PROFILE: Ralph Winfred Tyler

Ralph Winfred Tyler: Curriculum, instruction, and evaluation reformer ranked among world's fifty modern thinkers on education.

Copyright © 2008 by E. A. Kral

At the turn of the 20th century, most American public schools offered a curriculum designed to meet college entrance requirements, teachers primarily lectured and dictated with discussion usually between the teacher and class or teacher and individual student (not students among themselves), and students concentrated on memorization, note taking, and recitation.

With the focus on a formal atmosphere of work and very little play, passive learning activities, and a philosophy of "culling" the able from the less able, only one of ten youth aged fourteen to seventeen were enrolled in high school. Nationwide, about 8 percent earned diplomas, with a minority attending college.

From this background emerged Ralph Winfred Tyler, a Chicago native educated at Peru, Crete, and Lincoln, Nebraska who during a 70-year career devoted himself to innovation, scientific research, assessment, practicality, and simplicity in ways that brought enduring improvements to the public schools. And he has been ranked by his peers as one of the world's leading thinkers in the field of education.

Among his many contributions was leadership in three projects of historic significance: the evaluation of the Eight-Year Study in the 1930s that helped schools adjust their curriculum to local learners and their community, the formulation of procedures in the 1940s to help schools develop learning objectives for students, and the creation of a uniform method of evaluation in the 1960s that resulted in the first "nation's report card" for Congress and the public.

During his formative years in Nebraska, he developed an exceptional work ethic, a desire to achieve, and an interest in serving humankind. In one interview he recalled, "I find myself, ever since a child when I was carrying newspapers when it would be freezing and my nose and eyes would be running, to say, 'Well, this has to be done.' The world is like this. You can't change it so let's go ahead and do something with it."

From the example of his father who had given up a successful medical practice to become a minister, Tyler observed that helping others seemed more valuable than wealth, and years later, he reported, "To me, the important thing is not salary but doing things that are important to be done."

In his early elementary school years at Peru, he was friends with Samuel Brownell, who became U.S. Commissioner of Education, and Herbert Brownell Jr., who served as U.S. Attorney General, both during the Eisenhower Administration.

From 1911 to 1913, he attended school in Hastings, then lived in Crete, working at a creamery and graduating from Crete High School in 1917.

While attending Doane College, he worked as a telegrapher for the Burlington Railroad, majored in science, mathematics and philosophy, participated in debate, took it upon himself during his senior year to organize a state intercollegiate forensic league, and graduated with honors in 1921.

As a teacher of science for one year at Pierre High School in Pierre, South Dakota, he liked the diversity of the student body and the challenge of teaching, then decided against medical school in favor of education.

Tyler earned a master's degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1923, with research emphasizing statistics in testing, then was a teacher and assistant supervisor of science at its University High School until 1926.

After UNL secondary education professor Herbert Brownell Sr. offered him a loan--and encouraged study at the University of Chicago, where the head of education was Charles H. Judd, he earned his doctorate in educational psychology from there in 1927.

He was influenced by Prof Judd, who applied scientific principles to school issues, advocated understanding education from direct observation of schools rather than books, and concluded that students can learn how to generalize while acquiring facts. Judd also believed school practices and policies should be based on facts and tested principles.

At the same time, he had worked as a statistician for a Chicago project directed by W. W. Charters, who influenced him in several ways, including the use of systematic procedures for leading large projects. After Tyler taught for two years at the University of North Carolina, he was hired in 1929 by Charters to serve in the division of accomplishment testing at Ohio State University.

Tyler had become well aware of the emerging theories of progressive education leaders such as John Dewey, George Counts, and others who advocated that public schools should place emphasis on the individual child and on learning by doing. And he was sympathetic with the view that schools should prepare students for a variety of essential societal needs rather than simply concentrating on the minority that go on to college.

In October 1930, the Progressive Education Association established the Commission on the Relation of School to College to conduct a lengthy study to determine if the traditional college entrance requirements were actually related to success. Two years later, the Commission found 300 colleges and universities and 30 high schools nationwide to take part, and by 1933 innovative experimental curricula in accord with progressive theories were in place in the high schools.

