Laboratory Schools and the National Reports
By William Van Til
What should be the major function of laboratory schools? Why should universities maintain campus schools? As usual, John Dewey recognized such questions early and proposed possible answers. I am always amazed at the range and grasp of this man. Throughout the twentieth century new generations of educators have regularly rediscovered John Dewey's ideas. Sometimes the rediscoverers claimed Dewey's insights as their own and masked them in new phraseology.
Dewey is sometimes said to be hard to read, to be overly complex in sentence structure. He is crystal clear, however, on the major function of a laboratory school. In 1896, early in his pioneering at the campus laboratory school of the University of Chicago, he wrote of the laboratory school:
It bears the same relation to the work of pedagogy that a laboratory bears to biology, physics, or dentistry. Like any such laboratory, it has two main purposes: (1) to exhibit, test, verify and criticize theoretical statements and principles; (2) to add to the sum of facts and principles in its special line.... (Dewey 1896)Later he wrote in The School and Society:
Only the scientific aim, the conduct of a laboratory, comparable to other scientific laboratories, can furnish a reason for the maintenance by a university of an elementary school.... It is not a normal school or a department for the training of teachers. It is not a model school. (Dewey 1899, 11 - 12)Unfortunately, few paid heed to Dewey's reminder that to contribute to education, indeed even to survive, a laboratory school.
William Van Til is Coffman Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Education, Indiana State University. During a career in education that began in the mid-1930s, he taught at Ohio State University, the University of Illinois, Peabody College, New York University, and Indiana State University. He has been a leader in national associations of educators, an editor and writer in the field of education, and a contributor to popular magazines as well, must be a laboratory school. Late in the nineteenth century Dewey saw clearly that only the scientific aim could furnish sufficient reason for university maintenance and support of laboratory schools.
But nineteenth-century laboratory schools had been created as places for practice teaching and for observation of demonstrations of teaching as customarily carried on in public schools. Experimentation and research were minimal. As late as 1931, a study of seventy-seven laboratory schools reported that only three were characterized by experimentation (Eubank 1931, 75). In 1942, a study of laboratory schools not only reported that existent schools were used for observation, participation, demonstration, and student teaching but also suggested that little emphasis on experimentation in laboratory schools was needed (Williams 1942)
From the late 1940s onward, strong financial pressures from budget-conscious university administrators and state legislators were exerted on laboratory schools. As a consequence, during the sixties and seventies many laboratory schools were closed, sometimes through a process genteelly termed "phasing out," which terminated one level after another. The public schools increasingly became the focus of student teaching as well as the place for observation, demonstration, and some participation. Hopeful researchers also envisioned the public schools as potential locales for their research.
Laboratory schools responded slowly to the threats to their existence. A late 1950s study reported that 70.7 percent of laboratory school principals still regarded student teaching as the primary function of laboratory schools (Lang 1959, 36-43). An AACTE study of 186 laboratory schools by Evan H. Kelly, College- Controlled Laboratory Schools in the United States-1964 reported:
In spite of the attention, which has been given to the importance of research and experimentation as unique functions of laboratory schools, only twenty-seven (27) institutions listed either of these two functions as of first importance in their schools. On the other hand, sixty-two (62) institutions reported that student teaching is the most important teacher education function of their laboratory school. (Kelley 1964, 10)Many alarms were sounded by those who wrote on the laboratory school. A sampling of titles reflects the earnestness of the warnings: "Is the Campus Laboratory School Obsolescent?" (Gaskill and Carlson 1958, 106-107), "The Laboratory School: Unsolved Problem" (Ohles 1961, 390-94), "The Campus Laboratory School: Phoenix or Dodo Bird" (McGeoch 1971), "Laboratory Schools: Updated or Outdated" (Page and Page 1982; 1983, 372-74).
