Methods of Learning and Teaching

HODGKINS (46) gave a summary description of all the new methods of teaching with their applications to the social studies, and concluded that the experimental studies in comparative teaching methods have been thus far rather indecisive. Hockett (45) annotated research studies in the field of social studies in the April 1937 number of the REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH. In the February 1938 issue of the REVIEW, Wilson (113) did a similar survey of research in the social studies. In both of these summary statements, a special section of the chapter was devoted to methods. Horn (47), in his report in 1937 for the Commission on the Social Studies, attempted to canvass all the recent literature (up to 1937), including unpublished theses, on methods of teaching and learning in the social studies. Phillips (80), in a chapter in the 1937 yearbook of the National Council for the Social Studies, reviewed ten research studies on methods carried out from 1928 through 1935. He listed sixty-three additional studies dated from 1921 through 1935. In this same publication Davey and Hill (17) evaluated six studies, ranging from 1927 to 1931, on the effectiveness of the so-called Morrison unit-mastery plan as compared with other methods of instruction, and reached the conclusion that the superiority of any one method had not been established.