The Institute as Network: the Scottish Council for Educational Research as
a local and international phenomenon in the 1930s.
Martin Lawn
Centre for Educational Sociology
University of Edinburgh
Abstract
Established in the late 1920s, the Scottish Council for Research in
Education was a highly significant and influential institute for educational
research, both in the scope and the methodology of its work, in Scotland
and abroad.
It was one of the first of a new kind of institution; it signaled the rise of
specialized research institutes, outside the university yet closely connected
to academic work and to the governing of education, across the Western
world. Research Institutes are a flexible way of managing tasks and
influencing policy: they appear to conform to disciplinary procedures and
yet they are free to inquire and suggest policy directions.
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SCRE did not have a specialized staff of researchers but it did work
cooperatively, as a prototype knowledge network, linking together in
projects a wide range of Scottish academics, teachers and education
managers. Together, they were bound in a movement for reform and
experiment.
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The Scottish Council for Research in Education in Edinburgh, established
in the late 1920s, was a highly significant and influential institute for
educational research, both in the scope and the methodology of its
work. The context of its creation, the particular shape it took and its
connection to the new internationalism in this field are the subjects of
this paper. The period studied is the 1920s and 1930s. Research Institutes
are a flexible way of managing tasks and influencing policy: they
appear to conform to disciplinary procedures and yet they are free from
the University contexts and hierarchies of knowledge. For their customers
or sponsors, their attraction lies in their freedom to inquire and suggest
policy directions yet at the same time, working within recognized
disciplinary boundaries. Locating Institutes within their intellectual and
financial contexts, particularly the production and consumption of
practices of research and policy, is as crucial as any institutional history
set within national borders.
The formation of the Scottish Council for Educational Research in 1928 is
an important part of the development of the modern Scottish
educational system. By the mid 1930s, SCRE had become a leading
edge institute for innovative methodologies in educational research and
the lynchpin of wider moves to intelligence testing in Scotland. In these
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two sentences can be summarized the important story of the SCRE in
relation to the rise of specialized research institutes, outside the university
yet closely connected to academic work and to the governing of
education. They also reflect the way in which crucial innovations are
embedded within national narratives and excluded from global
significance and their inter-connected contexts. SCRE was also part of a
distinctive international trend in the rise of specialist scientific institutes,
the involvement of private [non state] monies and the arrival of experts.
It was part of the rise of specialist policy and evaluation functions in
education systems, dependent upon strong data flow upon which to
construct systems. SCRE’s early work on assessment methodologies was
crucial to the work of the important international study of assessment
organized by the International Institute at Columbia University, NY,
throughout the 1930s, with research institutes in Europe. The associated
Carnegie Foundation funding enabled an ambitious scale and depth to
its work. SCRE’s critical role in the development of intelligence testing as
a technology was important in the UK and, through this international
inquiry, with a wider world. The national and the international are closely
coupled in the formation and importance of SCRE.
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A National Research Institute
The Scottish Council for Research in Education was the first research
institute within the three reference territories within which it existed;
Scotland, the United Kingdom and the British Empire. Although it had a
precarious financial existence and was very short staffed, it fostered
some very innovative and valuable research studies, which had an
effect way beyond its borders. It was founded by the Educational
Institute of Scotland [the teachers’ union] and the local education
authorities in Scotland. The involvement of the EIS, a prime mover in the
SCRE, is very significant in the relation between teachers and
educational research and it followed on from an early research
committee founded within the EIS, some years previously. In the Scottish
histories of SCRE, and within current narratives of Scottish education, the
EIS is a major force in the development of education, and in this case, in
educational research.
There are three useful but short publications about SCRE that provide an
illustrative account of its activities and opinion about them [SCRE 1947,
Craigie 1972 and SCRE 1978] and upon which the following account is
based. Each of these accounts is a retelling of its history and were
published by SCRE itself. The agreed story of its creation is that the EIS
and the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland founded it
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jointly in 1927. They had organized a joint conference the previous year
on educational research in which the keynote lecturer, a Director of
Education, had pleaded strongly
for skilled, scientific, statistical investigation of all problems raised by
the [the key school examination] and for the organization of a body
of research workers who would think out the problems of method,
curricula and teaching technique [Craigie p3]
Both partners appeared to recognize that, post World War One, they
were in a new time, a time in which education was restructuring and
expanding, and which needed a good flow of data to be managed
effectively. Scotland had instituted university degrees for education in
1916.
