In taking over the methods of psychology and applying them to the solution of educational problems, a secondary advantage of the greatest importance has come to the science of education. These methods are capable of adaptation to a much broader range of problems than psychology would have attempted to solve. Both the statistical method and the experimental method have accordingly been carried over in the science of education to the widest possible range of applications.
Studies of Retardation
One of the first and most fruitful statistical studies made in education dealt with the retardation of pupils. Those who fell behind their grade were counted, and the problem which they presented was stated emphatically enough to bring about the organization of all kinds of special devices for the training of retarded individuals and groups.
School Experiments and Laboratory Studies
The experimental method was carried over and applied to whole classes. For example, two parallel classes were measured with reference to the effects of supervised study.
The experimental method has also been productively applied in detailed, analytical studies of particular subjects. Thus, to recall an example presented in an earlier chapter, reading has been investigated in the cases of slow and fast readers when they were reading orally and silently, when they were trained by the ordinary methods of the school, and when they were trained by special methods adapted to their individual cases. Like studies have been made of the movements performed in writing and of the stages passed through in various learning processes.
Examples throughout Earlier Chapters
Further examples will, however, be unnecessary for the reader who has had the patience to go through the earlier chapters of this volume. There are numerous illustrations in those chapters of statistical and experimental investigations of educational problems. These investigations show the extent to which the new science has borrowed from the old and the extent to which a new structure has been erected which has a right to claim an independent name and rank among the social sciences.
Studies of Administrative Problems
The recognition of the science of education as a separate discipline can be urged on the ground that the scientific methods which were first applied to the problems of mental development have opened up every aspect of school organization to scientific study. Thus, in the field of administration more than in any other field the value of scientific studies has been recognized. The promotion of pupils, the grading system, the construction of buildings, and the organization of financial systems are all spheres in which exact scientific methods have in recent years worked most important transformations in practice.