In order that this visitation may work out to the best advantage the following suggestions are made:

1. The state supervisor should send a letter at the beginning of the year to the principal of each school in which there is a teacher receiving such training, informing him of the fact that this teacher will be subject to visitation by a member of the training staff.

2. During such visitation the representative should confine his work to the improvement of the teacher's technique of instruction as represented by his work with pupils in the field, laboratory, classroom, or at the project. The visits that are made should be of such duration that it will be possible to accomplish this result. If there are changes of an administrative nature that would result in improving the quality of instruction, these should be brought to the attention of the state supervisor, who may take them up with the local authorities if he deems it wise to do so, but under no circumstances should the member of the training staff assume any responsibility for their correction.

3. Since the state supervisor will also endeavor to improve the instruction of his teachers he will be dealing with the teachers who are receiving training in service. For this reason it is desirable that the supervisor and those who are training teachers come to an agreement upon the fundamental principles that are to be observed in developing the work in vocational agriculture. When such an agreement is reacht there is little or no danger of disparity in the advice that comes from the two sources.

4. A definite period of time, for example, one year, should be set for this systematic instruction in service. The final decision as to whether or not it may be desirable to continue it over a longer period with certain teachers should be determined by the state supervisor.

The state supervisor should have a part in the formal instruction that is given to the prospective teacher. Arrangements should be made by which he will have several lecture periods for the purpose of getting before the class his views regarding the work which they are planning to enter. These visits should be made the occasion for giving the supervisor an opportunity to have a personal interview with each student. He should also go over the records of each with the teacher-training staff. These interviews and intimate considerations of each student will do much toward getting the teachers into the communities where they can work most effectively, because the supervisor will know the difficulties that are likely to be met in the various sections of the state much better than they are known to those in the training departments. Those who are preparing the teachers will be familiar with the abilities and limitations of their students and can judge of their capacity for meeting special problems that are presented in certain communities.

In New York state the department of rural education was able to cooperate with the state supervisor in a special work that was mutually helpful.

The supervisor prepared blanks on which the teachers were required to make monthly statements showing by means of a daily record certain facts regarding topics studied, methods used, and references employed. These reports were assigned by the department of rural education to advanst students for detailed study with reference to time allotment to the various topics, seasonal sequence, and the relation between recitation, laboratory, field, and project work. One of the annual conferences was devoted largely to a consideration of the studies that had been made of the work reported during the year.

The Smith-Hughes Act has placed before those interested in the development of vocational agriculture and those interested in the preparation of teachers for this subject a great opportunity. As has been definitely pointed out the greatest strength will be developt in each of the phases when they are working upon a coordinate basis with the fullest, freest, and frankest exchange of views between the two parties who in the end will be responsible for the failure or success of the work-the one who prepares the teacher and the one who supervises him after he has entered the profession. To accomplish this there must be conference, conference, conference.

PROJECT METHODS IN TEACHER TRAINING IN
VOCATIONAL AGRICULTURE

ARETAS W. NOLAN, STATE SUPERVISOR OF AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION, URBANA, ILL.

A project is a reflective act carried on in its natural setting. Dr. J. A. Stephenson, of the University of Illinois, defines a project as a problematic act carried to completion in its natural setting. It is a large problem carried over into action. It may be composed of a group of problems which constitute subdivisions of the project. The project is the normal life-situation. In school we often take these problems out of their natural setting and study them one by one. The tendency is to teach the problems in isolated groups rather than as related to one life-situation.

The chief educational function of a project is to translate information into conduct. It arouses interest, since there are many reservoirs from which interest may flow, being tied up with life-situations. Dr. Snedden, in his Problems of Secondary Education, states that the keynote of the newer education in these fields is to be found in the development of facilities for obtaining practical experience under conditions as nearly approximating those of the actual vocation as can be obtained. The project method in agricultural instruction offers these facilities.

The great problem in the use of the project method as a basis for the curriculum is to select such projects and groups of projects as will give all essential facts, processes, and principles of the subject-matter which may be organized as units of knowledge.

Since all instruction in vocational agriculture under the Smith-Hughes Act must include projects in farm practice, institutions training teachers for this work should provide actual project work as a part of their curriculum in agricultural education. Land, animals, crops, etc., should be available, and the students should have the opportunity to purchase or rent materials for agricultural projects in connection with their college course. Their projects should be of sufficient scope to have economic as well as educational value. Such work has already been provided at the University of Illinois at Urbana.

PROJECT METHODS IN TEACHER-TRAINING COURSES

W. S. TAYLOR, PROFESSOR OF AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION, PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE, STATE COLLEGE, PA.

For purposes of our study I think we shall find it more satisfactory to discuss this subject as problem-project methods in teacher-training courses rather than as project methods in teacher-training courses. The term "project" does not mean the same thing to all the people who use it. Dr. David Snedden, in an article in School and Society, described the term project as "a unit of educative work in which the most prominent feature was some form of positive or concrete achievement."

