American Educational Research Association Division B

American Educational Research Association (AERA) Division B focuses on the field of curriculum studies. The origins of Division B stem from 1963, the year AERA President N. L. Gage appointed a five-member division planning committee. One member of that group, John R. Mayor, was asked to chair an organizing committee for “Curriculum and Objectives,” which became the original title for Division B. Mayor recommended four others to serve on the division's organizing committee, of which Vernon Anderson and Robert Gagne were selected. With a budget of $100, the division held its first meeting at the 1964 AERA annual meeting in Chicago. As a founding division, Curriculum and Objectives was assigned its letter designation alphabetically (following Division A: Administration). That same year, John I. Goodlad was elected the first Division B vice president. B. O. Smith served as the division's first secretary.

A statement written by Anderson and Gagne at the division's founding sought to specify efforts to promote research in the area of curriculum and objectives. With an emphasis on interpreting research for school practice and increasing the general public's appreciation of curriculum research, the group sought to schedule regular meetings to present research and to establish more interdisciplinary approaches to curriculum inquiry. Since its inception, Division B has reflected the multiple and often competing goals of the curriculum field at large. In particular, the division was conceived not only as a venue for research. Its charge also included cooperating with other groups, interpreting research for practitioners, and helping the public understand the applications of research. Casting this broad net fit well with the field's long-standing efforts to employ an expert model in the work of curriculum professionalsa model that relied on interdisciplinary knowledge to solve practical problems. From Edward L. Thorndike to Franklin Bobbitt, those who shaped the early development of the field aspired to the use of research and professional expertise as a guide to educational practice.

This expert model was particularly strong pre-ceeding and during the decade in which Division B was founded. The inclusion of the term objectives in the original division title signaled an affiliation with the practical affairs of schooling. At that time, objectives were a key element in systematic approaches to program development, and the [Page 31][Page 32]word alone raised images of highly trained experts guiding school districts through the process of defining their objectives. In the aftermath of Sputnik, moreover, school curriculum was perceived as woefully out of date, whereas faith in modern techniques promised ways in which to help schools catch up with the times.

By the 1970s, however, the expert model began to fall out of favor among Division B members. Tensions arose from the very purposes that Anderson and Gagne's statement sought to embrace. On the one hand, many curriculum scholars were drawn to emulate the social sciences. Under the sway of AERA's emphasis on positivism and experimental science, these scholars found themselves identifying not with school practitioners but with researchers in the cognate disciplines of psychology, behavioral science, and sociology. For this group, the need for rigor came to trump the need for relevance.

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