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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled
JOHN DEWEY AND CURRENT PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES:

IS DEWEYAN PEDAGOGY IMPLEMENTED TODAY?

presented by

Gloria Gosen Musial

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph . D . d . Educational Administration
egree in (K-12)

 

 

 
   

Major professor

Date 3 '

0-12771

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cum- aha-9.1

 

in

D!

JOHN DEWEY AND CURRENT PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES:
IS DEWEYAN PEDAGOGY IMPLEMENTED TODAY?

By

Gloria Gosen Musial

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Educational Administration

1992

JOE-IN BE

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ABSTRACT

JOHN DEWEY AND CURRENT PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES:
IS DEWEYAN PEDAGOGY IMPLEMENTED TODAY?
By

Gloria Gosen Musial

John Dewey began to lay the foundation for changes
in American public education almost 100 years ago. The
purpose of this study was to describe and explain if
and how Deweyan pedagogical practices have been
implemented in a public elementary school in 1991-1992.

The central concepts in the study were
instructional behaviors set out by Dewey. These were
selected by the researcher, formulated into a matrix,
and validated by a panel of experts. Data were
collected through observations and interviews in a
public elementary school in 1991-1992. The validated
matrix of pedagogical practices was the standard
through which interactions were viewed and analyzed.
Through analysis of the data from the observations and
interviews, it was found that Deweyan pedagogical
practices in a public elementary school in 1991-1992

are not evident in terms of a pattern, but flickers

exist. In:
'conservat
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study lead
result in t
pedagogy.
conservatlv
the behavio
generated :3
and unlnten
Dewey/ems”
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Gloria Gosen Musiai

exist. Instructional strategies are best described as
“conservative.“

It was theorized that the behaviors found in the
study lead to both intended and unintended effects that
result in reinforcement of conservative instructional
pedagogy. At the same time, the reinforcement of
conservative instruction preserves both the effects and
the behaviors themselves. The cycle of reinforcement
generated by conservative behaviors and the intended
and unintended effects virtually drives out patterns of
Deweyan-style innovations which enter the process in a
one-way pattern only. Implications of the results of
the study include that interventions must break the
cycle of reinforcement for Dewey’s ideas to be more

evident in public schools today.

They
DEVer

This work is dedicated to my family.
They sacrificed a lot for this proJect, yet they
never failed to communicate their confidence in me.
My strength comes from them and God.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many people who provided guidance and support for
this study. I wish to recognize and thank all who aided me in
this endeavor.

First, I acknowledge the support of the members of my
guidance committee. Dr. Janet E. Alleman. the committee chair. is
a trusted mentor. I deeply appreciate her consistent support, her
confidence in me, her professional example, her knowledge, her
humor, and her friendship. Dr. Charles A. Blackman spent many
hours reading my work and conferring with me. I am grateful for
his patient guidance and assistance, and I treasure the memories
of our discussions about his experiences as a student at the Ohio
State University Laboratory School. I thank Dr. Philip A. Cusick
for his efficiency. energy, enthusiasm. and expectations. I
especially value his help in the formulation and completion of
this study. I thank Dr. Gerald 6. Duffy for introducing me to new
conceptions of knowledge, teaching, and learning, for sharing his
work with me, for loaning me materials, and for his consistent
support. I acknowledge Dr. Daniel H. Kruger for his instruction
and his valued counsel.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge the assistance of an entire
elementary school community. The school staff, the students, and

the parents accepted. supported. and trusted me. I thank them

deeply.

 

 

 

 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES

Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION

Background

Purpose of the Study

Methodology

Theoretical Framework for This Study
Significance of the Study

Research Questions

Limitations

Organization of the Dissertation

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Introduction

A Social Spirit

Relevant Experience

Activities and Connection to
Social Life

Discipline as Social Control

Loss of Control and Adaptations to It

Scientific Problem Solving and the
Teacher’s Role

Congruity of Goal and Process

0n the Scene

Summary

METHODOLOGY

Introduction

Theoretical Framework

Data Collection

The School

Preparation for Field Procedures
Data Analysis

Conduct of the Research

Summary

vi

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IV. PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA

Introduction
Classrooms that are Social Organizations
Findings
Summary
Schools that are Social Organizations
Findings
Summary
Integration of Scientific Problem Solving
Into Learning Experiences
Findings
Summary
Focus on Student Development of
Self Direction
Findings
Summary
Use of Interdisciplinary Units of Study
Incorporating Active Involvement of
Students as They Address Problems
That Are Relevant to Real Life
Findings
Summary
Use of Cooperative Learning Approaches
To Instruction
Findings
Summary
Knowledge and Use of Students’
Experiential Backgrounds and
Developmental Levels to Make the
Various Disciplines of Knowledge
Part of a Total and Growing
Experience
Findings
Summary
Emphasis on a Process Approach to
Instruction Including Regard for
Books and Reading as Tools for
Learning
Findings
Summary
Conclusions and MaJor Findings
Summary

V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Introduction

An Explanation of the Findings
Implications of the Study
Recommendations for Further Research
Reflections

vii

Page
76

76
77
77
98
101
101
117

118
118
123

124
124
127

128
128
140

141
141
147

147
148
157

158
158
169
170
174

180

180
181
186
189
193

APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B

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Page
APPENDIX A 21 1
APPENDIX B 224
BIBLIOGRAPHY 232

viii

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3.1
4.1
4.2
4.3
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5.3

5.4

5.5

5.7

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Figure
3.1

4.1

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LIST OF FIGURES

Floor plan of the school

Frequency of Deweyan indicants

Dewey one hundred years ago (innovative)
Elementary classrooms today (traditional)

Chart showing why only flickers of Dewey
were found

Chronological relationship of Dewey to
traditions

Conceptions of knowledge, teaching, and
learning

Social context of inherited pedagogical
traditions

Public school teaching as a practice of
human improvement

Resulting interactions when improvement
efforts are added

Chart illustrating Cohen’s theory

ix

Page
63
99

178
179

187

197

198

200

204

207
208

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Background
During his lifetime. John Dewey (1859-1952) was

hailed as America’s greatest educator. He remains one
of the best known thinkers of the twentieth century as
well as one of our most influential educators. Almost
100 years ago Dewey wrote his first article and began
to lay the foundation for changes in American public
education. He was a prolific writer, and, although he
has been dead almost 40 years, contemporary education
scholars continue to use his work as a basis for
research and recommendations.

Dewey (1899, pp. 32-35) decried a pedagogy in which
children were required to be passive and conforming.
"Learning? certainly, but living primarily, and
learning through and in relation to this living,“

Dewey (1899, p. 37) said. Meyer (1931, p. 5), when
describing Dewey’s philosophy regarding experience and
learning says, “Education is more than inactive
listening: it is more than a pouring-in procedure.“
Dewey envisioned pedagogical practices which responded

to learners’ needs for activity and experience.

For ti
practices
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Dewey
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2
For the purposes of this study. eight pedagogical
practices rooted in Dewey’s were selected and studied.
They are introduced and discussed in the next eight

subsections.

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Dewey (1938) urged educators to develop and to work
within classrooms that are cooperative social
organizations because “democratic social arrangements
promote a better quality of human experience, one which
is more widely accessible and enJoyed“ (p. 25).
Education should be considered a social process that is
realized to the degree to which the pupils in the
classes form community groups of which their teachers
serve as members and leaders. Dewey (1938, pp. 65—66)
related. Believing that “the adult world was too
complex for children and that the amount of knowledge
was overwhelming" (Cavanaugh, 1990, p. 277), Dewey
wanted classroom teachers to "promote ways of learning
and living that demonstrate habits of cooperation, free
communication, and reflective thinking“ (Wirth. 1966,
p.124). His theory was “Idemocraticl values are
learned better when lived than when merely talked
about“ (Cavanaugh, 1990, p.277). Dewey (1916) wrote.
“The measure of the worth of the administration.

curriculum. and methods of instruction of the school is

the exten?
splrit' m
ann‘ e
Dewe
cooperati
'tse the
(Cavanaa:
itn
of
or;

mir

The

3
the extent to which they are animated by a social
Spirit“ (9. 358).
Wagons

Dewey addressed the importance of schools as
cooperative social organizations. He wanted to
“use the schools to promote democratic cooperation“
(Cavanaugh, 1990, p. 221). In 1899, Dewey wrote,

[the] school itself shall be made a genuine form

of active community life (p. 11) . . . and

organized on a social basis (p.14) [as] . . . a

miniature community. an embryonic society (p. 15).

The common needs and aims [of the school as a

society] demand a growing interchange of thought

and growing unity of sympathetic feeling. (p. 11)
There should be “[a] spirit of free communication, of
interchange of ideas, suggestions. results, both
successes and failures of previous experiences,“ Dewey
(1899, p. 13) wrote.

Regarding the organization of the school and the
teacher’s role within that organization. Dewey stated
that a “cooperative social organization“ should apply
to both the teaching body of the school as well as to
the pupils (Mayhew & Edwards, 1936, p. 371). Teachers
should be treated as colleagues by administrators of

the school (Wirth, 1966, p. 188).

in a

practices

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In a discussion about how the pedagogical
practices of the University of Chicago Laboratory
School, for which he served as director. related to its
theoretical principles, Dewey discussed teachers as
“experts who maintain agreement and harmony through
continued consultation and cooperation“ (Mayhew &
Edwards, 1936. p. 36. citing Dewey, 1897b). Teachers.
students, administrators. and parents shared in the
same educational benefits as a result of sharing in the
same social process, he said (Mayhew & Edwards, 1936,
p. 382). Wirth (1966, p. 124) states. "The school was
designed to be a community because an important feature
was the coordination between individuals and society
that could result . . . Minds and selves are formed by
free interaction with others--through communication,
cooperation, inquiry, and thinking.“

Dewey considered continual interchange among
teachers as serving to integrate and coordinate program
and disciplinary matters. Teachers in the University
Laboratory School were released from teaching
responsibilities 20-30 minutes each day so they could
“visit and advise with other groups and teachers“
(Mayhew & Edwards, 1936, p. 375). The transcript of a
teachers’ meeting chaired by Dewey in 1899 provides

insight into Dewey’s feelings about teacher association

S
and interchange as important for “supervision. critic
teaching. and technical training" and his caution that
such consultations. which could be informal interchange
or the more formal interchange of a weekly meeting.
must “have a marked intellectual quality" and must
sometimes be “allotted to the specific discussion of
underlying principles and aims of the school“ (Mayhew &
Edwards, 1936. pp. 370-371).
W
W

Dewey conceived of thinking as a method of problem
solving in which the scientific method is applied to
all sorts of problems "from the simple everyday type of
problem to complicated social problems and abstract
intellectual problems“ (Tanner & Tanner. 1987, p. 37).
This is one of his ideas which has had the most
influence on the theory and practice of American
education (p. 36). Dewey (1938, p. 108) spoke of
scientific problem solving as an integral part of a
rich learning environment when he discussed the
“systematic utilization of scientific method as the
pattern and ideal of intelligent exploration and
exploitation of the potentialities inherent in

experience.“

6

SubJect matter and the development and training of
the mind should not be isolated and independent of each
other, Dewey (1916, p. 138: 1933, pp. 230-232) thought.
The scientific method provided

a working pattern of the way in which and the

conditions under which experiences are used to

lead ever onward and outward (Dewey, 1938, p. 111)

[into] an expanding world of subject matter.

(p. 108)
“Thinking is the method of intelligent learning“ and
“the method of an educative experience“ (Dewey, 1916.
pp. 153 & 163).
W

Student development of self direction was very
important to Dewey. Dewey (1899) said that any chance
society had to be “true to itself“ was “by being true
to the full growth of the individuals who make it up“
(pp. 4-5). When the school reflects the life of the
larger society, Dewey said, part of what will be
accomplished as it “introduces and trains each child
into membership within such a little community“ will
be to provide each child with “the instruments of
effective self-direction“ (pp. 27-28).

Dewey (1938) focuses on student development of the

“power of self-control“ as “ItJhe ideal aim of

CC‘OC

 

 

7
education (p.75).“ Self-control. as defined by Dewey
(p. 77) is the freedom and power of the learner to
participate both in the formation of purposes which
will direct his activities in the learning process as
well as in the organization of the means to execute

those purposes.

Dewey (1899, pp. 37-38) viewed the child as
already intensely active. and “the question of
education is taking hold of [the child’s] activities,
of giving them direction . . . so they tend toward
valuable results, instead of scattering and being left
to merely impulsive expression,“ he said. Dewey (1899)
described the use of interdisciplinary units of study
incorporating active involvement of students as they
address problems relevant to construction or occupation
work. scientific observation and experimentation. He
said,

the object of such forms of practice in the

school. . .is found in their connection, on the

social side, with the life without; while on the
individual side they respond to the child’s need

of action, of expression, of desire to do

whole.
stucies
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learning
wrete.
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In 1
1936) wro1
instrucuc
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8

something. to be constructive and creative.

instead of simply passive and conforming. (p. 72)
Various forms of active work, in the form of communal
proJects, are the means through which “the entire
spirit of the school is renewed“ and through which the
school “has a chance to affiliate itself with life“
(Dewey, 1899, p. 15).

If the child’s activities are related to life as a
whole, Dewey (1899, p. 80) said, then the child’s
studies are unified and naturally correlated. Active
work must be conceived of “as methods of living and
learning, not as distinct studies.“ Dewey (1899, p. 11)
wrote.
Win

In 1897, Dewey (1897b, cited in Mayhew & Edwards,
1936) wrote about cooperative learning approaches to
instruction as instrumental to the development of
social skills and discipline when he said:

[the] only genuine order and discipline are those

which proceed from the child’s own respect for the

work which he has to do and his consciousness of
the rights of others who are, with himself. taking
part in this work . . . the emphasis . . . upon
various forms of practical activity gives ample

opportunity for appealing to the child’s social

9

sense . . . moral growth is measured by the extent

to which children practically recognize in the

school the same moral motives and relations that

obtain outside. (p.32)

Dewey (1899) continued to discuss cooperative learning
approaches to instruction when he stated. “[Miutual
assistance [is] the most natural form of co-operation
and association . . . Helping others. . .is simply an
aid in setting free the powers and furthering the
impulse of the one helped“(p.13).

Educational activities in school should be related
to real life and “provide a context of work and play in
association with others . . . an opportunity for a
social atmosphere . . . a miniature social group in
which study and growth are incidents of present shared
experience“ (Dewey, 1916. p. 358). Learning
activities should “involve intercourse, communication.
and cooperation--all extending the perception of
connections,“ Dewey (p. 358) said.

In 1938, Dewey wrote that a teacher’s greater
maturity and knowledge are for arranging “conditions
that are conducive to community activity and to
organization which exercises control over individual
impulses by the mere fact that all are engaged in

communal proJects“ (p. 64). He called experience

10
gained through social cooperation in communal proJects
the “mother of all discipline worth the name“(Dewey.

1899 -.15).

.".“ ‘00; -‘O 7' O _ _.‘. " "9' " - O- 0 0"."

égewey (1902) urged educators to know and use
students’ experiential backgrounds and developmental
levels to make the various disciplines of knowledge
part of a total and growing experience.‘/ He described

the child and the curriculum as “simply two limits .

~—--——— - t5, 1. .
which define a single process . . . instruction“ which I

w-‘--

should move from “the child’s present experience out

FM

into that [experience] represented by the organized
bodies of truth that we call studies“ (p. 97). In /77
1938, Dewey wrote, “It is a cardinal precept . . . that

the beginning of instruction shall be made with the

an!"

experience learners already have; that this experience 1‘

and the capacities that have been developed during its

 

CBUTSE‘provide the starting point for all further
learning“ (p. “88)‘/ The teacher should be concerned
wfzgawm-,-Pam. r

ways in which [a] subJect may become a part of

experience; what there is in the child’s present

 

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be
as ‘-
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11
that is usable with reference to it; how such
elements are to be used: how his own knowledge of
the subJect matter may assist in interpreting the
child’s needs and doings, and determine the medium
in which the child should be placed in order that

his growth may be properly directed. (Dewey, 1902,

p. 105) if

Through his writings, Dewey emphasizes a process
approach to instruction that includes regard for books

and reading as tools for learning. His discussion

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(y

clearly focuses on teaching and learning as a r4?

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continuous process of reconstruction of experience in

ammwl'w’“ e-zi’“ A’i-e" o-S'rw .r-e MA «'5‘\“f.‘fl* 'r'a' “ ‘C‘r "“1"“ "7"

which growth or maturity should be ever present (Dewey,

w'wJ‘WJN‘J’ “M H'l“"r(‘t""-‘“Nt'

1938, pg: 52'& 111). Reading, Dewey believed. should
be taught “in close connection with other subJects, not
as a subject by itself. . . not as a textbook . .
[but] as an additional tool in his [the child’s]
equipment“ (Dewey, 1897b, cited in Mayhew & Edwards,
1936, pp. 26-27).

“Acquiring is always secondary, and instrumental
to the act of inquiring.“ Dewey (1916. p. 148) said.

“Reading and writing, as well as the oral use of

language, may be taught . . . as the outgrowth of the

organ
Dewey
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12

“plenty of opportunities and occasions for the
necessary use of reading, writing (and spelling), and
number work . . . not as isolated studies, but as
organic outgrowths of the child’s experience“ (p. 106).
Dewey (1897b, cited in Mayhew & Edwards, 1936, p. 33)
believed that “it is impossible to separate the
attainment of knowledge from its application

. .[lethout the consciousness of application,
learning has no motive to the child.“
sum

Dewey devised and described ways American

education could be made more relevant for a changing

American society. Dewey urged educators to

*develop and.work within classrooms that are
c00perative social organizations (Baker, 1955, p.
153: Dewey, 1897b, p. 26; 1899, pp. 11-14: 1916,
p. 99; 1938, pp. 58, 6S & 77-78; Mayhew & Edwards,
1936, pp. 32, 305, 393-394 & 472; Meriam, 1959.
p. 30)

*create cooperative social organizations within
schools (Mayhew & Edwards, 1936, p. 36, p.167:
pp. 368-370 a 376-377)

*lntegrate scientific problem solving into

learning experiences (Dewey, 1902, p. 92; 1916,

*d
the
an.
lif

1931

*USE

inst

71‘8

Ewe:

 

13
pp. 148-151, 153 & 163; 1938, pp. 98-99, 105-106 &
111-114: & Mayhew & Edwards, 1936, pp. 422-426 &
431) .

*focus on student development of self direction
(Dewey, 1899, pp.3-4 & 28; 1938, pp. 74-77; Mayhew
a Edwards. 1936, p. 33)

*design and use interdisciplinary units of study
that incorporate the active involvement of
students as they address problems relevant to real
life (Dewey, 1899, pp. 37?568 Mayhew & Edwards,
1936, pp. 27-32)

*use cooperative learning approaches to
instruction (Dewey, 1899, pp. 11-14, 32-35 a
71-80): 1916, p. 358; 1938, pp. 61-68; Mayhew &

Edwards, 1936, p. 2?)

