Two specific questions guide this study: (1) Did teacher-centered instruction persevere in public schools during and after reform movements that had as one of their targets installing student-centered instruction? and (2) If the answer is yes, to what extent did it persist and why? If the answer is no, to what extent did instruction change and…

Although there is a renewed interest in having reasoning skills taught in schools, current methods of organizing, staffing, and governing classrooms retard the teaching of critical thought. The limited impact of progressive educational reforms, an earlier movement for critical thinking, is assessed. Needed policy and research directions to improve…

The changing role of the kindergarten in U.S. educational history illustrates the ways in which educational reforms are altered as they survive. From a reform aimed at altering the relationship between school and community, kindergarten has become essentially a way to get children ready for first grade. (SLD)

This book investigates teaching practices before, during, and after reform impulses in the 20th century aimed at changing what teachers routinely do. Patterns of stability and change over a 90-year period are developed from evidence from a wide variety of sources, including classroom photographs, textbooks and tests used, student recollections,…

This second edition updates material in the first edition for another decade to 1990 and responds to criticisms of findings in the first edition. This book investigates teaching practices before, during, and after 20th-century reform efforts aimed at changing what teachers routinely do. Patterns of stability and change over a 100-year period are…