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UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

The College of Education of the University of Minnesota has a definite budget allotment each year which permits faculty members to visit former students. Contacts are also maintained through files kept by individual faculty members, through correspondence, and through short courses given at the University of Minnesota Continuation Center in various fields in which school administrators are interested. The University of Minnesota has also maintained for many years a Schoolmen's Week during which approximately a thousand dollars is spent to bring to the campus outstanding scientists in the field of school administration. This is one of the outstanding activities of the institution along the line about which you inquire. SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

Our extension work is not very great in amount, but what we do is aimed to assist administrators in their task of directing their staff in the direction of better curricula and better procedures. Our professors in elementary, secondary education, and supervision organize the teachers of the school systems under the direction and with the help of the superintendent, and they spend anywhere from a few weeks to an entire year in studying their content and procedures.

In addition to the above, we bring to the University on numerous occasions, the superintendents and principals in our area for conferences on their problems. A number of these conferences are for small, selected groups and extend over a period of two or three days.

YALE UNIVERSITY

Former students who have received their Ph. D. from the Department are invited, several times in the year, to attend Post-doctoral Seminars at which time a scholarly study is presented, either by a former student or a faculty member.

Personal correspondence with staff members on field problems is encouraged. Also conferences with those nearby.

The annual meeting of the A. A. S. A. is used for former students who are present to meet with members of the staff in attendance.

The faculty scatters pretty widely for summer sessions, enabling former students in different parts of the United States to confer with staff members. (Faculty members in 1940 were located at the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Oklahoma, University of Colorado, University of California, and University of Southern Caifornia.)

10. Describe briefly any activities which you have undertaken in this area (III) which have been of constructive value to you in the development of selective guidance procedures.

In addition to statements previously sampled there were included, five sets of documents of particular interest and value to all concerned with the problem of making selective guidance procedures more objective and systematic.

Syracuse University, generally credited with being one of the first universities to employ systematic methods of selecting students for the profession of teaching, submitted a report describing the universi

ty's methods and presenting data relative to their effectiveness.' The university's conclusions, quoted in part, are presented here:

1. On the basis of direct comparison students admitted to preparation for teaching through the selection system as described, are markedly superior in intelligence . . . in English . . . and in knowledge of current events... The bases of comparison were other students from our own university and students from other liberal arts colleges and universities who had used the same tests.

2. In about 80 percent of the cases of refusals, a constellation of factors operates. Undesirable personality operated alone in 9 percent of the cases, and in combination with other factors in 36 percent of the cases. Evaluation of this factor represents the combined judgment of four members of the Enrollment Committee, the Dean of Men, and the Dean of Women, and is based on individual interviews and significant data on extra-curricular participation. Scholarship operated in 8 percent of the cases as a single factor and in 58 percent of the cases in combination with other factors. Speech operated alone in only 2 percent of the cases, and in combination with other factors, in 3 percent of the cases. 3. As judged by the standards of those who discount the quality of teachers, students who survive the selection procedure represent the best, single, large, undergraduate group on the campus.

...

4. The product of the selection program is generally superior as judged by immediate standards. The next step should be an evaluation of the end products of selection through a study of teacher effectiveness in the field over a period of years.

The University of Wisconsin submitted the First Annual Report of the School of Education Personnel Committee. Attached thereto were samples of Student Data Booklets and individual report forms. The University of Florida provided a document addressed to staff members by a General Directing Committee for the work of graduate students in education. The University of Wyoming, College of Education, submitted a copy of the student cumulative record card together with descriptive statements and forms covering the significant aspects of a comprehensive guidance program. Columbia University provided copies of documents and forms related to guidance procedures in their Advanced School of Education.

Troyer, Maurice E. The selection of students for the profession of teaching. Journal of Educational Research, 35: 581-93, April 1940.

Chapter 4

Demonstration, Observation and Practice Experience in the Education of School Administrators

IN ITS REPORT on Standards for Superintendents of Schools the Committee on Certification of Superintendents of Schools of the American Association of School Administrators included a section on Special Education for the Superintendency Offered by Colleges and Universities. Of the 134 institutions studied and reported on in this section, 55 provided graduate training in administration. The Committee reports that among these 55 institutions "Provisions for internship or practical experience is an essential feature of only 13 They report further that "the general response to a request for information on such provision was that the majority of superintendents undertaking graduate work already had practical experience in administration or supervision before matriculation." 1

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Because interest had been centered so definitely on the extent to which provisions are made for practice experience in graduate programs of education for administration it seemed desirable to include the first 2 questions which appear in this section of the present inquiry. It should be noted that of the 55 institutions included in the study referred to above, 34 are also included in the present study.

1. Do you accept previous or concurrent experience in administra

tion or supervision as adequate provision for closing the gap between theory and practice in your program for the education of school administrators?