After the first year, the high schools threatened to quit participating because of the belief that traditional standardized tests would not measure what they were trying to accomplish with their new curricula. Upon suggestion by Ohio State University education professor Boyd H. Bode that his colleague Ralph Tyler had a scientific attitude and some innovative ideas on testing, Commission leaders interviewed him, then hired Tyler in July 1934 as research director of the evaluation staff for what became known as the landmark Eight-Year Study, which concluded in 1942.

Since World War I, standardized tests had been designed by "experts" largely to measure what had been memorized. And their purpose was to rank or classify test-takers' scores along a line of normal distribution, or bell-shaped curve.

However, Tyler's view was that evaluation in education does not exist to create a normal distribution among test scores but rather to offer a way to improve the curriculum and to determine if students have reached its objectives. And he advocated that instructional objectives ought not emphasize what a child memorizes but rather his or her understanding and use of the materials studied.

There were three parts involving evaluation for the Eight-Year Study. First, records about student performance would help colleges make wise admission selections; second, there would be an appraisal of what students were learning year after year in the high school so that the school could determine if they were gaining important learnings; and third, there would be follow-up after graduation to learn how students performed in college or in other post-high school areas such as employment, etc.

At the time, the term "test" usually meant a collection of memory items, so Tyler encouraged the use of the term "evaluation" for investigating what students were actually learning. And in the summer of 1936, he decided the best way to help schools improve their evaluation was by use of what he termed a "workshop," a gathering of teachers to solve problems or increase understanding. (This innovation replaced the profession's prevailing practice of holding "teacher institutes" which involved little more than passive listening.)

Two years later, after the Study's curriculum staff under professor Harold Alberty reported high schools wanted more help with curriculum development, Tyler outlined for them his "Curriculum Rationale," which, in part, stated, "In deciding what the school should help students learn, one must look at the society in which they are going to use what they learn...to learn something that you can't use means that in the end it will be forgotten. One must also consider the learner--what he has already learned, what his needs are, and what his interests are, and build on them. One must also consider the potential value to students of each subject."

Even though the Study's immediate impact was overshadowed by the advent of World War II, a five-volume report was published, including the book-length volume by Eugene R. Smith, Ralph W. Tyler, and the Evaluation Staff, "Appraising and Recording Student Progress," Adventure in American Education, Vol 3 (Harper and Brothers, 1942). Among the findings were that diverse types of school curricula can lead to success in college and that students from the most experimental schools academically outperformed those from traditional and less experimental high schools.

There were also other long-term results of importance. According to the entry "Eight-Year Study" in Encyclopedia of Education, 2nd ed, Vol 2 (Macmillan 2003), the Study led to "more sophisticated student tests and forms of assessment; innovative adolescent study techniques; and novel programs of curriculum design, instruction, teacher education, and staff development."

During his work with the Eight-Year Study, Tyler relocated in 1938 to the University of Chicago upon invitation of its renowned president Robert Hutchins, who further influenced his sense of mission in education. He first served as Chairman of its Department of Education, then was Dean of the Division of Social Sciences until 1953.

His leadership helped many capable students and colleagues such as sociologist David Riesman, educational scholar Benjamin S. Bloom, and author John I. Goodlad begin distinguished careers, and he was a director of the Cooperative Study in General Education.

Along with Everett F. Lindquist and others, Tyler was a member of an advisory committee to the U.S. Armed Forces Institute that developed the first General Educational Development Tests in 1943 to offer military veterans who had not graduated from high school an opportunity to qualify for admission to colleges. Comprised of five subject areas that emphasize the ability to read, write, think, and do math, though knowledge of some subject matter is needed, the GED Test has become a widely used alternative to gaining the equivalency of a high school diploma for both veterans and civilians.

While at Chicago, Tyler also taught the course Education 360--Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, and refined what became known as the Tyler Rationale, which argued that "what a school ought to teach and what a student ought to learn determine and legitimize all aspects of teaching and testing."

