STUDIES AND TESTS Pupil-administration is one of the fields in which this science has been productive. It was discovered that a great many pupils make progress through the school more slowly than is normally to be expected. If pupils enter the first grade of the elementary school at six years of age, they ought to reach the beginning of the fourth grade at nine years of age. As a matter of fact, many pupils do not reach the fourth grade until they are i o, 11 or 12 years of age. Such pupils are said to be retarded. The facts of retardation were clearly pointed out and extensively studied and radical reforms were introduced in the organization of schools in order to remedy the difficulty. The technique of comparison which was developed by studies of retardation was the technique of statistical comparison. It is one of the most widely employed devices of scientific study of school problems.
The Binet Scale.—A second group of scientific studies em ployed tests of various types. Certain of these are designed to reveal differences in the abilities of individuals. Binet, the noted French psychologist, discovered that there are certain kinds of knowledge which the ordinary child of three normally pos sesses, such as the knowledge of the names of different parts of the body. The child of four years of age possesses additional items of knowledge and so on. By arranging the items found to be normally exhibited by children of various ages, it is possible to devise a scale by which normal intelligence can be determined. The so-called Binet scale was perfected in 1905. It was intro duced in America and is now extensively used. To arrive at a simple expression for the results of measurements made with the Binet scale, the so-called intelligence quotient, usually written I.Q., was devised. The I.Q. is arrived at by dividing the score made on the Binet scale by any given child by his chronological age. Thus a child who passes the 1 o-year old standard test and is 1 o years of age has an I.Q. of 1 oo per cent. The child who passes only the nine-year test and is 1 o years of age has an I.Q. of 90. The child who passes the 11-year test and is 1 o years of age has an I.Q. of 11o.
Following the appearance of the Binet scale a large number of standard tests were devised. Series of examples in arith metic were prepared and the rate and degree of accuracy with which these were solved by pupils in different grades were deter mined. The average achievement of pupils in different grades is a reasonable standard of expectation for all pupils of similar advancement in the school. In this way standards of achievement and standard tests have been produced in all the fundamental school subjects.
Thorndike and Ayres.—In addition to standard tests, scales have been devised in various fields. Thorndike devised, in 191o, a scale for judging specimens of handwriting. He collected a number of specimens of handwriting of varying degrees of excel lence. Thorndike secured the judgments of expert teachers of handwriting and arranged specimens in a series of 18 steps. With the aid of this scale, scores can be assigned to any specimen of handwriting, progress measured and the writing of different indi viduals compared. Ayres devised in 1915 a scale of words to be taught in spelling. He secured exhaustive tests of the words used in correspondence, in the English Bible and in an edition of a news paper. He then required the pupils in the various grades of a number of schools to spell the words found to be in common use. He was able at the conclusion of his tests to make lists of words in common use which should normally be mastered by pupils in the various grades. The preparation of this spelling scale has completely transformed the methods of selecting words used in spelling lessons in schools.
The World War gave a great impetus to the testing move ment. The psychologists of the United States employed the expe rience which had been accumulated regarding methods of test ing general intelligence and special abilities and devised series of tests by means of which they were able to select abnormal indi viduals and eliminate them from the service and to select for special forms of service those who were competent. So success ful was the application of tests during the war that industry has adopted very similar methods, and schools have adopted tests for determining the grading and classification of pupils. In fact the measurement movement in education is regarded by some of its exponents as the essential part of the science of education.
A reaction has arisen against the testing movement on the ground that it has led certain educators to adopt a fatalistic or deterministic theory of education. It has been held by some ex tremists that a poor score on certain tests is sufficient indication of deficient mental ability to justify exclusion of the pupil making such a score from the advantages of a higher education. The opponents of educational determinism have adduced evidence to show that poor scores are often traceable to lack of educational opportunity rather than to native mental deficiency. It is con tended on such grounds that even pupils with low scores in tests have a right to the opportunities of higher education.
Laboratory Experimentation is a type of scientific study of educational problems which developed more slowly than did standard tests but has proved to be highly productive ; it origi nally borrowed its methods from experimental psychology. Labo ratory investigations of educational problems are either gen eral, dealing with such matters as the laws of learning, or specific, dealing with the habits cultivated in the acquisition of handwriting or reading or some other school subject. One of the earliest investigations of the general type was that of Bryan and Harter. In 1897 these investigators measured the progress from week to week of several persons who were learning to send and receive telegraphic messages. They found that the rates of progress in learning to send messages were not the same as the rates of im provement in learning to receive messages. Furthermore, they found that there are periods in learning to receive messages where for a time the learner seems to make little or no progress.
General Principles.—Later investigators have discovered many important facts about the learning process. It has been found that in committing to memory a poem or series of passages it is better to read repeatedly the whole poem or series of passages rather than to commit to memory one line at a time. "Whole learning," as the method of reading the poem through is called, has the advantage of giving the learner from the outset the general idea which the passage is intended to convey and pre vents the mere revolving of attention around a single line. An other important discovery is that pauses between periods of learning are advantageous. Long periods of continuous effort in learning evidently set up certain conflicts which defeat the learn ing process. It has also been found that mere repetition without careful attention to the material which is being repeated is not favourable to learning.
Transference.—In addition to the establishment of such gen eral principles, experimental investigations have measured the extent to which knowledge or habits of action acquired under one set of conditions will transfer and guide the learner under other sets of conditions. A vigorous dispute has been carried on between those who interpret their results in regard to transfer as showing that all learning is specific, that is, that there is no transfer and those who find that the human mind is capable of many forms of generalization. Extreme believers in the neces sity of specific training hold, for example, that every possible number combination to be encountered in practical life should be explicitly attended to and taught in the schools. On the other hand, it is believed by those who find evidence of generalization, that when a pupil has learned the meaning of number combination by dealing with a limited number of cases, he will be able to carry over the general principles of combination into number fields in which he has had no specific training.