Origins and Evolution of Teaching Research
by Bert Y. Kersh
I was working at the System Development Corporation (SDC) in Santa Monica, California, when Jack Edling phoned me from the campus of OCE (Oregon College of Education, now Western Oregon University). The College was starting a research arm, he was to be the director, and would I like to join in the effort, serving as a full-time researcher? If so, the College president, Roy E. Lieuallen, would be at a meeting in Los Angeles and would like to interview me for the position. Jack caught me at an opportune time. It was in the Spring of 1960 and I had joined SDC and moved my family there only about nine months earlier but, already greatly disillusioned with my work assignment and with family life there, I was ready for a change. In fact, I was angling for a position with AIR (American Institute for Research) which had a branch office in Santa Barbara.
The interview with Lew was memorable to both of us. We met for a meal in one of Los Angeles’ downtown hotels. I remember feeling a bit cocky—well, arrogant might be a better word—and brimming with research ideas. He described his view of the new research center and how it would fit into the college organization; and he outlined the terms of employment. I told him what I had in mind, based on Edling’s phone call, and answered his questions about my research agenda and my family. Simulating instructional settings in which teachers could interact with students for instructional purposes was uppermost in my mind, but I also must have described research projects in human problem solving and my research publications in that area.
In the years which followed, on occasion Lew would recall that interview and remark to me about the impression it made on him. In fact, when I last spoke with Lew, which was about 43 years afterwards and long after we both had retired, he spoke of that meeting.
Soon after the meeting with the college president, I was invited to visit the OCE campus. There, in preliminary meetings with Jack Edling and the college president, the organization of the new center, where it would be house on campus, and the details of my own position were set. Coming, as I had, with an elitist university graduate school background, I was very skeptical about associating a research center on the campus of a small teacher’s college. My orientation was completely contrary to that scenario: in my view, research was conducted by faculty members at research universities, faculty members whose teaching assignment was secondary to their research endeavors, and whose reputations were established through research publications, not by their instructional capabilities. I had completed my graduate level studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and had been awarded the Ph.D. degree by that institution in 1955. My first job after being graduated was at the University of Oregon where I taught for four years from 1955 to 1959. There, my teaching efforts had been a disaster in my opinion but, I came to realize much later, I had established an excellent reputation through my writing and research publications. I had left the University of Oregon in 1959 to begin a full-time research career in the private sector, in part because I felt my teaching efforts were inadequate. After all, I had been a 27-year-old research-oriented academic with absolutely no teaching experience when I joined the university faculty. I had been assigned to supervise student teachers and to teach educational psychology to graduate students, most of whom were experienced public school and college level teachers many years my senior. At that time, I did not enjoy teaching at all.
To return to my story, I received a formal letter from the college president offering me a one-year appointment as a research professor, beginning in September of 1960. The salary was several thousand dollars less than I was making at SDC and the letter made it clear to me that the position would have to be grant-supported if I wished to continue in the position beyond the first year. But, I accepted the position with great joy and confidence.
During the first year, Teaching Research consisted of three people: Jack Edling, a secretary and me. Jack and I were a great team. Jack was outgoing, charismatic, charming, a gifted salesman and a superb public speaker. I was inward but creative, good with communicating in writing or one-on-one and in small groups; but I was a rotten public speaker, prone to stage-fright and tongue-tied before a large audience. I was the “idea man,” according to Edling, and I was willing to stay on campus, build my research laboratory, write research proposals and run the office. Jack was the “front man,” willing to travel to Washington, D.C., as frequently as necessary to lobby for Teaching and to represent us at professional meetings.
I arrived in Monmouth before my family and made preparations for their arrival. Not an easy task since all available rental housing was being occupied by students and faculty. My wife and I considered making arrangements in nearby towns – Dallas is only ten miles away, and Corvallis and Salem, larger communities, 15 – 20 miles distant. But [Jack Edling protested], “What, you’re willing to commute back and forth? That would be a half-hour drive!” An easy commute in my mind, having just come from the Los Angeles area, but out of the question in the Monmouth area. Jack solved the problem for us: he purchased the “Mugg House,” perhaps the most expensive piece of real estate in Monmouth; then he relocated his family and leased his first piece of property to us. It was an extraordinary thing to do, but typical of Jack.
