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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/65937
Description
Title
Sympathetic Rationality in Elementary Schools
Author(s)
Freeman, Louis Gaylord
Issue Date
1980
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Educat.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, Administration
Language
eng
Abstract
Sympathetic Rationality in Elementary Schools is a study concerned with cultivating deep learning experiences interlaced with feeling. It recognizes the sensitive relationship between knowing and emotions. The concept was devised by Robert Jerome Starratt in a dissertation entitled, The Individual and the Educated Imagination: An Essay in Curriculum Theory, which was accepted by the Graduate College of the University of Illinois in 1969. Building on the Starratt concepts which were geared for a secondary school curriculum, this study attempts to identify the factors influencing elementary school climates which promote the learning experiences described in the first sentence. Two elementary schools were studied which might be placed at opposite ends of a continuum ranging economically from poor to affluent. The study is concerned with multiple forces affecting the schools over the ten year period, from the filing of the Starratt dissertation to the completion of the present study. The study focused on such broad influences as declining enrollments, desegregation and political forces which are changing the course of education in the United States.
The study advances the premise that curriculum theory and program changes are not likely to succeed unless the underlying forces affecting the educational climate are understood and controlled. The study also suggests that one of the best hopes for achieving the kinds of knowing interlaced with feeling is through improvements in the teacher education process. The value of university laboratory schools in this process is carefully explored. Finally, the delicate relationship between available resources, number of positions, change and the conservation of the school's heritage is a primary concern. The study concludes with the presentation of an administrative strategy or guidelines designed to produce the desired learnings.
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