HE publication and wide circulation of the monographs of the National Survey of Secondary Education offer an appropriate background for a statement on research needed in secondary education. The survey itself, comprising in the aggregate more than 4,400 printed pages, is a collection of important research studies relating to organization of schools, the pupil, administrative and supervisory problems and personnel, the curriculum, and the extracurriculum. It is to be noted that a number of important fields were omitted from consideration in the survey. These omissions were made by intention. Among them are history of secondary education, objectives, finance, training of teachers, and buildings and equipment. This limitation on subjects is carried through also in the present publication.

This bulletin, in fact, follows rather closely the plan and content of the survey monographs. For instance, quotations and summaries of statements regarding needed research taken from the monographs appear from time to time in these pages. Where, as happens with most of the monographs, no listing of research studies is included, attempt has been made to draw out the implications and suggestions for research studies from the findings reported and the procedures employed. The writer, while feeling free to draw his material from numerous sources, nevertheless has throughout maintained the viewpoint that this discussion is principally in the nature of a follow-up of the National Survey of Secondary Education. No effort is made to outline the research undertakings in detail. Such an attempt would carry the project far beyond

its purpose and would, besides, be unnecessary, since students of education who desire to undertake any of the studies here suggested can secure assistance in planning their investigations from numerous specialists in the various fields covered. It is hoped that the problems recommended may be judged to be both important and susceptible of study by techniques already available or possible of development on the basis of present information.

The numbers and titles of the survey monographs and the names of the authors follow:

1. Summary. Leonard V. Koos and staff.

2. The Horizontal Organization of Secondary Education—A Comparison of Comprehensive and Specialized Schools. Grayson N. Kefauver, Victor H. Noll, and C. Elwood Drake.

3. Part-Time Secondary Schools. Grayson N. Kefauver, Victor H. Noll, and C. Elwood Drake.

4. The Secondary-School Population. Grayson N. Kefauver, Victor H. Noll, and C. Elwood Drake.

5. The Reorganization of Secondary Education.

ing, O. I. Frederick, and Leonard V. Koos.

Francis T. Spauld

6. The Smaller Secondary Schools. Emery N. Ferriss, W. H. Gaumnitz, and P. Roy Brammell.

7. Secondary Education for Negroes. Ambrose Caliver.

8. District Organization and Secondary Education. Fred Engelhardt, William H. Zeigel, Jr., William M. Proctor, and Scovel S. Mayo.

9. Legal and Regulatory Provisions Affecting Secondary Education. Ward W. Keesecker and Franklin C. Sewell.

10. Articulation of High School and College. P. Roy Brammell. 11. Administration and Supervision. Fred Engelhardt, William H. Zeigel, Jr., and Roy O. Billett.

12. Selection and Appointment of Teachers. W. S. Deffenbaugh and William H. Zeigel, Jr.

13. Provisions for Individual Differences, Marking, and Promotion. Roy O. Billett.

15. Research in Secondary Schools. William H. Zeigel, Jr.

16. Interpreting the Secondary School to the Public. Belmont Farley.

17. The Secondary-School Library. B. Lamar Johnson.

18. Procedures in Curriculum Making. Edwin S. Lide.

19. The Program of Studies. A. K. Loomis, Edwin S. Lide, and B. Lamar Johnson.

20. Instruction in English. Dora V. Smith.

21. Instruction in the Social Studies. William G. Kimmel. 22. Instruction in Science. Wilbur L. Beauchamp.

23. Instruction in Mathematics. Edwin S. Lide.

24. Instruction in Foreign Languages. Helen M. Eddy.

25. Instruction in Music and Art. Anne E. Pierce and Robert S. Hilpert.

26. Nonathletic Extracurriculum Activities. William C. Reavis and George E. Van Dyke.

27. Intramural and Interscholastic Athletics. P. Roy Brammell. 28. Health and Physical Education. P. Roy Brammell.

Throughout the present publication the monographs will be referred to by the numbers assigned to them in the above list without further detailed reference.

20178°-38-2

• II •

SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF RESEARCH IN

SECONDARY EDUCATION

Study of Practices

UCH of the educational research conducted at the

MUCH

present time is characterized by a strong emphasis on the study of practices. This undoubtedly marks an advance over the earlier condition when the predominating stress was on the prejudice or opinion of the person or persons expressing a judgment without much regard to the securing of any considerable amount of objective evidence in support of that judgment. A sort of validation is supplied by common practice since it reflects both a theory in which many have believed and an experience in which many have participated.

The study of practices is of two principal types. The first of these, the mere study of status, takes a group of schools of a certain size, or type, or class, and studies them with a view to learning and reporting what their practices are in a given field. It often proceeds on the tacit assumption that frequency of occurrence of a given practice is indicative of desirability of that practice. In the other type, the schools to be studied are selected on the basis of certain criteria of excellence applied to them. In the study of outstanding schools as well as in the study of unselected schools the implication is present that the best practical ways of prosecuting any given educational undertaking are in operation somewhere; the problems confronting the research worker are to identify the schools and study their practices.

It would appear, however, that theoretically better ways of doing the job may be possible even though these better ways may not have been put into operation by any school, or, if practiced, are so difficult to find that they are not uncovered in the schools selected for study. A study of what should be may be justified by fully as convincing a train of logic as a study of what is or what has been.

The greatest need in educational research at the level of the secondary school is for evaluation of present and projected procedures. Obviously, evaluation may and does come through study of practices. Obviously, also, it may come through experimentation under which modifications and controlled conditions are introduced in the practices to render the study more significant. There is a sort of threelevel evaluation suggested here, the first level being a study of results of practices in any and all schools as found, the next being a study of outcomes of pratices in schools selected for their outstanding qualities, and the third a study of educational effects under experimental conditions set up especially for the purpose of testing theory.

Certainly it would be unfortunate if the impression were left that educational experimentation is not taking place at the present time. Much experimentation is being conducted. However, the experimental undertakings have often been narrowly limited in scope as regards both phases investigated and number of individuals or units cooperating in supplying the data. Some of the most significant experimental studies have been made by students of education who were engaged in preparing master's or doctor's dissertations; consequently, the facilities in time and money were all too often inadequate for a thorough canvassing of the problem under consideration. Generally speaking, the investigations were well planned; the techniques employed were excellently conceived and effectively executed; but the scope of the studies was so restricted as to allow only tentative conclusions usually hedged about by warnings not to apply the