I was one of the early contributors to the warnings. In 1969, 1 addressed your group in your meeting during the AACTE conference. My title? "The Laboratory School: Its Rise and Fall?" Since I tried to be polite, I placed a question mark after the horrid word "fall" in the title of both the talk and the ensuing pamphlet published by Indiana State University and the Laboratory School Administrators Association. I closed my 1969 warning by saying:
The choice seems clear. The friends of the laboratory school will either learn from the past and build a better laboratory school for the late twentieth century based on a reconstructed dream, or the friends of the laboratory school will carry on business as usual as the laboratory school, marked by conflicting purposes and varying perceptions, drifts toward extinction through internal neglect and external assault.... (Van Til 1969, 15)But the budgetary axes fell and continue to fall.
Kelley's 1964 survey identified 212 college-controlled laboratory schools, while a 1969 study, the National Survey of Campus Laboratory Schools, identified 208. Within the past decade, the downward trend has become clearly evident: 195 in 1969-70, 179 in 1972-73, and 166 in 1975-76. (Hendrick 1980, 59)By 1982, Fred M. Page, Jr., and Janet A. Page reported that to determine the current role of the laboratory schools in the United States the 123 existing (italics mine) laboratory schools were surveyed. The Pages indicated that some of the schools surveyed had reported that their continued existence was questionable (Page and Page 1982).
Despite the discouraging trend, friends of the laboratory school continued to proffer their advice. These friends should not be confused with the natural enemies of the laboratory school. Allow me to digress, please, concerning the natural enemies of the laboratory school. To understand the laboratory school's decline, one must recognize the nature of the forces
Proponents of laboratory schools encounter. In 1969 I identified the natural enemies
... the laboratory school student who rejects the education he received, the parent perceiving the school as another private school, the professor of education indifferent to the laboratory school, the budget-cutter in the legislature or in university governance hunting for cost reductions and lowered taxes. Strangely enough, the laboratory school sometimes has natural enemies within its own building-the laboratory school administrator who always accommodates and never leads, and the narrowly focused laboratory school teacher who rejects all functions save teaching....To these natural enemies of the laboratory school still another has been added in our times. With the development of projects and research financed by national government and foundations and with the shift in curricular innovation to the public school, a new type of professor and administrator in teacher education has come to the fore.... Many sincerely believe that funds now expended for laboratory schools would be better invested in their own research and projects....
... Caesar, you will recall, was put to death by his colleagues, who included the noble Brutus. (Van Til 1969, 13-14)
Let us now return to a pleasanter topic, the friends of the laboratory school. They include influentials pleased with their own education in laboratory schools, parents who want better education than traditional public schools provide, statesmen among legislators and university administrators (there must be some), teachers and administrators of laboratory schools who have foresight, and the aforesaid professors of education who, with their students, frequently cross the wide street that separates the laboratory school from its parent school of education. The latter group often uses the laboratory school to enhance the education and enlarge the mental horizons of undergraduate and graduate students. Of all the friends, the professors, as befits their trade, give advice freely.
Some advisors saw salvation for laboratory schools in field service to educators. For instance, in "New Paths for America's Laboratory Schools," Charles F. Cardinell (1978) called for an increasing role for laboratory school staff members in field-based teacher education. Some friends advocated building new programs for special groups. For instance, Kenneth R. Seely (1979, 5-6) described the University of Denver's enrichment program for gifted and talented students; Jack C. Dinger (1972, 194-96) told of the creative use of laboratory schools in preparing special education teachers; Charles J. Pulvino (1972, 45-51) told of a laboratory approach for American Indian students. However, the major pattern of advice emanating from friends of the laboratory school was twofold: they urged continuance of reduction of the student-teaching function of the laboratory school and sharp increases in the laboratory school's role in research and experimentation.
