308 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 



In Glasgow the resources of the Department of Psychology are open 

 to students who are interested in educational investigation of a psycho- 

 logical character. Dr. Watt's work on Memory and the Psychology of 

 Thinking is well enough known to indicate the various directions which 

 that might take. 



Under the inspiration of Mr. W. L. Winch, the Teachers' Guild has 

 formed a Research Committee, which receives and discusses abstracts 

 from the psychological journals, and assists in the prosecuting of re- 

 search in the schools. Mr. Winch has devoted himself to worK 

 of the kind for several years, entirely at his own expense. He has 

 already published many papers on the subject, and last winter he gave 

 a course of lectures, under the auspices of the London County Council, 

 dealing with the results of the experimental investigation of educational 

 problems, not only so far as they concern the teacher, but also those of 

 the administrator — e.g., the relation between bodily growth and mental 

 progress in schools, athletics and school progress, when children should 

 begin school, &c. 



Mr. H. S. Lawson, of Wolverhampton, has also conducted im- 

 portant inquiries partly in connection with the British Association and 

 partly privately. His private inquiries aim at (1) obtaining a hierarchy 

 of coefficients of correlation for tests which ' tap ' the higher mental 

 levels ; (2) showing that simple mental tests designed to expose natural 

 ability (inborn) are a better criterion of merit than the ordinary official 

 examination which is prescribed for boys who desire secondary educa- 

 tion, and who present themselves for the scholarship examination at 

 Wolverhampton Grammar School. 



This review of the present position of the movement towards research 

 into educational problems is necessarily incomplete. It considers the 

 subject from a point of view which many will consider very partial and 

 tentative, and, even within that narrow range, probably much has 

 escaped its attention. Nevertheless the report shows that a considerable 

 amount of work is being done in almost all the directions in which out- 

 of -school research can help to solve the teacher's problems — the psycho- 

 logist in particular is busy with investigations which concern the process 

 of instruction very intimately. Indeed, it seems almost necessary to 

 point out that there is just a danger of forgetting the sociological and 

 ethical aspects of the educational problem — aspects not less important 

 than the psychological. The whole field of experimental pedagogy 

 has been virtually left out of account in this review, and, although 

 we may expect to gain much by a study of the results of laboratory work, 

 it is, in the Committee's view, quite likely that the gain to educa- 

 tional science will come as much from a study of the methods of the 

 laboratory worker as from his achievements. In any case, those results 

 will have to be selected and adapted to the special needs of the teacher 

 and to the actual conditions of class-room work before they can be 

 incorporated into any systematic body of doctrine which will in the 

 future stand for the science of education." But class-room investigations 

 that will bring results of any permanent value must be conducted with 

 as near an approach to the rigours of exact science as the conditions will 



