Goodlad, John I.

John I. Goodlad (1920) is a leading educational researcher whose work has had a major impact on school reform, professional development, and curriculum studies. His studies have illuminated many components of education—from teacher training programs, to school administration, to classroom [Page 414]interactions—that affect curriculum implementation. Goodlad's primary object of inquiry has been the site where the curricular rubber hits the road—the school. His 30 books and hundreds of articles describe the arc of a long, varied, and deep engagement with the scene of schooling, or as he has put it a, “Romance with schools.”

One could say that Goodlad's career mirrors the evolution of the institution to which it was devoted. Beginning as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse, he went on to become a leading figure in the effort to understand and improve the modern school (i.e., postagrarian, comprehensive), whose conventions quickly became so familiar as to be invisible. What grasp we now have of these commonplaces is thanks in large part to the remarkable career of Goodlad. He not only participated in the Conant report—which had a major effect on the secondary school curriculum—but also spearheaded the “Study of Schooling,” among the most ambitious onsite studies of U.S. schools ever conducted.

Goodlad was born and raised in British Columbia. He left Canada for graduate study at the University of Chicago and as it turned out, an academic career in the United States. After completing his doctorate under the supervision of Ralph Tyler, Goodlad held a series of positions in teacher education, eventually becoming the head of Emory University's Division of Teacher Education. He then moved to University of California, Los Angeles, where he served as University Professor, the director of the lab school, and dean of the Graduate School of Education. Later, at the University of Washington, he founded the Center for Educational Renewal.

Goodlad has produced one influential work after another, from The Nongraded Elementary School that significantly challenged prevailing conceptions of school organization, to Educational Renewal: Better Teachers, Better Schools that proposed a route to educational reform based on whole-school emergent energy and commitment to improvement. None, however, has been more important than his pathbreaking A Place Called School. Named American Educational Research Association's Outstanding Book for 1985, this work is still today one of the most referenced accounts of the cultures and practices in schools across the United States. The monumental “Study of Schooling” on which this book was based included thousands of students, parents, teachers, and administrators from a broad cross-section of schools and blended qualitative with quantitative approaches. Goodlad's findings include, for example, that classrooms are loose-knit rather than tight-knit groups and that vocational and academic tracks for high school students are often mutually exclusive. Through this and other studies, Goodlad has contributed to curriculum studies a considerable amount of data about the functions and cultures of schools.

Goodlad has also been a leading thinker on school renewal, a term he prefers over the more common reform. To Goodlad, reform signals mandates imposed from outside, detached from the complexities of schools and the realities of implementation. Renewal focuses less on particular changes—such as involving teachers more in policy decisions or adopting specific curricula—than on the ongoing ability to change. Renewal is therefore devoted to creating a culture of change within the school, one that originates with, and is accompanied by, commitment from those involved.

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