The EIS had had a Research Committee since 1919, chaired by a
University of Glasgow lecturer, William Boyd; its main purpose was to
stimulate among teachers
An interest in the methods of educational research and keeping
them informed, by organizing lectures, and holding weekend
schools, of the results of experimentation and investigation. [Craigie
p2]
In November, 1919, Boyd invited teachers, in the EIS journal, to
communicate with the Committee if they were doing ‘experimental
work –however simple or unsystematic’ and promised that the Journal
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would publish records of research from Scotland and other countries,
and the Committee would try to begin ‘classes in Educational Sciences’
[and a summer school] [SEJ November 14, 1919]. In the following year, 6
thousand arithmetic tests were sent out to the teachers who wanted to
use them for their own assessment of the Qualifying Examination [for
entry to secondary school]. At the same time, 2,500 essays were
received to begin work on examining procedures. Boyd argued about
the value of educational research, teacher experiments and their value
in realizing professional power. In the early 1920s, the Scottish
Educational Journal [the EIS Journal] had regular essays and comments
about educational research, particularly on the comparison of
examinations and testing, trying to face the question ‘Will those who
have felt the difficulty of getting reliable marks let us know how the
problem has presented itself to them, and what they themselves try to
do to ensure satisfactory results?’[SEJ Vol 6 No52 1923 p1000] By 1925,
they were offering a prize to teaching college students for an essay of
5,000 words on ‘some aspect of school work involving personal
observation or/and experiment’ [SEJ Vol 8 No 41 1925 p1081]. In
comparison to England, the teachers Boyd addressed were more likely
to be graduates, which is probably the basis for their advanced work
and interest in experiment and reform.i
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So, it is not surprising that the Association of Directors of Education,
managing public education in the democratic local authorities, had
approached the EIS to explore the possibilities of cooperation in
education research. It was agreed that a Research Council should be
formed with the purpose of organizing and aiding the work of research
in Scottish schools, making grants to approved individuals for research
work, and publishing reports. In the same year, discussions took place
with the departments of education in the four Scottish universities and
with the four training colleges. However, even before it was officially
registered as a legal organization [as a limited company in December
1932], it received an invitation from the United States to join in an
international research project, a point to which I will return.
The interesting silence in this account is in the lack of place of the
universities; they are neither prime movers nor key partners in the
formation of the Council. There were four Scottish universities at this time:
Edinburgh and St Andrews were the first British universities to have chairs
of education, in the late 19thC, but were consistently hostile to
educational studies, and Glasgow and Aberdeen steadfastly refused to
establish chairs [and they did not appear until post 1945] [Bell 1975
p11/12]. However, individual professors were able to influence
educational research: particularly, Thomson and Drever [ a professor of
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psychology] in Edinburgh and McClelland in St Andrews. Thomson was
also Principal of Moray House Training College and McClelland was
Director of Studies at Dundee Training College.
SCRE was the first research institute of education in the United Kingdom
at a time when there were few departments of education in universities
and when the UK government, for example, had very few employees in
its central department of state in education. SCRE had a symbolic value
as well as a growing scientific production. Not until the late 1940s, did
England and Wales achieve its own research institute, the National
Foundation for Educational Research, constructed in a similar way, as a
form of cooperation between the teacher unions, the local education
authorities and the universities. Its emblematic value of the Council may
have masked its material existence. The Research Council was formed
with one part time Director, Dr Robert Rusk, a secretarial assistant,
Dorothy Charlton, and a clerk. [Dr Rusk was a graduate of the University
of Jena and was the SCRE Director from its beginning in 1928 until 1958].
Although the Research Council produced a series of publications and
major projects, it should be seen as less than a specific site of specialist
work than as a nodal point in a network of teachers and academic
workers. In 1930, it had no research workers or statisticians of its own
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although it had close support from its two founding associations in
voluntary service and
Its successes were made possible because teachers, in effect, did a
large part of the Council’s work for it on a voluntary basis.
