Some Materials Centers in the Midwest— A Further Look

Abstract

Although the concept of an &dquo;instructional materials center,&dquo; including a comprehensive collection of all media of communication useful for instructional purposes, has long been the goal of the educational avant garde, in a recent article the authors demonstrated that few teacher-training institutions had gone beyond the older concept of a curriculum laboratory : a small section of the library with some textbooks and a few courses of study.' At the time of the publication of the original article, the editor suggested that the authors should expand their study to include materials centers in schools to which these institutions send their graduates. Presumably information of a comparative nature might enable one to determine whether the lack of such centers at the teacher training institutions had any effect upon provision of similar centers in the schools themselves.In order to provide comparable data, in the spring of 1961, Miss Stull again surveyed the centers of the fourteen teacher-training institutions. Results of the new survey, four years later, are given in Table I and reveal that some progress has been made in the intervening period. Although textbooks and courses of study still remain the backbone of such centers (indeed the printed word whether in those forms or in the form of tests, pamphlets, free and inexpensive learning materials is predominant), a few institutions have added non-print materials. One more school has added projectors to its center, two more (not necessarily the same two in each case) have added filmstrips, listening posts