Smith, B. Othanel

B. [Bunnie] Othanel Smith (19031989) was a teacher, school administrator, professor, and curriculum theorist. Smith's areas of influence include curriculum development, teacher education, teacher knowledge, educational philosophy, and educational measurement. Notably, Smith is known for advancing the concept of critical thinking, promoting the study of logic within the profession of teaching, and arguing for a focus on pedagogy in teacher education curriculum.

During the early years of his career, Smith worked in Florida high schools as a science teacher and principal. He was overwhelmed by disparate curricular models that he and other teachers encountered as part of their daily practice. Frustrated with the sheer number of models such as these, Smith rejected the idea that any one formula could prove to be a panacea for curricular problems. Consequently, he devoted his academic life to discovering what skills teachers needed so that they might create their own solutions for improving school curriculum. Graduating from the University of Florida with a BS in education, Smith later enrolled in the graduate program at Teachers College, earning a MA in 1932 and a PhD in 1938. Smith's doctoral dissertation focused on educational measurement; specifically, he investigated the logic of assessment. This research sparked Smith's lifelong interest in the relationship between logic and teaching. Teachers, Smith later theorized, use logical reasoning constantly during the act of teachingfor example, when they define terms, explain concepts to students, or evaluate a particular behavior. He saw logic as preferable to psychology; rather than construing teaching as a psychological process, Smith argued that educators should view teaching as a logical process.

Smith accepted a job at the University of Illinois in 1937, where he began to shape and refine his conception of teaching. He defined teaching as a series of actions designed to result in learning, while acknowledging that the act of teaching may be performed differently within various cultural contexts. Drawing on the work of Harry S. Broudy, his friend and colleague at the University of Illinois, Smith embraced the interpretive use of knowledge. Smith asserted that learning should focus on teaching students the skills needed to reason and think critically so that they might make wise decisions later in life. Educators who taught students the process of thinking and stressed the utility of content, Smith believed, were preferable to classrooms that targeted the socialization of the learner. Also during his time at Illinois, Smith authored what might be his most famous work, Fundamentals of Curriculum Development, with Illinois colleagues William O. Stanley and J. Harlan Shores. The text echoed Ralph W. Tyler's four-step procedure for selecting curriculum content. The book helped to promote the study of curriculum as a subject in teacher education programs and influenced the work of curriculum development scholars for several decades.

Smith authored Teachers for the Real World, published by the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education. Supported by the U.S. Department of Education, the publication became foundational for programs sponsored by the government. Smith believed that university curriculum designed for preservice teachers often focused too heavily on theoretical, conceptual coursework typically found in foundations classes. Although he acknowledged that a general knowledge of such topics as human learning and social development was important for educators, Smith believed that “real world” curricula for teachers should focus chiefly on pedagogy. In Teachers for the Real World, Smith and his collaborators, Saul Bernard Cohen and Arthur Pearl, were the first teacher [Page 782]educators to champion the idea of preparing teachers through protocol materials. Protocols were audiovisual recordings of school-related scenarios (classroom, playground, home, etc.) that Smith believed provided a more direct relevance to classroom practice than lecture formats typical to most teacher preparation programs at the time.

...