*know and use students’ experiential backgrounds
and developmental levels to make the various
disciplines of knowledge part of a total and
growing experience (Dewey, 1899, pp. 37-38: 1902,
pp. 97 & 105: 1938, pp.44-45 & 88-91)

*use a process approach to instruction in which
books and the ability to read are regarded as

tools for learning (Dewey, 1899, pp. 20, 50, 67,
68-69, 70, 72, 81 & 106-107; 1916, p. 358; 1938,

Educa:
wonder
today“

oescril

 

14
p. 52, p.111; Mayhew & Edwards. 1936, p.26: 99.
373, 452)

Educators who are familiar with Dewey’s works may
wonder if and how pedagogical practices of teachers in
today’s elementary schools reflect the pedagogy Dewey
described beginning almost 100 years ago.
EHEEQ§£_QL_&DE_SLMQX

The researcher’s purpose in this case study is to
describe if and how Deweyan pedagogical practices have
been implemented in a public elementary school in
1991-1992.

mm

For the purposes of this study, the researcher
used a method of educational research called
educational ethnography, a form of descriptive, on-site
research. In gathering data on pedagogical practices
from staff members and students (informants), the
researcher employed a variety of methods including
observation, interviews, field notes, audiotape
recordings, and collections of artifacts.

The eight Deweyan instructional practices and
behavioral indicants of those practices were
formulated into a matrix. A panel of experts
knowledgeable about Dewey validated the matrix as
representative of Dewey. Then, the researcher used the

validated matrix as the standard for viewing the

15
interactions of teachers and for addressing the
research questions.
Wm
Many propositions relating to Deweyan pedagogical
practices may be formulated from the ideas contained in
Dewey’s works. M1_E§gagggig_§nggg (1897a), Ing_$§nggl
W (1899). WW

(1902), all written while Dewey served as Director of
the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago:

WW (1916). written while he was
Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University: and

Wu (1938). written while he was
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy in Residence at
Columbia University serve as sources for this

researcher’s synthesis of the propositions that follow.

Essential Deweyan Propositions Applicable to This Study

of Pedagogical Practices.

16

Knowledge and use of students’ experiential
backgrounds and developmental levels to make the
various disciplines of knowledge part of a total and
growing experience in classrooms and schools that are
cooperative social organizations are reflective of
Deweyan Propositions One and Two.

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and

17

W.

Classrooms and schools that are cooperative social
organizations as well as cooperative learning
approaches to instruction are reflective of
Propositions Three and Four.

5. We
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WM
Wu.

Five practices reflect Proposition Five (a) the
use of cooperative learning precepts, (b) the design
and use of interdisciplinary units of study that
incorporate the active involvement of students as they
address problems relevant to real life, (c) knowledge
and use of students’ experiential backgrounds and
developmental levels to make the various disciplines of
knowledge part of a total and growing experience, (d)

classrooms that are cooperative social organizations,

'1

r1

inco:
more

Pr0P0:

18
and (e) schools that are cooperative social

organizations.

6W

enxirgnment_abeut_hhm.

The use of interdisciplinary units that
incorporate the active involvement of students as they
address problems relevant to real life reflect
Propositions Six and Seven. The use of cooperative
learning approaches to instruction aligns with
Proposition Six. Classrooms and schools that are
cooperative social organizations as well as the process
approach to instruction and regard for books and
reading as tools for learning are reflective of
Proposition Seven.

8. l1_22AdLnQ_flnfl_E£l&anL£££_&§th&_§§
9utgrgwths_gf_the_students:.desires_tg_reiate
ex2en1ences_and_tQ_9et_1n_2eturn_&ne_ex2e£1ences_gf

A process approach to instruction in which books
and the ability to read are regarded as tools for
learning is reflective of Proposition Eight as is the
emphasis on student development of self direction.

9.Lf_t.easzhe.r_s_2r.ex_i.du_r.i_ch_LearnJ.ng
enx1n9nment1_then_atudents_w111_be_1nteres&en_1n

Integration of scientific problem solving into
learning experiences and student development of self
direction are reflective of Propositions Nine and Ten.

Proposition Ten is reflected in classrooms and schools

20
that are cooperative social organizations and in the

use of cooperative learning approaches.

11. W41:

WWW
Wheel.

The emphasis on a process approach to instruction
and regard for books and reading as tools for learning

are reflective of Proposition Eleven.

12. WW

21
W
W
Winn.

Student development in self direction is
reflective of Propositions Twelve and Thirteen. Both
propositions also are reflected in classrooms and
schools that are cooperative social organizations.

Significance_gf_the_Studx

Deweyan pedagogy is very demanding. It requires
teachers to be collegial, selfvconfident, and mindful
about individual students and disciplines of knowledge.
Teachers must match each learner’s experiential
background with the curriculum and, at the same time,
provide for active participation of learners in
learning experiences that expand their existing
experiences and knowledge. This can prove to be
especially difficult because Dewey considered learner
input into the purposes of the learning to be very
important.

Confusion has existed over the years because some
innovators have used Dewey’s theories indiscriminately.
Some practices claimed to be Deweyan have been based on
misinterpretations (Baker, 1955, p. 2: Tanner & Tanner,
1987, pp. 38-39). The degree of guidance teachers are
to provide to students is an example. 'Some educators

have misinterpreted Dewey to the point of “letting the

PE

t8.

Tanner
1Bailing
°°Ucat1
Mien“
PUD} iC ‘
We of
Thr
pedagogil

Them the

22
children do what they want to do today“ (Blackman,
personal communication, March 13, 1992). Dewey held to
a greater degree of leadership on the part of the
teacher.

The significance of this study derives from the
import members of the education profession have
accorded to John Dewey and his theories over a period
of almost 100 years. Dewey’s theories are said to have
had a

wide influence in educational thinking and
discussion, both in America and in other
countries. . . . Throughout the literature there
are constant references to his theories, and there
is hardly an intelligent discussion of the theory
or practice of schooling which does not, at some
point and in some manner, take his suggestions
into account“ (Baker, 1955, p.1).
Tanner and Tanner (1987, p. 36) called Dewey “the
leading figure in the theory and practice of American
education.“ If Dewey has been so influential in
American education, then pedagogical practices in a
public elementary school in 1991-1992 should reflect
some of that influence.

Through this study, the researcher selected

pedagogical practices rooted in Deweyan writings.

Then, the researcher examined instructional

 

 

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23

interactions in a public elementary school. Next, the
researcher determined if and how teaching practices in
accord with what America’s greatest and most
influential educator devised and described have been
implemented in a public elementary school almost 100
years after he first began to write.

WW:

Questions regarding if and how Deweyan pedagogical
practices have been implemented in some public
elementary school classrooms are of central concern in
this study. Using the validated matrix with the
behavioral indicants of each practice as the standard
for viewing the classroom practices of the teachers,
the following questions will be addressed:

1. Do teachers in a public elementary school
develop and work within classrooms that are cooperative
I social organizations?

1a. If so, what is the evidence of classrooms as
cooperative social organizations?

2. Do teachers in a public elementary school
develop and work within a school that is a cooperative
social organization?

2a. If so, what is the evidence that the school is

a cooperative social organization?

 

 

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scie

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24

3. Do teachers in a public elementary school
integrate scientific problem solving into learning
experiences?

3a. If so, what is the evidence of integration of
scientific problem solving into learning experiences?

4. Do teachers in a public elementary school
focus on student development of self direction?

4a. If so, what is the evidence of the teachers’
focus on student development of self direction?

5. Do teachers in a public elementary school
design and use interdisciplinary units of study that
incorporate the active involvement of students as they
address problems relevant to real life?

5a. If so, what is the evidence of the design and
use of interdisciplinary units of study that
incorporate active involvement of students as they
address problems relevant to real life?

6. Do teachers in a public elementary school use
cooperative learning approaches to instruction?

6a. If so, what is the evidence of cooperative
learning approaches to instruction?

7. Do teachers in a public elementary school know
and use students’ experiential backgrounds and
developmental levels to make the various disciplines of

knowledge part of a total and growing experience?

and L
(level

know.

a PFC

the a

PFOCE

aclll

0f [9

geneg

Binno

the r

25
7a. If so, what is the evidence of the knowledge
and use of students’ experiential backgrounds and
developmental levels to make the various disciplines of
knowledge part of a total and growing experience?
8. Do teachers in a public elementary school use
a process approach to instruction in which books and
the ability to read are regarded as tools for learning?
8a. If so, what is the evidence of this use of a
process approach to instruction in which books and the
ability to read are regarded as tools for learning?
Limitations
This study has certain limitations as do all types
of research. The reader is cautioned to avoid
generalizing the findings to populations beyond the
those of the school represented in the study. The
amount of interpretations of any kind of
research--quantitatlve as well as
ethnographic/qualitative--is infinite, and this study
should be considered (for the researcher as well as for
the reader) an
experience which has.the promise and
potentiality of presenting new problems
which by stimulating new ways of observation
and Judgment will expand the area of further

experience. (Dewey, 1938, p. 89)

 

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26

Although the researcher analyzed carefully Dewey’s
writing and that of those who’ve written about Dewey,
subJectivity of selecting pedagogical practices needs
to be examined. Another researcher may have preferred
to study other practices or to emphasize some and to
deemphasize different ones. The practices selected,
like the Deweyan propositions that form the theoretical
framework for this study, are not intended to be
all-inclusive of those representative of Dewey.

Wm

The study is presented from an ethnographic,
observer point of view. Chapter I includes material on
the background of the study, theoretical framework,
purposes of the study, methodology, significance of the
study, research questions, and limitations. Chapter II
consists of a review of the literature by and about
I John Dewey that describes an elementary school in terms
of the Deweyan ideal. The methodology in the study is
described in Chapter III. Chapter IV provides the
analysis of the results of the study. For Chapter IV,
the researcher used information from personal
observations, interviews, tape recordings, field notes,
and a collection of various artifacts. Chapter V
contains the findings and conclusions of the study
along with further research recommendations and

reflections. Information from the analysis of the data

 

V68 U38

andac

27
was used to generate an explanation for the findings,

and a correlating theory is discussed.

CHAPTER 11

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Introduction
Throughout his writings, John Dewey discusses what
he believes is an ideal school. This chapter is a

description of a Deweyan elementary school.

W
In Sghggl_and_§gg1gty (1899), Dewey describes his

ideal elementary school as "a genuine form of active
community life, instead of a place set apart in which
to learn lessons“ (p. 11). The people in the Deweyan
school “work together along common lines, in a common
spirit, and with reference to common aims" (Dewey,
1899, p. 11). Dewey views education as a social
process (Dewey, 1938, p. 66). Method, purpose, and
understanding exist in the consciousness of the ones
who do the work (Dewey, 1899, p.21).

There is a social motive for learning. It is
agreed that the main goal of the school is to guide the
students to grow and develop in the direction of social
capacity and service so they will be able to freely and
actively participate in modern social life (Dewey,
1899, pp. 11-14).

28

Clilphd!

with l

29

In the Deweyan school, the spirit of service is
emphasized. Educators endeavor to provide the students
with the instruments of effective self direction:

All that society has accomplished for itself is

put, through the agency of the school, at the

disposal of its future members. All its better
thoughts of itself it hopes to realize through the
new possibilities thus opened to its future self.

Here individualism and socialism are at one. Only

by being true to the full growth of all the

individuals who make it up, can society be true to
itself. And in the self-direction thus given,
nothing counts as much as the school, for, as

Horace Mann said, “Where anything is growing, one

former is worth a thousand re-formers." (Dewey,

1899, pp. 3-4)

Dewey postulates that the realization of
individuality and the realization of community can be
synonymous. Baker (1955) calls this Deweyan ethical
postulate a part of “the fundamentals of democratic
ethics“ (p. 54).

A tragic weakness of what Dewey (1899) calls the
"present school“ is that "it endeavors to prepare
future members of the social order in a medium in which
the conditions of the social spirit are eminently

wanting“ (p. 12). He.vlews the “present“ school as a

school
truths
the ac
social
The me
nature

PP- 12

30
school in which students merely absorb facts and
truths, and “[there] is no obvious social motive for
the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear
social gain in success thereat" (Dewey, 1899, p. 13).
The mere absorbing of facts and truths ”tends very
naturally to pass into selfishness“ (Dewey, 1899,
pp. 12-13).

In the present school, Dewey (1899) sees the main
measure of success as a competitive one, “in the bad
sense of that term--a comparison of results in the
recitation or in the examination to see which child has
succeeded in getting ahead of others in storing up, in
accumulating, the maximum of information“ (p. 13).
Helping others in this kind of school was seen almost
as a school crime, not as the “most natural form of
cooperation and association. . . an aid in setting free
the powers and furthering the influences of the one
helped“ (p. 13). The Deweyan school has a “spirit of
free communication, of interchange of ideas,
suggestions, results, both successes and failures of
previous experiences“ (p. 13). Individuals are
compared with regard to the quality of work done, not
in regard to the quantity of information absorbed.

Students have a role in the planning and
implementation of classroom activities (Dewey, 1899,

pp. 11-14 & pp. 32-35). They participate in the

 

form

int

base

when
reor
of e

the

31
formation of the purposes which direct their activities
in the learning process (Dewey, 1938, p.77).
We:

The school is related to life as a whole and is
based on experience. Dewey (1916, pp. 89-90) provides
what he calls a “technical definition of education“
when he says that education "is that reconstruction or
reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning
of experience, and which increases ability to direct
the course of subsequent experience." Students
utilize their experiences and interests in school and
apply to their daily lives what they learn in school.
In his discussion regarding the ideal school, Dewey
(1899) uses the ideal home as Justification:

If we take an example from an ideal home, where

the parent is intelligent enough to recognize what

is best for the.child, and is able to supply what
is needed, we find the child learning through the
social converse and constitution of the family.

There are certain points of interest and value to

him in the conversation carried on: statements

are made, inquiries arise, topics are discussed,
and the child continually learns. He states his
experiences, his misconceptions are corrected.

Again the child participates in the household

occupations, and thereby gets habits of industry,

 

32

order, and regard for the rights and ideas of

others, and the fundamental habit of subordinating

his activities to the general interest of the
household. Participation in these household tasks
becomes an opportunity for gaining knowledge. The
ideal home would . . . have a workshop where the
child could work out his constructive instincts.

It would have a miniature laboratory in which his

inquiries could be directed. The life of the

child would extend out of doors to the garden,
surrounding fields, and forests. He would have
his excursions, his walks and talks, in which the
larger world out of doors would open to him.

(pp. 35-36)

“Now, if we organize and generalize all of this,“ Dewey
(1899) states, “we have the ideal school." In such a
school, what can be done in most households only in a
meager and haphazard manner is done “systematically in
a large, intelligent and competent way“ (p. 36).

The child is brought into contact “with more grown
people and with more children in order that there may
be the freest and richest social life“ (Dewey, 1899,

p. 37). Continuous growth in experience for each
child is the main obJect. “Learning? certainly, but
living primarily, and learning through and in relation

to this living“ (p. 37).

Lea
experi
oomlna
Experl
points
oevelc
SUDJec

i938,

respor

0f the

33

Learning is thought to be important, but living and

experiencing are primary. The life of the child is the

dominant aim of the school (Dewey, 1899, p. 3?).
Experiences learners already have are the beginning
points of new instruction. Then comes “orderly
development toward expansion and organization of

subJect matter through growth of experience" (Dewey,

1938. pp. 88-89).
Educators in the Deweyan school take the

responsibility to find out the background of experience

(of their students. They select
those things within the range of existing
experience that have the promise and potentiality
of presenting new problems which by stimulating
new ways of observation and Judgment will expand
the area of further experience. (Dewey, 1938,

pp.89-91)
Relevance to life includes relevance to business.

il1dustry, and the university as well as relevance to
time life of the home. The Deweyan school has close

tties to business and industry because they represent
r‘eal life. The school has a longer school day than

tJfaditional elementary schools, fewer vacations, and a
Shorter sumer vacation because that is the way it is

111 social life and industry. Connections between

bl-Iainess conditions and the experiences of students are

as m
the:
envi
Prir
Dett
inc;
the

the

a n.
wit!

the

34

utilized and illuminated so that students’ studies are

in reference to the business and social environment

around them (Meriam. 1959, p. 30).
‘¢£mildren in a Deweyan school study.such subJects
as mathematics and geography, not as isolated things by

themselves, but with reference to the social

emvironment, including business and industry. Deweyan

principles recognize “the necessity for free play

tsetween the school and the needs and forces of

1899. p. 67). The connection between 69*)
\ff x\

the school and business life is not meant to prepare \ \;'

1"; e

1 ndustry" (Dewey ,

time child for any particular business, but is viewed as

a natural connection of the everyday life of the child

vvith the business environment about him. Teachers in

the school
clarify and liberalize this connection, to bring

it to consciousness . . . by keeping alive the

ordinary bonds of relation. The youth needs to

become acquainted with the bank as a factor in
modern life, with what it does, and how it does

it: and then relevant arithmetical processes would

have some meaning. (pp. 69-70)’/

The Deweyan school is a part of a school system in

‘VTIIch free interaction between all parts of the school

8ll'stem exists. The university, considered a part of

the school system, puts its resources at the disposal

0f thl
matte:
labor.
theor

and, I

'n

active
educa:

then C

(O

(n

Dewey
.keep

(p. 72

35
of the school contributing to the evolution of subJect
matter and method. The school, in turn, is a
laboratory in which the student of education can see
theories and ideas demonstrated, tested, criticized,
and, possibly, reinforced (Dewey, 1899, pp. 82-83).
ActL11t1es_and_Cgnnectign_tg_sgciai_Life

Students and teachers in a Deweyan school are
tactive. The child is viewed as an active being, and
educators take hold of the child’s activities and give
them direction. Dewey (1899) states:

The child is already intensely active, and the

question of education is the question of taking

hold of his activities, of giving them direction.

Through direction, through organized use, they

tend toward valuable results, instead of

scattering or being left to merely impulsive

expression. (p. 37)

Dewey (1899) says the value of activities, is that they
“i<eep the balance between the social and individual“
(19. 72).

In the Deweyan school, all studies are of
necessity correlated because the school is related as a
whole to life. Dewey (1899, p. 81) states, “The
9l‘owth of the child in the direction of social capacity

and service, his larger ‘and more vital union with life,

DCCG

info

whic

home
envi
chil
scho
iear.
Everj
learn

of he

 

36
becomes the unifying aim; and discipline, culture, and
information fall into place as phases of this growth."
The Deweyan school is a part of a school system

which is welded into a complete whole through having
all parts of the system united to life, including the
inome environment of the children: the natural
emvlronment: business life; and the universities. The
czhiid utilizes in school his experiences outside of
school: the child applies in daily life what he is

learning at school. There is no gap between the

everyday experiences of the child and what the child

learns in school (Dewey, 1899, pp. 66-67). The obJect

(If hands-on, active forms of practice in the school
is not found chiefly in themselves, or in the
technical skill of cooks, seamstresses,
carpenters, and masons, but in their connection,
on the social side, with the life without; while
on the individual side they respond to the child’s
need of action, of expression, of desire to do
something, to be constructive and creative,
instead of simply passive and conforming. (p. 72)
Activities are similar to those found in the home

(‘vork in wood and metal, weaving, sewing, and cooking),

hEiture study, elementary science, art, and history.

These are the means through which the students live,

e°<l2>erience, and learn. By participating in these

relev
actlv
going

choo

(Dewe

scien
them,
occas

SPEll

37
relevant activities in school, students keep alert and
active. Such processes are how society keeps itself
going, and they are “instrumentalities” by which the
school itself is made a genuine form of community life
(Dewey, 1899, pp. 14-15 B 20-28).

Relevant activities include construction,
scientific observation, and experimentation. Through
them, students have plenty of opportunities and
(occasions for the necessary use of reading, writing,
spelling, and mathematics.

