TEACHING, METHODS OF, for countries other than the United States see EDUCATION. The following section deals with a special phase of educational methods in the United States.
American students of education define teaching as the learning process. To promote the learner's growth is the teacher's objec tive, but growth, it is contended, results only from the activity of the learner himself. American educational theory looks upon the direct imparting of knowledge as a subordinate rather than a major function of the teacher. Especially does it condemn the "lecture method," and in the elementary and high schools any thing resembling this method has long been taboo. The use of textbooks has been subjected to serious criticism, although the prevailing "pattern" of teaching still comprises (I) assignment of a textbook lesson, (2) independent study of the lesson by the pupils and (3) a class meeting or recitation for testing the pupils' efforts to learn the assigned materials.
Late in the '9os, the Herbartian "developmental" method was brought to the attention of American teachers through the writ ings especially of Charles DeGarmo and Charles A. and Frank M.
McMurry. As crystallized in the "five normal steps of the recita tion," developmental teaching aimed to lead the learner to make his own inferences and formulate his own conclusions, after a careful study of the facts in each case. This method also em phasized the importance of having the learner conscious of the aim or purpose of each lesson.
The "problem" method, in part an outgrowth of the Herbartian movement, gained its chief support from other sources. The theories of Froebel, at first limited in their application to the kindergarten (q.v.), tended to emphasize throughout the field of elementary education the importance of "doing" as contrasted with "knowing." Manual training, introduced as a complement to and corrective of mental training, was gradually integrated with the latter; problems of construction in the workshop provided a field of application for the lessons of the classroom, and the needs of construction furnished motives for learning new les sons. John Dewey's insistence that school is life rather than merely preparation for life also encouraged the educational use of problems that arise in the everyday experience of children. The development of a dynamic psychology added strength to the growing conviction that knowledge may be most effectively brought to the learner, not in a logically organized form, but rather in the context of real problems and as a means of meeting real needs and conquering real obstacles.
The "project" method has been the natural outcome of this increasing recognition of the problem as the basic unit in teach ing and learning. Long used in schools of architecture, the term "project" was taken over by secondary vocational education about 1912 and applied particularly to "home projects" in agriculture and the household arts. The conception of the project as a rela tively large problem "carried to completion in its natural setting" was amplified by Werrett W. Charters and John A. Stevenson and applied to educational fields other than strictly vocational.
Under this conception, a large problem arising under conditions closely approximating those of real life may become the centre around which can be organized some of the skills, facts and principles the learner is expected to master.
A less restricted conception of the project method has been developed by William H. Kilpatrick. In Kilpatrick's theory, the essential characteristic of a true project is not to be sought in any set of objective conditions, but rather in the attitude of the learner toward his learning activities. Some advocates of pro ject teaching hold that the teacher's primary duty is to watch for these learning activities, to seize upon such of them as are worthy, and then to guide the learner toward their realization. According to this view all learning activities should originate in the learner's own spontaneous purposes and any imposition of learning tasks by the teacher would be an injustice. This limitation obviously excludes assigned lessons or prearranged courses of study. In fact a radical wing of the project group would have the school curricu lum grow from day to day—even from hour to hour—in response to the interests and purposes of the learner.
While the theory of project teaching has had a pronounced vogue and is, indeed, the central and dominant doctrine of the "Progressive Education" (q.v.) movement, certain other pro posals, not in harmony at all points with the project theory, have attracted attention. The plans for intensive individual instruction proposed by Mrs. Helen Parkhurst (the Dalton plan) and Carle ton W. Washburn (the Winnetka plan) give a central place to carefully organized and closely articulated subject-matter assign ments which the learner masters seriatim, progressing at his own rate but having advice and guidance from the teacher.
Closely related to these plans are the numerous devices for promoting individual learning developed as a result of the testing movement : practice exercises which provide drill on the essen tials of arithmetic and language ; remedial exercises to correct the weaknesses revealed by diagnostic tests; and "self-administered" measures of various types which enable the learner to note the progress that he makes. These devices provide "problems" for learning, as do the assignments of the Dalton and Winnetka plans, but not the type of problem that the project theory empha sizes.