The papers of Loren Barritt consist primarily of materials related to his career as a professor of education at the University of Michigan School of Education from 1964 to 2000. Records include correspondence with colleagues, papers presented at professional meetings, research proposals and reports, grant and fellowship applications, materials related to committees on which Barritt served, and newsletters. They document his research interests in educational testing and measurement, language development and testing, European (particularly Dutch) approaches to education and research, and educational psychology.
Loren Barritt received a B.A. degree in English from Blackburn College in 1958. He earned an M.A. in Guidance and Counseling in 1961 and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology in 1964 from Indiana University School of Education. At the University of Michigan School of Education Barritt served as an assistant professor from 1964 to 1968 and associate professor from 1968 to 1973. He became a full professor in 1973.
Barritt's research interests have evolved through the years. His dissertation in 1964 concerned the predictive validity of educational tests. In 1966 he joined the University of Michigan Center for Research on Language and Language Behavior. From 1966 to 1970 he conducted research on language testing for children with and without mental disabilities.
Barritt was influenced by European approaches to education and research. In the first of four sabbatical leaves to study abroad, he spent the early months of 1970 as a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Scientific Study of Education at the University of Geneva, where he attended lectures by Jean Piaget. Barritt spent the 1973-74 academic year as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Utrecht. Back at the University of Michigan in 1974, Barritt established the Phenomenology Seminar, which in 1981 was renamed the Human Science Research Association Meeting. The seminar brought together scholars interested in phenomenological approaches to educational research, which concentrates on a dialogue between study subjects and researchers and encourages participation in the lives of the subjects. He returned to the Netherlands in 1978-79 with a Visitors Grant from the Netherlands Institute for Basic Research to write a monograph on "Researching Educational Practice," and in 1985-86 with a research grant from the Dutch Ministry of Education to study a Dutch elementary school.
Barritt served as the chair of the University of Michigan School of Education Program in Curriculum, Teaching and Psychological Studies from 1986 to 1990. In addition, he has served on university committees. Throughout his career, Barritt has been an active member of many professional associations, including the American Educational Research Association, the National Council on Measurements in Education, and the Human Science Research Association, the North Dakota Study Group on Evaluation, and the American Anthropological Association. Barritt retired from the University of Michigan in 2000.