The final Justification of shops, kitchens, and so

on in the school is not Just that they afford

opportunity for activity, but that they provide
opportunity for the kind of activity or for the
acquisition of skills which leads students to
attend to the relation of means and ends, and then
to consideration of the way things interact with
one another to produce definite effects. (Dewey,

1938, p. 106)

Reading and writing are taught as means,
Chatgrowths of the students’ desires to relate
experiences and to get in return the experiences of
Others. Symbolic and formal learning is relegated to a
secondary position. The teacher helps the students to

see the relation between everyday life and the abstract

and S

mathe

of th
basis
atteh
ihoep
the t.
discil

in an

 

38
and symbolic subJects like reading, writing, and
mathematics (Dewey, 1899, pp. 20, 50, a 106).
W

Because of the active work going on, the members
of the school community organize themselves on a social
basis. School personnel give students individual
lattention and treat them as individuals having
independent minds, not as having minds dependent upon
‘the teachers’ minds. In the Deweyan school, a
ciiscipline of its own type is born out of doing things
it] an active, social and cooperative way.

The Deweyan school is democratic though under
gnlidance by teachers. Pupils are.iargely responsible
tcz the group which is ideally characterized by much
irateractlon and cooperation (Meriam, 1959, p. 30).
Tflie teacher is considered a member of the group and
acts as a leader and director of group activities in
facilitating the free interchange of ideas. The moving
sl=>irit of the group establishes order and social
Control (Dewey, 1938, pp. 58, 66).

The educator is responsible for a knowledge of

individuals and for a knowledge of subJect-matter
that will enable activities to be selected which
lend themselves to social organization, an
organization in which all individuals have an

opportunity to contribute something, and in which

hou:
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hast

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39
the activities in which all participate are the

chief carrier of control. (pp. 61-62)

According to Baker (1955), teachers and students

in the Deweyan school exchange ideas daily, and often
hourly. The exchanges consist of the formation of
goals and plans to execute the accomplishment of goals.

Treachers are leaders in the process, and they help to
<:urb any tendency the students may have to accept too
taastily inadequately formed purposes and plans.
treachers insist that goals and plans be “weighed,
tlarough reflection, against previous experiences, and
voith consideration for possible consequences“ (p. 153).
The teacher’s part [is] to answer questions and by
skillful refreshing of the children’s
memories to insure that plans for the day [alre
workable and also different enough in character to
furnish a new experience involving a problem for

the group. (Mayhew and Edwards, 1936, p. 305)

After the problem is formulated, the teacher’s emphasis
On (what the school calls) a test-and-see attitude
helps to sustain control (Baker, 1955).

With the younger children, Baker (1955) tells us,

t-eachers are more direct in their guidance toward the

development of democratic, intelligent control among

the members of the school community. As children grow

‘it1 their ability to assume more responsibility, the

tea

that
COR!
arse
loen
SUCH
and

COUt
appe
or w
em;
and

to D
theil
1936l

40
teachers gradually release responsibility to them, and
“responsible discipline becometsi a function of each

individual in the school comnunity" (Baker, 1955,

p. 153).

WWW

Discipline and curriculum are linked in the sense
that teachers in the Deweyan school see a loss of
<=ontrol (i.e., student misbehavior) as caused by the
absence of continuity of the experience and/or student
identification with the enterprise of the group. In
such cases, teachers work to interpret student behavior
and guide students toward the reestablishment of
continuity with group purposes. When some students
appear to lose interest and attention in an activity,
or when some students interfere with the interests and
efforts of others, Deweyan teachers may shift in method
and take those students out of the class and allow them
tt: follow their own “devices until the general trend of
tlaeir interests [can] be determined“ (Mayhew a Edwards,
1936, p. 213). Teachers evaluate continuity with the
group enterprise and purposes and then seek alternate
approaches (Baker, 1955, p. 197).

SQlsn1L1lQ_2nQDlflm_S9lxin9_§nd_&b£_12§§h££L§_RQl§
Students and teachers in the Deweyan school
‘°t\actice scientific insight as a means to facilitating

eClucative experiences as well as an instrument of free

1916

41
and active participation in modern social life.
Scientific problem solving is applied to all activities
in the Deweyan school. Educators encourage students to
continuously solve problems by securing relevant
information, making observations, developing suggested
solutions, and testing ideas by application to make
their meaning clear and to discover validity (Dewey,
1916, p. 163).

Teachers work to help students mature in their
problem solving abilities and in their scientific
habits of mind. Teachers view the educative process as
one of interaction between an “immature undeveloped
being and certain social aims, meanings, values
incarnate in the matured experience of the adult“
(Dewey, 1902, p. 92). Thus, “the child and the
curriculum are seen as two limits which define a single
process“ (p. 97).

This requires a lot of advance planning which
takes into account the developmental/experiential level
of each learner as well as the various disciplines of
knowledge which constitute the school’s curriculum
(Dewey, 1938, p. 63). “It is continuous
reconstruction, moving from the child’s present
experience out into that represented by the organized

bodies of truth that we call studies" (Dewey, 1902,

with

The 3;
From:
Obsefl
testir
c‘iear
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our ev

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42
p. 97; Dewey, 1938, p. 111). Teachers are concerned
with
the ways in which [the] subJect may become a part
of experience: what there is in the child’s
present that is usable with reference to it; how
such elements are to be used: how his own
knowledge of the subJect matter may assist in
interpreting the child’s needs and doings . . .
[to] determine the medium in which the child
should be placed in order that his growth may be
properly directed. He is concerned, not with
subJect matter as such, but with the subJect
matter as a related factor in a total and growing
experience. (Dewey, 1902, p. 105)
frhe scientific method (e.g., continuously solving
g>roblems by securing relevant information, making
cabservations, developing suggested solutions, and
tzesting ideas by application to make their meaning
<:lear and to discover validity) “is the only authentic
means at our coulnand for getting at the significance of
CnJr everyday experiences of the world in which we
1live," according to Dewey (1938, p. 111).
W
In the Deweyan school, the goal of education and
the process of education are believed to be congruous.

1pc, balance the two, the teacher needs to know the

vari
expe

leao

Proo
stim'

to m

StUOl
thr0t
GHQ!
tline
move:
and U
follc
U390
PErjo
Pient
will a
in Stt

D.

43
various disciplines of knowledge and the interests and
experiences of the students. The teacher takes the
lead in determining the environment of the students and
by working with both the course of study and the
experiential level of the students; the teacher
directs the experiences and activities (Dewey, 1902,
p. 110). Teachers in a Deweyan school perceive the
problem of direction as one of “selecting appropriate
stimuli for instincts and impulses which it is desired
to employ in the gaining of new experience“ (p. 102).
We

As part of the Deweyan school social process,
students work with a variety of groups and teachers
throughout their school day. Cooperative learning is
evident. Silence is not one of the prime virtues, but
time is provided for quiet reflection. Freedom of
movement is an important means for maintaining physical
and mental health, and periods of genuine reflection
follow times of more overt action. The quiet times are
used to organize what has been learned during the
Periods of activity. Classroooms are designed with
Plenty of space and the furniture is of the type that
“1 ll accomnodate flexibility in room arrangements and
in student activities and work (Dewey, 1899, pp. 32-35
8~ pp. 71-80; 1938, p. 72: Meriam, 1959, p. 30>.

the 5
com
sp 1 rl
direc
means
an en

Prima.

44
Sum
Deweyan school educators prepare future members of
tnae social order for free and active participation in
coumunity life by encouraging service and social
spirit. Most of all, they promote effective self
(direction. They view education as ongoing and as the
rneans of full participation in the social order, not as
an end in itself. Academic and social growth are
s>rimary goals.
The ideal aim of education, according to Dewey
<I1938) "is the creation of power of self-control“
(s). 75)--"freedom . . . power to frame purposes and to
execute or carry into effect purposes so framed . . .
for the formation of purposes and the organization of
means to execute them are the work of intelligence"
<:>. 77). Therefore, graduates of the Deweyan school
may be described as self-directed learners who can
frame purposes, Judge wisely, evaluate desires by
the consequences which will result from acting
upon them. . . [and who] have the power to select
and order means to carry chosen ends into

operation. (Dewey, 1938, p. 74)

too)
Peoag
eleme
in th
Dewey
resea
resea
dllaly
teach,
meLibel
as Dr
'angil
P- 55;
Ir
Uncer]
exDlag

‘CHAPTER I I I

METHODOLOGY

Wm

The researcher’s purpose in this ethnographic

study was to describe and explain if and how Deweyan

pedagogical practices have been implemented in a public

elementary school in 1991-1992. The central concepts

In this study were instructional behaviors set out by
These were selected by the

The

Dewey almost 100 years ago.

researcher and validated by a panel of experts.

research divided various behaviors into units for

the interactions between and among classroom
staff

analysis:
teachers, students, administrators, other school

members, parents, community members, and artifacts such

as printed materials. Such interactions were the

“angletsl of observation“ (Schatzman 8. Strauss, 1973,

P. 55) in this study.

In this chapter, the methodology employed and the

underlying assumptions pertaining to this study are
e><E>lained. The theoretical framework which guided and

uhderpinned the study is presented. Data collection

45

HI

and p
of th
conou
and t

chapt

46
and preparation is described. The selection and nature
<>f the elementary school in which the research was
conducted are specified. Data analysis is discussed
and the conduct of the research is described. The
chapter ends with a brief sumary.
W

The researcher used a method of educational
tresearch called educational ethnography, a form of
(descriptive, on-site research. Called “field method“
ray Schatzman and Strauss (1973), it entails
(observations of participants in real life situations.
Assumptions

Four assumptions were made prior to the study.

1. Pedagogical practices in a public elementary
school are best understood by observing the
interactions between and among teachers, students,
administrators, other school staff members.
parents, community members and artifacts such as
printed materials;

2. Classrooms of a public elementary school are the
best places to observe such interactions:

3. Interactions such as meetings, programs, and
informal discussions which occur outside of direct
instructional practices but which occur within the

context of the school and affect teaching

47
practices should be included in the units of
analysis;

4. A validated matrix of selected Deweyan
pedagogical practices and their corresponding
behavioral indicants can serve as a standard for
viewing the pedagogical practices of teachers in a
public elementary school and for addressing the
research questions in this study.

W
The researcher started with the Deweyan
raedagogical principles as concepts. As the study
rarogressed and data were collected, an explanation
emerged. The researcher developed working hypotheses
and then generated and tested them during the course of
time ten-week study. Theoretical sampling (Glaser &
Strauss, 1967), a technique which is consistent with
the nature of this study, is:
the process of data collection for generating
theory whereby the analyst Jointly collects,
codes, and analyzes his data and decides what data
to collect next and where to find them, in order
to develop his theory as it emerges. This process
of data collection is ggntngllgg by the emerging
theory, whether substantive or formal. The
initial decisions for theoretical collection of
data are based only on a general sociological

perspective and on a general subJect or problem

cat:
intl
as 1
and
ene:

ext!

SdtL

inst

48

area. . . . The initial decisions are not based on

a preconceived theoretical framework. (p. 105).

Theoretical sampling is based on the saturation of
categories as they, their properties, and their

Interrelationships are discovered. The sample is built
as the researcher discovers categories and properties
and tests their interrelationships. As an explanation
emerges, each addition to the sample serves to revise,
extend, or otherwise alter the explanation (Okey, 1990,
p. 63). ”The general idea is that the sociologist
should sample a category until confident of its
saturation“ (Glaser 8. Strauss, 1967, p. 113).

The only criterion for the sample is that it be an
instance of the case in the group or subgroup from
which the researcher wishes to collect data.
Theoretical sampling for saturation of a category
al lows for the examination of varied “slices of data,“
diverse kinds of data which give different views or
Vantage points from which to understand a category and
to develop its properties (Glaser 8. Strauss, 1967, p.
108).

In theoretical sampling, relationships among
categories and properties “are suggested as hypotheses
pertinent to direction of relationship, not tested as
descriptions of both direction and magnitude“ (Glaser 8.

Strauss, 1967, p. 106). Once a relationship is

disco
disco
direc

condi

onli‘
varlat
ACCOFC

Unsafe

49
(jiscovered, it is subJect only to being disproven. The
(discovered relationship is thought to persist in
(direction, to hold for other groups under the same
conditions.
This assumption of persistence is subJect only to
being disproven-~not proven--when other
sociologists question its credibility. . . . Only
if the hypothesis is disproven do biases in the
sample come under question. For generating theory
these biases are treated as conditions changing
the relationship, which should be woven into the
analysis as such. Thus, random Sampling is not
necessary for theoretical sampling, either to
discover the relationship or check out its
existence in other groups. (p. 107)
Eh:l§£&190_91_&h£_59h991
According to Johnson (1985), “Public schools are
more alike than different and have to be so because
triey are an institution universal to national society
as a whole rather than one unique to particular local
<=anmunity settings“ (p. 124). The differences among
Public schools, Johnson (1985) says, are "like musical
Vat‘iations on a single recognizable theme" (p. 125).
A<=<:ording to the theoretical sampling technique which

undergirds this study, the sample from which data were

we

8m
06!

19‘.

the
MM
resi
mile
less
35,0
one I
and 5
the n
and ]

llVec

and in
audio:
The Va

and the

50
collected had to satisfy only one criterion--that it
was a public school, an instance of the case.

The purpose of the study was to describe and
explain if and how Deweyan pedagogical practices have
been implemented in a public elementary school in
1991-1992. The sample, in accordance with Glaser and
Strauss (1967) and the principles of theoretical
:sampling, was an unfamiliar public elementary school.

Interviews with the building principal revealed
the community was rural—suburban, but not urban;
neither poor nor wealthy. The school location was in a
residential area approximately equidistant--about five
Iniles--from two small towns (each with populations of
less than 2800) and a mid-sized city (population
35,000). Students who attended the school came from
one of the small cities and from the surrounding rural
and suburban areas. According to the school principal,
the maJority of students in the school were from lower
land lower-middle class socioeconomic levels. Most
lived in single-family detached homes.

DA&§_§QLLQQLLQD

The researcher collected data through observation
and interview. Other tools included field notes,
audiotape recordings, and examination of artifacts.
frhe validated matrix of Deweyan pedagogical practices

and their corresponding behavioral indicants served as

(i

f:

t?
elf
ac

Pe

on.
Cl
Far

tile

51
a lens for the researcher. The research was patterned
after that of Johnson (1985) who studied classroom life
as both a participant and an observer at an elementary
school.

To see what is going on in the schools, “[oine
must begin in classrooms, the workplace of the
educational system,“ Johnson (1985, p. 4) states.
Sitting in the children’s chairs throughout the
classroom day, squatting on the floor with the children
while stories are read, “and squeezed between them when
invited to eat lunch with the classroom group“ brings a
researcher closer to the realities of classroom life
(p. 4).

To bring the realities of classroom life closer
for the purposes of this research, participant
observation in which the researcher took the role of
.the teachers whose practices were under study was
employed whenever possible. The researcher taught
activities when the fifth-grade students were at camp.
Periodically, she helped individual students.

The researcher made most of the observations in
one fifth-grade classroom and one second-grade
classroom over a period of 10 weeks. Observations
ranged from 2 hours each to a period of three days and

two nights at a residential outdoor education facility.

Eacl

0UP

9X d5:
rec“

52

Each teacher’s class was observed a minimum of 20 times
during more than 40 visits.
Mummies

Two concepts, one called events and the other
called activities, were important to the data
collection because the pedagogical practices being
examined were made up of different events and
activities. According to Johnson (1985), classroom
days are composed of “specific, recurring events and
activities“:

Eights are the maJor incidents occurring during
the classroom day: the entry of students into the
classroom, work routines, play periods, mealtimes,
and the like. 5211115135 are the smaller clusters
of behaviors making up the maJor event segments of
the classroom day. (p. 5, citing Barker and

Barker, 1961)

Classroom entry and exit event patterns are an
example of events composed of predictable and regularly
recurring subpatterns: “the way teachers address
students, the ritualized greetings and exchanges
between teachers and students, the ordered movements
between classrooms and play areas“ (Johnson, 1985,

p. 5). Events and activities in this study were the
interactions which composed the pedagogical practices,

the units of analysis.

53
W

The researcher recorded routine events and
activities of classroom life to use as a basis around
which to interpret them. Over an extended period of
time, the day-to-day life of the actors whose
interactions were under study became familiar.

The researcher sat in a student desk among the
students each time she visited and observed a class.
If the students were on the classroom rug, the
researcher sat with them. The researcher sat with
students at learning centers during center activities.
If the students went to an activity in another area of
the school, the researcher went with them. If the
event was a staff meeting, the researcher sat among the
staff members.

For every classroom session observed, the
researcher described events and activities—~event
transitions--on the right side of a notebook page. On
the left side of the page, near the left margin, she
recorded impressions of what she saw and
interpretations according to the validated matrix of
Deweyan pedagogical practices and their corresponding
behavioral indicants. As explanations of behavior
occurred, she wrote them as emerging hypotheses in the

front of the notebook.

llhl
me

COP:

cla:
hOtI
the:
(an

We

note
”DU 1
Derh

thou

54

The notebook, a looseleaf binder, contained blank
lined paper. To facilitate the search for categories,
properties, and interrelationships, the notebook also
contained copies of the research proposal and the
validated matrix.

For some interactions that occurred outside the
classroom, the researcher decided that having the
notebook would affect the interaction. An example was
when the researcher rode to the site of a field trip
(an art museum) with parents in a private car driven by
a parent. The researcher and parents met the
students--who rode on a school bus-~at the museum.
Since the notebook may have communicated a nonverbal
message which would have inhibited interaction, the
researcher made notes after the field trip.

Another example was when the researcher ate lunch
in the teachers’ lounge with the teachers. Taking
notes about those conversations while engaged in them
would most likely have affected the interaction,
perhaps causing teachers to say or do things they
thought the researcher wanted to hear or see.

After interactions such as those described above,
the events and activities were recorded as accurately
as possible from memory. Interpretations and emerging

hypotheses were added later.

in
Tea

F8!

.g

g3-

res
um

pa:

ha‘
Vii!

tea

Prl
19.
th
al

mo

00

the

W

55

Having the notebook did not appear to be a factor
in the two classrooms where observations were conducted
in a consistent manner over an extended time period.
Teachers and students did not appear to notice the
researcher nor the notetaking.
interxieu

As impressions and explanations occurred to the
researcher, she checked her ideas by asking the actors
under study--the informants--to describe and explain a
particular event or to verify their perceptions. These
instances of informal interviewing occurred in the
hallways, in the classrooms, in the smoking lounge, or
wherever informants were when they talked to the
researcher. A

Formal (scheduled) interview methodology and
procedures based on the work of Gorden (1969, 1980,
1987), Ives (1974), and Okey (1990) were used during
the final week. Scheduled tape-recorded interviews
allowed the researcher to listen more carefully, to be
more attentive, to maintain greater eye contact, to
observe the respondent more closely, and to maintain an
accurate record of the entire interview (Okey, p. 67).

As a well established and accepted field research
method, the interview provides a richness and personal
touch unattainable with data collection methods such as

the questionnaire (Okey, 1990, p. 57). Gorden (1969)

lder

QUBE

56
identifies five advantages of the interview over the
questionnaire:

1. The interview provides more opportunity to

motivate the respondent to supply aggunate_and

ccm2iete.infermatign_immediateix.

2. The interview provides more opportunity to

guide the respondent in his interpretatign of the

questions.