During the first weeks, Jack and I devoted considerable time and thought to the name and structure of Teaching Research. The name was to be printed and spoken in full. Always. Never abbreviated with the initials, “TR.” And, our focus would be on research in the area of classroom teaching and human learning, at all levels. Our primary focus would be on researchable problems which would benefit the Oregon State System of Higher Education institutions and, indirectly, the elementary and secondary schools. We also created the “spider web” logo which was used on all Teaching Research publications until I left the organization in 1967.
Before I was employed, Jack had directed the media center on campus and also, I believe, served as the public relations agent for the college. He was primarily interested in the application of new technology in the classroom and, in 1959, had been awarded a research grant under Title VII of the NDEA (National Defense Education Act,) to produce a motivational film and to test its efficacy with high school youngsters. I’m sure that it was Edling’s grant award which made it possible for the college president to free up salary funds with which to employ me on a fixed-term basis.
In 1960, before I was employed by the college, the college president had reassigned Jack to direct the new Center and to work on his research project. During the Fall term of 1960, Jack wrote the script and employed a media production team to produce a motion picture film under the direction of a professional movie-maker. Occasionally during the filming I accompanied Jack and the production crew and observed. Very impressive. Jack entitled the movie, “The American Dream.” The underlying thesis of the research project was that underachieving high-school students could be motivated to learn by appealing to the individual’s basic desire and linking it to successful school achievement. Jack focused the movie story line on the achievement of fame and fortune, i.e., the “American Dream,” and, in the movie, he argued that the dream could not be achieved without a high-school diploma. Now, that oversimplifies Jack’s project, no doubt, and my memory may well be inaccurate, but I believe that was the gist of Jack’s project. And, my memory tells me that Jack did complete the basic filming of the movie and gave it to a company in Hollywood to be edited and duplicated. To enhance audience appeal and for credibility, Jack employed a well-known Hollywood movie actor to enact the movie’s introduction at the beginning of the movie’s story line.
The making of “The American Dream” is only one of a kaleidoscope of pleasant memories for me during my first term with Teaching Research. Jack Edling was outstanding in public relations, and he was at his best during those first few months. I remember there being demonstrations on campus of state-of-the-art teaching machines (they looked like the music “nickelodeons” we used to see in cafes,) and innovative classroom teaching aids, one of which I used in a research project a year or two later. And, I remember the two of us traveling to other campuses and school districts to explain what we were about. On campus, we were assigned office space on the main floor of the Administration Building, just to the left of the main entrance. Our offices had been one of the classrooms, a favorite with several teaching faculty members, I remember being told, so we were not popular in some departments on campus. Immediately after settling my family, I set myself the task of writing research proposals; and, whenever we had a spare moment together, Jack and I conferred about the shape of things to come.
It was at that time that the “directorate” structure of Teaching Research was created and I became the first Teaching Research “Director.” Eventually, my title became, “Associate Director of Teaching Research,” the one who took over for Jack whenever he was away on assignment for any length of time. I mean no measure of disrespect for Jack in what I’m about to say. On the contrary, I truly feel that, in the annals of Western Oregon University, the name of Jack Edling needs to be lifted up and the memory of his contributions recorded for all who have followed him there. But, I was distinguished from the other Directors in Jack’s mind, I’m sure, only in that I was the first one: my rank was Associate Research Professor, my term of employment was twelve months, and I was completely free to create my own self-sustaining research enterprise. I was a member of the Teaching Research Directorate, the first no doubt, but nothing more and nothing less.