Fundamentally, he believed, like our nation's founders, that the general purpose of education in a democratic society is to help students understand there is a world far beyond the environment in which we live.

And if students are to have any vision, they need to know what past men and women have thought and done as well as what is currently happening in the world. They need to learn to read and to use the resources of scholarship to obtain more dependable knowledge than can be gained from hearsay or superstition.

Tyler offered an outline of one way of viewing the curriculum and instruction to help reach the general purpose of schooling. He believed that learning involves the process of acquiring new behavior, that is, ways of thinking, feeling, and outward action. Indeed, he stated, "Learning takes place through the active behavior of the student: it is what he does that he learns, not what the teacher does. The essential means of education are experiences provided, not the thing to which the student is exposed."

As he saw it, most of teaching is raising the questions that cause the students to inquire and find out for themselves. Though the teacher is the stimulator and guider of their learning, he or she is not the one who tells them everything in our society. Rather, the teacher tries to help students learn principles that can be generalized to other activities or ways of thinking.

Behavioral objectives are intended to help the teacher focus on what he or she is trying to do in the classroom. For example, in an English class, subject matter by itself cannot be an educational objective. Simply having a student read the Shakespeare play Hamlet is content. But asking a student to explain why young Hamlet justifiably dies (or not) at the end of the play helps specify what he or she may gain from studying that play, and other plays as well.

Basically, Tyler's outline offered a suggested series of questions to answer as educators go through the process of curriculum development. And he posed four fundamental questions (each with subcategories) as follows: (1) What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? (2) How can learning experiences be selected which are likely useful in attaining these objectives? (3) How can learning experiences be organized for effective instructions? (4) How can the effectiveness of learning experiences be evaluated?

In answering these four basic questions, and in designing school experiences for students, he advocated curriculum developers should consider three factors: (1) the nature of the learner, (2) the values and aims of society, and (3) knowledge of subject matter.

Tyler's course outline was published in 1949 by the University of Chicago Press in a 128-page book titled Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Written in a simple, easy-to-read style for any layman, teacher, college undergraduate, or expert in any field, and translated into at least eight languages, it has remained in print as of this writing, with some four to six thousand copies sold each year.

Though some critics since the 1970s have claimed his views were "linear" or "politically naive"or "reduced curriculum to objectives and outcomes" or tied to "social efficiency," they have not themselves formulated a concept to replace the Tyler Rationale, which some educators currently consider as pioneering and vital to modern efforts to improve schooling.

His 1949 book is ranked among the 60 most important published in the field of education in the 20th century in Craig Kridel's Books of the Century Catalog (Museum of Education, University of South Carolina, 2000).

Tyler's influence on educational policy nationally became even more significant after 1953, the year he founded the Advanced Center for Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, California, which he directed until 1967. It was formed to serve as a "think tank" for selected scholars.

In the late 1950s, he led the first national study that identified the benefits of student involvement in cooperative education, and from 1962 to 1981 served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the American College Testing Program at Iowa City, which developed the innovative ACT to judge the development of each student for purposes of guidance and counseling as well as for college admission and placement.

He also served as an education advisor in various capacities to several U.S. Presidents, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt and ending with Jimmy Carter. His most notable accomplishment came after U.S. Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel asked him in mid-1963 to assist in the creation of a national evaluation of America's educational system.

Keppel believed the Congress and the public were entitled to know what the nation's students were learning, and he wanted Tyler to develop a plan to determine what progress the nation's schools might be making. He liked Tyler's initial idea that the proposed appraisal instrument be called an "assessment" in order to distinguish it from traditional standardized tests.

As chair of an exploratory committee, Tyler proposed a periodic assessment of a small sample of students rather than testing all students nationally. In time, he also proposed that test results would be reported for only one of four geographical regions nationwide to dispel fears by educational associations that the results might be used to compare one state with another.

Even though it was a congressionally mandated project of the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, the initial responsibility for test development and administration rested with the Education Commission of the States. The student population tested involved those at ages 9, 13, and 17, and assessments conducted periodically in the arts, civics, geography, U.S. history, mathematics, reading, science, and writing.