3. The interview allows a greater flexibility in

questioning the respondent.

4. The interview allows greater control over the

interview situation.

5. The interview provides a greater Opportunity

to eyaiuatg the validity of the information by

observing the respondent’s non-verbal
manifestation of his attitude toward supplying the

information. (pp. 52—54)

There are disadvantages inherent in using the
interview, however. “Basically, the problem is one of
maximizing the relevance, validity and reliability of
the communication in both directions between the
interviewer and respondent“ (p. 59). To do this, the
interviewer must establish and maintain “optimal“
interpersonal relations with interviewees as the means
to the end of obtaining relevant information which

increases the validity and reliability of the

ma

lnl

DU.

thl

int

(111!

QUE

57
information the respondents give (pp. 60, 95). In
light of this, the researcher established and
maintained positive interpersonal relations with
interviewees.

The researcher interviewed teachers,
building-level administrators, and other staff using
the scheduled interview methodology. The open-ended
interview questions were based on the research
questions. As the notes were reworked and studied, new
questions were added to check perceptions in the
attempt to describe and explain accurately the behavior
of the actors whose practices were under study. The
interview questions were:

1. How do your teaching practices this year
compare to your teaching practices of previous
years? Have you made any changes during the
past few years? If so, how? What was the
impetus for any changes you made?

2. How do you decide what to teach?

3. How do you decide how to teach it?

4. In what ways are classrooms in this school
cooperative social organizations? What about
your classroom? Are there any school-wide
rules? If so, how were they developed? What

about classroom rules/behavior standards?

10.

58
In what ways would you call this school a
cooperative social organization?
What is happening in your classroom(s)
regarding the methods of science and
scientific problem solving? Do you relate
additional disciplines of knowledge to
scientific problem solving? In what ways?
Do teachers in this school assist and
encourage students to become self-directed?
How? Do you? How?
Do teachers in this school use units or themes
which incorporate the active involvement of
students as they address real life kinds of
problems? Will you describe some? Do those
units of study integrate various disciplines
of knowledge? If so, how? What about in your
classroom?
Are any kinds of cooperative learning
approaches to instruction used in the
classrooms of this school? If so, describe
them. What about your classroom? What do you
think are the main obJectives of cooperative
learning approaches used in your school
(classroom)?
In what ways do teachers in this school get to

know individual students, their experiential

59

backgrounds, and their needs? How do teachers
use this knowledge? How do teachers in this
school determine how well students are doing?
In what ways do teachers in this school try to
make the various disciplines of knowledge part
of a total growth experience for students? In
what ways do teachers in this school stay
informed about students? about subJect areas?
about teaching practices? What about you?

11. How do teachers in this school view reading
and reading instruction? What makes you think
so? What is your view? How do they teach
reading? Can you give some examples? How do
you teach reading? Can you provide some
examples?

12. Is there anything else that you can tell me
which will help me to better understand
classroom practices?

Rfillanill£l_§nd_¥§lldiix

According to Okey (1990), "Reliability, which is
the consistency or repeatability of the study, is
ensured by the method itself. . .[because] [tlhe method
is what connects the observer to the events and
situations being studied“ (p. 61). According to Garden

(1969), “By validity we mean the extent to which we are

abl

00!

How!
val l
rel i
the

(EU

0f

60
able to observe or measure that which we intend to
observe or measure“ (p. 4). Cusick says:
The test of validity is with the reader. If the
narrative which results presents enough data and
is what it says it is, it is valid. If it is
valid, it is reliable. Over a period of time,
reliability will take care of itself if validity
is present. (1987).
However, to provide more assurance of a worthwhile
valid study, and, therefore, have more assurance of the
reliability of the study, the research was tailored to
the six indices of subJective adequacy stated by Homans
(Bruyn, 1966, p. 181):
1. Time. The more time an individual spends with
a group the more likely it is that he will obtain
an accurate perception of the social meaning its
members live by. [A block of time more than 10
weeks in length was available for observation and
interviewing.)
2. Place. The closer the researcher works
geographically to the people he studies, the more
accurate should be his interpretations.
[The school site for the study was close and
easily accessible.)
3. Social circumstances. The number and variety

of social circumstances which the observer

61
encounters within the social structure of the
community increase his accuracy. [The observer
was active in school activities both within the
classrooms and outside of them. The activities
included staff meetings, field trips, science
fair, talent show, outdoor education camp, lunch
with teachers and with students, fund raisers,
evening programs presented by students, the school
fun fair, recess, and the school student-staff
softball game.)
4. Language. The researcher and his subJects
should share a common language. [As a former
elementary school teacher, a former elementary
school principal, and as a field supervisor of
student teachers, the researcher shared a common
language with the informants.)
5. Intimacy. The greater degree of intimacy the
researcher achieves, the greater his accuracy.
[The researcher intentionally developed and
practiced nonJudgmental verbal and nonverbal
behaviors in her work as an observer. Techniques
of active listening were used. Staff members
appeared to trust her and confided in her.)
6. Consensus. Confirmation that the meanings
interpreted by the observer are correct.

[Confirmation of perceptions was sought through

apps

tier

iii ti
and

ho“

the
Cla:
Cias

Stag

62
further sampling and data collection including

both scheduled and nonscheduled interviews.)

IDLSEDQQJ.

The subJect school housed grades K—5 and retained
a rural-suburban neighborhood atmosphere even though it
was a part of a district with a large (11,417) student
population. Before 1959, there was no district high
school in the area where the school is located. Only
grades K-9 were offered. Having no high school for
their students and wanting to provide students with a
more coordinated and richer curriculum, residents of
the area voted to consolidate with the adJoining school
district of the mid-sized city.

The school’s organizational structure and physical
appearance were similar to that of other public
elementary schools. The school building, constructed
in 1960, was a flat-roofed concrete and brick structure
with four rectangularly shaped “wings.“ With two
additions, one built in 1965 and the other in 1970, it
housed 650 elementary students in grades kindergarten
through fifth. Figure 3.1 depicts the floor plan of
the building which contained 23 self-contained
classrooms, 2 cross-categorical special education
classrooms, a combination gymnasium-cafeteria with a

stage, and a kitchen. Two small classrooms housed the

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

if: lwlmL- :
.. We .. "
m m” ,,,,...r ..... [ :J

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1!! III
: Custodial.—
.- Supplier
‘ _

in In In , annual:
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Figure 3.1. Floor plan of the school

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64
speech and language teacher and a paraprofessional who
worked with the Article III compensatory reading
program. One empty classroom was used as the
“multi-purpose“ room for various meetings and other
activities. A large former classroom did double duty
as a combination library and computer laboratory. A
multi-room office area connected to a small teachers’
lounge contained five small offices-~one each for two
secretaries, the principal and the assistant principal,
and one shared by two volunteer coordinators. The
building was surrounded by open areas, some of which
were blacktopped, and all of which were used as play
areas.

The enrollment had been stable during the three
years preceding the study. The school had no tuition
or inter-district transfer students. The full-time
building principal worked with an assistant principal
who was in the building Mondays, Wednesdays, and every
other Friday.

The school staff consisted of 23 full-time
classroom teachers, two special education resource room
teachers (one of whom spent her mornings in another
elementary school), a half-time physical education
teacher. a French teacher (two days per week), a
full-time speech therapist, and two secretaries.

Volunteer parents served as librarians. Two volunteer

65
coordinators sought other parent volunteers for a
variety of tasks. One day custodian and two night
custodians looked after the building. Twelve
paraprofessionals supervised students during the lunch
hour and noon recess each day. Two kitchen servers
worked mid-morning to mid-afternoon to serve lunches
prepared at the high school kitchen and transported to
the school. The district employed neither elementary
art nor elementary music teacher/specialists.

Teachers were to arrive at 8:15 a.m. so classes
could start at 9:00 a.m. Dismissal was at 3:00 p.m.
for students, and teachers could leave at 3:30 p.m.
Kindergarten students attended half-day sessions. The
morning kindergarten session was from 9:00 a.m. until
11:30 a.m.: afternoon. 12:30 p.m.-3:00 p.m. Teachers
were allowed to leave school earlier than 3:30 p.m. if
they reported to school earlier than 8:15 a.m. They
“signed“ for their hours at the beginning of each
school year.

Lunch and recess periods were on a staggered basis
from 12 noon to 1:00 p.m. The teachers had one hour
for lunch. During this hour, paraprofessionals
supervised students.

Children were dismissed from school for one-half
day each month to provide time for professional staff

development. The time was made up by making sure

 

Fe

26

66
school started no later than 9:00 a.m. and by “banking“
minutes of class time which went beyond the minimal
state requirement of 900 hours and 180 days of
instruction. On in-service (“bank“) days, students
were dismissed at 12:00 noon.

The researcher-observer worked in a second-grade
classroom with 29 students (14 boys and 15 girls) and a
fifth grade with 27 students (14 boys and 13 girls).
The principal and second-grade teacher described the
second grade as made up of a heterogeneous student
group because the students were at all different
achievement levels. Three of the students, all boys,
were in the classroom only in the afternoons. They
spent their mornings in the special education resource
room.

The female teacher of this second-grade class had
taught for seventeen years, including one year as a
Junior high teacher, one year as a third grade teacher,
and eleven years as a Chapter One remedial reading
teacher. This was her fourth year of teaching a
self-contained second-grade classroom. She was a
volunteer participant in this study who held a bachelor
of arts degree in education and a masters degree in
reading.

The female fifth-grade teacher, who had taught for

26 years, was in her twenty-fourth year of teaching

67
fifth grade. Her classroom population included a
cluster of six academically talented students.
According to the principal and the teacher, this
classroom, one of four different fifth-grade
classrooms, was called a PAT (Program for the
Academically Talented) room and did not have students
who were in the “low" group. Low group students were
distributed throughout the other three fifth-grade
classrooms. Students in this classroom were considered
the middle group and the “gifted“ cluster.
Elementary gifted and talented students from all

of the district’s elementary schools could attend a
district magnet program at another elementary school in
the school district. The volunteer fifth-grade
classroom teacher referred to students who went to the
magnet program as the “truly gifted“. Students in the
gifted cluster of her PAT classroom were not eligible
for the district magnet program. In schools of the
size of the subJect school, the cluster approach--a
cluster of “gifted" students housed in one out of four
available grade level classrooms--is a common
organizational approach to gifted education.

The fifth-grade teacher possessed a bachelor of
science degree in education and a master of arts degree
in elementary education. She volunteered to

participate in this research proJect.

68

To check her own perceptions as explanations and
theories emerged, the researcher observed in other
classrooms in the building. Teachers of all grades in
the building volunteered.

This school district received some of its
operating money through the state school monetary aid
formula. During the last school year (I989-90) for
which data were available, the district received 63% of
its funding from local sources: 33% of its funding from
the state government: and 4% of its funding from the
federal government. On the basis of those funding
proportions, the district ranked approximately in the
middle of the 562 state school districts. The total
general fund expenditures per pupil in the district for
the school year 1989-90 were $3372.64. On that basis,
the district ranked 370th of the 562 districts in the
state. The state equalized value (SEV) per pupil in
the district for 1989-90 was $63,810 which was 240th of
the 562 districts (Michigan State Department of
Education, 1991).

During the period of the study, the labor climate
was stable: current teacher and support staff
collective bargaining agreements were in effect. The
millage rate of the school district had remained
stable: the district had adequate operational and debt

retirement millage.

69
W22:

In preparing for this study, the researcher took
three formal procedural steps. First, the matrix of
Deweyan pedagogical practices and their corresponding
behavioral indicants was developed and validated.
Validation was accomplished by a panel of experts
knowledgeable about Dewey. Through a series of six
meetings over a period of six weeks before the
beginning of the observations and interviews, the
matrix was revised five times until the experts
considered it valid.

Second, the application to have the
research--which involves the use of human
subJects--approved by the Michigan State University
Committee on Research Involving Human SubJects (UCRIHS)
was prepared. Through the process of the preparation
of the application, the purpose of the study was
clarified, procedures were set out clearly, consent
documents were prepared, and the risks and benefits of
the study were assessed. The research documents
approved by the UCRIHS appear in the appendix of this
dissertation.

Third, the purpose of the study was explained to
the school staff members and parents. Consent forms
were signed by the parents of all children in the

subJect school and by the subJects who were observed

70
and/or interviewed. Volunteer participants were given

the right to withdraw at any time.

W

The purpose of this study was to describe and
explain if and how Deweyan pedagogical practices have
been implemented in a public elementary school in
1991-1992. The researcher made no attempt to evaluate
the quality of teaching. The intent wa to describe
what was seen and to interpret that in light of the
Deweyan principles.

Wham

To assure reliable data analysis, the researcher
used methods of data collection as well as techniques
which facilitated the search for categories,
properties, and interrelationships in the generation of
theory. Methods of accurate data collection were
discussed in the Data_§gllggtign section of this
chapter. Techniques to facilitate the search for
categories, properties, and interrelationships are of
concern in this section. However, the researcher
recognizes that such techniques, in order to be valid,
depend upon the accuracy of the data collected.

Research notes were coded according to classroom
or event (such as a staff meeting). The coding was

designed not only with respect to confidentiality but

71
also to facilitate the search for categories,
properties, and interrelationships.

Field notes were removed from the notebook to a
portable file in which they were organized according to
dates. As the study progressed, the notes were
rearranged according to pedagogical practices and
interpretations. The notes were written in a way which
allowed them to be cut apart for rearranging. This
organization for the collection and organization of
data also facilitated the search for categories,
properties, and interrelationships.

Tape recordings of scheduled interviews were used
to ensure accuracy in the process of checking
perceptions and to facilitate the search for
categories, properties, and relationships. The tapes
served as the primary documents. Although the
researcher took notes from them, the tapes were
available for further and deeper checks of perceptions.
After the interviews, the researcher listened carefully
to each interview session and recorded categories,
properties, and interrelationships as explanations of
behavior occurred. These were added to the set of
emerging hypotheses and impressions from the events and
activities. The rationale for using the tape recorder
is further explained in the nata_§gllectign section of

this chapter.

72

A simple frequency table——showing how many
interactions were recorded and how many of them were
indicants of Deweyan pedagogical practices--was
constructed from the interpretations of the notes. The
table facilitated the search for categories,
properties, and interrelationships by allowing
numerical comparisons and contrasts. Then, the
researcher used the research questions as categories to
describe interrelationships and write summaries about
each pedagogical practice.

The result was the generated theory about if and
how Deweyan pedagogical practices are implemented in a
public elementary school in 1991-1992. The techniques
described in this section served to facilitate the
search for such theory.

mammal;

The researcher soon became known to all school
staff. This happened in several ways and was
strengthened as a result of her consistent presence in
the school. The building principal was very
supportive. At a regular staff meeting before
beginning the study, the principal introduced the
researcher who explained briefly the purpose of the
research but not the Deweyan pedagogical practices.

The education secretary provided for the

researcher a mail box and copies of most printed

73
materials. Each day the researcher talked with the
teachers at lunch time. In order to get consent forms
signed by parents of students, the researcher visited
all classrooms personally to hand out information
letters and consent forms and to collect the signed
forms. The researcher attended all regular staff
meetings as well as all meetings of the building input
and discussion group, the CORE committee. In
addition, she attended grade-level team meetings,
building committee meetings, and informal meetings with
the teachers in whose classrooms she was an observer.

A typical day started a 8:00 a.m. when the
researcher arrived at school. The second-grade teacher
in whose classroom she was observing was going to a
talent show committee meeting. The researcher went
with her but did not distance herself. She sat with
the two teachers who were talking to the principal.
During the meeting, the researcher observed. After the
meeting, the teacher and the researcher returned to the
second-grade classroom. During the five minutes before
students entered the building, the researcher and the
teacher discussed some questions the researcher had.

At 8:45 a.m., the students entered, and the
researcher sat down among the students at a desk in the
group where she usually sat. The researcher then

observed, taking notes when necessary. As an observer,

74
the researcher was usually silent, but she spoke with
students when they or the teacher asked her to help
them. At 11:50, while students were working on routine
assignments, the researcher left the classroom to visit
other classrooms in the building and collect signed
consent forms.

At 12 noon, the researcher went to the teachers’
lounge to have lunch with the teachers. The two
teachers in whose classrooms she was observing lived
close to the school and went home for lunch, but they
returned about 15 minutes before afternoon classes
started.

At 1:00 p.m., the researcher went to the
fifth-grade classroom to silently observe social
studies classes. Notes were taken when necessary. If
asked by the teacher, the researcher helped individual
students. She sat at her regular desk, a student desk
at the end of a row near the back. When school was
dismissed at 3:00, the researcher walked to the buses
with the students and teachers. After students went
home, she talked to staff, examined artifacts such as
memoranda written to the teachers by the
administration, or left the building to organize and
study the notes.

A usual day included a committee or teacher

meeting, silent observation in both classrooms, and

75
informal interviews and conversations with staff as the
researcher clarified perceptions. Classroom
observations alternated between the two classes. If
the researcher was in the second grade in the morning,
she observed in the fifth grade in the afternoon, and
vice versa. Occasionally, the researcher also spent an
entire day in one classroom.

After leaving the school, the researcher organized
the notes taken during the day and categorized events
and activities. She made notes about emerging
categories, properties, and relationships and then
prepared for the next day’s observations.

Sum

In this chapter the researcher covered the
methodology employed in this study, the assumptions,
and the concept of theoretical sampling which provided
the framework the study. The author also described
methods for collecting data, the selection and nature
of the sample school, preparations for field
procedures, and techniques to facilitate the search for
categories, properties, and interrelationships were
discussed. A typical day during the conduct of the

research was depicted.

Chapter IV

PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA

Introduction

The purpose of the study was to describe and
explain if and how Deweyan pedagogical practices have
been implemented in a public elementary school in
1991—1992. The researcher collected data through
observation and interview, using a validated matrix for
a standard through which to view and analyze
interactions.

This eight-part chapter, written in essay form,
includes data, conclusions, and related findings for
each of the research questions and associated evidence
questions. The chapter ends with a summary of the
maJor conclusions and related findings, including
models of what Dewey described 100 years ago and

pedagogy today.

76

77

Classrooms that are Cooperative Social Organizations

1. Do teachers in a public elementary school develop
and work within classrooms that are cooperative social
organizations?

1a. If so, what is the evidence of classrooms as

cooperative social organizations?

Finding: Analysis of the data supported the conclusion
that teachers in a public elementary school in
1991-1992 develop and work within classrooms that are
cooperative social organizations in some ways.

Further data analysis supported the related
finding that classrooms are authoritarian
organizations. Teachers make the classroom rules,
determine the academic and social obJectives, and plan
the learning activities. Students are expected to
complete assigned work alone and to comply with adult
structured and monitored norms and procedures.

Teachers do not ask parents and community members about
curricular matters until parents or others voice

obJectlons after implementation of subJects or topics.

The data supporting this determination are
organized and presented in several subsections. The
volunteer teachers in the study are called T1, the

second-grade teacher, and T2, the fifth-grade teacher.

78

The subsections are arranged according to the
behavioral indicants. Student input and
responsibilities regarding classroom rules are
described in the first subsection. Then, student
responsibilities regarding the establishment of
learning purposes and plans for accomplishment learning
are set out.

Next is a discussion about evaluation of the
learning purposes and activities. How the schoolwide
academic and social obJectives are determined is
specified. Involvement of parents and community
members is depicted, and community service proJects are
discussed. A subsection covers the assessment of
student quality of adJustment in social interaction.
Learning assessment is discussed. The last subsection

contains a summary and a restatement of the conclusion.

