...Instead of seeking integration through a common science, or through a common body of formulated knowledge, we seek integration, both for our students, and our faculty, through common discussions in which disciplinary and clinical out-looks are represented. Such an approach can, however, succeed only if discussion is serious and thorough-going. We propose, then, as a further principle of integration, the strengthening of critical thought and dialogue in all the work of the School. Our impression is that we probably ask our students to read too much and too fast; we ask them to listen passively too much of the time, and to think not nearly enough. We suggest, therefore, a greater attempt to elicit the critical thought, discussion and reflective writing of students, and an increased experimentation with seminars, case discussion, tutorials, and similar methods.
We are dissatisfied also with the clinical components of current Masters' programs at the School. It is not merely that the quality of our clinical training, such as it is, could be improved, as was urged in several responses to our alumni questionnaires. It is rather that the whole conception and scope of such training seem to us to require radical revision. To prepare a student for teaching on the basis of one year's work, a fraction of which is devoted to apprentice teaching, seems to us simply inadequate. To graduate him at the end of such a year is, furthermore, to abandon him at the critical stage of entry into practice, a stage in which his academic training is being joined to the experience of full clinical responsibility, and in which his personal style of work is being shaped.
We propose, then, a general design in which a new academic sequence is to be method with a revised and expanded clinical experience, the whole program to extend beyond the single year. Briefly, we suggest a year's academic residence, preceded by a summer of clinical initiation, and followed by up to a year of supervised, paid internship. The academic year...would include...a new experimental full course [Introduction to Education], developed on a case and tutorial model, and designed to facilitate realistic entry into the educational profession. Full-time supervised practice with pay would be undertaken at the end of the year's residence, but the Masters' degree would not be awarded until satisfactory completion of this internship....
The Doctor's Degree
The degree we are primarily concerned to discuss here is the Ed.D. But preliminary remarks are necessary concerning the relation of the Ed.D. to the Ph.D. in Education. The former is, at Harvard, under the control of the School, whereas the latter is administered by a joint committee of Arts and Science faculty and Education faculty, and granted under the authority of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. There is, however, little structural uniformity with respect to these two doctoral labels throughout the country, and the relative quality of the Ed.D and the Ph.D. in Education does not seem to follow a predictable pattern, although the prestige of the Ph.D. label is almost invariably higher.
The Harvard policy has been to equalize the quality of the two degrees, while maintaining their separate structures and recognizing their different potentialities and demands. The structural separateness is built into university rules, which limit the permission to grant the Ph.D., to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alone; the professional Schools, in particular, must develop their own degrees. This separateness is therefore beyond the control of the Graduate School of Education and must be accepted in practice as given.... (This structural division has, in our view, little to recommend it, and we favor continued exploration of the possibilities for alternative arrangements.
The attempt to equalize the quality of the degrees is, however, clearly within the power of our School, and seems to us certainly the correct policy. Moreover, the attempt needs to be constantly made to improve the quality of both. A side from matters of program design and reyuirements, recruitment policy is one key to such improvement.... There are some devices that could be put into effect most immediately. One is the use the Faculty-Aide program, which supplies undergraduate research help to our faculty, to interest promising undergraduates in the possibilities educational research. Another, and intially much more far-reaching device, is the scheduling of certain of introductory disciplinary courses names of the day when they would accessible to undergraduates. Education, like science, history, and the law should, in fact, be made available the College as part of the general education of its students. No propoganda or special appeals are in point here; the presentation of educational topics in a general and scholarly manner is likely to have a long-term beneficial effect in bringing home to undergraduates the possibilities of educational study and work.
The substantive differentiation of Ed.D. and Ph.D. in Education is a more difficult problem, with which sundry committees have wrestled, to small avail, for many years. . . .
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...We might...try to effect a distinction of degree, rather than kind, in the following sense: to channel toward the Ph.D. in Education those candidates whose position, by virtue of training and interest, is closer to the discipline, but whose aim is to develop education as a preferred domain of application, and to channel toward the Ed.D. those whose position is rather closer to the field of education, but whose aim is to develop the capacity to analyze its problems by certain preferred disciplinary methods....
Quality of Teaching
....We hope that greater attention will be paid to the quality of teaching and advising in our School. It is no secret that the primary Harvard emphasis has, by and large, been placed on research rather than teaching, and that the career motivations and academic rewards of the young faculty member are linked more closely to the former than the latter. With our prososed shift in priorities toward doctoral training and the concomitant strengthening of the research spirit at the School, the quality of our teaching will be ever more in danger of being overlooked for the sake of what are considered more important concerns.
Yet we believe that the quality of teaching is of major significance, especially in a School of Education. True, there is no logical contradiction between the significant advancement between the significant advancement of knowledge and the poor teaching of such knowledge, and there is no law that says one must practice what he preaches. There is, however, an anomaly of a pragmatic kind in the neglect of its own teaching practices by an Education faculty. Such neglect raises the natural question as to why professional improvement does not begin at home.
It is, however, not easy to propose a direct attack on this problem....
Indirect and general methods seem to us the most desirable. We have, thus, introduced the stimulus to experimentation in several courses, proposing such exerimentation in the projected Introduction to Education, as well as in the introductory courses offered by the disciplinary Areas, [divisions of the faculty: humanities, social sciences, psychology] courses which are crucial in bringing the disciplines to bear on the general life of the School. ...We should like here to propose, also, that senior faculty members take major responsibility for introductory courses, which require both a mature grasp of the subject's technicalities, and a relaxed ability to explore its general ramifications; such courses also provide a natural and continuing challenge to improve the quality of teaching.
Teaching Loads
Concomitantly...there needs to be a restructuring of formal teaching loads. The earlier practice at the School has been for the faculty member to each five half-courses a year, and, in more recent years, to teach four half-courses, as a full load. Such a construal of a full load makes it, in our opinion, almost mathematically impossible for the professor to perform excellently in teaching, and to do a proper job in advising doctoral candidates, as well as to perform the research management functions which are requisite for the major research involvements of our School. Our suggestion is to recognize that the formal teaching of courses is only one sort of teaching that goes on in an advanced school; the teaching that takes place informally through advising, as well as through the informal guidance of apprentices on research projects needs also to be counted as part of the teaching engaged in by a professor. Given such recognition, we suggest that the formal teaching load be set at two half-courses, plus an optional advanced seminar. It should be strongly emphasized, however, that no reduction is here contemplated of the total teaching time of the professor; what is in point is simply a revised understanding of the sorts of teaching in which a professor is normally engaged. The reduction in formal course load is therefore definitely not intended to imply a diminished involvement in teaching. Such a reduction would yield fewer formal courses, but, we hope, better taught courses.
Utopian Suggestions
Our recommendations are, in one special sense utopian... We did not much concern ourselves with costs. Clearly, improvement in education, as elsewhere, requires funds. The proposals we have made for increased staffing in certain Areas, for improved and expanded relations with school systems and clinical facilities, for improved supervisory arrangements, for a reduction of Masters' level commitments concurrent with an extension to a "one year plus" design--all of these presuppose considerable financial support. They also presuppose a relatively peaceful world....
...Improvement depends basically, in our opinion, upon breaking down the narrow and isolating conceptions that confine education on all sides. Education is not simply an affair of the classroom, nor is the study of education merely a professional subject required of prospective teachers. Education is better conceived broadly as an organizing perspective from which all problems of culture and learning may be viewed. To place the issues of professional practice within such a context is to relate it to the whole life of the university. The special task of a university School of Education is to facilitate such relationship, and in so doing, to benefit both practice and scholarship.