First used in 1969, and named the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), it became the first national effort to use a uniform method of assessing America's educational system.

Over the decades since then, various changes as well as concerns have developed. Tyler himself was concerned that the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which in 1985 became responsible for further development of the NAEP, is made up primarily of psychometricians preoccupied with the bell curve, which detracts from the most important goal of understanding "what students have learned and where they are having difficulty in learning." And in 1988, a new congressional law introduced an element of competition by permitting statewide administration of the NAEP exercises, and thus access to test results and state comparisons.

Still, as stated in the entry titled "National Assessment of Educational Progress" in Encyclopedia of Education, 2nd ed, Vol 1 (Macmillan, 2003), "one of NAEP's hallmarks as an assessment program is its capacity to evolve, engage in cutting edge assessment development work, and provide results of value to many constituencies. It continues to serve its role as The Nation's Report Card."

Throughout his long career, Tyler witnessed a large increase of students enrolled and graduating from high schools nationwide--by 1980, nine of ten youth aged fourteen to seventeen were enrolled, and 71 percent graduated. As for the GED Test, the number of test batteries administered rose from some 42,000 in 1954 to over 720,000 in 1995.

Always dedicated to quality learning for students and to keeping curriculum development in the hands of local users as well as involvement by leaders and experts, he was author or co-author of more than 400 articles and 12 books.

After 1967, he never really retired, despite giving up directorship of the Center at Stanford, for he continued to serve on many committees, was a consultant to educators, and granted many interviews to professional journals and scholars. In 1987, a 466-page volume of his interviews conducted by Malca Chall was completed, and is available at Bancroft Library at the University of California-Berkeley.

Tyler was recipient of 22 honorary doctorates, including those from Doane College in 1954 and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1974. A building was dedicated in his name in 1980 on the ACT Campus at Iowa City, and a Ralph W. Tyler Award has been offered for outstanding research since 1983 by the Cooperative Education and Internship Association headquartered at Walnut Creek, California. To date, he has been the subject of at least 16 doctoral dissertations and books.

His papers are housed at the University of Chicago Library, and several of his books, research materials, and other memorabilia are at Doane College, where from 1939 to 1972 he had served as an active member of its Board of Trustees.

For this profile, the author found most helpful a compilation of Tyler's views by George H. Lackey Jr. and Michael D. Rowls titled Wisdom in Education: The Views of Ralph Tyler (College of Education, University of South Carolina, 1989) and a book-length report by Morris Finder, Educating America: How Ralph W. Tyler Taught America to Teach (Praeger, 2004), which also contains a reproduction of many Tyler interviews and a lengthy bibliography of his writings and publications about him.

Also valuable for the author was a pre-publication copy of a Ralph Tyler profile, forthcoming in Craig Kridel and Robert V. Bullough Jr., Stories of the Eight-Year Study: Reexamining Secondary Education in America (State University of New York Press, 2007).

An obituary was published in the February 23, 1994 New York Times, and there are lengthy entries in Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education (Routledge, 2001) and in Encyclopedia of Education, 2nd ed, Vol 7 (Macmillan, 2003). There is an entry in the prestigious American National Biography Online (May 2008 Update).

Born April 22, 1902 at Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, one of eight children (four survived to adulthood) of William and Ella Kimball Tyler, he relocated at age two with his family to Table Rock, Pawnee County, Nebraska for one year, then in 1905 to Auburn, Nemaha County for six years, followed by two years at Hastings, Adams County, then in 1913 to Crete, Saline County, where he graduated from Crete High School in 1917 and Doane College in 1921.

His father became a Congregational minister, reported Ralph's older brother Harry E. Tyler in his autobiography The Nebraska Preacher's Kid (Doane College, 1983). Ralph married Flora O. Volz on August 31, 1921, with the couple raising three children before divorcing 21 years later, then he remarried twice. Ralph Winfred Tyler died at age 91 on February 18, 1994 in San Diego, California.

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PROFILE: Ralph Winfred Tyler

Ralph Winfred Tyler: Curriculum, instruction, and evaluation reformer ranked among world's fifty modern thinkers on education.