Walter Dearborn
Encyclopedia
Walter Fenno Dearborn was a pioneering American
educator and experimental psychologist
who helped to establish the field of reading education
. Dearborn, who approached the study of psychology from the perspective of an empirical scientist, is perhaps best known for using empirical research to design and refine teaching methods. Dearborn’s research persuaded him that children develop at different rates and that schools should not ignore individual differences by teaching children in large groups or classes.
. He attended Boston public schools and then Phillips Exeter Academy
, graduating in 1896. He earned a bachelors degree (1900) and a masters degree from Wesleyan University
.
In 1903, Dearborn began studying for a doctorate at Columbia University
where he was the student of James McKeen Cattell
. His interest in the psychology of reading and human development
promoted him to spend a year studying medicine at the University of Göttingen. He eventually returned to Germany to earn a Doctor of Medicine
degree. Dearborn’s dissertation was published under the title, The Psychology of Reading: An Experimental Study of the Reading Process and Eye-Movements (1906).
After completing his doctoral studies, Dearborn joined the educational psychology faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and then the faculty at the University of Chicago
, where he was engaged in applied experimental psychology in solving practical problems. Dearborn pursued research in intelligence testing, predictors of academic success, and reading. In 1912, Dearborn accepted an invitation to join the faculty at Harvard University
, where he became an associate professor in just seven years.
In 1917, Dearborn founded the Psycho-Educational Clinic at Harvard University and served as the director of the Harvard Growth Studies project, a major longitudinal study that provided data for many influential papers. These studies tracked physical measurements and “mental test findings” of approximately 3,500 subjects over a 12-year period beginning in the subject’s first-grade year.[1]
Dearborn's work was critical in disproving then-prevailing theories regarding strong correlations between physical and mental development. He also identified key developmental milestones that influence approaches to education and theories of human development to this day.
Dearborn retired from Harvard in 1942, then joined the education and psychology faculty at Lesley College, now Lesley University
, in Cambridge, Massachusetts
. At the time, Lesley College was operating several laboratory schools, including programs for students with special needs. These schools soon adopted methods that Dearborn had developed for teaching students of average to above average intelligence who were nonetheless struggling with reading and mathematics. The schools gave Dearborn and his students a real-life setting in which to experiment with instructional methods tailored to individual students. The success of these schools, which were consolidated and re-named the Walter F. Dearborn Academy, was one of Dearborn’s proudest accomplishments. (p. 145)
Dearborn died on June 21, 1955 from complications following a severe brain hemorrage.
, cognitive psychology
, educational assessment, and child development
. Most significant has been his research in reading differences, eye-movement and visual fatigue, child development, intelligence testing, and the sociology of unemployment in young people.
Dearborn provided critical frameworks for understanding and treating reading difficulties and was among the first psychologists to refute the generally held view of “congenital word blindness” (now known as dyslexia
). Recognizing the wide range of abilities and differences that normal children can have, Dearborn showed that reading difficulties and intellectual capacities were not always connected and that pupils with average and above average intelligence may process language in different ways, thus creating challenges in the way reading was taught. In describing the difficulties some students had with reading, Dearborn wrote, “There are quite possibly cases with no intellectual defect or shortcoming either general or specific, where a combination of unfortunate circumstances combined with faulty learning may result in a disability as grave as that for which the word ‘blindness’ has been commonly reserved.” (p 147). Dearborn later developed successful methods for teaching reading to students with dyslexia. The discrepancy model for the diagnosis of dyslexia (Bond, Tinker, & Wasson, 1994 pp 42-45) is rooted in the work of Dearborn.
From observing the differences he observed in the ways individuals students’ learned to read, Dearborn came to believe that there were many possible ways to learn reading and that no single approach would be best for every child. By 1925, in what would be a precursor to later debates about whole language versus phonics approaches to teaching reading, Dearborn noted that for some students the “look-say” approach to learning reading was more successful than phonetic or auditory approaches. He encouraged his students to observe classrooms where look-say was being used and suggested that teachers not focus exclusively on phonics and advocated a balanced literacy approach.
Dearborn’s work on eye movements in reading is one of the most comprehensive studies in the literature. Venezky (1984) has written that Dearborn “covered among other topics the number and duration of fixation pauses, re-fixations, and eye fatigue in reading.” He raised questions about the relationships between the orthographic structure of words and their pronunciation——problems which remain unresolved. (Venezky,) One of Dearborn’s most interesting discoveries was that children who were left-eyed, were more likely to have reading difficulties than students who were right-eyed.
Dearborn’s most widely cited publications also include “Intelligence Tests: Their Significance For School And Society." (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1928). At the time, intelligence testing was still in its infancy and a there was not yet consensus in the field about goals of testing. A strong proponent of intelligence testing, Dearborn believed that tests could help uncover students’ needs and guide teachers in their instruction. Dearborn shows that intelligence as measured by the tests of his day was not a constant, but varied based on the subject’s learning and experience. “He has aimed a pointed and well-delivered attack against beliefs that the results of intelligence tests are due to nature solely. In fact he has gone further and minimized nature and emphasized nurture--boldly attacking many widely held theories and substituting others in keeping with his systematic point of view.”