The directorate structure was born out of Jack’s early business experience after returning from World War II, Jack told me. During the war, Jack served in the European Theater as an infantry captain, a company commander (“Over and back with Captain Jack,” was the rallying cry of those under his command). After the war, he took over, I believe he said, his father’s electrical wiring business. In that he was extremely successful. Jack expanded the business by employing promising leaders for a fixed term, assigning them to a sales arena, and charging them to expand the business enterprise, renting additional space and hiring additional help as needed, independently of Jack. If, at the end of their employment contract they were able to operate their business unit independently, Jack would extend their employment contract with a juicy promotion and higher pay; but, if they were not successful, they would be let go. It was a sink-or-swim proposition, but the rewards were great. And, for Jack, it was a very lucrative business plan. Later, he replicated the plan while in the employ of a large insurance company. Jack led me to believe he made his fortune in that manner before entering the academic world. (I trust Jack’s family will forgive me if my understanding is not accurate.)
My memory tells me that “The American Dream” was not ready for viewing until later on that first academic year, and that he was not able to begin testing the efficacy of the movie until the second year, in 1961-62. This was after he returned from a temporary assignment with the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C., during the Fall and Winter terms of 1960-61.
Jack’s abrupt and unexpected leave-of-absence in 1961 was completely unheralded. I remember his being visited on campus by a Washington bureaucrat and then, after a day or two of private tête-à-tête meetings, I was informed that Jack would be leaving in January. What a disappointment that was! It took the wind completely out of my sails. I felt abandoned. Teaching Research was dead in the water and was doomed to a become a failed effort.
But that, in fact, was not what actually happened. After overcoming my childish feelings, and while awaiting the outcome of my research proposals (I suffered through at least four failed efforts), I decided to spend my time and efforts more constructively by building my research equipment, by myself, and conducting preliminary studies without grant support.
One of my first preliminary studies was of grade-school children responding to motion picture images. At that time there was no evidence that I could find to indicate whether or not a child would respond to a “virtual” adult in the same manner they would to a “live” adult. So, I determined to find out.
In the basement of the old library building, where the college media center was then located, I constructed a moveable rear-projection screen with wing panels attached. Behind the screen, I had the media crew place two motion picture projectors. Then, I asked the Media Center Director, Claude “Bud” Smith, to make a motion picture of Bert Kersh introducing himself (yes, I was the actor) as if to a sixth grader. On film, I asked a series of questions, like, “What’s your name? What grade are you in? Who’s your teacher?” And, also on film, I made other comments, like, “I can’t hear you, please speak a little louder,” and, “Please say that again, I didn’t understand.” The film clips were separated and loaded onto two reels such that the leading questions could be projected from one of the two machines and the prompts (to speak louder or to repeat the response) from the other. I stood behind one of the wing panels and operated the two projectors remotely using a switch panel.
I was curious to see whether or not school-age youngsters would respond at all to my projected image after walking and talking with the real me as I escorted them one at a time from the campus school to the media center, a distance of about one block. And, if the youngster did respond appropriately, I wanted to find out whether or not they would speak louder and repeat themselves when prompted to do so. I do not remember that I tested the simulation on more than half dozen youngsters, nor do I remember for certain if I recorded the children’s behavior; but I do remember using an audiometer to record changes in the volume of their voice. The results of those preliminary trials were very satisfying: without fail, each child responded to my projected image appropriately; and, each did dutifully obey the requests of my filmed image. Later on – at which point in time I do not remember – a classroom space in the basement of the campus school (now the building which houses the Instructional Media Center) was transformed into a simulation laboratory and those preliminary trials were refined and replicated; and I reported the findings at one of the national meetings of educational psychologists which I attended regularly.
Also, during that first year, I built a “Skinner Box” and conducted some tests of B. F. Skinner’s operant conditioning theory. The Skinner Box was modeled after the one Skinner used to train pigeons, or at least I thought it was; I must have overlooked an important architectural feature. The poor parakeet I tried to train almost expired from the heat inside the glass-lined box whenever I turned on the spot lights used during the filming. I abandoned that project and the parakeet, “Petie,” lived the rest of its life in relative comfort in our home as our house pet.
