--- description: Education has never had an authoritative dictionary of its technical terms. Any three educators would haggle themselves silly trying to find a common 15-word definition for frontier thinkers,... title: Education: Definitions image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # Education: Definitions by [TIME](/author/time/) Aug 15, 1938 4:00 AM CUT by [TIME](/author/time/) Aug 15, 1938 4:00 AM CUT Education has never had an authoritative dictionary of its technical terms. Any three educators would haggle themselves silly trying to find a common 15-word definition for frontier thinkers, organismic psychology, transfer of training. Last week, at last, Phi Delta Kappa, 29-year-old professional fraternity of education, announced that it would compile from the best written sources and from the knowledge of its 23,000 members a Dictionary of Education. ΦΔΚ hopes to complete its work in about four years. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6779218/education-definitions/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6779218/education-definitions/"},"headline":"Education: Definitions","datePublished":"1938-08-15T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T15:14:55.865Z","description":"Education has never had an authoritative dictionary of its technical terms. Any three educators would haggle themselves silly trying to find a common 15-word definition for frontier thinkers,...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6779218/education-definitions/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME","url":"https://time.com/author/time/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6779218/education-definitions/","name":"Education: Definitions"}}]}] ```