Some of the advice from research specialists was patronizing in tone and indifferent to reality. Some who advocated research appeared uninformed on the conflict among the functions proposed for the laboratory school. They did not recognize that research couldn't be the sole function of a laboratory school. Some researchers were especially blind to the conflicting perceptions of groups of people related to laboratory school education; the culture in which laboratory schools exist must be taken into account. The uninformed ignored the skewed nature of the typical laboratory school population as to intellect, economic status, and ethnic group membership. They did not envision the strength of demands for "good education," not "guinea pig" experimentation. They failed to recognize the high specialization of professors as to their chosen research pursuits and the dedication of laboratory school teachers to the education of children and youth while carrying teaching loads which necessitated that research be a peripheral concern. Above all, they failed to understand the financial setting, populated by budget-conscious university administrators and legislators aware of the decline of student teaching through laboratory schools and past records of little research and experimentation.
More perceptive advocates of the development of research and experimentation through laboratory schools recognized that research, however important, cannot go on in a vacuum. It must take place in a setting in which children and youth are being well educated and are experiencing a forward-looking experimental total curriculum while they are being observed by students and teachers for whom the best of educational ideas are being demonstrated. Aware researchers also played down unrealistic insistence on highly quantitative research. They recognized with Evan R. Keislar that research is not limited to empirical studies for it also includes theoretical studies. Keislar says in "The Inquiry-Oriented Laboratory School":
Although the denotative meanings of the terms inquiry and research are highly similar, to many people research falsely connotes only empirical study or, even more narrowly, experimentation. Both these terms are used here in a broader sense to include, for example, not only empirical investigations, both experimental and descriptive, but [also] historical and theoretical studies. In educational philosophy or curriculum, for example, a logical analysis may be the major method employed. The methods of inquiry include quantitative and qualitative approaches. (Keislar 1980, 27)Some advocates of research and experimentation also recognized that the highly individualistic interests of research professors could result in fragmentary findings rather than long-range experimentation and case studies to evaluate outcomes of curricular designs and procedures. So they called for experimentation with professors' specialized interests but also for appraisals of total curriculum designs, longitudinal studies, and studies sponsored by the laboratory school faculty as a whole, not singly as individuals.
Calling on his experience as a director of UCLA's laboratory school, John Goodlad suggests that
a laboratory school never will fulfill to high degree the range of functions I have mentioned if the personnel and resources necessary for this fulfillment are lodged elsewhere in the school of education or other campus units, or simply nonexistent....... I believe we should quit thinking about the laboratory school as an administrative, budgetary unit. It should be an integral part of an organized structure for which the closest parallel probably is the R and D unit commonly found on the campuses of major universities. In effect, it should be part of a center or laboratory for childhood (and/or youth) education embracing the full range of functions mentioned earlier....
... A laboratory school can perform only one function well-the education of children. (Goodlad 1980, 52)
Francis S. Chase, formerly dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Chicago, suggested "transformation into a Center for the Study of Learning, designed for long-range experimentation and case studies to evaluate the effects produced by educational environments and treatments" (Chase 1980, 44) Both Chase and Goodlad envisioned a staff which included not only research- and experimentation-oriented laboratory school teachers. As additional staff, Chase envisioned "pediatricians, psychologists and other biological and social scientists [who] could advance their fields of knowledge through systematic observations, careful analysis of recorded data, and experimentation of many kinds." Goodlad envisioned a
second group of persons attached to the center [who] would be primarily research-oriented. Ideally, these would conduct two different kinds of research programs. The first would be focused on the activities of the laboratory school, decision oriented, and somewhat evaluative. Most of the research conducted in laboratory schools is generated out of the interests of university professors, not out of the continuing or innovative programs of the schools. (Goodlad 1980, 53)Supplementing the flow of advice from friends of the laboratory school has been a spate of studies by budget-minded legislative groups and state education organizations on the purported contributions of laboratory schools. For instance, in 1967, the Council of Deans of Schools of Education in Wisconsin State Universities called for redefinition of roles and functions and recommended deemphasis of the student-teaching role and maximizing other functions, including innovation and experimentation. In 1974, a Massachusetts Task Force on Teacher Education and Laboratory Schools encouraged evolution into teacher training centers for child study, program development, dissemination and experimentation. In accordance with the Florida legislature appropriations act, a study of state-coordinated research and development efforts concluded that the continuation of campus laboratory schools could be justified only if their central mission became that "of research and high-risk experimentation" sharply focused on the search for solutions to persistent problems in teaching and learning. Each laboratory school in Florida was evaluated on its research and development activities.
