Commission of Professors of Adult Education [CPAE] Records 75 (with text)

Box 1, Folder 2, Set 2/4

The Adult Education History Project

Based on Information in the Syracuse University Library Archives

Translated for the WWW by Roger Hiemstra

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75

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Set

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NXSV88-A18._

Main_entry-

Commission of Professors of Adult Education [CPAE].

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Records, 1953-1984, 1960-1983 (bulk).

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Bio/hist_note-

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Organizational Records.

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Correspondence, January-December, 1968.

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May-July, 1968.

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19680501

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19680730

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Correspondence.

Education-

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Theory building.

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Ingham, Roy.

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Professional Society of Adult Educators.

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Box 1, Folder 2, Set 2/4.

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In addition to following normal manuscript citation conventions, include these elements when citing records found "electronically" through The Adult Education History Project: Main entry, Title, Item number, and, if a specific image is being cited, Component number. Mention, too, that the record was found in "/history.html, an Electronic Source for Syracuse University Library's database for archives and manuscripts".

OCRd_text

{7:75:856:I:0,0:2544,3300} NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY AT RALEIGH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE AND LIFE SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF ADULT EDUCATION Box 5504 Zip 27607 May 22, 1968 M E M 0 R A N D U M To: Dr. Hamilton Stillwell Dr. Wesley Wiksell Dr. Eugene Johnson Dr. George Russell Dr. Edgar J. Boone Dr. A. A. Liveright Dr. Robert Boyd Dr. Malcolm Knowles Dr. Wayne Schroeder Dr. Glenn Jensen From: E. H. Quinn Subject: Professional Standards Committee of AEA As requested at the end of our committee meeting, I have attempted to re-state the tentative functions of the organization eliminating duplication of ideas and expanding the statement as it seemed appropriate. The revised functions are Attachment I and are still considered tentative. Further revisions may be concerned with: (a) whether the 20 functions do incorporate all the ideas from the original 32 functions; (b) whether any of the statements distort or lose any of the original intent; (c) whether any of the functions upon examination are inappropriate to the organization and thus should be eliminated; (d) whether further refinement or clarification of the wording can be suggested. Attachment II is the list of 32 functions developed during the meeting. I am sending these along in the event yours is mislaid and particularly for those who were not able to be present. Please let me know your suggestions relevant to any of the above points. I will be happy to do a further revision incorporating your wishes.

{7:75:857:I:0,0:2544,3300} (Attachment II) FUNCTIONS OF ORGANIZATION 1. Look at and examine professional education. 2. Seeking increased recognition and support for adult education in the framework of multi-purpose agencies. 3. To develop a legislative program that is broadly based and looks at legislative needs in a broad educational sense - in a way that transcends separate organizations. 4. Design and execute action programs. 5. Formulate and propose legislation. 6. Develop a systematic publication program. 7. Formulation and execution of research programs. 8. Formulate and police or pass on adherence to high professional standards. 9. Develop a high degree of professionalism by developing programs which would result in ever-increasing numbers of practitioners able to comply with membership standards. 10. Developing a high degree of professionalism among members. 11. Society should serve as consultants to related adult education organizations. 12. Develop program of consultation within specific problematic areas. 13. Seeking foundation-support for special graduate study and exchange of administrators. 14. Develop and maintain interest in international adult education problems. 15. Establish and maintain linkage with adult education in other countries. 16. Develop exchange programs with related organizations.

{7:75:858:I:0,0:2544,3300} 2 (ii) 17. Communicate the "career idea" to relevant publics. 18. Develop a strong public relations program. 19. Create a national school for adult education - a center and a library. 20. Develop a comprehensive fellowship program. 21. Designate distinguished professorships 22. Develop a fund to support on an annual basis professional leaves for advanced study in adult education. 23. Society ought to develop means for determining the status of the field - changes, needs, manpower pools, etc. 24. Establish an accrediting agency for graduate programs in adult education. 25. Standardize systems for collecting data. 26. Create a conceptual framework for collecting data for the field. 27. Should develop some kind of strategy for dealing with the federal government. 28. Develop strategy to deal with other disciplines and to encourage other disciplines to become familiar with adult education. 29. Create a national center for adult education research. 30. Create an interest in constantly searching for common terminology. - common concerns in the field. 31. Is there a publication role? 32. Create task force groups for program development for new programs of the federal government - talent bank.

