I am the new kid on the block.
I read all of the past material and agree with Greg that: “you need substance in our dialogue.” However, rather than presentations to each other about where you are, why not collaborate on where you are going – prospective rather than retrospective.
For example, I have been invited to give a 10-minute presentation to the USF College of Education’s Fall Diversity Forum on the “achievement gap.” I’d like feedback on my preliminary draft of what I think I they need to hear and I need to say, given my take on take on education. The text follows: is that of interest and does that make sense?
Action Research
K. Edward Renner
The research that you are most familiar with starts with a theory, is translated into an application, which you as teachers put into practice.
However, what I will talk about today is "action-research;" it reverses that direction. It is best illustrated by a story in which the principal actors can be a professor, a student, or a teacher depending on the audience.
Two students were driving across a bridge when they spotted a child being carried downstream below. No sooner had they pulled the child from the stream when they saw two more children in the water. The first student headed back into the stream, while the second climbed up the bank. The first one hollered "where are you going" while the second answered "up stream to see who is throwing them in."
Going up stream to do primary intervention is widely knowledge as the most efficient intervention, but it seldom happens. If it did, issues, such as the achievement gap, would not be the intransigent social problems they have become.
Why is that?
There is considerable social pressure not to walk away from someone in need. But if you went up stream you would find that it is your boss -- your own institution -- that is participating with related institutions to throw the children into the stream.
It is called iatrogensis. It is the process by which institutions contribute to the very problems they are responsible for solving. The most common illustration is that one third of all hospital days are the result of illnesses contracted as a result of being in the hospital. However, iatrogensis is a common affliction, as when correctional institutions increase the probability of recidivism or when schools, seen as the instruments of choice to create greater social equality, actually increase inequality.
In a city where I used to live my neighbor was principal of the local high school. As you may know, pregnant teens are often excluded from school and fail to graduate from high school. He tried to create a program where the home economics classes would take care of the children as a practical learning experience and their mothers would continue in their regular classes. Such was not to be the case. Home economics would continue to be taught through books, and pregnant teens were to be left to their own devices to take care of their children and to pursue a GED for their education.
In a university where I used to teach, a professor offered a class in which his university students ran an after school program in the largely poor and ethnic minority district. The program turned vacant lots into community vegetable gardens. In addition to food, there were other outcomes: parental involvement, home-school interaction, the creation of a community organization, a community newsletter and an interest in a food related additions to the curriculum. But, of course there were other push-back effects: One absentee landlord rejected this appropriated use of his land and attracted negative media attention when picketed. The city first agreed and then withdrew from citing absentee owners of overgrown lots with a code violation and offering a plea bargain of a monthly payment to the program equivalent to what a lawn service agency would charge for routine maintenance. The absentee landowner had a conversation with the University President at the country club about withdrawing his support as a booster of the football program, and a financial officer of University questioned the appropriateness of the department owning a tractor. You see, University presidents expect Dean's to protect them from such external intrusions, and Dean's expect the same from department chairs, who in turn want the same from their faculty. The Dean spoke to the chairperson who reminded the faculty member that such activity is not scholarship and would not contribute to obtaining tenure. In the end, the faculty member was not retained, the tractor sold, and the university classroom returned to theoretical teaching on how the lack of parental involvement, home-school interaction, and a stable community contribute to the minority achievement gap.
If you you go upstream to put together the "systemic" pieces you will be reminded to go back down stream and take care of the individual cases. The “real” cause, as the explanation goes, is that higher education cannot solve the achievement gap because of the failure of the public school system. The public school system cannot solve the problem because the poor children from dysfunctional families and neighborhoods are not properly prepared for school. So, until poor ethnic mothers heading dysfunctional families living in dysfunctional neighborhoods stop having babies there's not anything that can be done.
If course that is nonsense.
We know that it is the sum of the contributions of the component systems that keep the flow of children coming. The difficulty is that the only place you, as a person, can have an influence is within your own system. But, when you go upstream to do action research -- using practice to inform policy -- you will be sent downstream to do the job you have been trained for and are paid to do. This is where cynicism and teacher burnout comes from.
Your university education should prepare you for this. You need to learn about the methodology of action research and the challenges and strategies of going upstream. You should have within the College of Education programs like the garden project, ones that your faculty contribute to on a par with standard theoretical research. You need this to prepare you for interrupting the iatrogenic habits that exist within our systems, which collectively are largely responsible for the intransigent nature of social issues such as the achievement gap.
I read all of the past material and agree with Greg that: “you need substance in our dialogue.” However, rather than presentations to each other about where you are, why not collaborate on where you are going – prospective rather than retrospective.