[Thomasson ‘The SCRE and the Teacher’ in SCRE 1978 p20]
This relation with teachers, according to Thomasson, ‘gave the Council
phenomenal vitality in its earlier years’ [op cit p20]. Nisbet adds that
The reason why SCRE flourished in the 1930s was because of its
networks that it could draw on, - not just university people but a
number of teachers, head teachers mostly, some directors of
education, some university people, but very largely people from
[the four] training colleges - In Jordanhill, Moray House, Aberdeen
and Dundee. Although we tend to think of universities as the bases
for educational research, the real strength of educational research
in Scotland, in the early days, in the 30s, came from the training
colleges. The Universities were involved .. but the main workers in it
were the people in the training colleges. That is one of the main
differences between Scotland and England, the colleges
contained some quite outstanding research people .. the college
people put a great deal of effort in to it.{Nisbet 2003]
The EIS acted as its landlord until 1972. In fact, SCRE acted as a network
point and argued that its expertise, as the manager of a network in
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effect, allowed it to work more ‘intensively and extensively ‘ [Craigie p7]
than any one individual was capable of, ensured that a project
became a national project, and could undertake long term
investigations.
‘The Council helped the lone researcher by affording him expert
guidance, supplying him with literature and test material, subsidizing
his investigations and publishing his results.’[10th Annual Report,
reported in Craigie p7]
Finance was always short at SCRE.
‘For more than 20 years the Council was totally dependent on
financial contributions from the EIS and the education authorities.
Even as late as the mid ‘fifties, its budget was only £3000 a year,
barely sufficient to permit the employment of a part time director
and a small staff’ [Thomasson p20 in SCRE 1978]
The EIS supported the Council with a sum of between £500 and £750 per
annum; the Education Authorities paid 1/4 d [farthing] per pupil. The
average annual income amounted to £1500. However, the shortage of
money may not be the real question here. It is argued that
Rusk saw test construction as commercial, and he wanted
educational research to be academic, not contaminated by
anything like making money. In the 1930s it was possible to maintain
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that view. People would laugh today [at the idea] that you could
do research without money. But you could do it. [Nisbet 2003]
Morris concurs
‘Rusk had always set his heart against the Council being a test
producing agency, because he deplored such councils and
bureaux in America [Morris 1994 p87]
Within three years, from 1930, the Council had produced ten free short
research reports on subjects like individual differences, reading
comprehension, arithmetic in school, pupil attainment and school
leaving. it had produced project reports on colour blindness, a
Curriculum for Pupils 12-15 and Intelligence. It had a loan library for
researchers with technical journals; it compiled lists of Scottish theses in
education, and tried to assemble a master file of mental and scholastic
tests [SCRE 1948 p 14]. It managed major investigations on optimal
school size, comparisons with US children [using American tests], on
distribution of intelligence, and time allocation to school subjects. In
fact, it began a process of classifying pupils, conceptually refining pupil
categories, and even influencing class nomenclature [proposing
standard names for Scottish classes]. Data flowed out of Scottish schools
about how the selection processes of Scottish schools worked, how
much time was spent teaching subjects, and how to understand the
‘ability’ of the pupil. This information was to be used in the school system
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and indeed, formed the system as it began to shape the key categories
of it – pupils, ability, time, organization. Although this had cumulative
policy effects in the system, through the close and practical relations
with the teacher union and the local education directors, it is worth
noting that, in the formal sense, the Scottish office, the UK government
office for Scotland in this period, did not enter into this innovative relation
between professional experts and the effective government of
schooling.
The Scottish Office [in the 1930s] took [no part] at all [in the
Research Council meetings]. They thought that these researchers
were trying to tell ‘us’ what to do, and wanted no part of it. [Nisbet
2003]
Significantly, SCRE acted as the leading edge of the developing
expertise about testing. From the outset, it had used Binet tests, and then
revised a version of the 1916 Stanford Binet for Scottish use. As early as
1931, the Council determined to devise tests for types of ability to
‘enable pupils to be directed into the appropriate secondary school
course’, and did so for English, Modern Language, Mathematics,
Engineering, Science and Technical Subjects [SCRE 1948 p 18]. The
School Leaving Age was to be raised and tests were seen as a useful
way of managing this process of fitting the pupil to the curriculum and
teaching. The Council made information about these tests widely
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available. Copies of the Terman – Merrill Intelligence Scale were also
produced by SCRE for use by primary teachers and educational
psychologists. By 1936, the Council had been able, by extensive testing
of ability and attainment, to promote ‘the best combination’ [Craigie
p15] of intelligence tests, examinations and teacher estimates to
standardize the forecasting of the post-primary course best suited to the
individual pupil. However, although SCRE was heavily involved in the
new field of intelligence and ability, a key partner, Godfrey Thomson at
Moray House College, actually produced the tests used and sold them
profitablyii.
