SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.

In spite of the variety of opinion which is shown in the data just reviewed concerning the particular scheme of cooperation between academic and educational departments which should be adopted, there is fair unanimity as to certain principles which should have recognition in any plan which may be adopted. Some of the more important principles which seem to have general acceptance are the following:

1. Some form of cooperation is essential. As universities are now organized a department, or even a school, of education can not furnish all the elements which are essential in the training and equipment of a teacher for secondary or higher schools. While certain disadvantages arise out of this dependence on other departments, there are perhaps greater advantages arising out of the more general university atmospheres, out of the wider range of interests and the more miscellaneous personal associations, than could be had in a more narrowly limited, even though the wholly professional, institution such as a State teachers' college.

2. All courses, instruments, and agencies in the universities. which have for their chief purpose the instruction, training, or equipment of teachers should be centralized in the department or school of education, should be established only on the initiative of the education faculty, and should remain wholly under its control. In no other way can efficiency be secured or wasteful and irritating duplication be avoided. In no other way can a professional enthusiasm be aroused or a sense of professional loyalty be developed. No academic department should have the right to announce even a course in subject matter, especially for teachers, without first consulting and getting the approval of the education faculty. This faculty has for its chief function the promotion of the interests of teachers, and should, therefore, be the best judge of the fitness, the importance, and the need of proposed courses for teachers. Where the interdepartmental relations are what they should be, the education faculty will ordinarily be glad to get as many courses of special subject matter for teachers as possible, provided they are adapted to their end. It would follow, also, that the department of education should have the right to suggest changes of method and of subject matter in these special courses as well as the right to some voice in the selection of the instructor from among the available members of the academic department concerned.

3. Such special courses should be announced primarily in the bulletin of the department or school of education, and if announced elsewhere should be specially designated as given in or for the department or school of education.

4. The right to initiate and control implies also the obligation to finance a course. Therefore all teachers of courses accepted by the education faculty and announced in the bulletin as especially for teachers should draw a proportionate share of their salary from the education budget. This arrangement will have the double advantage of (1) giving the academic instructor a sense of responsibility to the department of education and (2) of making the education faculty reasonably conservative in initiating or accepting special courses for teachers.

5. Cooperation with, responsibility to, and the receipt of salary from the department of education should imply some official connection with that faculty. Just how close that connection should bewhether it should constitute full membership, with the right to vote on all matters of policy; whether it should grant only the right to discuss and recommend; whether it should limit the instructor to the right to attend only occasional faculty meetings in which students' work is discussed; or whether it should stop short with the privilege of advising students personally as to their work in his special coursedoes not appear from the data submitted. For the present, therefore, the extent of the participation of the special academic instructor in the affairs of the education faculty must be determined by local conditions.

6. Courses in special method should be in the same hands as the supervision of practice teaching. The intimate interdependence of special method and practice teaching is implied in the attitude of three of the groups discussed above, viz: (1) Those who would keep courses in method and supervision of teaching wholly within the education faculty, (2) those who would secure both through cooperation with the academic departments and (3) those who would delegate both functions to the high-school faculty in which the practice teaching is done. Only 4 of the 21 who gave constructive suggestions imply the separation of supervision and special method. The essential interdependence of these two important aspects of teachers' training seems to the writer almost axiomatic, whether teaching is to be regarded as the application of the principles of method, or whether special method is to be regarded as the organization of the experience gained in teaching.

Eliminating the suggestions which violate any of the above principles, and ignoring certain differences as to minor details, we may reduce the constructive suggestions of our contributors to three distinct schemes.

1. No cooperation whatever with academic departments. In this scheme the academic departments give only the academic courses which they offer for students of all departments regardless of their

vocational aims, while all special courses for teachers and all supervision of teaching are kept within the education faculty.

The advantages of such a plan are:

(1) Complete control of all professional work and the opportunity to develop a professional consciousness without interference.

(2) Freedom from outgrown academic traditions as to educational values and principles of method which eliminates the evil of conflict between the fundamental principles of general and special method, on one hand, and between special method and criticism of teaching, on the other hand.

The objections to the scheme are equally obvious:

(1) Unless the education faculty includes the teachers of the practice school there is the objection:

(a) That special method and supervision of teaching are artificially separated if the latter is in charge of the practice school teachers, or (b) That supervision becomes academic, formal, and lacking in dynamic force if it is exercised by the education faculty alone.