To this question there were 29 affirmative and 29 negative responses, with 4 institutions passing the question. Six of the affirmative responses were qualified, however. Apparently refusal to accept previous or concurrent experience as adequate provision for closing the gap between theory and practice does not in all cases mean that the institution is prepared to make up the deficiency, because, of the 29 institutions responding negatively to this question, 7 reported no provisions for practical experience under guidance in response to question 2, below. On the other hand, of the 29 institutions responding affirmatively to this question there were 14, or half of them, which

1 Standards for superintendents of schools. A preliminary report of the Committee on certification of superintendents of schools. American association of school administrators. The National Education Association. Washington, D. C., The Association, 1939. p. 39.

also reported provisions for practical experiences of the kind described in question 2 below.

In checking the 34 institutions which were included in the American Association of School Administrators' study it appears that 18 of these gave an affirmative answer to this question, maintaining practically the same 50-50 distribution of the larger group.

All that can be said concerning these replies is that approximately one-half of the institutions canvassed seem to accept the principle that the gap between theory and practice in programs of education for administration is not always adequately provided for by the fact that students have had or are having experience in administrative positions. As will be shown, however, a very much smaller number of institutions have gone beyond the point of rendering lip service to the principle.

2. Does your program make provisions for the actual performance of duties in real situations under the direction of skilled and experienced administrators and supervisors in the field through internships and other means?

Despite the fact that this question is phrased specifically to delimit the kind of provisions referred to, a number of institutions interpreted the question broadly, as shown by the following qualifying statements attached to affirmative responses:

To a very slight degree in one of our laboratory schools-In part-On undergraduate level for teachers—In the sense that they are in-service while taking graduate work-There is such a provision for Ed. D. candidates but it has never been implemented-Only the beginnings of an apprentice teacher program.

Altogether there were 33 affirmative replies made to this question. It is interesting to note that 9 institutions replying negatively to this question also indicated by a negative reply to question 1, that they do not accept previous or concurrent experience as adequate provision for closing the gap between theory and practice. It would be interesting to know how these institutions do provide for practical applications. On the basis of the 25 descriptive statements actually filed with returns on this question, 13 institutions reporting apparently provide varied opportunities for the kind of experience referred to in the question. Altogether the returns in this study seem to substantiate essentially the statement in the AASA report that "provisions for internship or practical experience is an essential feature of only 13" 2 institutions; this despite the fact that the present inquiry included 26 institutions not included in the AASA study.

An analysis of the descriptive statements filed indicates that arrangements have been made in seven institutions for internships.

* Ibid.

In two of these institutions the term "apprenticeship" is used. One institution offers what may be an interesting form of rationalization to explain why no such plan is operative. The reader is invited to "note that teaching experience is requisite in this State for an administrative certificate." This interesting conclusion is then reached; "if administrative internship is meant, it is, at present, legally impossible." The reasoning here apparently is that an administrative "intern" would have to qualify for an administrative certificate "in this State." The question of whether or not an "intern" or "apprentice" would have to be legally qualified in order to operate may of course have been raised and ruled upon "in this State." Such a ruling would of course involve a very strict interpretation of the certification law since students assigned as "interns" or "apprentices" are not "employed" in the usual sense. If the State department in question is as obdurate as it appears to be, by implication, in the statement quoted, it is of course unfortunate. The question raised here is whether or not the institution reporting has really tried to work this problem out with the certifying authorities. Perhaps a form of "cadet" license would meet the problem. Surely such a situation should not be permitted to go by default if the will to do is present. For their suggestive value the following statements describing practices are cited:

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

We have had an agreement with the leading superintendents in the San Francisco Bay region for an intern arrangement for our students in school administration. They have taken part in various divisions and functions of school administration; for example, the Superintendent of Schools in Oakland accepted approximately 15 students a year and assigned them to various administrative duties under the supervision of the members of the regular staff. When a particular assignment was completed they were transferred to another type of work, resulting at the end of the year in a varied and rich experience in the active field of administration and supplemental to the classroom activities on the campus.

More recently we have been following the practice of conducting community surveys, using the graduate students enrolled in advanced courses in administration. This field work is supplemented by assigning individual students to work in school districts all over the northern part of the State of California. An approach is made to the head of a local school department, securing from him information relative to the problems he is facing in his district that require an intensive study. The range of these problems has included every form of school activity. Students are assigned to work on these various problems. First they prepare a detailed and extensive outline on techniques, procedures, data to be gathered, etc., under the supervision of the instructor of the course called a Practicum in Educational Administration. The study when completed is presented in final form, the original copy going to the district in which the study was made. duplicates are filed with the instructor of the course and are eventually filed in Lange Library of the School of Education for use by future students.

The

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