Category Archives: Educational Research

Gathering Intelligence: A free seminar regarding Thomson’s life and work

Our Wellcome Trust funded project*, ‘Documenting the Understanding of Human Intelligence: cataloguing and preserving the papers of Professor Sir Godfrey Thomson’, is on course to deliver on all its objectives in the next few months. Continuing on from the cataloguing project, we aim to digitise Thomson’s papers, and catalogue related papers through the Moray House and University of Edinburgh collections.  We will also be curating an exhibition regarding Thomson’s life and work in 2016.

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Professor Sir Godfrey Thomson (1881-1955)

To mark this exciting and continuing collaboration between the academic and archival communities, we are holding a free seminar for researchers, students, and archivists at Edinburgh University Library, 16th May 2014.

Professor Sir Godfrey Thomson (1881-1955) was a psychologist, statistician, and educator.  The seminar programme reflects this, and is a varied one exploring Thomson’s work in Psychology (especially cognitive testing), Statistics, Education, and Eugenics, with academic speakers from each field.  Chaired by Professor Dorothy Meill, Vice Principal and Head of the College of Humanities and Social Science, It will also discuss current scientific research facilitated through data sets left from Thomson’s work, as well as the complexities involved in interpreting and cataloguing the collection itself.

Professor Ian Deary’s British Academy Lecture on Thomson

Programme

 Gathering Intelligence: the life and work of Professor Sir Godfrey Thomson

Chaired by Professor Dorothy Meill, Vice Principal and Head of the College of Humanities and Social Science

 9. 15:              Coffee and introduction

10.00:             Martin Lawn, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Education, University of Oxford: ‘’His Great Institution’’: Thomson’s advanced school of education in Edinburgh’

10.30:             Professor Ian Deary, Director, Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology: ‘Use of Thomson’s data today in studies of cognitive ageing and cognitive epidemiology’.

 

11.00:             Tea and coffee

11.30:              Professor Lindsay Paterson, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh: ‘Use of Thomson’s survey work in current research on social mobility and life-long education’

12.00:              Dr Edmund Ramsden, ‘Thomson’s research and opinions on the differential birth rate and eugenics’.

 

12.30:             Lunch (lunch is provided), and viewing of the collection

2.00:               David Bartholomew, Professor Emeritus of Statistics at the London School of Economics: Thomson’s original statistical contributions

2.30:               Emma Anthony, Project Archivist, Godfrey Thomson Project: ‘Interpreting and Cataloguing Thomson’s papers’

3.00:               Panel discussion

4.00:               Moray House tour

4.30:               Finish

The seminar is free, but please note places must be booked through eventbrite.

Wellcome Trust bursaries for accommodation and travel are available.

For further information, contact Emma.Anthony@ed.ac.uk.

*Funded by the Trust’s Research Resources grant scheme under the call ‘Understanding the Human Brain’.  Continuing on from the current cataloguing project, we aim to digitise Thomson’s papers, and catalogue related papers through the Moray House and University of Edinburgh collections.  We will also be curating an exhibition regarding Thomson’s life and work in 2016.

The disgruntlements of old age…

Disgruntlement.  The archives are full of it – though I should stress I am referring to the contents of our records rather than our lovely readers (or indeed my lovely  colleagues)!  This week’s letter is a wonderful example of disgruntlement from the eccentric and brilliant zoologist and classicist, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948).  The youth, he tells us, simply aren’t what they used to be:DSCN0373DSCN0374Thompson wrote the letter to Thomson in 1946 to congratulate him on his Galton Lecture, ‘the Trends of National Intelligence’, which explored the idea that as a nation, our intelligence was in decline.

While he acknowledges that he may well be ‘biased by the disgruntlements of old age’, he assures Thomson:

I still believe that my students are inferior to those of thirty or forty years ago, and to my own companions of 60-70 years ago.  They have less ability, much less diligence, and hardly any of the old enthusiasm and joy and happiness in their work.

And that, according to Thompson, isn’t even the half of it!:

There is something, something very subtle and mysterious, which brings the Golden Ages and the Dark Ages; which gives one, in literature, the Elizabethan, the Queen Anne, and the Victorian periods; and in Art the great and shortlived glories of Greece, Italy, Holland and our English school of Reynolds, Turner, Constable and the rest.  All gone!

Indeed.  And according to Thompson, who finishes on a wonderful note of pessimism, its only going to get worse:

I judge from the young people I have to do with, that we are going to be worse before we are better.

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D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson

But despite appearances, Thompson loved teaching – he was a renowned speaker whose lecture halls were packed, and he encouraged his students to exercise their enquiring minds.  Even while he lay on his death bed, Thompson’s students visited and livened up his last days with discussion and debate.  Any disappointment hinted at in his letter to Thomson could be attributed to his own brilliance, which perhaps caused him to expect similar levels of extraordinariness in those he taught.

Thompson’s love of biology was awakened by his Grandfather, who, along with Thompson’s Aunt, brought him up in Edinburgh.  This was due to the death of his Mother and his Father’s appointment as professor of Greek in Queen’s College, Galway.  He was educated at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge – gaining a first, naturally, and was appointed professor of biology in University College Dundee.

