Educational reform: Implications for educational psychologists

Abstract

The Holmes Group report, titled Tomorrow's Teachers (1986), and the report of the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, titled A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century (1986), contain major reform proposals that have implications for educational psychologists. To understand the nature of these proposals, we performed a content analysis of the Holmes and Carnegie documents and constructed a 149-item survey instrument. Three separate mailings were conducted to solicit volunteer respondents from the initial Holmes Group, Division 15 of APA, and the Teacher Education Council of State Colleges and Universities (TECSCU). A principal components analysis with varimax rotation was performed on data collected from 1039 respondents, and three factors were found to underlie the survey instrument: Incremental Changes, Sweeping Changes, and Financial Changes. A multivariate analysis of variance on the three factor scores revealed that the Holmes Group more strongly supported Incremental and Sweeping Changes than did TECSCU respondents, and that Division 15 members more strongly endorsed Sweeping Changes than did TECSCU. Recommendations are made for involving educational psychologists in the reform process.