MW

Although students and teachers collectively
appeared to share responsibility for knowledge of and
behavior according to a plan of expected behaviors, the
data analysis showed that the plan was designed by the
classroom teacher without student input. Classroom
management procedures and behavior policies were adult
structured and monitored. Classroom norms included

concentration, order, self-control, task orientation,

79
and production of paper-and-pencil work containing
right answers.

Students entered and left the second-grade

classroom, T1’s room, in an orderly and quiet manner.
When they entered the classroom at the beginning of the
school day, they began doing their spelling assignment
or writing in their Journals. The Journal question for
the day was written on the chalkboard for them. The
day’s “agenda“ was also on the chalkboard for them to
see. They had to do their spelling assignment or
Journal writing first.

Students in both T1’s and T2’s classes were
expected to work alone unless they were told by the
teachers that they could work together. Students were
allowed to work together more in T1’s classroom than in
Tz’s room. T1 regularly had students work together
' during language arts activities, particularly reading
and writing. T2 had students help each other,
sometimes, in math class. T2 didn’t feel as if she

could maintain order if students worked together very

often. T1 registered concern about students getting
“out of hand" while working in groups, also, but she
consistently had students working together in pairs or
in groups of four.

Students in both classrooms were expected to

concentrate and to work in an orderly fashion on

80
assignments planned and directed by the teachers. Most
tasks, other than the Journal writing and other writing
activities used by the second-grade teacher, were
paper-and-pencil tasks in which answers were either
right or wrong. Exceptions included plays that the
second graders regularly practiced and presented, the
public service announcements that the fifth graders did
for DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) classes
taught by a city police officer, and learning
experiences which were part of the Everybody Counts
(handicap understanding) activities taught by volunteer
parents. Other exceptions included proJects done by
the second graders (as part of their monthly themes)
and SEARCH proJects done by fifth-grade students who
were in the “gifted“ cluster.

SEARCH was a voluntary activity for gifted
students from schools throughout a three-county area.
To participate, students did a learning proJect in an
area of interest. They shared their proJects with
other students during a special conference held on a
Saturday at the local community college.

SEARCH and monthly theme proJects, however, were
done at home. Class time was not allocated nor spent
on them.

In both classrooms, if students wished to speak to

the class during large group discussions, the kind

81
which occurred most often, they were expected to raise
their hands and to be given permission by the teacher
before speaking. Students were expected to pay
attention when the teacher or other students were

talking.

T1, the second-grade teacher, did not use a
discipline plan, she said. She started out the year
with five general rules “that any teacher would have“
and discussed the rules only briefly with the students
at the beginning of the year. T1 wanted to eliminate
punishment and negativism from her classroom, so she
called her room “self-directed“ and told the students
that they were self-directed. She said she modeled for
them what that meant. It appeared that she structured
(i.e., by noticing certain behaviors and waiting for
compliance with classroom norms) rather than modeled
self direction, however.

T1 handled situations such as students talking to
each other while she or another student was trying to
talk by looking at a classroom area from which she
thought the noise originated and she said, “Whoever is
talking needs to stop“ or "Whoever is talking, will you
please raise your hand?“ Students usually responded by
being quiet.

T2 used an assertive discipline plan. The plan

was posted on the wall in front of the rows of student

82
desks. It delineated a series of steps the teacher
followed if a student broke one of the five classroom
rules. The plan was:

Name on board--Warning.

Name plus one check on board--5 minutes off
recess.

Name plus two checks on board-~15 minutes off
recess.

Name plus three checks on board--all of the
above and call parents.

Name plus four checks on board--all of the
above and hour time out in another
classroom.

Serious offense--immediate time out and
referral to principal.

When T2 noticed an infraction of a rule, she didn’t say
anything, but she wrote the name(s) of student(s) who
were not adhering to the classroom rules on the right
hand side of the front chalkboard. The names were left
there throughout the day. Checks were added if T2
noticed further misbehavior. Throughout the period of
the research, no student go more than two checks.

T2 wrote some other items having to do with
student behavior on the chalkboard. One was a series
of marks to which she added when she noticed that

students entered and exited the room in a quiet,

83
orderly manner. When she saw the class do that, she
told them, ”I liked how you came in very quietly and
got right to work this morning.“ Then, she added to the
marks and total points in the series of tabulations.
When a certain number of tabulations was achieved, the
class received a reward, a “fun“ movie. If the class
did not enter or exit in the expected manner, T2 took
points away.

T2 wrote the day’s assignments on the front
chalkboard. When students entered, they were to start
to work on the spelling assignment.

Another chart related to students finishing their
assigned work. It consisted of the names of the five
students who sat at the beginning of each row. Each
student’s name and a total number of points was written
inside a box drawn on the chalkboard. The boxes were
connected and placed at the top of the left hand side
of the front chalkboard. When students in a row handed
in their assignments in a careful manner, the teacher
added to that row’s point total. When the assignments
of each row were complete-~that is, when every student
in the row handed in his or hers--the row received
points. Points were taken away if the everyone in the
row didn’t hand in an assigmment or if the correct

procedures weren’t followed. T2 gave a reward when a

84
row reached a certain number of points. Usually the
reward was the opportunity to “skip" an assignment.

Entry and exit procedures for both classrooms
included walking in a straight, quiet line through the
school hallways when going from the classroom to other
activities, such as library, physical education, or
lunch. Entering and leaving classrooms in an orderly
manner were also entry and exit procedures. In Tz’s
classroom, students were rewarded with points on the
tally chart or the row chart if they walked through the
halls quietly, if they entered the classroom in a quiet
and orderly manner, and if they got to work on academic
tasks as soon as they entered or reentered. T1
rewarded her students with verbal praise and nonverbal
reinforcement such as a smile when they entered in a
quiet and orderly manner.

When the data were examined, it was found that if
students didn’t enter or exit the classroom in
acceptable ways, they received negative reinforcement
in the form of loss of points (fifth grade) or (gentle)
verbal reminders and nonverbal negative
reinforcement—-frowns--in second grade. On such
occasions, students were told firmly by their teachers
that better compliance was expected.

On one occasion, after students entered the

classroom in a noisy manner, T2 said, “You know what is

85
expected of fifth graders, and I expect that you will
behave like fifth graders.“ Then, she took points off
the tally board and wrote the names of a few of the
students, whom she held most responsible, on the front
chalkboard.

In summary, the data analysis found that students
had no input into classroom or school rules. They
shared responsibility for knowledge of and behavior
according to a plan, but the group did not design the
plan. Management procedures and behavior norms were
adult structured and monitored.
WWW
Winn;

Analysis of the data showed a lack of involvement
of students in the determination of their purposes for
learning and how to accomplish the learning obJectives.
Teachers, acting authoritatively, took charge of
planning their individual classroom goals and learning
activities.

Together, committees of teachers planned several
schoolwide learning activities as part of the building
school improvement goals and obJectives, but individual
classroom teachers varied in what activities they
implemented. The only observed instance where students
had input into their purposes for learning was the

SEARCH activity.

86
T2 opened the activity to all of her students.
not Just those in the gifted cluster, but the proJects
were done at home. Though no school time was
allocated, seven students participated.

The teachers’ planning and implementation of field
trips and assemblies could be considered indicants of
their having acted as facilitators. They introduced
students to learning activities which were perceived to
have immediate interest to students as well as long
range implications for growth and relation to
curricular goals.

However, the field trips and assemblies were not
group decisions which involved students. There was
little connection with curricular goals or activities
as played out in the individual classrooms before or
after an assembly or field trip. Relevance of those
kinds of learning experiences to interests of students
and their individual growth needs was by chance only.
Several teachers said they planned a lot of science
assemblies (three) because that was the subJect they
felt the least confident about teaching.

T1 planned and implemented one field trip which
correlated with a writing unit. Her students
corresponded with penpals who were second-grade
students at another district school. The field trip, a

picnic to meet their penpals, took place at a local

8?
park. The trip was planned totally by the two
classroom teachers involved. This was the only trip
which came close to being a descriptor of a Deweyan
pedagogical practice, but students were not involved in
the planning nor in the implementation of the trip,
however.

Before the beginning of the study, T1’3 students
had taken five other field trips. She planned all of
the trips so her students could have some experiences
on which to base their classroom learning activities.
“Without a background of experience,“ she said, “they
can’t even brainstorm.“

The researcher observed one event in which
students had a choice about what a learning activity
would be. It occurred at the end of a marking period.
T2 gave her pupils a choice about whether she would
read to them or they would do textbook assignments in
spelling. Students asked her to read.

She told her class that if she read to them it
would not be possible for her to have their report card
grades ready in time for them to know their grades
before report cards were sent home. She needed time to
work on figuring out the grades (in percentages).
Students elected to do the textbook work. Otherwise,

events and activities indicating class meetings for

88
group decisions about how to accomplish the goals and
obJectives for learning were not observed.

The data analysis did not find support for student
input into formation of learning purposes. In
addition, analysis of the data from observations and
interviews demonstrated that students did not have
input into formulation of learning purpose and plans
for accomplishing them.
We:

In analyzing the data, the researcher found no
activities in which learning experiences were evaluated
by students and the classroom teacher in such a manner
that goals and further experiences were problem solved
and developed. Teachers did not act as facilitators
who guided students in making group determinations of
this nature.

Analysis of the data further supported that
evaluation of most learning activities was through
assessing the progress made by students on standardized
tests. In the case of field trips, assemblies, or
learning experiences and activities planned as part of
the building goals for school improvement, evaluation
was focused on the activity itself and occurred through
teachers’ discussions with other teachers. This is

discussed in the next subsection.

89

During the period of the research. T113 class and

T2’s class attended a total of eight assemblies. They
went on a total of seven field trips. one for the
second grade and six for the fifth grade. After field
trips and assemblies very little discussion or
evaluation of the field trip or assembly occurred. The
teacher facilitated no development of further learning
experiences as a result of such experiences.

Usually after assemblies or field trips both T1
and T2 mentioned how nice the field trip or assembly
was and then directed the class to take out a certain
textbook so regular class work could continue. One
exception was a fifth-grade kite-making activity and
contest. T2 implemented the spare time proJect after
her students took a field trip to view a Japanese kite
exhibition at an art museum.

The fifth-grade field trips to the electric power
generating company, the art museum, and the state
capitol were learning experiences that their teachers
thought the students should have. The students and
teachers together did not evaluate the experiences, and
they did not become parts of subsequent units of study.

When the data were examined, no support was found
for students and teachers working together to evaluate
learning experiences and to problem solve goals and

further experiences. In addition, the data analysis

90
showed that further learning experiences do not usually
develop from previous ones.
WWW
Quinslllfia

Analysis of the data from the observations and
interviews found no involvement of parents nor
community members in decisions about curriculum or
classroom or building rules and policies. The
curriculum was a curriculum developed for district use
by teacher and administrative representatives. In
addition, portions of the curriculum resulted from
state initiatives. Classroom and building rules and
policies existed through tradition as well as through
development by teachers and school staff.

Staff members developed curriculum according to
which textbook best fit the perceived needs of the
students so they would do better on standardized
achievement tests and state tests of minimal basic
skills. "We get together to choose which textbook we
want to use, then we follow the obJectives in it,“ T2
said.

Elementary foreign language instruction, the state
Model for Health Instruction, and Drug Abuse Resistance
Education (DARE) were some examples of state initiated
curriculum. State initiated curricular changes

affected what state mandated tests evaluated, so they

91
also impacted upon the choices of textbooks to be used
in reading and mathematics instruction.

In addition, under a state law, teachers and
administrators in the building devised together a
yearly school improvement plan which included three
obJectives and corresponding action plans for
implementation and evaluation. One obJective focused
on improving students’ achievement in writing: another
was to improve student self esteem: and one was to
improve student physical fitness. A committee of
teachers developed the action plan and suggested
learning activities for accomplishment of the goals and
obJectives of the building school improvement plan.

Parent input into curriculum consisted of comments
made after curricular decisions were made. On these
occasions parents had obJections to particular methods
or to particular topics. For example, a group of
fundamentalist Christians obJected to portions of the
state Model for Health Instruction which was taught in
all grades of the school.

A lower elementary lesson in visualization for
stress reduction and relaxation was removed from the
program. A fifth-grade lesson on problem solving was
changed according to parental input after initial

implementation.

92

The fundamentalists obJected to the visualization
exercise on the grounds that it was brainwashing.
ObJections to the negotiation portion of the
problem-solving unit focused on the parents not wanting
their youngsters to think that decisions made by their
parents were negotiable in any way. The fifth-grade
unit was modified to discuss negotiation as a part of
problem-solving practices to be used only in situations
at school. This was a compromise between the parents
and the school district administration. After having
been vocal regarding their obJections to some of the
curriculum, some representatives of the fundamentalist
group are now included on the director of elementary
education’s unofficial curriculum subcommittee.

A new district task force was recently formed.
Its purposes include parental and community input and
determination of desired outcomes for graduates of the
district’s high schools. The task force was formed
because of state initiatives tied to funding.

Analysis of the data supported the finding that
the curriculum is highly standardized in the form of
commercially published textbooks and their accompanying
paper-and-pencil assessment instruments. Further
analysis confirmed that schoolwide social obJectives
(e.g., procedures and behavior expectations) are

decided in accordance with tradition by teachers and

93
staff without community and parent input. Although a
new committee now allows for some parental and
community input into desired outcomes for students,
data analysis showed that parents and community members
do not have input into curriculum development unless
they aggressively voice obJections to something.
W
22922::

Although the data analysis showed no support for
parental and community involvement in determining
academic and social obJectives, parents and community
members actively shared in some portions of the
learning process. Their participation, as shown by the
data, was as volunteer chaperones for field trips and
as volunteer clerks to organize and carry out the
administrative side of school fund raising activities,
'of which there are many.

During the school year, parents coordinated four
schoolwide fundraisers. Volunteer parents were in
charge, but teachers determined how the money was
spent. Activities to raise money included a food sale.
a magazine sale, a read-a-thon, and a school fun fair.
Proceeds were used to fund the schoolwide assemblies
and purchase of updated reference materials, especially

encyclopedias.

94

During the period of the study, the entire fifth
grade (only) raised $7000 to fund their three days at
an outdoor education camp 100 miles away. They
sponsored a pancake breakfast, and candy and raffle
ticket sales.

Parents were always invited to the schoolwide
assemblies and were usually present. Sometimes,
parents and community members were involved directly in
classroom learning activities.

One example of such parent involvement was the
Everybody Counts (handicap awareness) learning
activities that were taught in each classroom by a
group of volunteer parents. The activities were
planned and taught to the parents by curriculum
specialists of the regional service center
(intermediate school district).

An example of a community member being involved in
the learning activities was the ProJect DARE (Drug
Awareness Resistance Education) program in the fifth
grade. A city police officer taught the fifteen-week
program in each fifth-grade class once each week. The
officer used learning activities devised and taught to
her by DARE America.

Sometimes, parents and community members were not
welcome to participate in classroom learning activities

if they were not acting as chaperones, clerks, or

95
refreshment committees. This was especially evident
before Young Author celebration day. The day was
designated as a celebration of year-long writing
activities. At a staff meeting before Young Author
Day, the committee in charge of the school improvement
writing goal discussed the schoolwide assembly being
planned to recognize student writing efforts. Each
class was to have three student representatives each
read something he or she had written during the year.
Parents would be invited to the assembly. After the
assembly, the committee had planned for each classroom
teacher to include parents in further activities to be
held in his or her room.

A group of teachers strongly obJected to having
parents invited back to their classrooms. One of them
said, “I’m not sure I will have students ready to read
something at the assembly let alone have parents come
back to the room. What will I have them do?“

Other teachers nodded their heads and appeared to
agree strongly with the teacher who was raising her
concerns. The committee and the teachers together then
decided that parental involvement in any classroom
activities held after the assembly was up to each
teacher.

On the day of the celebration, very few teachers

had students’ parents come to their classroom. Neither

96
T1 nor T2 had classroom activities after the assembly,
although T1 was a member of the planning committee.

In summary, examination of the data supported the
finding that parents and community members shared in
some learning activities. Further examination revealed
little actual classroom involvement but much
involvement as chaperones and fundraising chairpersons
and clerks.

Q9mmunitx_§enxi§e_prgiecss.

When the data were analyzed, the presence of
community service proJects students had chosen and
implemented was not found. In one proJect, some
students participated, but it was initiated by a local
hospital through the district’s central administration
and the school principal. Teachers were asked to have
students make Valentines for patients at a local

hospital. Some teachers and students participated.

WWW
interaction

The data analysis showed that assessment of
student quality of adJustment in social interaction,
when done, was done by teachers in a behavioristic
manner. Positive reinforcement was provided for “good
behavior“--behavior according to expected rules and
procedures. Negative reinforcement was provided for

not adhering to behavior standards. This is discussed

97

subsection . Wes.

contains a more complete discussion.
Wu;

Examination of the data found that assessment of
the students was done by each teacher according to
percentage of work produced--answers written out on
paper--with right answers. .Teachers designated letter
grades on standard district report cards for upper
grade students.

Teachers of lower grade students assigned
Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory or Improving. Some upper
grade teachers gave only A, B, or I (incomplete).
Others give A, B, C, D, or E (failing).

There appeared to be a standard for grading which
was external to individual students--a community
standard of work on standardized tasks, not a standard
focused on the learner’s individual growth as shown in
the quality of the learner’s work.’

Teachers administered tests manufactured by the
commercial publishers of the textbooks used by the
school for reading, mathematics, social studies,
science, and English instruction to evaluate student
progress. Some of these written tests were printed in
the textbooks themselves: some were on separate
blackline masters: and some were in paperback booklet

form. Results of the tests were shared with students.

98
but the tests were not discussed with the whole group
after they were graded and handed back. Reading tests
were kept in their booklet format even after students
completed the tests. Students were allowed to retake
any tests--except state-mandated and standardized
achievement tests--on which they received less than 80%
correct. Both teachers said this was part of their
“mastery“ approach.

Data analysis consistently supported a
determination that assessment of the students was done
in a manner which was more standardized than focused on
the evidence of each learner’s individual growth.
Learners were assessed according to a percentage of
right answers on standardized textbook tasks. Also
considered for assessment was how learners performed on
standardized achievement tests and state mandated tests
of minimal learning obJectives.

Summau

The bar graph in Figure 4.1 shows that 22% of the
events observed (38 of 175) contained activities
indicating classrooms as cooperative social
organizations. Examination of the data supported the
conclusion that teachers in a public elementary school
develop and work within classrooms that are cooperative

social organizations in some ways.

PERCENT

99

100

90

80

7O

6O

50

40

30

20

10

 

O

A B C D E

,1

G H

Interdisciplinary units
Self direction
Cooperative learning
Problem Solving

a Cooperative social schools

= Process approach

a Cooperative social classrooms
= Knowledge and use

DON?
20"!!!
I I I I

Figure 4.1 Frequency of Deweyan indicants

100

Further data analysis supported the related
finding that classrooms are authoritarian
organizations. Teachers make the classroom rules.
determine the academic and social obJectives, and plan
the learning activities. Students are expected to
complete assigned work alone and to comply with adult
structured and monitored norms and procedures. Parents
and community members are not asked about curricular
matters until they voice obJections after
implementation of subJects or topics.