The importance of artefacts in teaching was clear to Thompson from the outset.  Under his guidance a rich museum of zoology was created, helped by the Dundee whalers.  Thompson himself was deeply interested in whaling, visiting the Pribylov Islands as a member for the British–American ‘inquiry on the fur seal fishery in the Bering Sea’.  This interest would continue throughout his life, seeing him speaking at international conferences; appointed CB (1898); becoming a member of the fishery board for Scotland; and becoming a British representative for the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. In 1917, Thompson accepted the post of senior chair of natural history in the United College of the University of St Andrews.

Thompson’s published output was vast, and included papers on biology, oceanography, classical scholarship, and natural history.  He had several honours bestowed upon him, including his election as fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1885); his election as fellow of the Royal Society (1916); the Linnean gold medal (1938); the Darwin medal (1946); and his knighthood (1937).  Despite his description of himself as a ‘disgruntled old man’, Thompson encouraged the youth surrounding him to think, to enquire, and to explore – something he did right up until the end of his life.

 

 

A few of my favourite things…II

In the next instalment of interesting objects (chosen solely on the discerning basis that I rather like them!) are these intelligence testing blocks from the Godfrey Thomson unit:

TestingBlocksTesting blocks were (and are) used in several intelligence tests, including the WAIS intelligence tests and Wechsler tests.  The individual is presented with the blocks and cards with patterns on them, and tasked with replicating the patterns with the blocks against a timer.  This measures spacial ability.

Sadly, the accompanying cards have not survived (though this is perhaps just as well, since they would have resulted in procrastination en masse here in the archives!).

However, purely for entertainment purposes are the following teasers for you to try your hand at:

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test4Enjoy!*

* Before embarking on this endeavour, the reader is advised that we do not have the answers!

Education and the ‘Disconnected Mind’

This week, I was lucky enough to have a good rummage through the Scottish Council for Research in Education collection, which is in Glasgow University Archive Services.  The council, which began in 1928, spent much of its life situated in Edinburgh, until its latter years when its staff were moved to the faculty of education in Glasgow.

It was the Scottish Council for Research in Education (who shall henceforth be known as SCRE!) who carried out the Scottish Mental Surveys, with funding from the Population Investigation Committee, the Eugenics Society, and, with later follow on studies, the Nuffield Trust.  The surveys tested every child in Scotland born in 1921 and 1936 in 1932 and 1947 respectively, and there were three follow on projects (the ‘Binet 1000’, the ‘6-day sample’, and the ’36-day sample’).  Some of the children from the 1947 survey were still in contact as far as 1963, their achievements and social background being examined alongside their original results to see what bearing these had had on the rest of their lives.

The records of these surveys, including the completed test papers, compiled results, follow on studies, and sociological data, survive to this day within the collection, and have been utilised to great effect by psychologists at Edinburgh University who are working with participants of the surveys to explore why some individuals’ cognitive abilities decline more than others.  Their work is part of the Disconnected Mind project, which aims to prevent an increasingly ageing population from losing their cognitive abilities, and is funded by Age UK.  You can hear Prof Ian Deary discuss the project here:

Like Deary, SCRE were concerned with the ‘disconnect’ of the mind, though that of the child rather than the adult.  Much of SCRE’s work involved the engagement of the child in their learning.  They had various primary school committees including committees for handwriting, numbers, spelling, and bilingualism (of which Thomson was convenor), as well as committees looking at the needs of blind, partially sighted, and deaf children.

This is reflected in the SCRE published spelling list:

Dr Robbie reported that in preparing the spelling list which the panel is proposing to compile the panel had sought to discover the kind of subject about which children liked to write.  he explained that the pupil’s spelling and vocabulary would be obtained by distributing the chosen topics to selected schools,  from this, a spelling list compiled on the child’s need would ultimately be compiled [Council minutes, 21 June 1947].

This concern about the child’s interests was, in actual fact, highly forward thinking, and there are many artefacts and teaching aids surviving in Moray House which show how teachers at the demonstration school piqued the interest of the children:

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Some of the artefacts from the Moray House cupboard/wunderkabinet! [photograph courtesy of Emma Smith]

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Another of the Moray House demonstration school’s teaching aids [photograph courtesy of Emma Smith]

Today, SCRE is no longer in operation.  However, the publications they produced as a result of their work were widely disseminated, surviving in many higher education libraries.  These, along with their records, show SCRE to have been both a highly innovative and democratic organisation, exploring hitherto unexamined areas and keeping equality, as well as the abilities and potential of each child, at its core.

With thanks to Glasgow University Archive Services.

A brief history of Godfrey Thomson!

In 1932 and 1947, every 11 year old child in Scotland was given an intelligence test, known as the ‘Moray House Test’, as part of the Scottish Mental Survey.  Additionally, they were the subject of a questionnaire which gleaned information about their social and familial background.  All of this was in response to the idea that as a nation, Scotland’s intelligence was decreasing due to a supposed differential birth rate.  The resulting data, which proved this hypothesis wrong, survives to this day.  It is an entirely unique and rich source of information, which has allowed current researchers at the department of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh to undertake pioneering research exploring cognitive ageing.

