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RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY

Research Concerning Education

Educational research in the 1940s indicated a need for the reformation of high schools and the expansion of junior and community colleges. Responding to such studies, traditional educators demanded substantial amounts of further research; before initiating major changes schools needed to be sure that such reforms would produce the desired results, they maintained. Thus, research on American education became a growth industry in the 1940s, as well as the subject of many philosophical debates over the role of American education.

Research Areas

The bulk of the burgeoning discipline of educational research during the decade addressed four areas: school administration, curricula, student development, and pedagogy, or teaching methods. Debates soon formed over the changes and implementation of ideas posited in these four areas. The war had demonstrated the need for an expanded scientific community, but educators argued that overemphasis on science in the schools would come at the expense of a liberal education.

Educational Sociology

Researchers attempted in the 1940s to develop appropriate sociological techniques with which to study various aspects of education. One of the leaders of the movement was British scholar Karl Mannheim, who published several influential works of research about education, the last of which was Diagnosis of Our Time (1943). The ultimate goal of education, Mannheim reasoned, was to produce citizens capable of fitting smoothly into a particular national culture; there-fore, the type of education stressed in the schools should reflect the type of society for which students were being educated. During World War II the global conflict was between democracy and totalitarianism; Mannheim stressed that in such a sociological climate educators were crucial in creating a future generation of democratically trained and inclined individuals.

Cultural Bias?

In 1944 Who Shall be Educated?, by W. L. Warner, R. J. Havinghurst, and M. B. Loeb, reported research done at schools in the Midwest, the South, and New England to prove that middle-class white children did better in school because tests were biased in their favor; the solution, they suggested, was for teachers to increase their efforts to make the classroom more democratic and offer greater opportunities for social mobility.

Stereotyping

Later, Allison Davis's Social Class Influence upon Learning (1949) documented the stages by which elementary students became aware of social class. Her argument was that teachers and schools tended to reinforce the beliefs and habits of the white middle class to the exclusion of other cultural attitudes. Thus educators were blamed for the high failure rate of black and/or lower-class students. Davis found that the educational system tended to increase stereotyping, but she was uncertain about what actions would best alleviate the situation. As is often the case with educational sociology, the problem was noted, but no solution was offered.