The 1932 Mental Survey was a considerable achievement by the young
research Institute, a model of extensive fieldwork, a research partnership
with teachers and an exemplar of policy focused research work.
‘The 1932 Mental Survey arose out of a proposal to hold an
investigation into the incidence of mental deficiency in Scotland to
match one in England on which a report has been submitted to the
Board of Education and the Board of Control. It was early realized,
however, that the amount of mental deficiency in the country
could be assessed even approximately only if the distribution of
intelligence was known for a whole age group.’ Craigie 1972 p 17
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The proposal came from the Professor of Psychology at the University in
Edinburgh, James Drever, and the test used was a Moray House test,
produced by Godfrey Thomson, a Professor of Education at Edinburgh
and Principal of Moray House from 1925 to 1951, a key writer on
intelligence in the 1930s. So, the scientific resources for this test were
already contained in the university at Edinburgh but the SCRE offered a
consolidating network of teachers and administrators and a flexibility of
operation, which the university could not. All pupils born in Scotland in
1921, nearly one hundred thousand pupils in state or private schools or
‘institutions’, were tested on a Monday morning in 1932.This was a
remarkable logistical feat, undertaken by an inexperienced Council with
its new network of voluntary support from the teachers and local
authorities. The tests were administered and marked by the teachers. It
has been argued that the key to understanding the logistical efficiency
and effective management of the testing programme on intelligence was
due to
.. a widely diffused dedication to, and understanding of, empirical
research in the Scottish profession [Hope in SCRE 1978 p23]
This point is echoed in the SCRE report in 1947, talking about the support
from the teachers union, the EIS; it refers to the ‘active cooperation of its
members’ and the
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.. offers of help from teachers in applying tests or supplying data are
never lacking [p38]
Hope further argues that the reason why Scotland was the first country
to undertake large scale testing of intelligence was the
‘The most ambitious attempt made by the Council to apply
intelligence tests, and so far the only nation wide survey ever
undertaken, was the application in 1932 of a group test especially
prepared for the purpose to a complete age-group [SCRE 1947
p25]
The consequence of this involvement with mental testing meant that
SCRE became a major source of expertise on mental testing and
promoted their use in the training of teachers and in the armed forces.
Inferences were drawn about intelligence and occupation and housing.
The sophisticated techniques which Thomson, Kennedy-Fraser and
their colleagues employed in the Intelligence of Scottish Children
1933 placed them in the forefront of social research’ [Hope, K in
SCRE 1978 p24] [The Intelligence of Scottish Children was the
published report of the Mental Survey.]
and
But for sheer hard thinking, lucidity of research design, and
credibility of findings there is really nothing in modern survey work
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which comes up to the standard of these studies [Hope, K in SCRE
1978 p24]
Nisbet argued that many of the standard research procedures used
since were pioneered in Council projects [SCRE 1978 p7] including the
standardization of research instruments, such as the wide range of tests
for ability and attainment. It was easy for a Director of SCRE to state that
Throughout its existence, the Council has had a distinguished record
of research. The authors of the Council’s early publications make up
a Who’s Who of the greats in this field – Drever, Vernon, Thomson,
McLelland and Boyd. These people influenced educational thinking
throughout the world. [SCRE 1978 p10]
It is very interesting that he then said that
Newton, Darwin and Einstein shaped the way people thought and
still think. So with education, the research carried out by SCRE over
the last half century has both provided a technology and set a
climate of opinion [SCRE 1978 p11]
It is worth emphasizing again the way in which SCRE worked at this time
which was, in its own words, ‘an adventure in cooperative research[
SCRE 1938]. In Dundee, a triumvirate of McClelland, Margaret Young,
Lecturer in Experimental Education, in Dundee Training College, and
Douglas Macintosh, Assistant to the Director of Education, County of Fife
undertook a major study on entry examinations to secondary school.
