Method of Comparison
In many investigations the method of comparison has been brought to a degree of perfection which justifies reference to it as a special method of scientific research. All the previous discussions of standardization show how a single school system profits by the effort to evaluate its own practices in the light of the experiences and results of other school systems.
Records Necessary to Scientific Study
The scientific methods which have been referred to imply as their necessary basis a series of detailed and accurate records. Some of these records, as, for example, those which show school attendance and those which deal with expenditures, are kept in ordinary routine. Some have to be made especially for the purposes of scientific studies. Here belong all those records which are made through tests. Tests are merely devices for showing clearly and explicitly how far educational practices have succeeded in special cases.
Subdivisions of the Science of Education
The subdivisions into which the science of education naturally breaks up are dictated in part by the needs of different individuals within the school system and in part by the methods which are employed. Thus the supervisor needs a different type of training from that which is required by the classroom teacher. Again, the functions of the different supervisors are so different that some require full information on problems of school finance, while others are in more direct contact with the problems of promotion and of the curriculum. A second line of cleavage is that which is described most fully in this chapter and results from the use of different methods of investigation. Thus, laboratory studies of reading and writing naturally separate themselves from statistical studies of administrative problems.
Another line of division is that dictated by school organization. High-school problems are likely to be considered in special courses, elementary-school problems in others.
There is no need in a general introduction of the type here offered of attempting to consider these subdivisions. Our purposes are adequately served if we can show what the science as a whole is by referring to typical examples of scientific work undertaken in several of the subdivisions.
Rapid Expansion of the Science of Education
Furthermore, it is to be understood explicitly that the science of education is in process of rapid expansion. Any effort to describe its methods and content in full would of necessity fail. The rapid enlargement of the science and its methods in recent years is the most impressive fact which can be recorded in a chapter describing the scope and purpose of such a study. A simple definition within which there is wide room for expansion is therefore the only definition which is appropriate at the end of this introduction.