ERIC Number: EJ790972
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008-May
Pages: 34
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0195-6744
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Education, Science, and the Politics of Knowledge: The American Educational Research Association, 1915-1940
Mershon, Sherie; Schlossman, Steven
American Journal of Education, v114 n3 p307-340 May 2008
In the early twentieth century, a new alliance formed between university-based scholars who dedicated themselves to the scientific study of education and public school officials. This alliance centered on the proposition that applied research could advance the professionalization of schooling and become a prestigious academic specialty in its own right. The American Educational Research Association (AERA) emerged to further these dual goals. This essay analyzes changes in the ideological and organizational dynamics of the AERA between 1915 and World War II. By 1940, the AERA's founding faith in a unifying professional identity had been undercut in two ways: first, by a weakening of the Progressive Era paradigm of a socially relevant science of education, and second, by an intensification of divisions among the constituencies that the AERA aspired to serve. Relying heavily on archival data, we track the multiple sources from which this gradual distancing of research from the politics of education occurred. (Contains 19 notes.)
Descriptors: Educational Research, Educational History, Politics of Education, Public Officials, School Personnel, Ideology, Organizational Change, Psychometrics, Technology, Social Sciences, Professional Occupations, School Administration, Professional Associations
University of Chicago Press. Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005, Chicago, IL 60637. Tel: 877-705-1878; Tel: 773-753-3347; Fax: 877-705-1879; Fax: 773-753-0811; e-mail: subscriptions@press.uchicago.edu; Web site: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu
Publication Type: Information Analyses; Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A