{7:75:859:I:276,480:2019,2454}July 23, 1968 Dr. William Griffith Assistant Professor Department of Education University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois 60637 Dear Bill: After reading the proposal for the Seminar on Theory Building and Application in Adult Education Research, (July 8, 1968 version) I decided to make a second and more extensive effort to reshape its purposes and procedures. Evidently my thoughts on this matter as expressed in my letter of March 27, received no encouragement from other members of the Committee. I am making the assumption that the cause of this reaction (non-reaction?) was the lack of clarity in the brief original statement. If my assumption in wrong, what follows will be of little utility with respect to influencing the direction of the seminar. In order to present my case, I shall first describe how a science may be developed, state some assumptions relative to the state of this development for adult education, and finally, how we might proceed in our efforts. My approach to this matter can be expressed most clearly by quoting from Herbert Simon's Administrative Behavior (2nd ed.). In his efforts to develop a science of administration, Simon believes that "before we can establish any immutable principles [or theory] of administration, we must be able to describe, in words, exactly how an administrative organization looks and exactly how it works. As a basis for my own studies in administration, I have attempted to construct a vocabulary which will permit such description; and this volume (Administrative Behavior) records the conclusions I have reached. These �conclusions do not

{7:75:860:I:240,255:2019,2631}Dr. William Griffith July 23, 1968 Page Two constitute a "theory" of administration, for except for a few dicta offered way of hypothesis, no principles of administration are laid down. If any "theory" is involved, it is that decision-making is the heart of administration, and that the vocabulary of administrative theory must be derived from the logic and psychology of human choice." Simon also described an approach to the development of a science. "Before a science can develop principles, it must possess concepts. Before a view of gravitation could be formulated, it was necessary to have the notions of "acceleration and weight." The first task of administrative theory is to develop a set of concepts that will permit the description, in terms relevant to the theory, of administrative situations (underlining mine). These concepts, to be scientifically useful, must be operational, that is, their meanings must correspond to empirical & observable facts of situations." (Underlining mine.) Simon proceeds to describe what in his judgment, are the important phenomena to observe in the study of organizational behavior. "What is a scientifically relevant description of an organization? It is a description that, so far as possible, designates for each person in the organization what decisions that person makes, and the influences to which he is subject in making each of these decisions." The process which culminates in the formation of principles, or theory, begins with observations. (I use Phillip's definitions of concepts, principles, and theory in this discussion - see Bernard Phillip's Social Research.) After making observations, we then discriminate among them along some appropriate dimension or scale. Next, various observations are combined to form classes. The labels we assign to these classes are our concepts. We state hypotheses, or statements relating two or more concepts. If not rejected, we gain increased confidence about the "truth" of these statements, and at some arbitrary point, call them principles. When a system of principles is derived, we call that principle which is superordinate to all others in the system a theory (simply a principle whose concepts are at a very high level of abstraction).

{7:75:861:I:243,147:2094,2865}Dr. William Griffith July 23, 1968 Page Three I hope I haven't belabored what is probably an all too familiar schema. But it is essential for what follows that we possess this common frame of reference. The starting point, taking our cue from Simon, is to select from the descriptions of adult education those that are "scientifically relevant." For administration, Simon selected decision-making as the most essential activity. Is there some central theme (themes?) in adult education comparable to that of decisional processes in organizational behavior around which we might build our science? What would be our answer, or answers, to the question, "What is the heart of adult education?" Once this question is answered, even tentatively, we can then proceed to develop our vocabulary. (To repeat, Simon derived his vocabulary from the logic and psychology of human choice.) Is there some comparable concept from which we can derive the vocabulary of adult education? Various observers have described the process of adult education and possibly amidst this extensive collection of data may be descriptions of those activities that constitute the essence of this process. But the same condition seems to prevail for adult education as Simon found for administration, we do not yet have adequate linguistic and conceptual tools for realistically and significantly describing even a single adult education agency - describing it in a way that will provide the basis for scientific analysis of the effectiveness of its structure and operation. (A study which, in my judgment, is in the right direction is that of Burton Clark, Adult Education in Transition.) If we asked an observer to look at adult education activity and describe what he saw, he might say something like this: "I see people enrolling in education programs; making an effort to learn, and on occasion withdrawing from the effort; other people attempting to help them learn; still other people hiring teachers, making budgets, writing brochures, evaluating courses, raising funds, making plans, issuing directives, acquiring physical facilities, and attempting to tell others about adult education. The observer might also add that it makes considerable difference how these activities are performed depending on the type of organizational setting in which they occur, i.e., the church, public school, or industry.

{7:75:862:I:219,267:2019,2757}Dr. William Griffith July 23, 1968 Page Four My assumptions are: 1. No central theme of adult education has gained sufficient consensus to allow for a group approach to theory building. 2. In the absence of this central theme, no linguistic conceptual tools have been developed that are scientifically relevant to this task. 3. Data now available provide a basis for making a beginning effort to identify a central theme. Perhaps an example will serve to clarify the approach I am recommending. Let us assume that my first assumption is not true, and that we agree that program planning is the heart of the adult education process. Alan Thomas' chapter in Adult Education: Outlines of an Emerging Field of University Study, "The Concept of Program," together with the work of several other persons, e.g., Boyde Bruce and Cyril Houle provides a basis for beginning our task. Verner's description of the concepts of method, technique, and device provides valuable conceptual tools for this effort. Thus, accepting the "theory" (probably it would be more accurately called an assumption) that program planning is the heart of the adult education process, a beginning in the development of a science of adult education has been made. Given this "theory", what should the seminar's purpose and procedures be? They might look something like this: A. Purposes: 1. Order the principles of program planning into a logical system. 2. Specify the vocabulary and concepts about program planning; i.e., what basic process, like "human choice" can provide the vocabulary for describing the situations of program planning? 3. To identify phenomena of program planning that are not accounted for by existing principles. 4. To recommend strategy for

strengthening the present theory.

