ASCD (Association for Supervision and curriculum development)

Origins of the Organization

ASCD was the fruit of the merger of the National Education Association (NEA) Department of Supervisors and Directors of Instruction and of the Society of Curriculum Study. Both of these organizations began in the 1920s.

The supervision group, founded in 1921 as the National Conference on Educational Method, brought together school leaders who were particularly interested in the potential of William Heard Kilpatrick's “Project Method.” Several years later as the Project Method waned in popularity, the organization recognized the value of highlighting various general teaching methodologies. In 1929, the conference became a department of the NEA with changed name. Its membership was never large, but most of its members were school supervisors. College and university faculty members as well as state level instructional supervisors constituted two other significant but smaller constituencies. Its major publication was The Journal of Educational Method, subsequently retitled Educational Method. In 1928, ASCD began the [Page 52]publication of a series of well-regarded yearbooks. It held twice yearly meetings, at the meeting of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) in the late winter/early spring and at the NEA annual meeting in the summer.

Especially important to this group was James F. Hosic, formerly a supervisor of English in the Chicago public schools and the founder of the National Council of Teachers of English. As a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University, he came to believe that Kilpatrick's Project Method was one that was appropriate for use in almost every course offered at every school level. Hosic called what became the organizational meeting of the conference and, later, as a faculty member at Teachers College, he served as the group's executive secretary and editor of Educational Method.

The second party to the merger that created ASCD was the much smaller Society for the Study of Curriculum. This group's beginnings can be traced to a very small and informal discussion group convened by L. Thomas Hopkins, then a consultant to the highly publicized Denver Curriculum Program. The discussants were six school curriculum leaders who met at the 1924 AASA meeting and who agreed to invite a few colleagues and to meet again the following year during the AASA convention. This informal group slowly added members, and in 1929, it formally organized itself and, after two name changes, it took the name of Society for the Study of Curriculum. Like the Department of Supervisors and Curriculum Directors, the society met annually at the AASA winter/spring convention.

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