My main objective during the first year was to gain financial support with which to conduct experiments in what came to be called the Classroom Simulator. Of course, in the beginning, I had no clear idea how the simulator would work. I knew only that it would operate basically in accordance with the operant condition learning theory of B. F. Skinner; and that students of teaching would gain experience, in an appropriate manner, in a realistic simulation of a classroom. The simulation of the classroom would be created using motion pictures, and the projected images would be controlled by a trainer, interactively, in accordance with the actions of the student teacher.
While writing my first proposal for a research grant, a major stumbling block in my efforts to describe the classroom simulator came when I tried to envision a laboratory setting with a student teacher responding to a simulated classroom full of youngsters projected on a motion-picture screen. I could envision the trainer changing the classroom scenes, rather seamlessly, through the use of more than one projector (at first, I imagined there being more than three), but I could not imagine how the student teacher could role-play in front of the screen without blocking the projected images. In my mind, the actor would, of course, be moving about between the projector and the movie screen. The solution, to use rear-screen projection, was suggested by Jack Edling during the first term of the academic year, before he left for Washington, D.C.
Clearly, the technology used in the Classroom Simulator was on the cutting edge at the time: rear-screen projection may not have been entirely new at the time, but it was new to me; and the control system and the use of prismatic mirrors to redirect the light from the projectors, both were the creative adaptations of Charles (Chuck) Frye, the laboratory technician who joined us during the second year. If we had then the technology we have now, 45 years later, we would have used a single digital projector with a three-dimensional DVD recording of the classroom scenes, no doubt. Using a single DVD we could have had random access, almost instantly, to each of the follow-up scenes. But, I doubt that I would have changed the file folders we made for each child in the simulated classroom, “Mr. Land’s Sixth Grade.” The contents of those folders, disguised duplicates of the children we filmed, I wanted to be in exactly the same format as those actually used in the Campus Elementary School.
There was more activity during the first year of Teaching Research, of course – more than my preliminary experiments with the school children and with Petie the parakeet. I remember publishing a short description of the yet-to-be-built simulation laboratory, and I began writing the script for a demonstration film. Ty Brown, an experienced school principal who was between jobs, was hired by Jack to consult with other school districts. I traveled with Ty and helped him prepare proposals for consultation.
After Jack left, in January I believe it was, I felt my dream-world was beginning to fall apart. I had no confidence that Jack Edling would return; in the Spring of that year, the Board of Higher Education picked Lew [Roy E. Lieuallen] to be the next Chancellor of the State System; and my research proposals were being returned, rejected, one after another. I seriously considered finding employment elsewhere. A department head at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) in Menlo Park, California, invited me to explore employment opportunities with them. I believe his name was Harry Kincaid. I took the bait seriously and flew there to explore possibilities first-hand.
It was after returning from Menlo Park that I had a kind of epiphany, a moment of sudden realization – and closure. Barbara and I already had decided that Woodland Hills, California, was not a wholesome place to raise children; and, working on proprietary research contracts, especially for the military, was not for me. I had just seen first hand that Menlo Park and SRI were not better places. Moreover, Barbara and I were in the final stages of designing our dream home. We had been working with the Corvallis architect, Edith Yang, for several months and had purchased a prime piece of residential property located within a few blocks of the site of a new elementary school. Of course, the property could have been sold and the architectural plans could have been used in Menlo Park, but . . . .
So it was that, on a beautiful Spring day, as I was driving along Highway 99E from Corvallis to Monmouth, I felt a sudden confidence that, in spite of all the changes and unknowns, here is where my research objectives could be achieved, and here is where my family could live and grow most happily. I remember going to Lew’s office almost immediately afterwards and discussing with him the implications of my decision to stay on into the next academic year, even without research grants with which to pay my salary. I really do not know what would have been the outcome because, as it turned out, soon afterwards I was notified that not one but two of my research proposals had been approved and I was fully funded: Teaching Research was alive! And, if the full truth were known, I would not be surprised to learn that Jack Edling had something to do with that.
In my mind, that was the real beginning of Teaching Research.