{7:75:863:I:294,255:1989,2676}Dr. William Griffith July 23, 1968 Page Five B. Procedures: 1. Papers presented by those who have already made contributions to the stated purposes. 2. Discussions with other adult educators who have conducted research. 3. Critique by persons expert in conceptual thinking and logic (Examples: Gerald Coombs, B. 0. Smith, Herbert Simon, and Abraham Kaplan.) If the Committee did not believe that the concept of program planning was at the heart of the adult education process, in other words, the Committee agrees with my first assumption, the Seminar agenda would be changed as follows: Purposes: 1. To examine the descriptions of adult education to determine what process is essential to its structure and effectiveness (Of course, there may be more than one "central theme" identified by different persons necessitating the development of consensus on one of these themes.) 2. To identify a basic process, like "human choice" from which the vocabulary might be derived for describing the situations in adult education. 3. To outline strategy which will lead to the development of the linguistic and conceptual tools required to build a science of adult education based upon the agreed upon central theme. (Subsequent conferences would have an agenda similar to the one proposed for dealing with program planning.) Procedures: 1. Papers presented by adult educators which describe particular phenomena in adult education; e.g., what participants do, what teachers do, and what administrators do. 2. Discuss with other adult educators and with persons expert in conceptual thinking.

{7:75:864:I:0,0:2544,3300} Dr. William Griffith July 23, 1968 Page Six 3. Make plans to achieve the third purpose. These purposes may appear to be too elemental. But if the foregoing analysis in accurate, they are necessary first steps to be taken. This leads me to my prime criticism of the proposed agenda-- The procedures are premature. I agree with the purposes expressed in the proposal, but, accepting my statement about the process of theory building and my assumptions, different procedures are called for. We cannot build, much less refine, theories in adult education lacking the requisite identification of what we consider to be the central theme in adult education and the linguistic and conceptual tools. I suspect we would learn a considerable amount about. the topics scheduled for discussion, a knowledge objective, but I do not see us achieving our primary purpose of developing theory, which a problem-solving objective. I propose that subsequent seminars be planned for an intensive analysis of some particular theory or set of principles. This detailed analysis, say during a two or three day period, is necessary for: 1) a thorough understanding of the theory, its concepts and relevant data, 2) a critique of the theory, 3) the design of research required to test various hypotheses dealing with specific questions about the theory, and, 4) suggestions for dissemination to other researchers and practitioners. Because I feel strongly that the idea of a seminar to develop the body of tested knowledge about adult education has great potential, I hope that the counter-proposal I have made will be given serious consideration by the members of the Committee. Sincerely yours, Roy J. Ingham Associate Professor RJI:db

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{7:75:867:I:105,477:2184,2586}Standards on Criteria for Membership I. Educational Criteria a. doctorate b. masters degree in adult education (at least 18 credits as defined below) or 6 courses (18 credits) distributed in no more than 3 areas and where no more than 2 courses (6 credits) are in supporting areas. The areas are: 1. Comparative, educational sociology, history, social Issues. 2. organization, supervision and administration 3. curriculum, program planning evaluation 4. learning, human development, instruction, methods, socio-psychological areas of adult education. II. Experience a. full-time employed as an adult educator b. has held such a position (II-a) for at least one year III. Philosophical Commitment a. gives compliance with philosophical statement of the Society showing a broad commitment to the field of adult education. This may be done through the use of a credo of the Society. b. express willingness to participate in an initiation ceremony 1 The position is defended by the agency as being an "adult educator," or the functions of the position can be so described that the Standards Committee can describe it as being an "adult educator" position. 2 The purpose of expressing it in this manner is an attempt to break down the agency-based orientation now existing in the field of adult education.

{7:75:868:I:135,306:2022,1344}IV. Performance a. pass an entrance examination b. prepare a scholarly paper which is published in a recognized scholarly journal c. evidence of leadership in developing and executing some noteworthy and contributing project to the field of adult education d. active membership on one or more professional committees or work task groups In the field of adult education V. Recognized as a Professional a. three letters of recommendation from those qualified to pass on the applicant's professional qualifications in the field of adult education VI. Dues a. special dues are paid at the time of being admitted to membership in the society

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Created on May 21, 2002

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