(2) It fails to get any cooperation from the academic departments which through lack of sympathy keep many of the prospective teachers majoring with them out of the department of education.

2. Cooperation with the academic departments both for courses in special method and for supervision of teaching. This is probably the most practical of all the schemes proposed for the present conditions under which most departments of education are compelled to work.

Its advantages are:

(1) It secures the cooperation of the academic departments (at least theoretically) and forestalls the establishment of rival courses. (2) It preserves the natural interdependence of subject matter and method, on one hand, and of theory and practice, on the other hand. (3) Experience in supervision may react so as to vitalize the content and improve the method of the subject matter courses in the academic departments.

(4) It puts the education faculty in a position to appeal for concessions and adjustments for which it could not otherwise ask with any reason or hope of success.

But it is impossible to overlook some unmistakable objections to this plan:

(1) It is rarely, indeed, that the holders of academic chairs have had either the training in educational theory or the practical experience in teaching in elementary or secondary schools essential in the organization of a course in special method or in constructive criticism of teaching.

(2) Extreme specialization in advanced subject matter is likely to have given the academic specialist a warped perspective in the determination of relative educational values of subject matter within his own field, for purposes of secondary or elementary education, or as between his subject and other subjects of the curriculum.

(3) There is the danger that the best qualified members of the academic department will be more interested in research or in the advanced courses of the department and will therefore give only perfunctory attention to the education courses, or worse still, intrust them to poorly prepared or inexperienced subordinates.

3. Both the courses in special method and the supervision of teaching conducted by heads of the several departments of the school in which practice teaching is done, who are made regular members of the education faculty. This involves the limitation of the academic departments to subject matter courses as in the first scheme discussed above, but it differs from that plan in the utilization of the training school faculty for methods courses and supervision. There is much to be said in favor of this plan, especially in institutions which have well-organized practice schools or in urban communities which can afford to employ well-trained and specially qualified teachers in the public elementary and secondary schools.

In favor of this plan are the following considerations:

(1) It has both the advantages claimed for the first of the three plans under consideration.

(2) It insures a closer organic relation between the courses in general educational theory and the actual teaching experience of the students than any other plan.

(3) It avoids the danger of making the work in special method formal and academic and insures a greater concreteness and vitality through closer correlation with the practice work.

(4) It avoids the three objections offered to the plan of cooperation with academic departments.

(5) It places both method and supervision in charge of teachers who are specialists and whose main interests lie in the field of this work, and who are able to adapt it to the actual conditions and standards under which teachers must actually work better than could any teacher whose interests are chiefly academic and in a higher field. That is, it projects the preparatory work on the plane and in the field where the actual professional service is to be rendered later. Some of the weaknesses of this plan are indicated in the following points:

(1) It fails to secure the cooperation of the academic departments-an objection offered to the first plan discussed.

(2) It separates the special method from the advanced subject matter of its department and thus is deprived of the advantage of specialized scholarships-unless, of course, teachers may be secured for the supervision work who have specialized in the academic aspects of the work as well as in education. It is thus open to the criticism of sacrificing scholarship to professional interests.

(3) The employment of teachers in secondary or elementary schools to assist in the work of preparing teachers in university departments has the appearance of lowering the standards of the university. The obvious reply is that these teachers must meet the best university standards as to training and experience; an ordinary secondary teacher could no more do this work than he could occupy a university chair of physics or Greek.

THE RESULTS OF PRACTICE TEACHING ON TEACHING

EFFICIENCY.

By H. G. CHILDS.

During the six years covered by this investigation, 124 students have completed a course in practice teaching in the Bloomington (Ind.) High School under the supervision of critic teachers in the departments of English, history, mathematics, botany, geography, and zoology.

During the first three years of this period the course was completed in 12 weeks. Because of this, three separate student groups were able to receive training during any year. This accounts for the relatively large enrollment in these courses for these years. For the past four years the work has been carried on on the semester basis.

During the year 1913-14 practice work was offered in but one department, history. During the year just closed practice teaching has been offered in English, history, and botany. In the history department, however, the critic has devoted but one-half year to the work.

The table following indicates the distribution of practice teachers by departments:

The purposes of this study were to determine (1) the valuation the teachers who had taken the practice teaching placed upon it as an aid in later teaching; (2) the estimate city superintendents place upon the quality of teaching done by our practice teachers without previous experience during their first year in the public schools as compared with other teachers.

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