National Society for the Study of Education

The National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE) was an organization of scholars, professional educators, and policy makers. Among these members, the NSSE strove to create a vigorous, inclusive dialogue that addressed educational problems and focused on the relationships between pedagogical research, policy, and practice. To catalyze this dialogue, the NSSE hosted meetings, engaged in interorganizational conferences, and published a two-volume, annual yearbook.

Having originated from the National Herbart Society (1895–1901), christened for the revolutionary educational thinker, Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841), the NSSE was founded in 1901 and published its first yearbook in 1902. Each yearbook was thematically centered on a particular educational issue that interested the general public and the NSSE's members. For instance, the 1983 Individual Differences and the Common Curriculum issue contained articles about the mul-tifaceted nature of individual differences and how curricular designers can accommodate student variability. Similarly, the 1988 Critical Issues in Curriculum edition contained articles about tracking, testing, textbooks, and other compelling educational dilemmas and practices. Initially, such topics were investigated and written about by an assembled committee, but later authors were solicited to individually contribute. The ultimate goal for the volumes was to provide a foundational perspective of the topic.

To provide this foundational but pluralistic perspective, the NSSE has featured such eminent and diverse authors and editors as John Dewey, E. L. Thorndike, Lawrence Kohlberg, Benjamin Bloom, and Jerome Bruner. Such efforts resulted in much praise for the yearbook from the academic and educational communities. Despite these efforts, the NSSE had been occasionally criticized for being too conservative, dismissing progressivism, and having an overly cabalistic and cloistered board of directors. But these problems were not as severe and consistent as NSSE's low membership.

Membership dues were an important source of income, and ultimately the lack of members and other related factors rendered the NSSE financially [Page 602]unfeasible. Thus, at the conclusion of 2008, the NSSE no longer functioned as a membership society. The NSSE's assets, including its yearbooks, became the property of the Teachers College Record (TCR), at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City. Under TCR's auspices, the yearbook has continued its publication, and the NSSE's archives have been digitized.