C

Caldwell, Otis William (1869-1947). American educator. Born at Lebanon, Indiana, where his parents, Theodore and Isabella, were farmers. He was educated at local public schools and at Franklin College, graduating with a BS degree in 1894. After a year as a high school principal at Nineveh, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1898 with a PhD in botany. Caldwell then taught biology at the Eastern Illinois State Normal School in Charleston, from 1899 until 1907 when he moved to a post at the school of education in the University of Chicago. He was dean of University College, University of Chicago, 1913-17. Caldwell was a keen exponent of improved teaching methods in schools and of the introduction of science into the school curriculum. In 1917 he was recruited to be the first director of Lincoln School, an experimental progressive elementary and secondary school, linked with Teachers College, Columbia University. For the next ten years Caldwell kept Lincoln School at the forefront of educational development, hiring able faculty staff such as Harold Rugg, promoting curriculum reform and materials, and a ‘unit approach’ in which the insights of traditional disciplines were combined. Lincoln School served both as a site for educational experimentation, and as a successful school in its own right, receiving a total of $3 million from the General Education Board. In 1917 Caldwell was appointed professor of Education at Teachers College, and in 1920 also assumed the role of director of school experimentation in its Institute of Educational Research. Between 1927 and 1928 he served as director of the newly formed Institute of School Experimentation, which had a $400,000 laboratory attached to the Lincoln School. Caldwell retired from Teachers College in 1935, but continued in the role of secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a position he held from 1933 until his death. In 1940 he served as president of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. Caldwell was a practical person, who promoted the causes of education and science, but who eschewed grand theories in either field. He was a prolific author, particularly of school textbooks and popular scientific works. See his own writings, many of them co-authored, including, Laboratory and Field Manual of Botany (1901); Elements of General Science (1914); Then and Now in Education (1923); Biological Foundations of Education (1931); Everyday Science (1943), and the entry by Patricia Graham in the Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement IV.