From the beginning of history,” Wilfred Wees observed inScience in the Classroom, “men have been concerned with ‘betterment’, each with his own betterment, or with the betterment of somebody else, or with the betterment of mankind.” Though wanting for little, Eve, the heroine of an early history book concerned with beginnings, was apparently tempted by promises of betterment. Notwithstanding the consequences of this episode, her descendants were so taken with the notion of bettering themselves and society that they institutionalized their desire by the creation of schools.

The first curriculum, according to “J. Abner Peddiwell” (Harold Benjamin) in his...

A curriculum, or a program of studies, represents an attempt on the part of educational institutions to provide a learning person with a coherent sequence of impressions, exercises and cognitive subjects by virtue of which he can participate consciously, conscientiously, and productively in the cultural development of the nation and of mankind as a whole.

This generalization should serve as an invitation to ask more precise questions. May I mention some of them. What concept do we have of a “person”? What is learning? Which subjects should be taught? What is the relation of education to society?

If we turn...

Education is a late-comer among the pursuits of man’s inquiring mind. In Western civilization we can go back to Moses for religion, Thales for philosophy, Archimedes for mechanics, Hippocrates for medicine, Herodotus for history—most of the modern disciplines have their ancient origins and their continuity. Throughout the ages, however, one seeks in vain for systematic thought about education. All that one finds are crumbs of thought dropped accidentally into some other intellectual dish.

Systematic thinking about education did not appear until Comenius picked up Bacon’s cue and wroteThe Great Didactic. Even then people had so little regard for...

Society has instituted, and supports, an educational system as a means for developing human personality and thus fostering the common good. The worthy ends of all human activity include relief from material and spiritual want, from ignorance, from oppression of body, mind, and soul. Education that fosters the fullest growth of the moral, aesthetic, social, physical, and intellectual aspects of the human being must be available for all, not just the privileged, members of society.

We may explain our moral concepts and standards humanistically, as the result of the accumulated experience of our race, or, theologically, as signs of divine...

A number of terms are used to indicate the opportunities for learning experiences provided for learners under the direction of a school and its teachers. Curriculum, program of studies, course outline, syllabus, course of study, or similar terms are used to describe anything from a topical outline of content to be taught to descriptions encompassing everything, planned or spontaneous, that happens to the learner in the school setting. A national study conducted a few years ago by D. E. Glendenning indicated that Canadian educators do not agree in their definitions of these terms. Moreover, course outline and syllabus are widely...

Few can remember when the Bible, the blackboard, and the birchrod were the only respectable teaching aids. However, most teachers today began their careers when the unholy trinity of book, chalk, and talk dominated classroom communications. The technological revolution now promises to put into every school “learning resources” ranging from simple handheld slide-viewers to total systems capable of programming simultaneously the learning activities of many students.

The communications revolution, for all its disruptive characteristics, promises dynamic solutions to a paradoxical problem. Ours is a world beset by a knowledge explosion and, at the same time, an unprecedented shortage of persons...

The possibilities and implications inherent in large-scale use of technological developments in education are so staggering to the imagination that one can scarcely avoid coming into frequent contact with someone’s opinions, well-founded or otherwise, as to the benefits or dangers of any widespread introduction of media into the formal learning situation. Suggested applications of technology range from the continued utilization of the book and the blackboard to complete control of the learning programme of large numbers of students by centrally-located computers.

At the recent Third Commonwealth Education Conference, Prime Minister Pearson expressed a concern of many thoughtful persons when he...

This section of the questionnaire called for the rating of a wide variety of teaching materials for the reading programme: printed and hand-prepared reading materials, audio-visual aids, and tests of reading achievement. In addition to rating the materials and specifying some others, the respondents have in many cases submitted comments where none were anticipated. Some of these have been included in the report.

The items on page 15 of the questionnaire were clearly directed to teachers with primary experience only. Since approximately 50 per cent of the respondents were known to have had experience in the primary grades, about 3,000...

A newspaper article recently observed that 200 specialists had been set to the evaluation of plans submitted to the U.S. government for the construction of supersonic aircraft. It is surely comforting to travellers to know that their safety (among other things) will be the object of careful consideration by such a large task force.

