A Chronological Table Would Be Better
This history surveys 100 years, from about 1880 to 1980.
Landsheere signals it is from pre-1990 to the 1970s, and that sums up his style: obtuse; that of someone who is cramming and not enjoying his writing. He constantly interpolates references, as if to prove he did his homework and he has never heard of an appendix of notes.
Here is an example from pre-1900 “…longitudinal observations of individual children were recorded during the nineteenth century …” Yawn. Case studies of children were made more than 100 years ago, but individuals rather than classes… Disinterested research is good because it reduces bias, but this comes over as uninterested research.
With relief one finds a table of chronology of events – all too brief before the author communicates his ennui again in turgid prose.
We want to know what happened from 1900 to 1930? You got it. Strangely we don’t get 1900 to 1920s – maybe he is mixing his chronological periods to keep us awake. Anyway, quantitative research flourished from 1900 to 1930 underpinned by statistical theory and mental testing and assessment, survey techniques, development of curriculum and evaluation – this is an interesting section relatively free of his reference-dropping. Did you know that “the modern questionnaire technique was developed by Stanley Hall” and “… that what is obvious for an adult is not for a child”? When was that, you ask? I bet you think it was the twentieth century, which we are supposed to be surveying at this point. No; it was in the 1880’s. Oh that Landsheere, he keeps you on your toes, he does. Why make history easy by a chronological retelling of it, when you can mix it all up? I expected a list of events and dates and I get a tangled thread of ideas, published papers by people I have never heard of without clear explanation of what it means.
His period 1930 – 1960 could be summed up with the statement that sociological studies ruled.
Alas, nothing is written simply in this article. Of course, our author covers to the late 1950’s. How late? Well, 1960. So, why say “to the 1950s” when he could say “to 1960”? I am being a pedant because it is poor structure like this that makes his task a a writer harder and our task as a reader so taxing. Anyway, computers enabled researchers to do large scale research from 1960s using new statistical techniques and other tricks.
So, at last, the final decade ends with 1980 (“the 1970s”). Crisis: is traditional educational useful? Is there enough to go round? Are schools effective? Hey, what's changed?
This paper is poorly structured and its information is obscured with scholarly interpolation. What did I learn? Not a lot.
The course E835 has a concise and cogent summary which flatters the paper it’s sourced on.
My Diversion into the epistemology of nomothetic and ideographic complementation. Piaget in a paper in 1972 showed that nomothetic and historical approaches are complementary. What a shock that must have been. Now, I did not know that nomothetic was a word. Surely Landsheere will explain? No. So allow me to have shot at it.
There is irony here because the antonym is ideographic meaning particular events or facts as appear in a history. So the article is ideographic. Nomothetic is about the power of naming or listing; a search for principles to explain the Universe. Was it shocking that Piaget thought nomothetic and historical approaches are complementary? Yes, because they are opposites of each other, one being nomothetic and the other ideographic. Yet both ideas are epistemological – they try to understand the limits and validity of knowledge.
I don’t know anything yet about Piaget or what he promulgated but I suspect that Piaget considered nomothetic and ideographic approaches to research were on a continuum and thus complementary. Look at a set of events in history and you may conclude a principle. Did not Darwin do that at Galapagos when he developed his theory of natural selection, and contemporaneously but independently didn’t Wallace do the same thing; from ideography may come nomothetism? Similarly, if you have principles, one can look again at history and see particular incidents and facts in a new context. Maybe that is what Piaget came to see. I am surprised it was considered new, but then re-discovery is indeed what nomothetism is about.
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