Principles of Method Applied in Concrete Situations

Abstract

Contact with many teachers having a wide variety of training and experience has convinced the writer that a common weak ness is inability to apply educational principles to daily situations. Perhaps no neglect is so far reaching in its disastrous effect as the general failure to establish correct habits of study. Be lieving that this inability is due to lack of insight rather than to indifference, the writer has attempted in this discussion to illus trate, by applcation to concrete situations, arising in a series of fourth-grade geography lessons, various educational principles and methods. An outline of general and specific aims is followed by a dis cussion of these aims and some general principles involved in the two lessons which are repeated in full. Pages 31-40 give the stenographic reports of these lessons, paralleled by detailed dis cussion of points illustrated. The pages and lines have been numbered so that the exact principle can be quoted and the correct reference cited for par ticular cases of procedure. Having followed this plan for two lessons, we thought it would be best to give a description of the subsequent lessons with the discussion of the psychological laws and of the educational principles involved.