The use of the term cooperatiye to describe the
classrooms would apply as Michael Apple (1990) used it
to characterize the intent of early twentieth century
curriculum theorists. Large-group internal cooperation
was needed, they believed, to develop “large group
consensus“.

Similarly, the students in this study were
expected to develop a high degree of normative and
cognitive consensus, “likemindedness” (Apple, 1990, pp.
69-70). The use of a standardized curriculum and the
expected compliance by students to adult structured and

monitored activities reflect that expectation.

101

Schools that are Cooperative Social Organizations

2. Do teachers in a public elementary school develop
and work within a school that is a cooperative social
organization?

2a. If so, what is the evidence that the school is a

cooperative social organization?

Eindings When the data were examined, the analysis
supported the conclusion that a public elementary
school in 1991-1992 is a cooperative social
organization regarding some interactions.

Through data analysis, a few indicants of a
cooperative social organization were found to be
present in teacher-to-teacher and teacher-administrator
interactions. However, additional scrutiny supported
the related finding that teacher-to-teacher and
teacher-to-administrator cooperation is usually related
to procedural issues (e.g., methods and materials for
using the standardized curriculum, student discipline,
plans for schoolwide assemblies, administrative details
for ordering materials and grouping students,
procedures for examining the school improvement plan,
fundraisers, assemblies, and field trips) rather than
substantive pedagogical matters. Substantive matters

such as the underlying principles and aims of the

102
school and the alignment of teaching practices with
those principles are seldom discussed.

A second related finding is that parents,
community members, support staff, and students are most
often excluded from participating in decisions about
curriculum. District policy provides for parental and
community input, but such avenues are usually used only
for complaints after decisions have already been made.
Student input into curriculum exists in the form of

performances on standardized measures of assessment.

This section is divided into three subsections:
(1.) teacher-to-teacher interactions, (2.) interactions

between teachers and others, and (3.) a short summary.

WM

Examination of the data showed that
teacher-to-teacher interaction focused on organizing
for instruction (including grouping students), grade
reporting, teaching ideas and materials. school
improvement, professional development “training“, the
needs and progress of certain students, fundraisers,
field trips, and assemblies.

One behavioral indicant of a school as a
cooperative social organization is whether teachers
consider themselves as specialists regarding some

subJect matter. At the same time they are sensitive to

103
the interrelationships between and among the various
subJect matters--the larger context.

Analysis of the data revealed that a few teachers
considered themselves as specialists. For example, T1
thought of herself as an expert in reading instruction.
Most teachers, including T2, said they characterized
themselves as generalists, however.

Examination of the data from the observations and
interviews showed several interactions related to such
considerations. One was a departmentalized approach to
organization of instruction used by two of the
fifth-grade teachers, one of whom was T2. She and the
teacher next door grouped their students for reading,
mathematics, social studies, and science classes. The
teacher next door taught the “higher" math group, while
T2 instructed the "lower" group. T2 had the “higher“
reading group, and the teacher next door was in charge
of the “lower" group. T2 took all of the neighboring
teacher’s students for social studies instruction while
all of her students were in the other teacher’s
classroom for science class.

In the second grade, T1 was the only teacher (of
four) who had her students all day long. The other
three teachers grouped their students for reading
instruction. The teachers organized groups according

to achievement: high, medium, and low. One teacher

104
taught each of the groups during the block of time set
aside for reading.

Other interactions between teachers related to
considerations about whether or not they considered
themselves as specialists. Analysis of the data showed
that the same teachers who thought of themselves as
specialists were viewed by others as experts.

T1 was seen as an expert in reading. Another
second-grade teacher was called an expert in the
writing process. A fourth-grade teacher who was a
district “trainer“ in cooperative learning was referred
to as a specialist in that approach. A fifth-grade
teacher was described as the “science and technology
expert“ in the building. T2 was the building expert on
raising student self esteem.

When the data were analyzed further, the
researcher found that a few teachers were somewhat
sensitive to the larger context and the
interrelationships between and among some of the
various academic disciplines. Three pilot proJects
served as examples.

One teacher, the one who was considered an expert
about writing instruction, tried a whole language
approach to reading and writing instruction. Included

in her pilot proJect was the use of themes, such as

105
“whales“, around which reading and writing lessons were
based.

T1 tried a thematic approach to language arts
instruction. Both teachers, although they called
themselves “creative” and “risk takers,“ used the basal
reader tests to evaluate and grade their students’
progress.

A fifth-grade teacher tried activities from a
commercial curriculum called AIMS, Activities to
Integrate Math and Science, published and sold by the
AIMS Foundation. He used AIMS lessons to supplement
the standardized mathematics and science textbooks he
used.

Of these three teachers, the two second-grade
teachers were called upon by the building
administrators and by other teachers to give advice and
to write the action plan for implementing the building
goal "to increase student ability to express ideas in
written form.“ When professional development
activities regarding language arts instruction
occurred, both teachers volunteered or were asked to
attend.

A fifth-grade teacher who was considered by others
to be the unofficial school science consultant, kept

the AIMS materials--stored in a type of resource

106
materials area-~organized. He recommended assembly
programs with scientific topics.

Sometimes, teachers asked other teachers, those
whom they thought of as experts, for help. One
teacher, the second-grade teacher who was considered an
expert about writing instruction, worked with two
first-grade teachers at their request during the school
year. She gave them advice about methods to use, but
she did not go into their classrooms to model an
instructional approach. She also worked with a
fourth-grade teacher.

Two second-grade teachers asked the cooperative
learning expert to help them. They held meetings
throughout the school year, but the expert teacher did
not model the approach in the other classrooms.

The data were examined for another indicant of a
cooperative social organization, teachers reflecting
with each other regarding the needs and progress of
students. Although the data analysis showed that
teachers spent time reflecting with each other
regarding student growth, further investigation showed
that their discussions focused on student performance
on standardized textbook or assessment tasks or on
student failure to comply with adult structured
procedures and behavior standards. This happened both

informally and formally.

107

Informal reflections appeared to be the kind that
occurred most often.» They happened anywhere teachers
gathered, including in each others’ classrooms and at
lunch. For example, T2 went into the classroom next
door to talk to another fifth grade teacher, her “team"
partner, about a student they shared who was absent
excessively. Together, the two teachers developed a
strategy to help the student be more successful. One
result of the informal meeting was that T2 called the
student’s parents to seek further information and
register their concerns.

The next morning the student was in school early.
His mother was with him, and they brought afternoon
snacks for Tz’s class.

Formal reflections took place at staff meetings
and at meetings to determine or reevaluate special
education students’ needs and progress. At one staff
meeting, for example, teachers discussed how the
results of student performance on the state mandated
tests of minimal obJectives would be analyzed.

“1 want to know how my kids from last year did,“
said a third-grade teacher in reference to the
fourth-grade tests. “I want to know what I should
concentrate on to get my kids ready this year,“ she

continued.

108

At another staff meeting. teachers discussed
report card grades for handwriting. Teachers decided
to grade handwriting to show that it was valued. "If
we don’t grade their handwriting, they [the students]
will think we don’t feel it is important," commented a
third-grade teacher.

At the same meeting, teachers talked about their
choice of grades for other subJects. A prior school
improvement effort emphasized mastery learning, and
upper grade teachers were urged to give only A, B, or I
grades, with A or B signifying mastery and I meaning
inggmpletg. Several upper grade teachers were still
grading report cards in that manner.

“Are we still doing ODE?" one asked. (The prior
school improvement effort was Outcome Based
Education--OBE.) Nothing definite was decided, and
’ teachers continued to use their various systems of
letter grades. Some used A, B, C, D, or E , while some
used A, B, or 1.

Examination of the data showed that teachers
interacted formally and informally to share materials
and develop learning activities for the standardized
curriculum and the school improvement plan. During the
period of the research, teachers were preparing for the

summative activity of the building writing improvement

109
goal. At several staff meetings the teachers shared
many ideas for what and how to have students write.

At one meeting. T1 described the use of blank
books, and all teachers received blank books for their
students. One teacher described how she organized and
managed her students’ writing activities in preparation
for the Young Author event.

At another meeting, teachers discussed the annual
standardized achievement testing. “I haven’t even done
the math for the CAT, yet,“ was the comment of one
teacher who sounded overwhelmed.

Later, in response to the concern registered,
another teacher at her grade level demonstrated where
and how the CAT math questions matched the math
textbook at their grade level. She also loaned the
worried teacher some blackline master activity sheets.

Interactions at staff meetings also consisted of
plans for assemblies. An awards assembly to recognize
students who were on the honor roll was devised, and
plans for other assemblies were discussed.

The needs and progress of individual students were
discussed informally between teachers. This usually
occurred when a students had academic or social
difficulties. Individual students were not discussed

at formal meetings nor in large groups which met

110
informally, including the group of teachers who ate
lunch together.

Discussions regarding individual students’ needs
and progress were held in very small groups--two or
three teachers--in private areas. Teachers who worked
with a particular student discussed problems they were
having, and other teachers gave suggestions about what
methods of working with the student might “work."
Sometimes, the student’s teacher from a prior year or
the resource room teacher (a special education
professional) was a part of such informal meetings.
Formal meetings about individual student’s needs and
progress were a part of the identification process for
special education eligibility. Annual review meetings
for students receiving special education services were
also formal. The researcher observed neither formal
nor informal meetings about the needs and progress of
students who received supplemental Article III reading
and mathematics instruction from the compensatory
education paraprofessional.

The analysis of the data revealed an instance
where a large group of teachers interacted in response
to recurring instances of lower grade pupils
misbehaving on the playground. The response included

an after school ad hoc meeting of many teachers.

111

As a result, the teachers who were at the meeting
decided to have all lower grade students stay in their
classrooms for lunch and recess the next day. After
eating, all pupils were to keep their heads down on
their desks and to “think about" how they acted and how
they should have acted during the noon recess. This
informal meeting did not include all teachers, but most
were there.

An investigation of the data revealed that
teachers did not spend time deeply reflecting about
substantive matters such as their own professional
growth. Reflection regarding professional growth
usually occurred in terms of choosing workshops they
thought they should attend to learn how to ”do“
something. The time they~spent alone or with each
other was used to plan learning activities.

Teachers said they did not have enough time during
a typical day to reflect about their own professional
growth. About 20% of the staff reported to work at
7:00 a.m., one hour and fifteen minutes before their
contractual starting time. They said they needed to do
that in order to get everything done that needed to be
done. Correcting papers and planning learning
activities was how most of the early time was spent.
After the official beginning of the school day,

teachers said they were involved in meetings and could

112
not get done what needed to be done in order for their
class to run "smoothly“.
Interacti9ns_am9n9_teachers_and_9tners

The data were examined for indicants of
interaction among teachers and others regarding the
Joint development of curriculum. Data analysis showed
that support staff, parents, community members, and
students did not have input into development of
curriculum. They did not comment unless they obJected
to a curriculum decision made by the board of education
through district committees usually comprised of
teachers and administrators. Interactions of this
nature were more fully described in the preceding
section.

Student performance on standardized measures of
achievement affected decisions about curriculum. The
data analysis found that the results of such
assessments were the primary considerations when
teachers determined what to teach and how to teach it.
Such results were viewed in two different ways.

First, teachers examined test results of their
students from the prior year to determine where those
students did not do well. These areas would be
emphasized more with the current students. Second,
test results of current students were analyzed to find

additional areas which should be given stronger focus.

113
Teachers wanted to make sure their students did well on
standardized tests because they wanted the pupils to be
successful “in the next grade."

The standardized curriculum, approved by the board
of education, consisted of commercially prepared
textbooks, workbooks, blackline masters, and assessment
measures. Teachers said they felt free to teach how
and what they wanted. Yet, the data analysis showed
that even teachers who called themselves “creative“ or
“risk takers" adapted their instruction to standardized
texts and materials adopted by the district.

Further analysis showed that teachers adopted the
obJectives of the district curriculum as printed in the
standardized texts, teachers’ guides, and assessments.
Although learning activities in the whole language and
_thematic pilot proJects were devised by teachers
themselves, obJectives for students were based on those
of the standardized materials, so that students would
be "successful in the next grade.“

Through examination of the data from observations
and interviews, the researcher determined that the
underlying principles and aims of the school were not
discussed although posters stating the school mission
were posted in each classroom. The mission statement

was developed by teachers and a former building

114
principal without the participation of support staff.
parents, community representatives, or students.

When the data were scrutinized to find indicants
of regularly scheduled discussions regarding how
practices in the school aligned with the underlying
principles and aims of the school, such discussions
were not found. Even after a provision for regularly
scheduled discussions was discarded, subsequent data
analysis did not reveal support for the presence of any
interactions concerned with the underlying principles
and aims of the school as main topics.

With regard to teacher input into the management
of the school, data analysis also showed teachers had
very little input into management. Although the
building administrator turned over to teachers more and
more decisions, analysis of the data found that
decisions turned over to teachers were of a procedural
nature, such as procedures for examining standardized
test results, the building school improvement goals and
obJectives, and special education student
mainstreaming.

Further scrutiny of the data found that teachers
wanted to make some decisions but not others and that
they wanted to make the choice about which decisions
they would make. At one staff meeting, a teacher asked

that the problem-solving committee be reinstated.

115
Teachers and the building administrator agreed to do
so, and the committee was considered reinstated.

The building administrator later turned over to
the committee a problem about scheduling for the
succeeding year. "Why doesn’t he make that decision
himself!“ the chairperson exclaimed. “That’s not a
problem for us to solve.“

When the building administrator turned over the
distribution of some instructional materials to two
second-grade teachers, they said he “wasn’t doing his
Job." Analysis of the data lends support to the
assumption that teachers viewed participatory decision
making in three ways.

One way was to want to have a "say“ in decisions
affecting them. An example of this was when the large
ad hoc group of teachers designed a plan to deal with
the recess misbehavior of the lower grade students. At
their request, the building principal implemented their
decision.

Another way teachers viewed such participatory
decision making was as a sign of weakness on the part
of the administration. The data analysis found that
this happened when teachers did not want to be involved
in certain decisions such as the scheduling problem.

Further analysis of the data lends support to a

third view. Teachers wanted to share in making

116
decisions for which they could be accountable. The
teachers, for example, did not want to assume
accountability for the scheduling problem.

When the data were examined for indicants of
teachers having input into allocation and distribution
of district money, no support for substantive input
into such matters was found. Teachers were received a
certain amount of money for their classroom. How to
spend money allocated to them by central administration
was the extent of their input. However, teachers had
almost complete control over how the money raised by
students and volunteers in local fundraising efforts
was spent. The teachers spent money for 1991-1992 on
assemblies, field trips, a visiting author, and other
proJects.

Through analysis of the observation and interview
data, the researcher determined that teacher input into
the school calendar and starting and dismissal times
was through the teachers’ collective bargaining group
under terms of the master agreement with the school
board. One teacher was an association representative
who communicated the wishes of building teachers to the
executive committee.

Examination of the data found that placement of
students in classrooms for the succeeding year was done

by teachers according to established guidelines. The

117
placements were subJect to being overridden by the
principal, however.

Further examination of the data established that
teachers did not determine the times of lunch and
recess nor that of classes such as physical education
which were taught by itinerant teachers. Class
schedules were determined by the traveling teachers and
the school administrators. Teachers had some input,
however.

Data analysis found no support for teacher input
into the selection of personnel for the building.
Personnel decisions were handled by central
administration according to district policy and

collective bargaining agreements.

Summari

According to the bar graph (Figure 4.1), 37% of
the observed events (65 of 175) had activities which
were indicants of the school as a cooperative social
organization. Investigation of the data supported the
conclusion that a public elementary school in 1991-1992
is a cooperative social organization regarding some
interactions.

Further examination supported a related finding
that cooperation is usually in relation to procedural
rather than substantive pedagogical matters. Included

in procedural issues are methods and materials for

118
using the standardized curriculum, student discipline,
plans for schoolwide assemblies, administrative details
of ordering materials and grouping students, procedures
to examine the school improvement plan, fundraisers,
assemblies, and field trips. Substantive matters such
as the underlying principles and aims of the school and
the alignment of teaching practices with those
principles usually are not discussed.

That parents, community members, support staff,
and students are usually excluded from participation in
decisions about curriculum is a second related finding.
District policy provides ways for parents and community
members to have input, but such avenues usually are
used most frequently for complaints after decisions
have already been made. Student input into curriculum
consists of performances on standardized measures of

assessment.

Integration of Scientific Problem Solving into Learning

Experiences

3. Do teachers in a public elementary school integrate
scientific problem solving into learning experiences?
3a. If so, what is the evidence of integration of

scientific problem solving into learning experiences?

Findings Close study of the data consistently

supported the conclusion that scientific problem

119
solving is seldom integrated into learning experiences
in a public elementary school in 1991-1992. A related
finding that scientific problem solving is virtually
excluded from the curriculum was supported through
further analysis. Additionally, the researcher found
through the data analysis that teachers view scientific

problem solving as a separate subJect.

The data and analysis are presented in three
subsections: (1.) indicants of the teacher’s role in
scientific problem solving, (2.) indicants of student

activity in problem solving, and (3.) a short summary.

W

The data were examined to identify events and
activities in which teachers helped students to develop
skills in problem solving and decision making. Four
‘ instances were located. However, upon further
analysis, the researcher determined that two of the
instances were interactions in which students were
being asked to comply with the adult structured and
monitored norms and procedures.

In the first interaction, T2 asked a student who
did not have her written assignments completed, “Do you
think you should have been working on your kite
yesterday or should you have been working on your math

assignment?“ Examination of the facts of the instance

120
lends support to the determination that the teacher was
reinforcing compliance with the classroom norm of
completing written tasks before working on other
(optional) proJects.

In the second interaction, T1 looked up from a
group of students with whom she was working and told a
student who was in another part of the room, “Do you
think you can work without bothering J (another
student) or do you want to come to sit by me?“

Analysis of the data regarding this instance supports
that the T1 was reinforcing compliance with the
classroom norm of working by oneself without disturbing
others.

The data analysis supported the determination that
neither of the foregoing interactions was an indicator
of a teacher helping students to develop
problem-solving skills. The decisions students were
being asked to make were decisions about compliance
with classroom norms and procedures. Further analysis
lends support for the finding that obedience was
expected and reinforced.

Two interactions in which the teacher served as a
guide to help students develop skills in problem
solving and decision making were observed. Both
occurred during fifth-grade DARE instruction The city

police officer who taught DARE was serving as the

121
teacher both times. The DARE problem solving examples
were role play activities and the creation of public
service announcements. Students focused on problems
about how they might be tempted to use drugs, including
alcohol. The police officer guided students in
creating and role playing relevant solutions.

Examination of the data located support for a
determination that teachers believed scientific problem
solving was “science.“ Several teachers said they did
not “do it“ because they lacked confidence about
teaching science.

Data analysis also supported the finding that
teachers thought of problem solving as a separate
subJect to teach.: There wasn’t enough time available
to teach it. 'One teacher commented, “I know what to
do, and I have a strategy board I’ve used for teaching
problem solving. But, if we keep adding new subJects
to the curriculum, something has to go. I don’t have
time to teach problem'solving this year.“

Additionally, investigation of the data located
support for a determination that some teachers did not
“do" problem solving because of parental obJections.
The facts of an interview included a reference to
fifth-grade parents who obJected that negotiation was
taught as a part of the problem-solving unit in the

state Health Model.