Good pedagogy demands that the subject-matter of a course be divided into teaching units. The most effective teaching unit in teacher-training courses undoubtedly is the problem. This the lecture method formerly in common use in teacher-training classes failed to recognize. It is not strange to us today that the lecture method of instruction proved to be even more ineffective for teacher-training work than for other work. Instructors offering teacher-training work were as a rule well trained in agriculture but poorly trained in education. The men in charge of the teacher-training work in agriculture were not slow to realize that the instruction was failing to give the help that such courses were supposed to give. The students did not get the vision of the possibilities of secondary agriculture. The courses lackt that something that would stimulate, that would motivate, that would organize, and that would give direction.

At the same time that instructors in charge of teacher-training classes were groping around in search of better methods for their courses, supervisors and directors of secondary agriculture were searching diligently for some means of making agricultural instruction in secondary schools effective. Instruction in agriculture in secondary schools was lifeless and all but meaningless until project teaching put life, interest, and meaning into the work offered. The child found in his project definite problems to be solved and a goal toward which to work.

In the same way, if the student in a teacher-training course is to get the greatest possible good from his work he must have some definite problem

before him. We all work hardest when we have a difficult problem to solve. So it is with the student. The result which he is seeking "becomes a conscious aim, a guiding and inspiring purpose." He thinks with less waste when he has something central as a motive and guide. Problemproject teaching gives a realness and a concreteness to instruction that can be obtained in no other way.

Endeavor is more earnest and more persistent where interest is keen in the end desired. Interest is keener when there is a distinct need felt for the end sought. The problem, therefore, the need of whose solution is keenly felt, stimulates thought to discover the best methods of dealing with the situation. Furthermore the project that enlists the energy and resources of the student most is not your project but the project that he himself is working out.

So we have come to look upon our teacher-training courses as projectsbig projects made up of a series of problems. This series of related problems that make up the content of the courses, when solved and properly correlated and organized, comprises the working out of the project. The planning of a library for vocational agriculture in secondary schools is an example of one of the problems of the course. Instead of having the instructor give the class a stereotypt or perhaps a mimeographt lecture on the high-school agricultural library, the student is given a problem to work out. Briefly, he is askt to select his library of books and give reasons for each book selected. He is askt to select a library of bulletins-bulletins that will be useful in his teaching—and he is askt to catalog them in the way that will make them most usable to his students. He has something definite to work out-something that will be directly helpful in his work when he becomes a teacher of secondary agriculture. When the students, under the direction of the teacher, have decided upon the list of books that will be of most help and know why they will be most helpful, when they have learned how to select bulletins of most worth and catalog them so as to make them most accessible, they will feel more than repaid for their work and will attack the next problem with enthusiasm and zeal. A problem of this kind stimulates interest and effort because of its practical bearing. Its solution insures better library materials, better library methods, and better library facilities in secondary vocational agricultural libraries, all of which are greatly needed.

Let us suppose again that the problem of the class in teacher training is properly to equip the agricultural laboratory. The problem will be first to determine what will be incorporated in the course of study and then to buy equipment to fit the course as outlined. Too frequently the teacher plans instruction to fit his equipment rather than equipment to make clear his instruction. Equipping the agricultural laboratory becomes relatively a simple matter when attackt from this viewpoint, and again the student has something he can use in developing his work in secondary schools.

In the same way we might enumerate all the problems of the course and show how each gives definite help. But the problem-project method does more than give specific help. Every project is a life-problem, and we get direction and power to handle other problems of life from having successfully workt out the preceding one. The project may be small or it may be large; the lesson from each should lead toward the same end; it should develop correct procedure in thinking and in working out similar problems; it should aid in developing clear notions of accuracy and scientific viewpoint; it should develop initiative; it should give self-direction; it should develop self-reliance; and lastly project teaching should motivate.

It is not difficult to see that project teaching in teacher-training courses must have careful planning. The student must know where he is going, or there will be a tremendous amount of lost motion. Every problem of the course must be specific; it must be vitally related to the work that the student expects to do as a teacher, and its working out must lead to a definite goal. Problem-project teaching accomplishes its purpose when the results of the effort required for solving the problem "are of such positive and abiding interest as to arouse the person to a clearer recognition of purpose and to a more thoughtful consideration of means of accomplishment."

The result that is most desired in all teaching, according to Mr. Dewey, is "that the mind should be sensitive to problems and skilled in methods of attack and solution." The acid test of good teaching, according to Kirkpatrick, is "to leave the student with a desire to know more." I want to combine these two and say that the acid test of good teaching is (1) to leave the student with a desire to know more and (2) to enable him to sense problems quickly and attack and solve them in the most economical way. This the problem-project method of teaching attempts to do in teachertraining courses.

SECTIONAL CONFERENCES AND PERIODS OF PROFESSIONAL
IMPROVEMENT WORK FOR TEACHERS OF
HIGH-SCHOOL AGRICULTURE

RUFUS W. STIMSON, STATE SUPERVISOR OF VOCATIONAL AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION, BOSTON, MASS.

The aim of high-school agricultural instruction need not be vocational. It may have strong avocational values. It may also have important prevocational or vocational-guidance values. If it guides pupils into agricultural colleges it will at the same time be assisting them to accumulate experience which cannot but add to the value of their agricultural-college training.

Those in charge of our program today are understood to have had highschool teachers of agriculture suited to vocational courses primarily in mind in assigning the subject of this address.