RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND IMPROVEMENT IN EDUCATION’
RICHARD
E.
SCHUTZ
Southwest
Regional
Laboratmy
for
Educalional
Research
and
Developmat
There are unprecedented problems facing school personnel today. As Francis
Keppel
(1966)
has pointed out, the quantitative expansion of an ever-increasing
pupil population has been steadily evolving for almost a century. There are estab-
lished precedents for attacking the current quantitative problems. However, the
new pressure is qualitative in nature. Keppel sees this emphasis on quality as the
“necessary revolution” in American education. The nation’s schools have always
been (‘good’’ by definition. The necessary revolution goes beyond describing
or
justifying current quality.
It
involves an empirical demonstration of educational
improvement.
One need not retreat into the mystical aura with which educators have tradi-
tionally surrounded the term “improvement.” Improvement in education can be
gauged along the same dimensions used to assess improvement in other sectors of
life; utility, reliability of effect, time, and cost. Educational improvement is
at-
tained by enhancing performance on any one or more of these dimensions without
concomitant decrements in the remaining dimensions.
I
do not mean to imply that educators have opposed or even resisted improve-
ment; they have simply placed it in the same category as the flag and mother. Much
greater effort has been devoted to studying educational improvement than to
demonstrating it. This study has led to the development of many myths for educa-
tional “change.”
I
should like to enumerate a few of these myths, which are fre-
quently referred to euphemistically as “models.”
MYTHICAL MODELS
OF
CHANGE
The
alchemist
myth is one to which educational researchers have contributed
significantly. This involves the “translation of research into classroom practice.’’
The more rapidly we admit that educational research as currently defined has no
more direct relationship to educational practice than base metals have to gold, the
better off the researcher and school man will both be. The extrapolation of research
findings into school applications is
not
an easy and direct process which happens
naturally, without effort. We currently lack “translation” procedures.
The
great man
theory is another myth to which school administrators have
contributed.
It
implies that there is an isomorphic relationship between adminis-
trative policy and classroom practice. My very brief administrative experience has
been sufficient to convince me that the gap between administrative policy and opera-
tions
is
at least equal to that between the research report and operations.
The
copycat
model
I
attribute primarily to various private institutions.
Several foundations appear to have adopted a policy of investing in school programs
which are labled “research” to take advantage
of
the positive connotations of the
term but which have been pre-judged as “desirable” before the investment. The
programs are given visability with the expectation that they will be imitated else
where.
If
such imitation has occurred in the past, its effect has not been obvious.
The
total
destruction
myth may be attributed to the outspoken critics of the
’Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting
of
the California Educational Research Association,
Los
Angeles, California, March,
1967.
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