The creator of these tests (and chairman of the second Scottish Mental Survey) was none other than Professor Sir Godfrey Hilton Thomson.

So just who was Thomson- and why do we think him so important?!

Thomson was a pioneer in the interloping fields of intelligence, statistics, and education. He was the first person to the Bell Chair of Education at the University of Edinburgh, and the Directorship of Moray House School of Education simultaneously; published prolifically on the topic of psychometrics; debated voraciously with eminent statistician Charles Spearman for almost 30 years, and last, but by no means least, was a Knight of the Realm thanks to his considerable services to Education.  More than this, Thomson was an egalitarian from a humble background, a ‘lad o’ pairts’ who achieved greatness thanks to his talent and determination, and who believed deeply in equality and fairness.

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Godfrey Thomson, c1920s

The ‘Moray House Tests’ which the children sat in 1932 and 1947 actually had their origins in Newcastle in 1921.  The local authorities, who at that time provided bursaries for secondary school education, were concerned by a lack of applicants from rural backgrounds.  Thomson was conscious of the fact that rural children were often absent from school, so he wanted to create a test which would allow children to demonstrate ‘native wit’ or innate intelligence, rather than a test which would rely upon past learning.

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Example of a question from the Newcastle tests

This striving for equality was typical of Thomson, and perhaps in part a result of his own humble background.  Born in Carlisle in 1881, his Mother left his Father, taking the infant Thomson with her, to return to her childhood home in Tyneside.  His Mother and he lived with her three sisters, and she earned a very modest income from working with a sewing machine firm in Newcastle.

Thomson had plans to become a ‘pattern maker’, a specialist joiner who made wooden models of steel castings for engineering works, after leaving High Felling Board School.  However, after sitting a scholarship examination, Thomson found himself at Rutherford College, where he discovered various interests in mathematics, music, and etymology.  Rutherford College was supported largely by the students entering and winning examinations as part of a government scheme, and Thomson soon became a veteran in these examinations, obtaining prizes for English and Mathematics amongst others.

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Thomson as a young boy

At 16, he sat the London Matriculation exam, and returned to High Felling Board School as a pupil teacher.  During this time, he took additional evening classes, studying chemistry, physics, botany, and zoology.  In 1889, aged 18, Thomson sat the Queen’s Scholarship, an all-England competition, and came third, continuing his studies in what would become Armstrong College, and later King’s College, at Durham University.  Thomson studied for his teaching diploma and a joint Mathematics and Physics degree simultaneously, and graduated with distinction.  He went on to study at Strasbourg under the Nobel prize winning physicist, Professor Ferdinand Braun, and graduating Summa cum Laude following his work on Herzian waves.

After his three years in Strasbourg came to a close, Thomson returned to Newcastle, attaining the post of assistant lecturer at Armstrong College in order to fulfil the obligation of his scholarship.    It was here he met his wife, Jennie Hutchinson, a fellow lecturer, and here he gained an interest in Educational Psychology. In 1916 he published a paper which would ignite a 30 year debate with the eminent statistician, Charles Spearman.

Essentially, the debate centred around Spearman’s Theory of Two Factors regarding intelligence.  He believed that performance in each subject was down to specific abilities linked to each, and general ability linked to all.  Thomson provided an alternative for this in his bonds model, in which he hypothesised that any mental task requires a number of ‘bonds’, some of which are more closely related to others in ‘pools’ (Thomson made a link between these bonds and the neurons of the brain).  Thomson had no wish to discredit Spearman’s theory, rather to show that his provided an alternative, and he showed good sportsmanship in holding off publication during the war years to enable Spearman, who was serving, time to respond. However, the debate would continue until Spearman’s death in 1945.

In 1925, Thomson accepted his position in Edinburgh and his family (by now including his son, Hector) moved to Edinburgh.  It was here in what became the Godfrey Thomson Unit that Thomson and his team would formulate the Moray House Test.  The test, which included questions on verbal reasoning, English, and mathematics, was also used by local authorities throughout the UK for School selection.  Thomson was not wholly comfortable with this, but concluded testing was preferable to nepotism, and worked on making the tests as fair as possible.  Thomson could have made a considerable fortune on the tests, but instead insured all royalties were transferred into a research fund to facilitate their continual improvement.

On his retirement in 1951, Thomson, who had proved highly popular amongst staff and students, was presented with 2 portraits of himself by RH Westwater, one of which hangs in Moray House to this day.  He passed away in 1955.

These are just some of the many reasons why we think Thomson is incredibly important, and has been unfairly neglected from the history of psychometrics.  This neglect is, in part, due to scholars having no primary material to consult – the archive itself was only discovered in 2008, and it is no exaggeration to say it was rescued.

It is our task to catalogue his papers, and to ensure he finally receives the recognition his work deserves.  In the coming months, we will be blogging about Thomson, his collection, and the people he came into contact with throughout his life and career.  We hope you will enjoy!