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They organized a large, disciplined group of people to undertake this
research, about 400 students from the College, about 80 Teachers in
local schools, 6 local Headmasters, and 14 College staff; in total they
gave voluntarily about 13,000 hours of labour. It is worth quoting the
report in which their organization was describedAll of these [ assistants] had previous instruction in mental and
scholastic testing but they were specially trained by Miss Young for
the application of the particular tests. Similar teams, trained and
supervised by Miss Young and Mr McIntosh, undertook the laborious
task of correcting the mental and scholastic tests, calculating the
intelligence and educational quotients and tabulating the results.
.. Throughout the sessions 1936-7 and 1937-8 this group met one or
two evenings a week from 6 to 9pm. Practically all members have
helped with the investigation from the start, and they have become
highly skilled workers who can handle most of the essential
techniques involved. They have been a most faithful and reliable
group, whose only reward, apart from their keen interest in the
research, has been a cup of tea in the middle of the evening’s
work…. A large amount of the grid making and other mechanical
parts of the working up of the results was undertaken by large
groups of students who gave us their help in free periods during the
college session. From time to time specially qualified and interested
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students have been trained to act as a group leaders, and these
have helped to ease the burden of the organization and
supervision of the various teams. Many of the have become
interested in special aspects of the investigation and have
undertaken to work up the results of these independently… At the
moment we have about 20 of these helpers who work largely at
home, but come up to the evening meetings from time to time to
discuss their methods and obtain help in any difficulties which they
have encountered. [SCRE/ IEI 1938 p12]
To undertake this research, a big undertaking, teachers were made the
core of the process, in effect, they would be a resource as educational
testers and researchers across Scotland for the next generations.
In fact, SCRE was an early scientific knowledge network in education,
linking together professional and lay expertise across the country in such
a way that it acted as single, consistent disciplined effect. It enabled this
small country to develop a model of genius. So, Scotland produced
SCRE and SCRE produced Scotland.
The story of SCRE, within its own official histories of this time, is of a very
Scottish institution. Very little reference is made to external events or an
international context. It is a clearly bounded story in which a country, its
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education and institutions, and its territory, constitute the case, to which
SCRE becomes the local solution. The ‘outside’ appears only as a useful
source of assistance or resource. This is the most common way,
especially in the early decades of the last century, to describe a nation’s
progress in education; it is an internal series of events, with its own
landmarks. In an apt eulogy for SCRE, after its first fifty years, Bryan
Dockrell, its Director in 1978, wrote
When the first meeting of the Scottish Council for Research in
Education took place on 23rd June 1928, a pioneering work was
begun. There were no similar organizations anywhere in the world so
no precedents could be followed. Instead, SCRE became a model.
Within two years, the Australian Council for Educational Research
was established and a little later, the New Zealand Council for
Educational Research was founded. Both consciously followed the
Scottish model. Nearly twenty years later, a parallel organization,
the National Foundation for Educational Research, was established
for England and Wales. [SCRE 1978 p10]
SCRE appears to have been the first research institute with its particular
features, yet the USA had semi-governmental statistics bureaux, which
had similarities to SCRE and had been founded some time before. Also,
the model for the South African Bureau, founded in 1929, had actually
been published by Malherbe [its subsequent Director and ex-Columbia
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student] in 1921 [Fleisch 1995 pp201-203]. SCRE was not the prototype
but a unit, which was part of its time, not only in Scotland but, especially
through American influence, across the world. It had a particular shape
and context but it was part of a recording and collection expertise,
gradually integrated within the government of education systems
[Johnson 1993, Larson 1984].
The National in International Networking.
From the moment of inception, it is clear that SCRE became part of an
international network of institutes and part of an international movement
of scientific testing and survey research. Indeed, it appeared to be
created and internationalized at the same moment. This was not
incidental or even a question of scientific ideas moving swiftly across
borders. It is a reflection of the new purposes of research institutes: they
had to describe and shape, mainly through numerical information, their
national systems for the new purposes of efficiency and performance in
education. Moreover it was part of a deliberate policy by wealthy
private foundations and powerful, world leading American institutions to
project their ideas into a wider world space, synonymously with an
awaking of American global interests and declining British and European
hegemony. One of the interesting elements in this account is the parallel
relation between some of the core network members, who, while they
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studied at Jena before 1915, moved into ambitious internationalism in
the 1930s via New York, a symbolic shift from a European sciences of
education tradition to American pragmatism in educational research.