Dearborn’s wide-ranging approach to the study of the process of reading also included a close study of typography and typographic conventions. He wrote an influential paper on type faces, which might be regarded as one of the earliest examples of work in the area of the psychology of industrial design.
A strong proponent of individualized instruction, Dearborn believed that the grade and classroom approach that characterizes much of American education did not serve ultimately students well. He challenged educators and school systems to think differently about what schools could be and how the process of education might be better carried out.
“No problem of education is more important than that which involved the adaptation of instruments to the capacities and needs of the children who are to be educated. Every parent, for the same of his children, every citizen, for the sake of society, every teacher for the sake of her pupils, and every school officer as a measure of the education provided should ask these questions: Is the child in the school located in the grade and class best suited to him? Are the subject matter and methods of instruction properly adapted to his capacities and stage of progress? Is the school so organized that, within necessary limits each child may progress in his education at the rate demanded by his individual abilities and needs? Have all reasonably possible means been employed to classify pupils in instructional groups according to their various capacities?"
The following is a selection of works by Walter F Dearborn:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
educator and experimental psychologist
Experimental psychology
Experimental psychology is a methodological approach, rather than a subject, and encompasses varied fields within psychology. Experimental psychologists have traditionally conducted research, published articles, and taught classes on neuroscience, developmental psychology, sensation, perception,...
who helped to establish the field of reading education
Reading education
Reading education is the process by which individuals are taught to derive meaning from text.Government-funded scientific research on reading and reading instruction began in the U.S. in the 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers began publishing findings based on converging evidence from...
. Dearborn, who approached the study of psychology from the perspective of an empirical scientist, is perhaps best known for using empirical research to design and refine teaching methods. Dearborn’s research persuaded him that children develop at different rates and that schools should not ignore individual differences by teaching children in large groups or classes.
Biography
Dearborn was born in Marblehead, MassachusettsMarblehead, Massachusetts
Marblehead is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 19,808 at the 2010 census. It is home to the Marblehead Neck Wildlife Sanctuary and Devereux Beach...
. He attended Boston public schools and then Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy is a private secondary school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the United States.Exeter is noted for its application of Harkness education, a system based on a conference format of teacher and student interaction, similar to the Socratic method of learning through asking...
, graduating in 1896. He earned a bachelors degree (1900) and a masters degree from Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
.
In 1903, Dearborn began studying for a doctorate at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
where he was the student of James McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell , American psychologist, was the first professor of psychology in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania and long-time editor and publisher of scientific journals and publications, most notably the journal Science...
. His interest in the psychology of reading and human development
Developmental psychology
Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...
promoted him to spend a year studying medicine at the University of Göttingen. He eventually returned to Germany to earn a Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...
degree. Dearborn’s dissertation was published under the title, The Psychology of Reading: An Experimental Study of the Reading Process and Eye-Movements (1906).
After completing his doctoral studies, Dearborn joined the educational psychology faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and then the faculty at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, where he was engaged in applied experimental psychology in solving practical problems. Dearborn pursued research in intelligence testing, predictors of academic success, and reading. In 1912, Dearborn accepted an invitation to join the faculty at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, where he became an associate professor in just seven years.
In 1917, Dearborn founded the Psycho-Educational Clinic at Harvard University and served as the director of the Harvard Growth Studies project, a major longitudinal study that provided data for many influential papers. These studies tracked physical measurements and “mental test findings” of approximately 3,500 subjects over a 12-year period beginning in the subject’s first-grade year.[1]
Dearborn's work was critical in disproving then-prevailing theories regarding strong correlations between physical and mental development. He also identified key developmental milestones that influence approaches to education and theories of human development to this day.
Dearborn retired from Harvard in 1942, then joined the education and psychology faculty at Lesley College, now Lesley University
Lesley University
Lesley University is a private, coeducational university in Boston, Massachusetts and Cambridge, Massachusetts.The university is a member of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, National Association of Schools of Art and Design, and New England Collegiate Conference.-History:The...
, in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
. At the time, Lesley College was operating several laboratory schools, including programs for students with special needs. These schools soon adopted methods that Dearborn had developed for teaching students of average to above average intelligence who were nonetheless struggling with reading and mathematics. The schools gave Dearborn and his students a real-life setting in which to experiment with instructional methods tailored to individual students. The success of these schools, which were consolidated and re-named the Walter F. Dearborn Academy, was one of Dearborn’s proudest accomplishments. (p. 145)
Dearborn died on June 21, 1955 from complications following a severe brain hemorrage.
Contributions to psychology and education
Dearborn’s career included important contributions to the fields of reading educationReading education
Reading education is the process by which individuals are taught to derive meaning from text.Government-funded scientific research on reading and reading instruction began in the U.S. in the 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers began publishing findings based on converging evidence from...
, cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....
