Peabody College Collective of Curriculum Professors

Since its founding in 1914, George Peabody College of Education has been a principal center of graduate study in education in the South, affecting curriculum studies through the work of Hollis Caswell, Harold D. Drummond, and William Van Til, along with their graduate students who have had wide influence in curriculum history and the development of the middle school curriculum.

Peabody College of Education, a private educational institution, emerged out of the division of the University of Nashville and was relocated adjacent to Vanderbilt University in 1911. Although Peabody was a segregated school emphasizing education of teachers and school administrators for White students, a limited program of desegregation (carefully selected principals of Black schools from 13 Southern states and the District of Columbia) was initiated in graduate studies in 1954, and the undergraduate program was desegregated in 1964. Peabody merged with Vanderbilt University in 1979.

By the late 1940s, Peabody was widely recognized as a premier program in the South for future college and university professors. In 1929, the Division of Surveys and Field Services was initiated by Caswell who came to Peabody from Teachers College, Columbia University. Survey research was a design for inquiry and evaluation of school resources and curriculum to support the professionalization of school leadership and modernize curriculum planning and instructional delivery. Over two decades, 47 state and city surveys were completed throughout the South. Caswell remained at Peabody until 1938 and coauthored with Doak Campbell what is often referred to as the first synoptic curriculum text, Curriculum Development, in 1935, followed by Readings in Curriculum Development, a collection of articles representative of contemporary curriculum concerns. Henry Harap, who had established his reputation for his promotion of consumer education curriculum and was a principal in the founding of the John Dewey Society, then assumed direction of Peabody's Surveys and Field Services division.

Influence on curriculum scholarship reemerged in the 1950s with Drummond and Van Til joining the Peabody faculty. Drummond collaborated with John Goodlad in authoring a work on educational leadership for building principals in elementary schools in 1956, a practitioner's guide for effective leadership of staff, curriculum planning, and program development. Drummond's scholarship shifted to the development of a popular geography series. Journeys Through Many Lands, Journeys Through the Americas, and Our World Today were widely adopted for use in elementary and junior high schools.

Van Til came to Peabody in 1951 while the institution and then the city of Nashville struggled with racial desegregation. Before his appointment as chair of the Division of Teaching and Curriculum Development, Van Til had been director of Learning Materials at the Bureau for Intercultural Education and professor at the University of Illinois. A recognized advocate of democracy as a key purpose of education and activist for progressive reform, Van Til remained as chair until 1957. As a member of the executive board of the John Dewey Society, Van Til promoted support for implementation of democratic schooling and open consideration of controversial social issues in school curricula. Van Til was directly involved in efforts to advance the Brown decree in Nashville public schools.

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