The international context is part of the standard histories of SCRE, usually
via a vain but fairly struck note about its archetypal existence, a model
of possibilities for other societies. It could be argued to be the first of its
type. However, there is another aspect to its existence, which is not so
prominently featured. Reference was made to financial support for a
project on assessment financed from the USA. There is another element
in the stability and growth of SCRE, which connects it to the global
growth of research institutes, and that is its involvement, from the early
days, in international research studies with private foundation funding.
The Carnegie Foundation, an American philanthropic foundation, which
worked closely with the International Unit at the University of Columbia,
NY, financed SCRE in a sizeable way and it became a significant
catalyst in the foundation of research institutes elsewhere [Berman 1983,
Lageman 1989, Sealander 1997]
The histories of the Council always make reference to its ‘founders as the
EIS and the AEA [Association of Education Authorities]’ yet there was
another major source of income which is treated as a useful income
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stream but not as a crucial element in the continued existence of SCRE
and a major reason why it was able to mount innovative large scale
surveys. Within a year of its creation, the Council received a letter from
America
… the first contribution to the new Council from philanthropic
sources appears to have come from New York, in 1930, in the form
of a solitary invitation from the Carnegie Corporation for SCRE to
become one of the five European participants in an international
study of examinations.' [Watson in SCRE 1972 p14]
In the earlier history, it was described in this way
The Council was at an early stage recognized abroad as a body of
national and international standing, and in 1931 was invited by the
International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia University, New
York to undertake for Scotland investigations into various aspects of
examinations for the International Examinations Inquiry [SCRE 1947
p10]
Without funding from Carnegie/Columbia, it was unlikely that the
Council could have undertaken what was to be its major contribution
to educational research, the 1932 Mental Survey. Between 1931 and
1941, the Council received £5157 from New York, approximately £500
per annum, for its work on the International Inquiry. Its income from the
EIS and AEA probably amounted to £1000 per annum in this period
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[source - SCRE 1947 p 11 – ‘the average annual income of the Council
amounts to some £1500’].
In 1931, the [Carnegie Corporation] of America paid direct to the
Council the sum of £723 towards the cost of the Examination Enquiry
and a further £4334 through the agency of the International
Institute, Teachers’ College, Columbia University towards the same
end. [Craigie 1972 p8]
So, Carnegie was the third partner in SCRE during the 1930s, something
that is not fully acknowledged in the national narrative around the
groundbreaking institute. In reality, Carnegie Foundation, NY, has to be
recognized alongside the EIS and the Directors of Education as one of
the founders of the SCRE. Indeed the IEI and its funding was used to
develop a range of Scottish studies and it was essential to the 1932
Mental Survey [of every child in a single year group across Scotland
and the 1935-7 Survey]. The 1947 report makes this clear
Without these generous subsidies [from Carnegie] the major
investigations of the Council could not have been undertaken
[SCRE 1947 p11]
Morris [1994] highlights this problem for SCRE, which is not represented in
its histories, and which is overlaid by talk of its international standing
[within two years of its foundation]. Morris argues that in early 1932, ‘the
Council had reached a plateau. Finance was critical and the absence
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rate of members at committees was exceeding fifty per cent’ [Morris
1994 p86] And, luckily, on the 14th January, they received a letter from
Prof Paul Monroe, the Director of the International Institute, Teachers
College, Columbia, offering them $2500, paid through the Carnegie
Corporation, for SCRE to join the International Examinations Inquiry.