So in recent years laboratory schools have experienced a substantial decline in their numbers, received advice from friends of the laboratory schools in universities, and encountered pressures from legislatures and state educational bodies. In general, there have been two types of responses by laboratory schools. One was essentially passive, maintaining older functions, proceeding with business as usual, in effect making no response. Apparently the hope of practitioners of this strategy was that the prevalent legislative or university lightning would not strike their particular school. They counted on inertia to result in continuance of established laboratory practices.
For some laboratory schools this strategy appears to have worked, since some laboratory schools have continued to conduct business as usual. However, for such schools, the risk of an occurrence of unexpected stormy weather is always present. Should assaults on their survival materialize, they would have few defenses or defenders. To rely on the belief as to closing that "this too will pass" and we will be exempt is a dangerous strategy for a laboratory school. A second type of response was active. For instance, the University of Hawaii took the R & D route. Loretta Krause reports that the laboratory schools on the Manoa campus of the University of Hawaii responded to the State Report of 1965-66, which recommended that the schools be converted "from teacher training facilities to centers for curricular research, development and experimentation." The University Laboratory School became a division of the Curriculum Research & Development Group. The pupil population was reduced and made more representative of ethnic groups on the island. All staff members were related to the R & D function, and a substantial proportion taught one or two periods a day and devoted the rest of their time to curriculum research and development. The curriculum shifted from electives to courses in the sciences, arts, and humanities. Experimentation with new ways of scheduling took place. All students were encouraged to take all courses available to them on a continuing basis (Krause 1979). The P. K. Yonge Laboratory School at the University of Florida combined research activity with stepped-up dissemination. J. B. Hodges, director of the school, summarized the school's research and development model in nine steps:
(1) problem determination; (2) search of existing information for possible solutions; (3) formulation of a research project if no solutions already exist; (4) implementation of the project in the Laboratory School; (5) field testing and modification of the project in selected public schools; (6) compilation, publication, and distribution of a report to the state school system; (7) receipt of feedback from educators; (8) drive-in conferences and workshops for school personnel interested in implementing the project; and (9) maintenance services (consultation, sharing sessions, etc.) for schools using the project products. (Hodges 1977)You are well aware that many further illustrations could be cited of laboratory schools which responded to the survival challenge with programs of research and experimentation. But for every laboratory school that responded actively, there were others that were helpless to respond. The Catch-22 which constantly stymies proponents of maximizing the role of research and experimentation in laboratory schools is funding. To afford laboratory school faculties their opportunity to engage in research and experimentation rather than simply to "keep school," there must be some combination of lighter loads, additional staff, and released time for research and experimentation. This necessitates more funding. To encourage professorial specialists to do other than fragmentary studies requires support for designing curricula and developing major studies. Again, the question of funding is central. To complicate the situation, we have a decline in number of laboratory schools, economy-minded university administrations and legislatures, and laboratory schools with a teaching faculty lacking in a record of successful laboratory research. Where are the funds for the research and experimentation to come from?
If funding for the research and experimentation function of the laboratory school is not sufficient in the laboratory school's own budget, nor from the school of education, nor from individual research grants and contracts of school of education professors, where are those interested in curriculum research which is long-term, broad in scope, and institutionalized to turn? Obviously to extramural sources outside the university, at least for supplementation. So I bring you a modest proposal which admittedly may not work but which may be worth consideration. It so happens that we live in a time of many national reports on education. Many of them are proposals for change in secondary school education. I have no doubt that there will be future reports dealing with elementary education. The reports emanate from foundations, from educational organizations, from influential authors with access to funding sources, and from governmental agencies. They have been published as books through major publishers and as attractive pamphlets. Most recommend heightened requirements in such areas as science, math, English, and computer instruction. Legislatures have been especially responsive to the most politicized, publicized, and influential of the reports, A Nation at Risk, which restricted itself largely to dramatizing national deficiencies and juggled credits for high school graduation. But many of the national reports have fortunately not restricted themselves to prescriptions as to years of exposure to subject areas. They have often called for substantial changes in goals, methods, and procedures. They have asked for modifications of present practice and urged experimentation. I have made a distinction between two categories. Perseverance and political skill would be requisites, for not all proposals brought to philanthropic, educational, and governmental bodies are funded. Yet for some laboratory schools, currently exhorted to make bricks yet supplied insufficient straw by budgetary restraints, my modest proposal might prove a way of carrying forward Dewey's dream of a laboratory school that is truly a laboratory.
