The Rise of the American Nursery School: Laboratory for a Science of Child Development

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511610400.012

10 - The Rise of the American Nursery School: Laboratory for a Science of Child Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009

Barbara Beatty

Edited by

David B. Pillemer and

Sheldon H. White

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Barbara Beatty: Affiliation:
Department of Education, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
David B. Pillemer: Affiliation:
University of New Hampshire
Sheldon H. White: Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts

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Summary

American nursery schools served both as laboratories for the derivation of a science of child development and as consumers of this new science. Nursery schools grew out of the larger preschool movement of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century infant schools and kindergartens and from new conceptions of childhood. Treatises on how to educate young children, medical advice and child rearing manuals, Darwin's theory of evolution, and other early work in biology and comparative psychology laid the groundwork for the study of child development. G. Stanley Hall's child study movement of the 1890s was the main precursor. Edward L. Thorndike's educational psychology added new quantitative methodology. All of this came together in the environment of the nursery school, where psychologists, teachers, and parents sought new scientific information about children, and young children were readily available for research (Beatty, 1995; Koops & Zuckerman, 2003; Sears, 1975; Smuts and Boardman, 1986; White, 2003).

Driven by societal needs and concern for children's well-being, the nursery-school movement and child development research were based on the belief that scientific knowledge about young children, child rearing, and preschool education could ameliorate larger social problems. The flood of immigrants and increasing industrialization, urbanization, and poverty heightened existing worries about child welfare. The growth of cadres of experts in the sciences, social sciences, and children's professions created a new infrastructure. The roaring economy and more organized private charities and government agencies provided financial and political support.

Type: Chapter
Information: Developmental Psychology and Social Change
Research, History and Policy
, pp. 264 - 287

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511610400.012 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2005

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10 - The Rise of the American Nursery School: Laboratory for a Science of Child Development

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