Nathaniel Lees Gage was an educational psychologist

Educational psychology

Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Educational psychology is concerned with how students learn and develop, often focusing...

 who made significant contributions to a scientific understanding of teaching. He conceived and edited the first Handbook of Research on Teaching (Gage, 1963), led the Stanford Center for Research and Development of Teaching, and served as president of the American Educational Research Association

American Educational Research Association

The American Educational Research Association, or AERA, was founded in 1916 as a professional organization representing educational researchers in the United States and around the world....

. Gage was a professor at the Stanford University School of Education

Stanford University School of Education

The Stanford University School of Education , is one of the seven schools of Stanford University. It is the second-oldest school of education in the United States, after NYU...

, where he moved in 1962 after 14 years at the University of Illinois

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

. Deborah Stipek, dean of the Stanford School of Education, called Gage a "giant among educational researchers."
David C. Berliner, Regents' Professor of Education at Arizona State University, called Gage "the father of the field of research on teaching."

Education

Gage was born Nathaniel Lees Gewirtz in Union City, N.J. in 1917; his eventual name change is explained below. He attended the City College of New York and the University of Minnesota. At the University of
Minnesota, he had a job working for the youthful psychologist B.F. Skinner. His duties included making food pellets for laboratory rats.

He graduated magna cum laude in 1938 with a bachelor's degree in psychology, but was rejected by 10 graduate schools before being admitted to Purdue University. According to David Berliner, the many rejections were due to anti-Semitism. Gewirtz then changed his last name to Gage.

During World War II, Gage spent two years in the Army, where he developed aptitude tests for choosing navigators and radar observers. Gage earned a Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in psychology from Purdue University

Purdue University

Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...

in 1947.

Academic career

Gage taught at Purdue for a year, and at the University of Illinois for 14 years. In 1962, Gage became a professor at Stanford University, where he remained until his death. In 1965, Gage co-founded the Stanford Center for the Research and Development in Teaching (now known as the Center for Educational Research at Stanford), funded with a $4 million federal grant. Upon his retirement from active teaching, Gage became a professor emeritus, and still went to his office daily to work.

He edited the Handbook of Research on Teaching (1963), and wrote The Scientific Basis of the Art of Teaching (1978) and Hard Gains in the Soft Sciences (1985). He completed his last book, A Conception of Teaching, shortly before his death. It will be released in November, 2008.

His many honors include a Guggenheim fellowship (1976-1977), election to the National Academy of Education (1979),
the E.L. Thorndike Award for Career Achievement in Educational Psychology (1986), and an honorary doctorate from the Université de Liège in Belgium (2001).

He died of complications of a fall.

Family

Gage married Margaret "Maggie" Burrows Gage in 1942. They had four children: Tom, Elizabeth, Sarah, and Annie.

Further reading

• Gage, N. L. (1963). The handbook of research on teaching. Chicago, IL, USA: Rand McNally.