It would be comforting to learners to be able to report that the programs in the schools, especially the new curricula, were so arduously examined or even that a more modest evaluation had been or would be undertaken. Unfortunately, very few curricula, old or new, have...

How to know what the child knows was posed as a problem in the section on experimental schools. Again we have barely entered this subject which needs considerable discussion not only in the light of our suggestions, but with respect to present practices in Ontario. As we noted before, the problem is not an acute one in the early years when the small range of knowledge and the openness of the child combine to allow a teacher to know when understanding is there. It is in the higher years that more formal evaluation becomes necessary and here there are sticky...

In general, evaluation is the process of assessing the child’s needs, his growth in learning power, and his progress toward stated educational goals. Practices in evaluation should reflect the philosophy of the school and/or system, and should be considered an integral part of the teaching-learning process. Good practices in evaluation involve a continuous planned assessment of progress and growth. Such practices foster the development of data that can provide guidance in a variety of ways, for the pupil, the teacher, the principal, the parent, and the administrator. Evaluation data assist in the diagnosis of learning problems, provide guidelines for school...

What is curriculum research? A seminar group which met during the 1966 convention of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development could neither agree on a definition of curriculum research nor adequately describe its nature and functions as distinct from their other research activities.

What then is the state of those research activities which are associated with curriculum development? The June 1963 and June 1966 issues of the American Educational Research Association’sReview of Educational Research, devoted to “Curriculum Planning and Development,” sound very much the same pessimistic note. In 1963, James B. Macdonald and James D. Rath maintained that...

Because the gaps in our knowledge are so glaring, and the basic questions to which answers are needed are so numerous, there is little point in our singling out particular research topics for detailed discussion. When we say that we need to know very much more than we do about the mechanisms that constribute to school learning, about ways of determining its effectiveness, about the particular range of situations in which particular learning experiences bear fruit, about the ways in which motivational, attentional, ideational, perceptual, and motor processes can best be organized to optimize the effects of instruction, this statement...

My predecessors as luncheon speakers both referred to the conference co-ordinator’s urging to be brief. For me, a call for brevity will not provide the occasion for wit, but rather offers an invitation to indulge in a certain amount of uninhibited generalization. For if any of my statements are thought to lack appropriate qualification, or to neglect exceptions, I will merely plead lack of time.

I speak as a person who is charged with the responsibility of attempting to apply psychology—the so-called “science of behaviour”—to the problems and practices of education. From my particular point of view, a...

This final section brings together three addresses originally delivered to the Second International Curriculum Conference. In brief, they might be described as (1) an Englishman’s assessment of where we are today; (2) an American’s analysis of the directions in which we are purposefully gravitating; (3) a Canadian’s blueprint for a vehicle that may move us expeditiously on our way. The literate, provocative, and forceful wit of Sir Ronald Gould, the comprehensive, penetrating examinations and imaginative prescriptions of Dr. Robert M. McClure, and the breadth of vision and practical experience brought to bear on the complex problems of building for the...

For the first time in history, three groups of people from three countries, with a common interest in curriculum reform, are meeting together. We are innovators, originators, pioneers, trail-blazers. Yet it is only the fact that we meet internationally for this purpose that is new. Individuals and groups have often made the curriculum the subject of discussion and even controversy.

Listen to this: “What does it profit a student to spend his days in these things which neither in the army, nor at home, nor in business, nor in the cloister, nor in politics, nor in the church, nor anywhere...

Unique contributions to human welfare from single nations are rare. When the history of the world is written, the Greeks will be remembered for liberty, the Romans for law, the British for parliamentary government. In America, we hope we will not be remembered for our industrial might, our scientific achievements, our ability to mass-produce material objects. We would rather have it noted that from our very beginning as a nation we took seriously the idea of universal public education. Soon, I hope, we can add the word “equal” to that phrase.

Schooling in the United States is a vast enterprise:...

My assigned task, Mr. Chairman, is to discuss research and development in education and, in particular the new structural model we have tried to develop in Ontario. You may think it strange to find such a topic, provincial in scope, on your agenda. I think our common interests must stem from a shared belief that the whole educative process should be continuously evaluated and improved, and that changes in the massive structure of public education not only should but can be made. Your primary concern obviously lies in the field of curricular reforms, in both instructional techniques and materials; my...