Contributions to the Science of Education
Second, the study of school problems by teachers in service has contributed powerfully to the creation of bodies of organized knowledge bearing directly on school matters. When education courses were designed chiefly for candidates for teaching positions, these courses survived even if they had no close relation to school work. To-day the situation is entirely different in character. Teachers in service come to the study of education with urgent problems to be solved. The abstract statements of the older courses will not satisfy such students. The impulses toward the development of scientific information about schools which arise out of a demand for efficiency and economy are powerfully reënforced by the demand within the teaching profession itself for definite and constructive studies of school problems.
EXERCISES AND READINGS
The training of teachers is so closely related to state legislation that this chapter suggests the possibility of introducing the student to the methods of looking up state laws. How does one go about finding school laws? Why is education a matter of state legislation rather than a matter of national legislation? What are some of the striking differences between the educational laws of different states?
Second, since the economic conditions which control teachers’ salaries are of importance in determining how much training teachers shall be required to secure, the question of salaries is an important one. This matter may be looked up in the two bulletins referred to below.
Coffman, L. D. Social Composition of the Teaching Population. Teachers College Publications, 1911.
The Tangible Rewards of Teaching. Bulletin No. 16, United States Bureau of Education, 1914.
A Comparative Study of the Salaries of Teachers and School Officers. Bulletin No. 31, United States Bureau of Education, 1915.
[APPENDIX]
CLASSROOM OBSERVATION
In connection with the study of the foregoing chapters and collateral readings it is desirable that students visit classrooms and make systematic observations of the work there under way. In order that such observations may be productive it is necessary that the student have definite ends in view, otherwise observation will be scattered over many phases of that which is seen. The questions below are intended to furnish guidance.
It is recommended that each student in the course be required to spend at least three hundred minutes in observation and that he or she prepare a written report.