W. W. Charters (1875–1952)

Werrett Wallace Charters

Author of Methods of Teaching (1909), Teaching the Common Branches (1913), Curriculum Construction (1923), and Motion Pictures in Youth (1933).

Coauthor of The Commonwealth Teacher-Training Study (1929).

Werrett Wallace Charters (1875–1952) was a pioneering researcher in teacher education and curriculum development. His scientific approach to curriculum development through analysis of life activities broke new ground in the emerging field of curriculum study.

Born in Hartford, Ontario, Charters attended the Hartford Village School and, after finishing studies at Hagersville High School, enrolled at McMaster University in Toronto for one year. Taking a break from the university, he taught at the Rockford Public School for two years before he returned to McMaster to earn a bachelor’s of art degree. A leader throughout his life, Charters served as class president during his final year at McMaster. In 1923, he received an honorary doctorate degree from his alma mater.

Charters earned his teaching diploma at Ontario Normal College in 1899 and, subsequently, became the principal of Hamilton City Model School. He later served as the school’s administrator and instructor of teachers-in-training. So successful were his teacher preparation methods that the Board of Examiners named the Hamilton Model School as the premier model school in Ontario. Charters later earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. John Dewey, renowned educational philosopher and the first Laureate of Kappa Delta Pi, was his dissertation advisor.

Upon completing his doctorate, Charters served as principal of the Winona State Normal School in Minnesota before transferring to the University of Missouri, where he became a Professor of Theory of Teaching and the Dean of the School of Education. Concerned particularly about instruction in rural schools, Charters traveled throughout Missouri to visit and inspect high schools, often walking miles between train stations and the schools themselves. His first book, Methods of Teaching, appeared in 1909.

From 1917–1928, Charters was a faculty member at four institutions: the University of Illinois, Carnegie Institute of Technology, University of Pittsburgh, and University of Chicago. In 1928, he left the University of Chicago to become Professor of Education and Director of the Bureau of Educational Research at The Ohio State University. He also served as Director of Research at Stephen’s College in Columbia, Missouri, from 1920–1949.

While at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (1919–23), Charters engaged in numerous research projects, especially ones in vocational and professional education. By analyzing the professional activities of various occupations to determine deficiencies in content knowledge, Charters developed curricula for training in fields such as pharmacy, secretarial work, and radio education. For Charters, activity analysis was the critical starting point of curriculum development. “Without such analysis,” he explained, “we are entirely at a loss to know how to proceed in building the curriculum” (Charters 1923, 40). Increasing productivity through heightened efficiency in industry was another of his professional emphases, and one which Charters would continue throughout his career.

Upon leaving the Carnegie Institute, Charters assumed the position of Professor of Education and Director, Research Bureau for Retail Training, at the University of Pittsburgh. There, he continued to work with business and industry to develop efficient, systematic curricula. He published Curriculum Construction (1923), one of his major contributions to the emerging curriculum field, initiating the need for methods of developing curriculum—methods centered on life activities rather than content itself. By preparing students for specific life activities, he believed that education would enable students to solve issues which they would encounter regularly as adults (Seguel 1966). Hence, Charters, along with his contemporary Franklin Bobbitt, helped shift concerns for development away from school subject knowledge toward students’ presumed adult functioning.

At the University of Chicago (1925–1928), Charters, assisted by Douglas Waples, directed The Commonwealth Teacher-Training Study (1929). In this project, he used his activity analysis for teacher education.

Moving to The Ohio State University, Charters was responsible for research, for publication of the Educational Research Bulletin, and for the professional development and assistance of university and college faculties, including curricula preparation, course development, and instruction and testing. Additionally, the Bureau of Educational Research provided professional expertise to specialized branches of education, such as health, telecommunication, women’s education, and vocational education.

Charters’s role as Director of the Bureau of Educational Research afforded him opportunities to make significant contributions in several professional fields. An area of special interest was audiovisual education—particularly, the effect of motion pictures on children (Dale 1970). After directing 12 studies in the area, Charters published Motion Pictures and Youth (1933), in which he concluded that the motion picture “is a potent medium of education” that can strongly influence student attitudes both positively and negatively (Charters 1933, 60; Wraga 2003, 265).

Another noteworthy achievement during his tenure at Ohio State was founding the Journal of Higher Education. As its first editor, Charters believed that the journal would serve as a medium for the reporting of research and expressing varying views from multiple disciplines within higher education (Johnson 1953).

Charters’s legacy includes the enhancement and professional development of the lives of many of his students and colleagues. Notably, Charters selected William H. Cowley, Edgar Dale, and Ralph W. Tyler, all his former Ph.D. students, to become affiliated with the Bureau of Educational Research. Each later became internationally renowned.

During his lifetime, Charters published more than 500 books, chapters, and articles. An active member and leader of numerous organizations, Charters served as founder and director of the Institute of Education by Radio, director of the National Society for the Study of Education, a Kappa Delta Pi Laureate, and the National Education Association (Kliebard 1975; Rosenstock 1984).

Charters died in 1952, at the age of 77 in Livingston, Alabama. The Charters’ Papers are housed in the Special Collections division of the library at The Ohio State University.

Contributed by Michelle M. Bauml, The University of Texas at Austin

References
Charters, W. W. 1923. Curriculum construction. New York: Macmillan.

