International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1931)

390 — Photography Section in collaboration with the National Touring Committee and each film dealt with the geography, art, economics and folklore of a particular Spanish province. The provinces selected were Salamanca, Avila, Zamora and Santander and the films as a whole were well-made and exhaustive. The main object of the experiment was, quoting Prof. Blanco, " to ascertain, by comparison with ordinary teaching methods, the value of the cinema as an instrument of teaching." The programme was as follows: (a) preliminary examination before projection: without previous notice, without the aid of any text-books, maps or other material and without consulting each other, students were required to write down all they knew about a certain province. (b) Projection of the film dealing with this province; the projection was stopped from time to time in order that students might be given oral explanations of special more important passages. (c) Examination subsequent to projection: under the same conditions and the same rules as the preliminary test. (d) Repetition of the same tests for the other provinces. (e) Grouping, analysis and interpretation, of results on the basis of a comparison of each pupil's preliminary and subsequent paper, first for each province and then for all the provinces together, so as to determine the progress made between the beginning and end of this first part of the experiment. (/) Selection of the same number of provinces as was studied in the first part of the experiment. Each province in this new series was chosen for a certain analogy — as regards characteristics, aspects, interest and difficulty of its study — with another province in the first series. (g) Succession of exercises corresponding to those mentioned under (a) -(e) and applying to each of the provinces referred to in (/). The only difference was that the projection of the film was supplemented by an oral lesson in which use was made of the ordinary teaching material commonly employed in schools. (h) Comparative study of the results obtained from the two series of exercises. Tf this programme had been carried out in its entirety, it would certainly have revealed the advantages and disadvantages of the new method of teaching. Various circumstances, however, prevented the experiment from being carried beyond the first part of the programme. The tests were held in all classes and, in comparing results account was, of course, taken of differences of class. In every class an index figure was fixed for each pupil and employed throughout the experiment so as to measure the progress made from one exercise to another. In this way it was ascertained that the method of teaching experimented with facilated understanding and expression, thus confirming the theory that he who sees well, writes well. In view of the small number of tests set and the difficulties of the problem, it was thought best to draw no definite conclusions from this experiment. Valuable information, however, was forthcoming and if the experiment were repeated under better conditions of technique and after removing certain practical difficulties encountered on this occasion, it should be possible to arrive at conclusions whicn would establish the value of film-teaching, as far, anyhow, as it is possible to be at all absolute in psychological matters. Prior to the experiment, its organisers felt that this method of teaching was superior to any of the means in current use, but they could not trust to intuition. In the sphere of teaching, the value of a method must be determined scientifically and by experiment. In the absence of final conclusions, the experiment in question enabled the following observations to be made: (i) The cinema develops ideas to an appreciable extent which increases as the pupil becomes more familiar with the cinematographic method. (2) This development of ideas does not stand in a fixed ratio to the class of student; the number and kind of ideas