References
Cardinell, Charles E. 1978 "New Paths for America's Laboratory Schools." Paper presented at the School of Education, Indiana State University, May 3. Resources in Education. September. ERIC Document Reproduction Service #ED 153-997.
Chase, Francis S. 1980 . "The Chicago Laboratory Schools: Retrospect and Prospect." UCLA Educator 2 1, no. 2 (Winter).
Dewey, John. 1896 "The University School." University Record. November 6, 417-442. Cited from mimeographed copy. 1899 The School and Society Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cited from "The Psychology of Elementary Education." UCLA Educator 21, no. 2 (Winter 1980).
Dinger,Jack C. 1972 "The Creative Use of Laboratory Schools in Preparing Special Education Teachers." Education and Training of the Mentally Retarded 7, no. 4, (December).
Eubank, Louis A. 1931 "The Organization and Administration of Laboratory Schools in State Teachers Colleges." Northeast Missouri State Teachers College Bulletin 31 (April).
Gaskill, A. R., and A. A. Carlson. 1958 "Is the Campus Laboratory School Obsolescent?" School and Society, March.
Goodlad, John. 1980 "How Laboratory Schools Go Awry. " UCLA Educator 21, no. 2 (Winter).
Hendrick, Irving G. 1980 "University-Controlled Laboratory Schools in Historical Perspective. " UCLA Educator 2 1, no. 2 (Winter).
Hodges, J. B. 1977 "Research and Diffusion Process: K. P. Yonge Laboratory School." University of Florida, Gainesville.
Kelley, Evan Hugh. 1964. College- Controlled Laboratory Schools in the United States-1964. American Association of Colleges for Teachers Education. Cited from The Laboratory School Its Rise and Fall? See Van Til, William.
Keislar, Evan R. 1980 "The Inquiry-Oriented Laboratory School." UCLA Educator 21, no. 2 (Winter).
Krause, Loretta. 1979 "From a Campus Laboratory School to an R and D Center." Resources in Education, February. ERIC Document Reproduction Service #ED 013-179.
Lang, D. C. 1959 "Current Theory and Practice in Connection with the Function of the Campus Laboratory School." Educational Administration and Supervision, January.
McGeoch, Dorothy M. 1971 "The Campus Laboratory School: Phoenix or Dodo Bird." Washington, D.C.: National Center for Educational Communication, DHEW/OE.
Ohles, J. F. 1961 "The Laboratory School: Unsolved Problem." Journal of Teacher Education. December.
Page, Fred M., Jr., and Janet A. Page. 1982 "Laboratory Schools: Updated or Outdated." Resources in Education, July. ERIC Document Reproduction Service #ED 213-672. 1983 "Laboratory Schools: Updated or Outdated." Education 103, no. 4 (Summer).
Pulvino, Charles J. 1972 "The Laboratory Approach: A Vehicle for Facilitating American Indian Education." Counseling and Values 17, no. 1, (February).
Seely, Kenneth R. 1979 "Utilization of University Facilities for School-Age Children. " CEFP Journal 17, no. 6 (November -December).
Van Til, William. 1969 The Laboratory School Its Rise and Fall? Indiana State University and Laboratory School Administrators Association. 1984 "The National Education Reports in Perspective." Manuscript.
Williams, Edward L. F. 1942 The Actual and Potential Use of Laboratory Schools in State Normal Schools and Teachers Colleges. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.