Dean: Ed Schools Need Research Reforms

Though Ellen Condliffe Lagemann has made waves in her first few months as dean of the Graduate School of Education (GSE) by speaking out on the need to reform GSE and its role in the education world, in a speech last night she avoided talk of Harvard, instead surveying the broad problems she sees currently facing educators and researchers.

Speaking to a crowd of about 200 at GSE’s Askwith Lecture Hall, Lagemann gave a “troubling account” of the history of education research, arguing that “low status, isolation and conservatism” have limited the field’s achievements.

“The troubling account, though depressing, is much more helpful” in deciding the course that education research must take in the future, she said.

Lagemann said the persistent low status of teachers and education in general is emblematic of a movement she called “anti-educationism,” an idea akin to anti-intellectualism. The image grew, she said, out of beliefs that teachers had lower levels of skill and competency than other professionals.

“He or she that can, does and he or she that cannot, teaches,” Lagemann said, wryly quoting what she said remains a common view.

She also argued that education research is isolated from traditional arts and science research, to the detriment of education.

A movement toward school surveys, Lagemann said, led to the increased monitoring of different aspects of school systems from building quality to test scores. At first, the surveys led to improvement as leading social scientists studied survey results and effected change, but eventually these scholars left the field, she said—and they were not replaced.

“School surveys became mechanical and useless,” Lagemann said, “but schools continued to do them.”

At the same time, the flourishing of disciplinary studies like anthropology and economics in the 1960s led to education falling out of public concern in the following decade.

The third and final “depressing” theme discussed by Lagemann was a history of conservative ideas attaining dominance in the field of education itself.

Lagemann cited the formation of institutions like the Educational Testing Service, with its accompanying focus on test grades, as one example of the conservative view of education winning out.

Because progressive methods of education often do not produce desirable results within short periods of time, Lagemann said, their proponents are often hard-pressed to find support—especially financial support. With this lack of funds has come a lack of incentives for scholars to enter the field, as well as for prospective teachers to become educators, and a lack of improvement in research in general.

But Lagemann also pointed to brighter themes in the history of education research. She said recent studies have begun to acknowledge this research as a branch of science, an “empirical, experimental endeavor.”

But because education is a “field of study” rather than a “discipline,” there are differences in the way knowledge must be applied to it, she said.

Though Lagemann stressed a desire not to speak from Harvard’s point of view, she did say that universities and institutions of education in general must “educate the public about education...foster demand for research...and generate knowledge that will be helpful for practitioners, parents and policy makers.”

She stressed the need for education to become a central—instead of peripheral—issue at research institutions everywhere, so that it can receive the attention and resources it needs in order to become a more viable and respected branch of research.

“Unless we can get the support, we cannot improve,” she said. “It’s about status. It’s about appreciating teachers and about appreciating education and research in education.”