EDUCATION RESEARCH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21663, 1 December 1933, Page 12

EDUCATION RESEARCH

WORK IN NEW ZEALAND CARNEGIE GRANT MADE [BY TELEGRAPH —PRESS ASSOCIATION] WELLINGTON, Thursday In March the Carnegie Corporation of New York .-ippointed a committee consisting of Professor T. A. Hunter (convener) and Messrs. F. Milner and D. M. Rae, to report on a proposal to establish in New Zealand a council for educational research. The committee reported in August, and Professor Hunter has now received advice from New York that the corporation has decided to found a research council and provide it with an annual grant of 17,500 dollars, £3500 at par, for five years. The corporation is inviting the following to constitute the first council: —Professors W. H. Gould, Hunter, J. Shelley and Messrs. C. M. Gilray, Milner, Rae and T. U. Wells. A meeting of the council will be held as soon as possible, and steps will be taken to organise branches in the main centres.

The proposed council will be on the lines of the Australian Educational Research Council, which was established in 1930 with an initial grant of £IO,OOO from the Carnegie Corporation. The latter also created a trust fund of £55,000, which, it stipulated, was to be available for expenditure upon the development of educational research in Australia during the next ten years. The Australian council conducts a central bureau and six subsidiary research institutes, one in each State of the Commonwealth. Its director is Mr. Frank Tate, formerly director of education in Victoria* of the organisation eirbraces all education, from the kindergarten to the university. It deals with problems of both general and local importance by offering facilities to approved teachers and others to undertake research- into problems which they encounter in the course of their daily duties. This is done without cost to the teacher or the authority that employs him, and the results, if of sufficient merit, are published by the council. Up to the early part of this year, the organisation had issued over 20 books and pamphlets, including an important treatise, "The Primary School Curriculum of Australia," by I)r. K. S. Cunningham, its chief executive offcer.

Proposals for a similar, though smaller, educational research foundation in New Zealand were discussed with various authorities by Dr. L. D. Coffman, representative of the Carnegie Corporation, during his visit to the Dominion in. 1931, but no definite action resulted until this year. The research ' scheme was heartily approved in principle by the Education Department and all the principal educational authorities aome months ago. The organisation, while retaining its independence, will probably co-operate closely with the Australian research council for mutual help and to avoid overlapping in the work.