Carnegie could not help them outright, like it was doing with Australia,
because Scotland had its own Carnegie Trust, but Monroe was a trustee
of the Carnegie Corporation and overcame this problem. Professors
Thomson and Drever followed up the letter with Monroe: this may
explain why Drever is regarded in the official history as proposing the
Mental Test Survey. Morris concludes by suggesting that ‘the Council’s
acceptance saved it from possible liquidation’ [Morris 1994 p86]. This
can’t have been easy: the Director, Rusk, was opposed to the test
producing bureaus of the USA and even though the secondary school
entry exam [the Qualifying Examination] was causing problems
throughout Scotland and the new problem of the secondary school
examination was the subject of the IEI, it was the financial inducement
that pushed them along. [Morris 1994 p87]. Interestingly, Monroe had
been made a fellow of the EIS, a sponsor of the SCRE, in 1925, so past
contacts probably are at work behind this offer of support.
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The links with Carnegie were fortuitous for SCRE. Without Carnegie
funding, its ability to develop its expertise and undertake large scale
research would have been very limited in the 1930s. It had the time and
could link the personnel but not the organizational resource costs it
needed. The general impression gained by SCRE’s official histories or
reports is that Carnegie was just philanthropic and recognized a body
of international standing when it looked for one. Yet, in this wonderfully
naïve view, there is little room for an analysis of Carnegie’s motives and
mission: its Trustees interest in the ‘Anglo-Saxon tradition’ {Glotzer 1995
quoting Keppel], in modernizing the Empire and governance by expert,
were either ignored or were a commonplace shared by the key SCRE
professionals.
The International Inquiry in Education was to involve key experts from at
least ten countries over a ten year period: apart from the USA, they
were all in Europe – Switzerland, Germany, France, England, Scotland,
Finland, Sweden, Norway and Holland. Major academics, such as
Michael Sadler, Edward Thorndike, Paul Monroe, Percy Nunn, Pierre
Buvet, Robert Ulich, Celestin Bougle, Godfrey Thomson and Isaac
Kandel, were closely involved as individuals or through embryonic
institutes, with this network. The advantages that SCRE had, apart from
the considerable expertise of Thomson and Drever, was a cohesive
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organization, extensive support from the teachers in the EIS and local
authority managers, and an experience of working together. This gave
it an advantage over other societies which were not yet ready to
create specialist institutes. SCRE began to establish the dominance of a
Scottish tradition of experimental investigation in education
Thus by 1930, the scientific approach to educational research was
firmly established …[it] saw research as a specialized activity, based
largely on psychology and statistical analysis, requiring extended
training, producing findings which were supposed to tell teachers
and policy makers what to do’ [Nisbet 1999 p9]
Social scientists in the UK and the USA have always taken a strong
interest in the development of their subject, particularly its financing and
sponsorship [Lageman 2000, Fisher 1978, 1980, 1983, Bulmer 1984]
something which their counterparts in history of education and
educational research may one day emulate. Jennifer Platt, an expert on
the rise of sociology, stated (1996:142): "The institutions which fund
research are an important part of its social context." Another way of
approaching this question is to ask ‘ which institutions are created and
funded to do research’? The relation between funding and purpose has
been crucial to the financing of significant institutes and to their
research and publications, especially since the 1930s. Often this research
work has been treated as part of a national narrative about the
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development of systems of education or within histories of national
organizations. In the case of SCRE, as a new model of research institute,
funding by a powerful teachers union and the local education
managers is significant; it shows how the professional users in education
needed a flow of information about what was happening in the system
and what works or could work in it. SCRE was the source of data about
the system and a specific problem, the demand for secondary
education. The way it began to conceptualize this problem – as a
question of intelligence – was a modern idea. Not ruling elites but honest
meritocrats would result from effective inquiry by mental testing.