Charters, W. W. 1933. Motion pictures and youth: A summary. New York: Macmillan.

Dale, E. 1970. Associations with W. W. Charters. Theory into Practice 9(2):116–18.

Johnson, B. L. 1953. Werrett Wallace Charters: Particularly his contributions to higher education. The Journal of Higher Education 24(5): 236–40, 281.

Kliebard, H. M. 1975. The rise of scientific curriculum making and its aftermath. Curriculum Theory Network 5(1): 27–37.

Rosenstock, S. A. 1984. The educational contributions of W(erret) W(allace) Charters. Ph.D. diss., The Ohio State University, Columbus.

Seguel, M. L. 1966. The curriculum field: Its formative years. New York: Teachers College Press.

Wraga, W. G. 2003. Charters, W. W. 1875–1952. In Encyclopedia of Education, Vol. 1, 2nd ed., ed J. W. Guthrie, 263–65. New York: McMillan.

Professor and director of the Bureau of Educational Research at Ohio State University, Werrett Wallace Charters contributed to the fields of curriculum development and audiovisual technology. Born in Hartford, Ontario (Canada), Charters earned his A.B. in 1898 from McMaster University, a teaching diploma from the Ontario Normal College in 1899, a B.Pd. from the University of Toronto, and his M.Ph. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, respectively in 1903 and 1904. After a three-year career in Canadian public schools as a teacher and principal, Charters spent the remainder of his career in the United States. Before joining Ohio State University in 1928, Charters served as a faculty member and/or dean at six institutions: the State Normal School in Winona, Minnesota, the University of Missouri, the University of Illinois, the Carnegie Institute for Technology, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Chicago. In 1923 Charters was awarded an honorary doctorate from McMaster University.

In his earliest scholarship, Charters attempted to develop what he called a "functional" theory of instruction derived from the ideas of the Progressive educator John Dewey (who, despite having discouraged Charters from pursuing doctoral study, had served as his doctoral adviser). In his first book, Methods of Teaching, Charters maintained that the function of school subject matter was "to satisfy needs and solve problems" faced by society (pp. 3,31). A school's program of curriculum and instruction would put into practice this conception of subject matter by introducing subject matter when it addressed an actual or potential student need, enabling students to perceive its function. Charters discussed ways to organize subject matter and teaching to achieve such conditions, indicating, among other things, that students should not only be told about, but also should be allowed to "construct" functions of subject matter for themselves. Although he continued to embrace the notion of "functional" education, subsequently Charter's work departed significantly from Dewey's educational theory.

Charters's most significant contribution to the field of curriculum development came in the form of his activity-analysis approach to curriculum construction. Activity analysis essentially involved specification of the discrete tasks or activities involved in any social activity. For purposes of curriculum construction, the resulting specifications translated into program objectives. Activity analysis was considered a "scientific" approach to curriculum construction insofar as it represented a quantification of human activities as a basis for selecting educational objectives. Because activity analysis often amounted to little more than an accounting of tasks, critics of the approach characterized it as "scientism" in curriculum work and rejected it as overly mechanistic.

Charters's version of activity analysis differed from those of his contemporaries largely in terms of the emphasis that he placed on the inclusion of social ideals in the curriculum. In 1923 Charters articulated seven "rules" that governed curriculum construction.

1. Identify major educational aims through a study of contemporary social circumstances.
2. Classify the major aims into ideals and activities and reduce them to operational objectives.
3. Prioritize the aims and objectives.
4. Reprioritize the aims and objectives to lend greater importance to those relevant to children's experience than to those relevant to adults but remote from children.
5. Identify those aims and objectives achievable within the constraints of the school setting, relegating those best accomplished outside the school to extraschool experiences.
6. Identify materials and methods conducive to the achievement of the selected aims and objectives.
7. Order materials and methods consist with principles of child psychology.

Charters's approach to curriculum construction influenced a generation of curriculum scholars, including George S. Counts, Ralph W. Tyler, and Hilda Taba.

During the latter part of his career, Charters focused his attention on audiovisual education. In his book Motion Pictures and Youth, Charters summarized a series of twelve studies that he had directed that investigated the effects of motion pictures on children and youth. Among the earliest of their kind, these studies examined attendance at and content of movies and how they influenced children. In addition to ascertaining the retention of information from movies, the studies found that children and youth accepted movie content as true and that movies could exert a significant influence on attitudes. In his summary, Charters recognized not only that motion pictures were "a potent medium of education"(p.60), but also that films were potentially miseducative. Charters concluded that film clearly was a powerful source of information and attitudes, but that the extent of its influence on children and youth relative to other institutions, such as the home, church, and school, remained unclear.

Charters's contributions to scholarship were dwarfed, however, by his managerial and organizational accomplishments. In addition to directing the Bureau of Educational Research at Ohio State University from 1928 to 1942, Charters directly or indirectly managed numerous educational projects. These include codirecting the Commonwealth Teacher Training Study (1929), founding the Institute for Education by Radio (1930) and the Journal of Higher Education, serving on the United States Senate Committee on Racketeering (1933–1934), and conducting evaluations of pharmaceutical and library education programs and of the United States Armed Forces Institute (1942).

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