122

The parents complained to district administrators
who directed teachers to use only school-related
examples when teaching that particular unit. According
to the interview. parents were concerned that their
students would learn ”everything is negotiable“. They
did not want their youngsters to think that their
parental decisions were negotiable in any way.

The data were investigated to locate interactions
in which teachers arranged the classroom environment so
that situations and activities of interest to the
students were presented as problems and opportunities
for learning. No examples were found. Students do not
have opportunities to be actively involved in
determining problems they want to solve and identifying
their purposes for learning.

Additionally, the data were studied closely to
ascertain if teachers acted to guide learners in the
use of scientific problem solving across the
curriculum. Further analysis was conducted to
determine if teachers acted similarly in relation to
students’ social interactions. Examples of teachers
acting as problem-solving guides were not found.
WW

Facts were closely studied to find interactions in
which students were actively involved in identifying

problems which they wanted to solve. By being involved

123
in such determinations, students would thereby be
involved in determining their purposes for learning.
However, no examples of such involvement were located.

Related indicants focused on the involvement of
students in selection and evaluation of activities to
accomplish their learning purposes: on teachers serving
as assistants to students as learners work to
accomplish learning purposes: and on student input into
organization of what has been learned. The data
analysis did not find support for these kinds of
interactions. A more complete discussion of them is
presented in the first two sections of this chapter.
Sumarl

The bar graph in Figure 4.1 shows 1% of the events
(2 of 175) had activities that contained indicants of
scientific problem solving. Both events occurred as
part of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) learning
activities taught in the fifth grade by a police
officer.

Systematic study of the data consistently
supported the conclusion that scientific problem
solving is seldom integrated into learning activities
in a public elementary school in 1991-1992. Additional
analysis upheld the finding that scientific problem
solving is virtually excluded. Further, some teachers

view problem solving as a distinct "subJect“.

124
Focus on Student Development of Self Direction

4. Do teachers in a public elementary school focus on
student development of self direction?
4a. If so, what is the evidence of the teachers’ focus

on student development of self direction?

Findings Through the examination of the data, support
was found for the conclusion that teachers in a public
elementary school in 1991-1992 infrequently focus on
student development of self direction. Further
analysis of the facts upheld two related findings.
First, events and activities in the school reflect
teacher direction, not student self direction. Second,
teachers perceive their learners as self directed when
students need little assistance, know the assignments,

and produce the assigned work.

The discussion in this section is divided into
three subsections: (1.) teacher perceptions of self
direction, (2.) a discussion of special proJects, and

(3.) a summary and restatement of the conclusions.

WWW

Systematic study of the facts of the observations
and interviews finds support for the finding that
teachers interpreted self direction in two different

ways. First, the data demonstrated that student

125
compliance with the norms and culture of the classroom
was how some teachers viewed student self direction.
Those teachers identified self—directed learners as
those who didn’t bother others, knew what assignments
to do, and got them done with little or no attention
from the teacher.

Further investigation of the data supported a
determination that some teachers perceived student self
direction as a student conducting an investigation and
learning something he or she wanted to learn. One
teacher, the data show, perceived self direction both
ways.

The data analysis consistently supported that the
first definition was the one which was reinforced in
the school. T1 called her classroom a “self-directed
classroom.“ By that, she meant that students came into
the classroom in the morning in an orderly manner and
got right to work on the assigned tasks. She said,
“They know what to do, I don’t have to tell them very
much.“

T1 commented that students in her self-directed
classroom behaved well if she wasn’t in the room.
Sometimes, she had informal meetings with other
teachers or with parents and was unable to be in the
classroom when students entered. Her students entered

quietly when she was there and when she wasn’t there.

126

The second meaning, indicative of Deweyan
instructional practice, was shown to be present in the
form of extra proJects. Further investigation into the
data found that such proJects were somewhat indicative
of self direction in the Deweyan sense, but they lacked
substance. The teacher was rarely involved in guiding
and helping students to evaluate their growth. The
proJects may or may not have originated in what had
already been learned.

Ssesial_erple§ts

The data included examples of special proJects
such as SEARCH, plays, and the theme-of-the-month
proJects. SEARCH was for students from several area
school districts and.was designed so students could
share with each other particular investigations they
did. SEARCH proJects were done at home.

Second graders in Tl’s class and in the class of
the teacher next door--the expert about teaching
writing—-worked on and presented plays and programs in
school. T1’s students worked with a fourth-grade class
to present a Christmas play. They worked at home on
required theme of the month proJects planned by T1.

Through an examination of the facts it was found
that teachers who used special proJects did not guide
students nor become involved. Indicants of such

involvement would have been that teachers helped

127
students to form purposes for learning, to select and
evaluate methods to accomplish their learning purposes,
to evaluate what was learned, and to assess how the
student was growing in self direction. The data
analysis found no support for teacher involvement of
that nature.

The examination of the facts found that teachers
provided opportunities for students to share
accomplishments with other members of the school
community. During the school year, Ti’s students
presented four plays for parents. Upper grade students
displayed science proJects at a school science fair.

T2 had students present their SEARCH proJects to
classmates. The Young Author assembly consisted of
student representatives from each classroom reading
examples of their writing. Parents and community
members attended each event.

Sam

The bar graph in Figure 4.1 shows that 10% of the
events observed (17 of 175) contained activities with
indicants of self direction in a Deweyan sense.

Through the examination of the data, support was found
for the conclusion that teachers in a public elementary
school infrequently focus on student development of

self direction. The analysis of the data also provided

support for two additional findings: (1.) events in

128
the school reflect teacher direction, not student self
direction, and (2.) teachers view self-directed
students as those who need little teacher assistance.

know the assignments, and produce assigned work.

Use of Interdisciplinary Units of Study Incorporating
Active Involvement of Students as They Address Problems

that are Relevant to Real Life

5. Do teachers in a public elementary school design
and use interdisciplinary units of study that
incorporate the active involvement of students as they
address problems relevant to real life?

5a. If so, what is the evidence of the design and use
of interdisciplinary units of study that incorporate
the active involvement of students as they address

problems relevant to real life?

Findings The analysis of the data supported the
conclusion that teachers in a public elementary school
in 1991-1992 seldom use interdisciplinary units of
study that incorporate the active involvement of
students as they address problems relevant to real
life. Further analysis led to the finding that
teachers use standardized commercial curriculum
materials to address the various disciplines of

knowledge as separate subJects.

129
Additional findings upheld in the examination of
the facts are that relevance occurs by chance: students
are not actively involved in the learning experiences:
and discontinuity of learning experiences prevails over

continuity.

The findings are delineated in five subsections:
(1.) units of study, (2.) involvement of students,
(3.) room arrangements, (4.) relevance, and (5.) a

short summary.

llama!

The data consistently supported the finding that
teachers used units of study prescribed by standardized
commercial textbooks, workbooks, and assessments. Some
teachers supplemented the textbook units of study with
integrated reading and writing activities or with
integrated math and science experiences.

T1 and the teacher next door, both of whom
considered themselves experts in language arts
instruction, used some integrated reading and writing
units. The fifth-grade teacher who was considered to
be the building science and mathematics expert used
some lessons that incorporated both disciplines.
However, examination of the data did not show evidence

of the integration of language arts, mathematics,

 

130
social studies, science, and the fine arts into the
same unit.

Through investigation of the observation and
interview facts, the researcher ascertained that field
trips were indications of interdisciplinary learning
activities. Teachers planned and implemented field
trips to provide students with experiences. Ti's
rationale is discussed in the first section of this
chapter.

Further examination of the data supported the
determination that field trips usually were not
components of larger units of study and were taken with
little preparation and little follow up. Before or
after field trips, teachers did little to integrate
various disciplines of knowledge. The picnic field
trip (discussed in the first section of this chapter)
in which T1 and her class met the pen pals they’d been
writing to all year, was somewhat exceptional.

Learning activities were rarely connected or
continuous. Examination of the data of classroom
events and activities offers support for the finding
that, after a certain period of time spent discussing
and working on the learning obJectives of one subJect,
an abrupt change to a different subJect was made. In
the following manner, the teacher directed the

transition to another subJect: “All right. Put away

 

131
your spelling textbooks and get out your math books.

We’re going to work on page .“

 

The succeeding subJect was not related to concepts
or facts from the previous subJect. The data analysis
consistently supported the finding that the various
disciplines of knowledge were called “subJects“ and
were not related nor integrated with each other in even
the most minimal ways. Even the pilot proJects in
second-grade language arts (reading and writing) were
separate and distinct from what students studied in
social studies, math, science, and the fine arts (if
teachers provided experiences in the arts). Scrutiny
of the facts of the fifth-grade AIMS lessons supported
the determination that they were unrelated to language
arts and social studies learning.

Additionally, the analysis supported the
determination that within the various disciplines,
subsequent learning activities did not have their roots
in participation in previous learning experiences. The
fifth-grade AIMS lessons did not emulate from previous
learning experiences in math or science, nor were they
related to subsequent activities which focused on those
disciplines.

All three pilot proJects had their roots in
standardized commercial materials as shown by the close

study of the data. The second-grade teachers designed

132
units of study to integrate reading and writing, but,
when interviewed, they said that their obJectives were
related to those of the standardized obJectives of the
curriculum. They said that, although they didn’t use
the basal reader according to the teachers’ guide, they
administered the basal reader “magazine" tests “to make
sure" that their students were progressing "okay.“ One
of the teachers explained, “I want to make sure my kids
will be successful in third grade where teachers use so
many workbooks and skill sheets." Third-grade teachers
complain to second-grade teachers if their students
appear unfamiliar with how to do workbooks.

The analysis of the data supported the
determination that some learning activities were in
place because of tradition. Certain assemblies and
field trips were examples.

Fifth-grade teachers, for example, were in charge
of raising thousands of dollars and supervising their
students for three days and two nights at a residential
outdoor education camp. When asked why, they said they
didn’t know. “Before we came here,“ one commented, “we
were told by the assistant superintendent and other
teachers that the fifth grade in this building ’always
goes to camp’“.

Study of the data revealed that field trips,

fifth-grade camping included, were not only good

133
examples of traditional learning activities, they also
indicated the discrete and discontinuous qualities of
the learning experiences. Experiences of a field trip
were not necessarily rooted in previous learning
experiences and did not necessarily serve as purposes
for learning, that is, purposes for learner
participation in further learning experiences that had
roots in the field trip.
Wm

As discussed more completely in the first four
sections of this chapter, the analysis of the data
supported the finding that students were not involved
in selection and evaluation of methods and activities
to accomplish learning purposes. Closer scrutiny of
the facts revealed that purposes for learning were
usually not communicated to students.

However, T1 sometimes explained the rationale for
reading lessons by stating, I'This will help you to be
better readers.“ More often, when she communicated a
purpose for learning, she told students the reason they
were doing work from their spelling and social studies
textbooks was because “you will have to be able to do
this in third grade.“

The analysis found that teachers sometimes helped
students to organize what had been learned, but not

often. Usually, the data indicated, such organization

134
occurred Just before a paper-and-pencll test. It
consisted of group discussion and review of learned
facts which would be tested.

Analysis of the facts provided support for the
finding that listening was the student’s primary mode
of learning. A related determination sustained by the
analysis was that learning activities involved more
learning channels (e.g., visual and kinesthetic) in the
second grade than in the fifth grade, although second
graders still used their auditory modes the maJority of
the time.

According to the data analysis, second-grade
students had.more freedom of movement than fifth-grade
students. They also I'made" (constructed) more things.
In the fifth grade, the examination of the data
determined the prevalent instructional practice was
large group discussion and oral reading from the
textbook. Students were required to listen more than
to be actively involved using other learning channels.

After careful study, the researcher determined
that students were not actively involved in learning
activities which used physical media such as math
manipulatives and scale models. Further analysis
revealed that the various disciplines of knowledge were
approached from a symbolic perspective emphasizing

process (e.g., how to add two-digit numerals).

135

Very few scale models were present in the
building. The ones available in the fifth grade were
in the classroom of the teacher who was considered a
mathematics and science specialist. He appeared to be
the teacher who used them.

Math manipulatives were stored in a materials area
located next to the administrative offices. During the
period of the study, most of the materials remained on
the shelves. The data examination showed that neither
T1 nor T2 had students work with math manipulatives.

T1 and T2 used standardized, commercially produced
workbooks, textbooks, blackline masters, and assessment
materials. Both T1 and T2 said they modified or
skipped some procedures of the teachers’ guides, but
that the obJectives and “skills“ were still important
so their students could be “successful in the next
grade“.

As depicted in the data, T1 did not use the math,
science, or social studies textbooks. She did use the
blackline masters that correlated with each of those
texts. Usually, she introduced and discussed the day’s
lesson through the use of the chalkboard. In math
class, she then passed out copies of the worksheets
made from the blackline masters. She had students mark
I'DI" (i.e., “direct instruction) at the top of the

worksheet if they worked on the sheet together.

136
Otherwise, students worked alone to complete the
assigned.worksheet.

For science and social studies instruction. T1

designed and used whole-class learning games in which
students reviewed basic concepts through review of
vocabulary. Although students didn’t use textbooks,
the learning obJectives were from the teachers’ guides:
copies of blackline masters were used for assignments.
The data analysis confirms that students’ involvement
in math, social studies, and science classes in the
second grade was to listen and comment when asked and
to do the assigned paper-and-pencil tasks with at least
80% correct.

T1 organized an approach to reading and writing
instruction in which students were more actively
involved. The data showed that students in her room
began each day by writing in Journals. They also
wrote assigned stories that correlated with the theme
of the month. They were involved in doing the pen pal
activity all year, also. Students were actively
involved in writing during class time devoted to it.

The facts showed that T2 used six different
textbooks. She also used the blackline masters to
supplement the textbook lessons. At the beginning of
each “subJect“ class period, she reviewed with students

what they had worked on during the previous lesson(s).

137
Then, she demonstrated on the chalkboard the processes
involved in the current lesson (e.g., how to multiply
three-digit numerals by three-digit numerals with a
zero in the tens’ column).

After a period of about 10 minutes, students were
assigned written tasks from the textbook or on
worksheets. Pupil involvement, as consistently
supported by the review of the facts of the
observations, was to listen and comment when asked,
then to complete the paper-and—pencil task assigned
with at least 80% of the answers correct.

The data contained evidence that some students
were actively involved in learning activities such as
plays and skits. Examination confirmed the finding
that such active involvement of students happened more
in the second grade than in the fifth grade.

Fifth-grade students in ProJect DARE were involved
in active learning activities planned and directed by
the police officer who taught DARE. Additionally,
fifth-grade students were actively involved in learning
experiences through field trips and while at outdoor
education camp. Such activities, as discussed in the
preceding subsection, lacked continuity in the same

way that separate subJect textbook activities did.

138
anm_arransemenia

The data analysis confirmed the finding that
although classrooms had movable furniture, space was
limited because the rooms were small and contained
relatively large numbers of students (27 and 29).
Therefore, flexibility in room arrangements for student
activities and work was limited.

Examination of the facts of the observations
showed that seating arrangements did not vary.
Second-grade students were seated in groups while
fifth-grade students were seated in rows.

Sometimes, the second graders sat on a large area
rug in a section of the classroom near the classroom
library. Occasionally, T1 had them do this for large
group instruction. Investigation of the data found
that during independent work periods, if students had
their assigned work completed, they could move from
their desks to the carpeted area to read quietly. The
second-grade classroom also contained three large
tables placed in areas of the classroom where students
could sit when their assigned work was group work or
learning centers.

The fifth-grade classroom did not have room for
such areas. It was filled to capacity with rows of
student desks. Students in the fifth grade, the data

analysis revealed, were required to sit in their chairs

139
at their desks all day. The only exceptions were when
the class, as a whole, went to other locations in the
school for physical education, library, computer
classes, or lunch. On “bank days" (i.e., professional
development days when students were in school only
until noon), all students were required to eat lunch at
their classroom desks.
82.1mm

When the data were analyzed to find the use of
simulations, three were found. Two occurred as parts
of DARE lessons taught by the city police officer.
(Both are discussed fully in the third section of this
chapter.) Additionally, the fifth-grade Everybody
Counts lesson (depicted in the first section of this
chapter) taught by volunteer parents incorporated
several activities which simulated learning
disabilities.

Close study of the data did not locate learning
experiences that were simulations such as classroom
banks, classroom stock market clubs, classroom or
school stores, or classroom or school post offices.
The analysis supported the finding that students did
not experience learning activities in which they
simulate and participate in activities related to real

life activities.

140
summer!

The bar graph in Figure 4.1 shows that 148 of the
events observed and recorded (25 of 175) had indicators
of interdisciplinary units of study. Four of those
events were field trips from which no further learning
experiences arose. In some, only reading and writing
were incorporated while others integrated only math and
science. Plays produced by second-grade classes
accounted for many of the designations. Five of the.
events with interdisciplinary indicators were learning
activities planned and taught by outsiders (e.g.,parent
volunteers and the DARE police officer).

The analysis of the data supported the conclusion
that teachers in a public elementary school in
1991-1992 seldom use interdisciplinary units of study
that incorporate the active involvement of students as
’ they address problems relevant to real life. Further
analysis led to a related finding that teachers use
standardized commercial curriculum materials to address
the various disciplines of knowledge as separate
subJects. Additional findings were that relevance
occurs by chance: students are not actively involved in
the learning experiences: and, discontinuity of

learning experiences prevails over continuity.

141

Use of Cooperative Learning Approaches to Instruction

6. Do teachers in a public elementary school in
1991-1992 use cooperative learning approaches to
instruction? .

6a. If so, what is the evidence of cooperative learning

approaches to instruction?

Findings The data analysis supported the conclusion
that teachers in a public elementary school in
1991-1992 rarely use cooperative learning approaches to
instruction. An additional finding upheld by the data
analysis is that students are usually expected to
complete assigned tasks alone, especially in the upper

grades.

The findings for this section are discussed in
three subsections: (1.) student-to-student
interaction, (2.) teacher-and-student interaction, and

(3.) a short summary.

W

The data analysis supported the finding that
students seldom spent time working in groups on
communal proJects. Some instances of group work were
reported, however.

T1 sometimes had students work together in what

she called “peer reading.“ This activity usually

142
involved two students reading orally to each other from
the basal reader. Students in her class also worked
together in larger groups (e.g., four students) several
times during the observation period. One instance was
a “webbing“ activity in which the group task was to
develop a semantic map of the main ideas in basal
reader expository text about the weather. Each student
in the group made his or her own map, but the group
worked on their maps together.

Another instance of cooperative grouping in T1’s
class was when groups of students worked together on
seat work activities which correlated with the monthly
theme for April, rabbits. Again, each student in the
group worked on completion of his or her own packet of
work sheets.

Throughout the data collection period indicators
showed that Tl’s students worked in groups to plan and
present plays. The students presented two plays for a
Mothers’ Day program. Previous to the period of the
study, the students had presented plays on three other
occasions.

T1 assigned plays to groups of students. Then,
she provided class time for groups to work together to
assign each other’s parts and to practice.

Through further examination of the data, five

events indicate students worked together cooperatively

143
in the fifth grade. One of those events occurred as a
part of the Everybody Counts lesson taught by parent
volunteers. In that lesson, students worked in groups
on several different activities. Every student in the
group was responsible for his or her own task, but
students could work together. Tasks were simulations
of learning disabilities that included mirror writing.

