ABSTRACT
A social psychologist of education, Richard Allen Schmuck is Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology at the University of Oregon, Eugene. He did research and development and taught there for 32 years. His specialties were classroom peer-group dynamics and school-faculty organization development, both largely focused on cooperative social processes. During a professional career of over 40 years at the University of Michigan, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Temple University, and the University of Oregon, Richard published 26 academic books and 199 scientific journal articles.
In 1971, Richard Schmuck published two co-authored books: one on organizational development in schools with Philip Runkel, the other on group processes in the classroom with Patricia Schmuck. The book on organization development was based on research he and his colleagues at the University of Oregon had been conducting on strategies for helping school participants (primarily teachers and principals) develop more effective school processes. His work on group processes aimed at helping teachers create more socially, emotionally, and high-performing classrooms. Addressing important problems faced by educators in the 1960s and 1970s, Schmuck’s work was guided by ideas and theories from the fields of social psychology, group dynamics, and planned organizational change. He was influenced by the work of leading scholars, including Lewin (1944, 1948, 1951), Lewin et al (1939), Lippitt et al (1958), and Thelen (1954).
In this chapter, we first describe Schmuck’s contributions to the fields of organization development and group processes and the relationships among these fields to cooperative learning. The chapter concludes with a review of Schmuck’s leadership over the years in the International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education (IASCE) and his personal reflections on becoming an IASCE Pioneer.
