence, but the Masters' degree would not be awarded until satisfactory completion of this internship....

The Doctor's Degree

The degree we are primarily concerned to discuss here is the Ed.D. But preliminary remarks are necessary concerning the relation of the Ed.D. to the Ph.D. in Education. The former is, at Harvard, under the control of the School, whereas the latter is administered by a joint committee of Arts and Science faculty and Education faculty, and granted under the authority of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. There is, however, little structural uniformity with respect to these two doctoral labels throughout the country, and the relative quality of the Ed.D and the Ph.D. in Education does not seem to follow a predictable pattern, although the prestige of the Ph.D. label is almost invariably higher.

The Harvard policy has been to equalize the quality of the two degrees, while maintaining their separate structures and recognizing their different potentialities and demands. The structural separateness is built into university rules, which limit the permission to grant the Ph.D., to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alone; the professional Schools, in particular, must develop their own degrees. This separateness is therefore beyond the control of the Graduate School of Education and must be accepted in practice as given.... (This structural division has, in our view, little to recommend it, and we favor continued exploration of the possibilities for alternative arrangements.

The attempt to equalize the quality of the degrees is, however, clearly within the power of our School, and seems to us certainly the correct policy. Moreover, the attempt needs to be constantly made to improve the quality of both. A side from matters of program design and reyuirements, recruitment policy is one key to such improvement.... There are some devices that could be put into effect most immediately. One is the use the Faculty-Aide program, which supplies undergraduate research help to our faculty, to interest promising undergraduates in the possibilities educational research. Another, and intially much more far-reaching device, is the scheduling of certain of introductory disciplinary courses names of the day when they would accessible to undergraduates. Education, like science, history, and the law should, in fact, be made available the College as part of the general education of its students. No propoganda or special appeals are in point here; the presentation of educational topics in a general and scholarly manner is likely to have a long-term beneficial effect in bringing home to undergraduates the possibilities of educational study and work.

The substantive differentiation of Ed.D. and Ph.D. in Education is a more difficult problem, with which sundry committees have wrestled, to small avail, for many years. . . .

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...We might...try to effect a distinction of degree, rather than kind, in the following sense: to channel toward the Ph.D. in Education those candidates whose position, by virtue of training and interest, is closer to the discipline, but whose aim is to develop education as a preferred domain of application, and to channel toward the Ed.D. those whose position is rather closer to the field of education, but whose aim is to develop the capacity to analyze its problems by certain preferred disciplinary methods....

Quality of Teaching

....We hope that greater attention will be paid to the quality of teaching and advising in our School. It is no secret that the primary Harvard emphasis has, by and large, been placed on research rather than teaching, and that the career motivations and academic rewards of the young faculty member are linked more closely to the former than the latter. With our prososed shift in priorities toward doctoral training and the concomitant strengthening of the research spirit at the School, the quality of our teaching will be ever more in danger of being overlooked for the sake of what are considered more important concerns.

Yet we believe that the quality of teaching is of major significance, especially in a School of Education. True, there is no logical contradiction between the significant advancement between the significant advancement of knowledge and the poor teaching of such knowledge, and there is no law that says one must practice what he preaches. There is, however, an anomaly of a pragmatic kind in the neglect of its own teaching practices by an Education faculty. Such neglect raises the natural question as to why professional improvement does not begin at home.

It is, however, not easy to propose a direct attack on this problem....

Indirect and general methods seem to us the most desirable. We have, thus, introduced the stimulus to experimentation in several courses, proposing such exerimentation in the projected Introduction to Education, as well as in the introductory courses offered by the disciplinary Areas, [divisions of the faculty: humanities, social sciences, psychology] courses which are crucial in bringing the disciplines to bear on the general life of the School. ...We should like here to propose, also, that senior faculty members take major responsibility for introductory courses, which require both a mature grasp of the subject's technicalities, and a relaxed ability to explore its general ramifications; such courses also provide a natural and continuing challenge to improve the quality of teaching.

Teaching Loads

Concomitantly...there needs to be a restructuring of formal teaching loads. The earlier practice at the School has been for the faculty member to each five half-courses a year, and, in more recent years, to teach four half-courses, as a full load. Such a construal of a full load makes it, in our opinion, almost mathematically impossible for the professor to perform excellently in teaching, and to do a proper job in advising doctoral candidates, as well as to perform the research management functions which are requisite for the major research involvements of our School. Our suggestion is to recognize that the formal teaching of courses is only one sort of teaching that goes on in an advanced school; the teaching that takes place informally through advising, as well as through the informal guidance of apprentices on research projects needs also to be counted as part of the teaching engaged in by a professor. Given such recognition, we suggest that the formal teaching load be set at two half-courses, plus an optional advanced seminar. It should be strongly emphasized, however, that no reduction is here contemplated of the total teaching time of the professor; what is in point is simply a revised understanding of the sorts of teaching in which a professor is normally engaged. The reduction in formal course load is therefore definitely not intended to imply a diminished involvement in teaching. Such a reduction would yield fewer formal courses, but, we hope, better taught courses.

Utopian Suggestions

Our recommendations are, in one special sense utopian... We did not much concern ourselves with costs. Clearly, improvement in education, as elsewhere, requires funds. The proposals we have made for increased staffing in certain Areas, for improved and expanded relations with school systems and clinical facilities, for improved supervisory arrangements, for a reduction of Masters' level commitments concurrent with an extension to a "one year plus" design--all of these presuppose considerable financial support. They also presuppose a relatively peaceful world....

...Improvement depends basically, in our opinion, upon breaking down the narrow and isolating conceptions that confine education on all sides. Education is not simply an affair of the classroom, nor is the study of education merely a professional subject required of prospective teachers. Education is better conceived broadly as an organizing perspective from which all problems of culture and learning may be viewed. To place the issues of professional practice within such a context is to relate it to the whole life of the university. The special task of a university School of Education is to facilitate such relationship, and in so doing, to benefit both practice and scholarship.