Carnegie, the other funder, had an interest in ‘race’ and advancing the
interests of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ lineage and the approach of eugenicists –
a preference for action ’dominated or backed by white, Anglo Saxon,
Protestant descent’ [Lagemann 1989 p30]. Even within a loose and
contextualized definition of ‘intelligence’ and eugenics, Carnegie
trustees
‘worried about and financed projects that were intended to help
preserve the racial purity of American society’ [Lagemann 1989
p81]
In a very natural way that is without conflict or politics, SCRE found itself
acting as a major source of expertise into systems of education,
distribution of intelligence and technologies of assessment, which were
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simultaneously modern and imperial. They became part of a wider
network of Empire institutes of educational research, funded by
Carnegie, in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. [White 1997,
Glotzer 1995, 2000, Fleisch 1995] and part of a wider association of
expertise on testing and selection [Hoffman 1962, Chapman 1998]
Conclusion
Kandel, the comparativist who played such a key role in the
deliberations of the IEI, described national education systems as being
determined by the ‘cultural, social and political traditions’ of the
people they are designed for [Kandel 1936 p52]. This was the view
taken by the historians of SCRE, who have tended to treat SCRE as a
bounded Scottish phenomenon, created out of the genius of its
theorists, blessed by the skills and willingness of a well trained teaching
force, supported by its local education managers: in addition, in a small
country they had an opportunity to network together and a silence
from the four Scottish universities who were generally either indifferent or
hostile to educational studies and education professors [Bell 1975 pp1213]. Without question, SCRE was a highly significant agency in the
institutionalization of the new technologies of selection and
differentiation in Scotland. It was a prototype knowledge network, with
its Director, institutional contacts and key professors acting as nodal
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points in the modernizing and reforming movement in education, an
aim set for it years before by the EIS, concerned about the lack of
radical reform.
SCRE can be seen as a specific fusion of two research traditions; firstly,
the older Germanic tradition of experimental research, always
attempting to rationally and pragmatically engage with ‘problems’,
was melded with the contemporary American influence and
experience on testing and measurement [part of a general approach
to practical action, described as a ‘functional reality’ Nisbet 1999 p6].
Scotland was a meeting place of that Germanic experimental
tradition and the American measurement tradition and the way
that it differed from England was that there these matters did not
arise - the content and methods of education were to be decided
by authority, by people who could write about it like Percy Nunn. A
whole lot of English writers, who influenced English education, did it
as philosophical writing in which they went to first principles and
tried to decide what should be done. In Scotland, an empirical
approach, linked to the Scottish enlightenment of the 18th Century,
.. . directly drew from the Germanic tradition, because Thomson
and Rusk and all the others went to Germany for their doctoral
studies. [Nisbet 2003]
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This ‘meeting of minds’ would surely have helped the way that SCRE
acted as an indispensable agent in the internationalizing of American
education and its methods and concerns [Smith and Hamilton 1980]. It
was part of the expansion into new markets of the American
experience with testing and surveying. It was sustained in part by
American Foundation finance, provided with international contacts by
it and treated as a skilled and resourceful partner by much more
powerful forces than itself. Its histories only broadcast the myths of
Scottish excellence, which serve to weaken the very real successes it
had. Like all myths of course, they reflect real circumstance as well as
imagined qualities. Although it was not intended to be a testing bureau,
its lack of finances, as well as a Scottish interest in new ways of selection
in its meritocracy, forced it to act like one, selling on converted
American tests. It became part of, what can be discerned in retrospect
as, an American sphere of influence, concerned with educational
efficiencies, differentiation and the new technologies of research in a
new internationalism.
SCRE was part of an early international movement across national
education systems, which connected adaptable and expert individuals
and institutes. Experts were drawn from the university sector but usually
supported by flexible organizations, able to organize national projects.
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Through its early history, its partners in the International Examinations
Inquiry, its close relations with the new Commonwealth institutes pf
research, and the continual presence and support of the Carnegie
Foundation [and the enormous international influence and contacts of
the International Institute at Columbia], one can see the emergence of
an international organization in education based upon networks and
institutes. They drew upon academic and professional support, and
even state support, but they acted on issues, which were financed by
independent contract or from private income. They produced work
that could be used by policy makers or system managers, and in doing
so, tended to produce statistical or survey based quantitative data or
actual materials [tests and related information]. Without Carnegie
support, much of the research would not have happened in the
effective way that it did, as its scope was costly to manage.
So, SCRE was a ‘Scottish’ research institute, and possibly a kind of
prototype organization for educational research, one which
transformed the subjects and modes of inquiry of research, and which
acted as a new form of governance, connecting research and policy.
It was more than a site or a cluster of experts, it was an early knowledge
producing network, which while later replaced by professional experts,
looks increasingly modern in structure. It is argued here that it was a
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major lynchpin for an internationalization process in educational
research which is the forerunner of its formal postwar institutionalization
in international agencies.
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i
Graduates in Teaching
Scotland
1920
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Men
49%
Women 12%
15.5%
5.3%
1938
Men
70%
Women 32%
16%
14%
Source- Wake 1984 p81
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