How do you prepare educators so they can truly make a difference in our schools? This is a fundamental question. We want and need outstanding educators who can optimize the learning of all students.
For 100 years, the UMass Amherst School of Education has been seeking
answers to this question and its many offshoots. The School today is
a powerhouse, with three academic departments and four research centers
focused on assessment, international education, school counseling outcomes,
and education policy. External funding for research is high. The school
has a top-tier/top 50 rating among education schools in the country.
“We have synergy at the School of Education — our research emphasis
is wholly integrated with our teaching and outreach missions,” says
Dean Christine McCormick, who took over the reins at the School in
2005.
As the School has evolved and grown, it has also remained true to its
origins. The practice of educating educators first came to the Massachusetts
Agricultural College (“Mass Aggie” to friends) in 1907 as part of a
wave of innovations sweeping the country during the Progressive Era.
The School of Education is still at the forefront of trends and initiatives
that both influence, and are influenced by, the larger society.
“Public education is basically a policy-driven enterprise,” says faculty
member John Carey. “If you are not ahead of the curve, you can’t be
effective.”
The approach to teacher education was well ahead of the curve from
the outset, according to retired professor of education William Kornegay.
He points to the work and outlook of William Richard Hart, named in
1907 to head the new Department of Agricultural Education. Kornegay,
whose specialty is history, describes Hart as “the professor to specifically
train teachers of agricultural education.” Hart was a pioneer in applying
educational psychology to the teaching of agriculture.
Those early ideas have come full circle: Dean McCormick is also an educational psychologist, with expertise in studying learning strategies and assessing their effectiveness. As McCormick oversees an era of transformation and growth—one-third of the 65-member full-time faculty have been hired in the last three years—she envisions a school that continues to frame the important issues of the future. If much has changed to keep up with the times during the last century, one thing has not: the School’s commitment to innovation.
The School was born of an era inspired by nature, imbued with an ethic
that looked to agrarian life as an incubator of virtue. The small land-grant
college took up the challenge of blending theory and practice to further
rural education, beginning a long tradition ofleadership as an innovator
in pedagogy.
Retired professor Raymond Wyman, now 91 years old, remembers the 1930’s
when he was an undergraduate. Wyman, who taught high school science
before getting a graduate degree, came back in 1949 as a faculty member.
He experienced the influx of soldiers coming home from World War II
and the attendant rapid expansion of the university. By 1956, when
the baby-boom generation was reaching school age, the burgeoning demand
for teachers prompted a thorough rethinking of a mission that at its
core was to prepare education professionals.
This is when Furcolo Hall was built, along with Mark’s Meadow School,
designed to be a place where future educators could observe in action
the very best teachers the university could recruit. Wyman helped design
the school based on a concept he saw in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. It includes
an “observation corridor” running the length of the building with one-way
windows looking into the classrooms. Only experienced teachers worked
at Mark’s Meadow, Wyman said, and they received $1,000 in addition
to their regular pay for being “on display.”
Wyman, whose field was educational media, was among the first to use
video cameras and closed-circuit monitors as part of teacher training.
Today the school continues to utilize the latest educational technology,
such as web- and pod-casting to connect students and educators all
over the world, and robotics to encourage girls to excel in mathematics
and science.
Wyman was still on the faculty when the School of Education experienced
its next major growth phase, under the leadership of Dwight Allen,
in the late 1960s and early 1970s, adding 50 professors to the roster.
Allen attracted a legion of energetic and innovative people as well
as a steady stream of grant money. Allen, now a professor at Old Dominion
University in Virginia, says his “number-one priority was combating
institutional racism.” Of the 800 or so doctorates conferred during
his tenure roughly a quarter went to minorities, he said. The most
famous of these was entertainment icon Bill Cosby ’72G, ’76G, with
whom Allen would go on to co-author American Schools: The 100 Billion
Dollar Challenge, a book about reforming education from the ground
up.
Allen’s time “was a big growth phase with lots of creativity and a
great springboard for where we are now,” said Joe Berger, who heads
one of the three departments within the school. “A lot of lessons were
learned about pushing the envelope and not following the existing conventions.”
The challenge afterwards was to figure out which pieces of that could
be sustainable, something “on which you can build.”
Now celebrating a century of research and teaching about the art and science of processing and passing on knowledge, the School of Education is still anticipating rather than reacting to the times. Looking at the sweep of 100 years of research and teaching the school has to build on, “while we are proud of our legacy,” says Dean McCormick, “we are continually transforming ourselves and our contributions to educational practice, and that is a very exciting place to be.”