, educational assessment, and child development
Child development
Child development stages describe theoretical milestones of child development. Many stage models of development have been proposed, used as working concepts and in some cases asserted as nativist theories....
. Most significant has been his research in reading differences, eye-movement and visual fatigue, child development, intelligence testing, and the sociology of unemployment in young people.
Dearborn provided critical frameworks for understanding and treating reading difficulties and was among the first psychologists to refute the generally held view of “congenital word blindness” (now known as dyslexia
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
). Recognizing the wide range of abilities and differences that normal children can have, Dearborn showed that reading difficulties and intellectual capacities were not always connected and that pupils with average and above average intelligence may process language in different ways, thus creating challenges in the way reading was taught. In describing the difficulties some students had with reading, Dearborn wrote, “There are quite possibly cases with no intellectual defect or shortcoming either general or specific, where a combination of unfortunate circumstances combined with faulty learning may result in a disability as grave as that for which the word ‘blindness’ has been commonly reserved.” (p 147). Dearborn later developed successful methods for teaching reading to students with dyslexia. The discrepancy model for the diagnosis of dyslexia (Bond, Tinker, & Wasson, 1994 pp 42-45) is rooted in the work of Dearborn.
From observing the differences he observed in the ways individuals students’ learned to read, Dearborn came to believe that there were many possible ways to learn reading and that no single approach would be best for every child. By 1925, in what would be a precursor to later debates about whole language versus phonics approaches to teaching reading, Dearborn noted that for some students the “look-say” approach to learning reading was more successful than phonetic or auditory approaches. He encouraged his students to observe classrooms where look-say was being used and suggested that teachers not focus exclusively on phonics and advocated a balanced literacy approach.
Dearborn’s work on eye movements in reading is one of the most comprehensive studies in the literature. Venezky (1984) has written that Dearborn “covered among other topics the number and duration of fixation pauses, re-fixations, and eye fatigue in reading.” He raised questions about the relationships between the orthographic structure of words and their pronunciation——problems which remain unresolved. (Venezky,) One of Dearborn’s most interesting discoveries was that children who were left-eyed, were more likely to have reading difficulties than students who were right-eyed.
Dearborn’s most widely cited publications also include “Intelligence Tests: Their Significance For School And Society." (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1928). At the time, intelligence testing was still in its infancy and a there was not yet consensus in the field about goals of testing. A strong proponent of intelligence testing, Dearborn believed that tests could help uncover students’ needs and guide teachers in their instruction. Dearborn shows that intelligence as measured by the tests of his day was not a constant, but varied based on the subject’s learning and experience. “He has aimed a pointed and well-delivered attack against beliefs that the results of intelligence tests are due to nature solely. In fact he has gone further and minimized nature and emphasized nurture--boldly attacking many widely held theories and substituting others in keeping with his systematic point of view.”
Dearborn’s wide-ranging approach to the study of the process of reading also included a close study of typography and typographic conventions. He wrote an influential paper on type faces, which might be regarded as one of the earliest examples of work in the area of the psychology of industrial design.
A strong proponent of individualized instruction, Dearborn believed that the grade and classroom approach that characterizes much of American education did not serve ultimately students well. He challenged educators and school systems to think differently about what schools could be and how the process of education might be better carried out.
“No problem of education is more important than that which involved the adaptation of instruments to the capacities and needs of the children who are to be educated. Every parent, for the same of his children, every citizen, for the sake of society, every teacher for the sake of her pupils, and every school officer as a measure of the education provided should ask these questions: Is the child in the school located in the grade and class best suited to him? Are the subject matter and methods of instruction properly adapted to his capacities and stage of progress? Is the school so organized that, within necessary limits each child may progress in his education at the rate demanded by his individual abilities and needs? Have all reasonably possible means been employed to classify pupils in instructional groups according to their various capacities?"
Publications
Walter F. Dearborn is the author of numerous books and articles on education, and reading, many of them still in print. He is also honored as a Reading Pioneer at the Reading Hall of Fame.The following is a selection of works by Walter F Dearborn:
- The Psychology of Teaching Reading
- The Psychology of Reading: An Experimental Study of the Reading Pauses and Movements of the Eye (Paperback - Feb. 12, 2010)
- A Comparison Of The Intelligence And Training Of School Children In A Massachusetts Town: Series 1, No. 1, Studies In Educational Psychology And Educational Measurement (1922) Edwin Adams Shaw (Author), Edward Andrews Lincoln (Author), Walter F. Dearborn (Editor)
- School and University Grades (Paperback)
- Predicting The Child's Development
- The Psychological Researches Of James McKeen Cattell: A Review By Some Of His Pupils (1914) by Vivian Allen Charles Henmon, Walter Fenno Dearborn, and Frederic Lyman Wells (Hardcover - Feb. 17, 2010)
- Reading and Visual Fatigue by Leonard and Dearborn, CARMICHAEL (Hardcover - 1947)
- Research Within The Field Of Education, Its Organization And Encouragement (1911) by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley, Walter F. Dearborn, and Paul Monroe