For example, I have been invited to give a 10-minute presentation to the USF College of Education’s Fall Diversity Forum on the “achievement gap.” I’d like feedback on my preliminary draft of what I think I they need to hear and I need to say, given my take on take on education. The text follows: is that of interest and does that make sense?
Action Research
K. Edward Renner
The research that you are most familiar with starts with a theory, is translated into an application, which you as teachers put into practice.
However, what I will talk about today is "action-research;" it reverses that direction. It is best illustrated by a story in which the principal actors can be a professor, a student, or a teacher depending on the audience.
Two students were driving across a bridge when they spotted a child being carried downstream below. No sooner had they pulled the child from the stream when they saw two more children in the water. The first student headed back into the stream, while the second climbed up the bank. The first one hollered "where are you going" while the second answered "up stream to see who is throwing them in."
Going up stream to do primary intervention is widely knowledge as the most efficient intervention, but it seldom happens. If it did, issues, such as the achievement gap, would not be the intransigent social problems they have become.
Why is that?
There is considerable social pressure not to walk away from someone in need. But if you went up stream you would find that it is your boss -- your own institution -- that is participating with related institutions to throw the children into the stream.
It is called iatrogensis. It is the process by which institutions contribute to the very problems they are responsible for solving. The most common illustration is that one third of all hospital days are the result of illnesses contracted as a result of being in the hospital. However, iatrogensis is a common affliction, as when correctional institutions increase the probability of recidivism or when schools, seen as the instruments of choice to create greater social equality, actually increase inequality.
In a city where I used to live my neighbor was principal of the local high school. As you may know, pregnant teens are often excluded from school and fail to graduate from high school. He tried to create a program where the home economics classes would take care of the children as a practical learning experience and their mothers would continue in their regular classes. Such was not to be the case. Home economics would continue to be taught through books, and pregnant teens were to be left to their own devices to take care of their children and to pursue a GED for their education.
In a university where I used to teach, a professor offered a class in which his university students ran an after school program in the largely poor and ethnic minority district. The program turned vacant lots into community vegetable gardens. In addition to food, there were other outcomes: parental involvement, home-school interaction, the creation of a community organization, a community newsletter and an interest in a food related additions to the curriculum. But, of course there were other push-back effects: One absentee landlord rejected this appropriated use of his land and attracted negative media attention when picketed. The city first agreed and then withdrew from citing absentee owners of overgrown lots with a code violation and offering a plea bargain of a monthly payment to the program equivalent to what a lawn service agency would charge for routine maintenance. The absentee landowner had a conversation with the University President at the country club about withdrawing his support as a booster of the football program, and a financial officer of University questioned the appropriateness of the department owning a tractor. You see, University presidents expect Dean's to protect them from such external intrusions, and Dean's expect the same from department chairs, who in turn want the same from their faculty. The Dean spoke to the chairperson who reminded the faculty member that such activity is not scholarship and would not contribute to obtaining tenure. In the end, the faculty member was not retained, the tractor sold, and the university classroom returned to theoretical teaching on how the lack of parental involvement, home-school interaction, and a stable community contribute to the minority achievement gap.
If you you go upstream to put together the "systemic" pieces you will be reminded to go back down stream and take care of the individual cases. The “real” cause, as the explanation goes, is that higher education cannot solve the achievement gap because of the failure of the public school system. The public school system cannot solve the problem because the poor children from dysfunctional families and neighborhoods are not properly prepared for school. So, until poor ethnic mothers heading dysfunctional families living in dysfunctional neighborhoods stop having babies there's not anything that can be done.
If course that is nonsense.
We know that it is the sum of the contributions of the component systems that keep the flow of children coming. The difficulty is that the only place you, as a person, can have an influence is within your own system. But, when you go upstream to do action research -- using practice to inform policy -- you will be sent downstream to do the job you have been trained for and are paid to do. This is where cynicism and teacher burnout comes from.
Your university education should prepare you for this. You need to learn about the methodology of action research and the challenges and strategies of going upstream. You should have within the College of Education programs like the garden project, ones that your faculty contribute to on a par with standard theoretical research. You need this to prepare you for interrupting the iatrogenic habits that exist within our systems, which collectively are largely responsible for the intransigent nature of social issues such as the achievement gap.
The alternative is a Millennial Generation dutifully volunteering down stream as the product of a complicit educational system helping to provide a steady supply of children who need to be rescued. All of this while the “systemic” educational system passively watches a consuming life style, in a deregulated economy thriving on a money driven political process having created a Millennial Generation dutifully volunteering down stream…