Two other events in which Tz’s fifth-grade
students worked together were found in the data. Both
were planned and directed by the city police officer
who taught ProJect DARE. In one, students were
assigned to groups to role play solutions to situations
in which they were tempted to use drugs or alcohol. In
the other, students were assigned to groups to produce
public service announcements for broadcast on local
radio stations. In both of the events, students were
responsible to each other for the completion of the
task.

A fourth event in which fifth-grade students
worked together occurred in French class several days
before the class went to camp. The French teacher put
the students into groups to work on translation of
words related to the outdoors. Each student in the
group worked on his or her own worksheet. even though

students could work together.

144

The data analysis revealed another event in which
fifth graders worked together. This happened at camp.
In one of the activities, planned and directed by
volunteers, students were paired to locate items for a
nature scavenger hunt. Students in each pair were
responsible to each other and Jointly prepared one
answer sheet.

Further examination of the data for indicators of
cooperative approaches to learning in the fifth grade
led to the finding that T2 did not use cooperative
learning in her class. The events in which students
worked together were all planned and directed by others
(e.g., parent and other volunteers, the DARE police
officer, and the French teacher). T2 commented during
an interview, “I’ve tried it, but I feel that I lose
control when students work in groups of four and five.
It gets too noisy.“

When the researcher investigated the data for
indicators of cooperative learning in other classrooms,
she found that every time she visited the classroom of
the fourth-grade-teacher who was the cooperative
learning specialist, students were working
individually. Additionally, through examination of the
data from visits to other classrooms, including rooms

designated as PAT, the researcher did not locate other

145
events in which cooperative learning approaches were
used.

Through close study of the observation and
interview data, the researcher ascertained that
students worked together for nine events. In two of
the events, students shared responsibility for the
group task. Each student was held responsible in the
others, even the second—grade plays in which the
teacher held each student responsible for memorizing
his or her part. For peer reading, the teacher held
each student responsible for being able to pronounce
the vocabulary words.

Data reviews also failed to find indicators that
students working in cooperative groups focused on
social obJectives as well as academic tasks. Nor did
older students regularly work with younger students
and "gifted“ students did not work with those who
needed more time to learn.

Related to that, data from the interviews
contained several instances in which teachers of
"gifted'I students voiced concerns about using
cooperative groups to have gifted students help others.
Two teachers, in separate individual interviews said,
“Gifted students shouldn’t be held back by others.

They need a chance to grow and expand, too.“

146

Data show that students did not work
cooperatively. In comparison to the total events and
activities observed, those in which groups of students
worked together were few (see the summary of this
section). In the maJority of the events and activities,
teachers expected students to complete academic tasks
alone.
Wm

When cooperative groups were used, teachers
focused on the academic tasks. not on the group’s
growth in social interaction. Teachers did not aid
students in developing group decision making and
conflict resolution skills. Although teachers (or
whoever was in charge) observed groups and provided
feedback, the feedback was academic in nature and was
not shared nor did teachers encourage students to share
their progress on social purposes.

Additionally, no data were found to support group
summary and processing focused on how the groups
accomplished their goals. When T1 used cooperative
groups, she determined the make up of the group. As
shown by the data from the interviews, she had in mind
the purpose(s) of the learning, the need for some kind
of mix and representativeness within each group, and
the academic needs of individual students in mind, but

she did not mention social purposes.

147

Summanx

The bar graph in Figure 4.1 shows that 78 of the
observed events (13 of 175) had activities with
elements of cooperative learning approaches to
instruction.- Eight of those events were observed in
the second-grade class, and five were observed in the
fifth-grade class. Of the five which occurred in the
fifth grade, one was planned and directed by parent
volunteers, two were planned and directed by the DARE
police officer, one was planned and directed by the
French teacher, and one occurred when the researcher
was in charge of a group at camp.

The data analysis supported the conclusion that
teachers in a public elementary school in 1991-1992
rarely use cooperative learning approaches to
instruction. A related finding upheld by further
analysis is that students are usually expected to
complete assigned tasks alone, especially in the upper

grades.

Knowledge and Use of Students’ Experiential Backgrounds
and Developmental Levels to Make the Various
Disciplines of Knowledge Part of a Total and Growing

Experience

7. Do teachers in a public elementary school know and

use students’ experiential backgrounds and

148
developmental levels to make the various disciplines of
knowledge part of a total and growing experience?
7a. If so, what is the evidence of the knowledge and
use of students’ experiential backgrounds and
developmental levels to make the various disciplines of

knowledge part of a total and growing experience?

Findings The analysis of the data provided support
for the conclusion that teachers in a public elementary
school in 1991-1992 generally do not use students’
experiential backgrounds and developmental levels to
make the various disciplines of knowledge part of a
total and growing experience. Three related findings
were upheld through the examination of the data.

The first related finding is that even though
teachers get to know students’ experiential backgrounds
and developmental levels, the standardization of
curriculum overrides a teacher’s knowledge of students
as individuals. Further analysis led to a second
finding that although teachers use standardized
curriculum materials to be in control of the teaching
and learning that goes on in their classrooms, in
reality, such use means teachers are not in control.
Related to these findings is the third finding that
teachers perceive knowledge as something external that
others (e.g., textbook authors and university

professors) have, but that they themselves don’t have.

149

Discussion in this section is divided into four
subsections: (1.) knowledge as emphasized and
perceived by teachers, (2.) teacher actions to acquire
knowledge of students, (3.) professional development,

and (4.) a short summary.

Won

Did teachers place more emphasis on the various
disciplines of knowledge as resources in solving
problems than on the individual disciplines? The data
showed that teachers did not integrate problem-solving
activities (see section three), but used standard
commercial curriculum materials regardless of students’
experiential or developmental backgrounds.

Through knowledge of the standardized curriculum
for each grade level, through use of the students’
cumulative files, and by talking to each other,
teachers learned what each student accomplished before
coming to the teacher’s class. The data analysis
indicates that teachers worked harder to learn a
student’s academic and social strengths and weaknesses
if that student exhibited academic or social problems.

Some teachers adapted the standard curriculum if
learners were having difficulty attaining a "mastery“
level of correct answers, 80% correct, on classroom
assignments. In such adaptations, teachers still used

standard materials but allowed students more time to

150
complete assignments. Teachers grouped students so
that some groups proceeded through the materials at a
slower pace than other groups. Another adaption was to
allow students to retest until “mastery“ was reached.
Additionally, teachers used standardized curriculum
materials at a different level of difficulty for
certain students.

Consistent with the analysis for other Deweyan
pedagogical practices in this study students did not
participate in the formation of purposes for learning
(identification of problems) nor did they have input
into selecting the means to accomplish the learning
purposes. Students did not participate in evaluation
of the accomplishment of learning purposes, either.
Even teachers who called themselves “creative“ planned
learning activities according to the obJectives of the
standardized curricular materials. (This is discussed
more completely in sections two and three of this
chapter.) Growth was measured by how well students
performed on standardized assessment measures.

Teachers viewed knowledge as something external
and “belonging“ to experts. What the teacher felt
confident and comfortable doing appeared to affect the
learning experiences more than did the teacher’s
knowledge of individual students. Teachers perceived

more control of what was learned when they used the

151
standardized materials. Yet, they did not design nor
write the materials. Data analysis led to the
determination that teachers thought they did not
possess the “expert“ knowledge needed to do so.

Curriculum as prescribed by the standardized
materials was written and published by “experts“
external to the school. Because of that, further data
analysis supported the finding that although teachers
used standardized curriculum materials to be more in
control, actual control was external.

“I feel that the authors of the textbooks are
experts, and they know how to present and organize what
my kids need to know,“ commented one teacher.

I'I don’t feel confident that I know enough about
science to be able to teach it without a textbook,“
said another. Similar comments were made in relation
to reading, writing, social studies, and math.

Analysis of the events and activities involved in
implementation of the school improvement goal 'to
improve students’ abilities in writing" provided
further support for the finding that teachers perceived
knowledge as something external and belonging to
experts. During the period of the study, some teachers
emphasized student improvement in writing.

The committee that planned for the implementation

of that particular school improvement goal urged

152
teachers to incorporate writing activities into their
classes. An all school assembly was planned as a
summative activity in which students from each class
were supposed to share their writing with each other
and with parents.

As the time for the assembly drew near, several
teachers registered doubt that they knew the I'right"
way to have students write. In the words of T1, whom
other viewed as a reading and writing specialist, some
teachers “panicked.“

That "panic“ was observed at a staff meeting in
which several teachers, with voices higher pitched and
louder than usual, said they didn’t “know how to do it
[the writing)“ especially without having to do all the
editing that they thought would have been necessary.
“There isn’t enough time in my day to do all that,“ one
said.

In response to the concerns raised by those
“unsure“ staff members, one member of the writing goal

committee, the writing expert whose classroom was next

door to T1, assisted a fourth-grade teacher in
directing a writing activity in her classroom. At the
next staff meeting, the fourth-grade teacher, who was
(then) enthusiastic about writing because her classroom

writing activity was successful, explained to the

153
others how well her students had done and how she, with
help, organized the experience.

Analysis of the data from an interview found that
the writing expert teacher used her own time to observe
in classrooms and attend professional development
meetings in another school district so that she could
learn how to “manage“ student writing activities.
Further examination of the data confirmed that she
and other teachers often mentioned the need to learn
“how“ to do something from persons whom they perceived
as experts.

Data that confirmed teachers’ perceptions of
knowledge as external also existed in the numerous
times teachers asked the researcher to help them
improve based on what she saw in their classrooms and
her (perceived) expert knowledge. In the sense that
standardized materials were perceived to contain
“expert“ knowledge, their existence and use was also a
confirmation of the teachers’ perceptions.

The data consistently supported that teachers used
the obJectives of the standardized materials regardless
of the students’ experiential or developmental levels.
A further finding, that teachers perceived knowledge as
external to them but possessed by “experts,“ was also

confirmed.

154

Findings regarding the discontinuous nature of
learning experiences were also confirmed in the data
analysis for this section. These findings are
discussed completely in section five of this chapter.
WWW:

When the data were examined for indicators of
teachers’ efforts to gain knowledge of students’
experiential backgrounds and developmental levels, the
data showed that teachers did many things to get to
know students. Classroom teachers did not administer
informal interest inventories to get to know students,
but some did use webbing, semantic mapping,
brainstorming, and other techniques to elicit students’
prior knowledge about topics they were studying.

Usually, the data showed prior knowledge about
topics being studied was elicited as a transition from
what was taught one day to what was taught the next.
Sometimes teachers used webbing, semantic mapping, and
other techniques to help students connect prior
knowledge to new knowledge, but the prior knowledge was
what teachers thought learners should have. Students’
existing prior knowledge and that which the teachers
thought students should have (e.g., what had been
taught in previous lessons) were not necessarily the
same, a finding confirmed in the investigation of the

data of the observations.

155

Teachers intentionally got to know students’
families and home situations when students were having
behavior or academic problems, the analysis confirmed.
Teachers did not visit students in their homes, but
they sometimes had lunch with students or went out to
recess with them.

Students’ families were invited into school to
share learning accomplishments, to volunteer in the
classroom, and to help as volunteer clerks to organize
and implement fundraising activities. Many events such
as the Young Authors celebration were held on a
schoolwide basis and included parents.

Teachers did communicate regularly with their
students’ families through classroom newsletters,
sending home samples of student work, writing notes
home, or telephoning. Classroom doors were usually
open, and parents visited teachers on an unplanned
basis.

T1, when asked about her efforts to acquire
knowledge of her students said, “That’s why I have so
many plays and things. When I have the parents in so
much, I really get to know my kids."
WM

Reiterated here is the confirmed finding that,
during any quiet time they had, teachers spent time

organizing learning activities and checking papers.

156
They did not spend time at school in personal
reflection about their own professional growth.
Additionally. much of the official work time, if not
spent teaching, was spent in meetings. None of the
observations supported a determination that meetings at
school were of a professional development nature.
Professional development is also discussed in section
two of this chapter.

The data analysis confirmed the finding that many
teachers were involved in professional development
activities such as membership in professional
associations, attendance at professional development
seminars, readings in professional Journals, and
teaching other teachers. One teacher, the writing
specialist, was a part-time teacher in the College of
Education at a nearby university. However, when the
data were examined for evidence that teachers were
taking graduate courses, no support was found.

Teachers attended professional development
seminars to find out how to “do“ something--how to “do“
cooperative learning, for example--and to find things
to try which might “work for me.“ During the period of
the study, the data showed, teachers attended (during
the school day) the Michigan Reading Association state
conference, professional development activities in

technology education, whole language, gifted and

 

157
talented education, teaching the state health model,
cooperative learning, portfolio assessments, and whole
language.
Summarx

As shown on the bar graph (Figure 4.1), 15% of the
events observed and recorded (27 of 175) included
activities indicative of teachers’ knowledge and use of
students’ experiential backgrounds and developmental
levels. Data showed teachers in this public elementary
school in 1991-1992 generally do not use students’
experiential backgrounds and developmental levels to
make the various disciplines of knowledge part of a
total and growing experience. Three related findings
support that conclusion.

First, even though teachers get to know students’
experiential backgrounds and developmental levels, the
standardization of curriculum overrides a teacher’s
knowledge of students as individuals. Second, although
teachers use standardized curriculum materials to be in
control of the teaching and learning in their
classrooms, in reality, such use means teachers are not
in control. Third, teachers perceive knowledge as
something external and that others (e.g., textbook
authors and university professors) have, but that they

themselves don’t have.

158
Emphasis on a Process Approach to Instruction Including

Regard for Books and Reading as Tools for Learning

8. Do teachers in a public elementary school use a
process approach to instruction in which books and the
ability to read are regarded as tools for learning?

8a. If so, what is the evidence of the use of a process
approach to instruction in which books and the ability

to read are regarded as tools for learning?

Findings The data analysis supported the conclusion
that teachers in a public elementary in 1991-1992
sometimes use a process approach to instruction in
which books and the ability to read are regarded as
tools for learning. Further examination led to two
related findings.

First, when teachers think they are using a
process approach, it is really a product approach to
instruction in which students are taught strategies to
answer questions and do problems in textbooks and
workbooks as well as on copies of blackline masters.
Second, a related finding reconfirms an earlier finding
(see section five) that relevance of learning
activities to students and their real life needs and
applications is by chance as teachers and students

proceed through standardized curricular materials.

159
This section is divided into two subsections:
(1.) learning activities in relation to process and

product, and (2.) a short summary.

W

The data were analyzed for the use of reading
comprehension and writing skills as part of the
learning activities and as the need arose out of those
learning activities. Some examples are given below.

One was the pen pal activity in which T1'3 second
graders corresponded with students from another school.
That activity, discussed in sections one and five of
this chapter, provided examples of reading and writing
skills being used as part of the learning activities.
Another occurred in the second-grade classroom next
door to T1, the writing expert’s classroom. The
activities in her room were part of her pilot proJect
in whole language. Students read and wrote about
various themes chosen by their teacher. For instance.
one theme was “whales.“

Investigation of the data showed that teachers did
not have students use reading and writing to
communicate about their learning experiences.

Students used both reading and writing as part of the
(daily Journal writing activities in both T1's and
7P2’s classes. T2 used such experiences as handwriting

Lassessments, but communication between her and her

160
students was an additional obJective. In addition to
using Journal writing activities for handwriting

practice and communication, T2 used Journal writing to

supply what she called “higher level thinking“
experience. Questions were on the rear chalkboard
every morning and were of this type: "What if you
found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Write
5 sentences.“

T1 used daily Journal writing activities as part
of her concentration on having students write to
increase their “abilities" in writing. The use of
reading and writing to communicate about learning
experiences was not observed, however.

Students used reading and writing to gather
information in order to meet the purposes set for
their learning. However, consistent with analyses for
other indicants, teachers, not students, set the
purposes for learning. Exceptions were the
fifth-grade SEARCH proJects done outside of school.

The facts supported the determination that, in
most classrooms, reading comprehension and writing
skills related to the standardized curricular
materials. Teachers used learning activities
prescribed by the standardized materials. Teachers

followed the teachers’ guides, and students completed

 

161
standardized, commercial paper-and-pencil assignments
accordingly.

As discussed in previous sections of this chapter,
teachers assessed students according to the number of
right answers on the standardized assignments.

Students were grouped for some reading and mathematics
instruction according to the results of their right
answers on standardized tests. The data analysis
confirmed the finding that teachers emphasized products
produced by students.

In Tz’s classroom, for example, a section of the
front chalkboard contained a list of assigned tasks and
the names of students who hadn’t turned them in. The
list was always posted. The assignments and the names
changed as the school year progressed and students
handed in more papers. Another chart in her room kept
track of the handwriting/Journal assignments. The
chart was used as a contest between the boys and the
girls. At the end of a period of time, whichever group
had the most assignments turned in was excused from two
succeeding days’ Journal writing assignments.

T1 used the proJects made by students at home as
part of the theme-of-the-month activities and as part
of student assessment. On a designated day at the end
of the month students brought in what they made to

share with the rest of the class. T1 turned the

3.."

fi“? W17? 7T1“: “'

 

162
afternoon of that day into a special celebration and
had special snacks and treats for the students.

Also at the end of each month, she rewarded
students with prizes such as kites according to how
many book reports (related to the monthly theme) they
turned in. Even though she appeared to pride herself
on the fact that she did not use textbooks very often,
T1 rewarded and/or assessed students according to the
production of these and other “proJects“ (e.g.,
Journals, book reports, math worksheets, books and
stories, standardized tests).

When the data were examined for the integration of
spelling instruction into topics being discussed and
learned, though teachers sometimes integrated spelling
with other subJects, spelling textbooks were the main
source of spelling instruction in both the lower and
the upper grades. Spelling words were pronounced on a
certain day, and students were expected to write them
correctly in isolation from memory.

One teacher, T2, made a tape recording of herself
pronouncing the words. On the day of the spelling
“test,“ she played the recording for students. That
way, she was free to correct papers and monitor
students. She was also able to give the additional

blackline master skill sheets that students got if they

163
were not taking the entire test and writing the
“challenge“ words.

T1 used spelling in relation to vocabulary
instruction in social studies and science lessons so
that “slower“ students could use the correct spelling
to fill in the blanks on social studies and science
standardized tests. T1 also integrated spelling as
part of the writing in her class. Students had “word
dictionaries", blank dictionary forms, so adults could
write down for the students words they needed to use in
their writing, but that they could not spell.

T2 used the standardized spelling textbook
activities consistently. She did not teach spelling in
other ways. Spelling instruction in her class
proceeded according to a standard sequence that
corresponded to the day of the week. Students worked
on certain portions of the textbook on Monday, others
on Tuesday, took a trial test on the standardized word
list on Wednesday, worked on skill sheets and the
textbook exercises on Thursday, and took another test
on Friday.

T1 used the spelling textbook occasionally. She
did so “because the third-grade teachers will expect
the kids to know how to work out of the book.‘ T1
consistently pointed out to the researcher that she

didn’t like to use the textbooks, but she wanted the

164
students to be successful in the next grade. Her
comments occurred in relation to student learning
activities in all disciplines, not Just spelling.

Close study of the data led to the finding that
teachers had students writing as part of the building
school improvement goals. Two second-grade teachers,
T1 and the writing expert, planned and implemented
student writing experiences consistently, but they
chose the topics. Sometimes, students got to write
about their own experiences in Journal writing in Tl’s
class.

T2’s fifth-grade students didn’t write about their
own experiences very much, the data analysis showed.
Learning experiences students had for getting ready
for the Young Author celebration marked the first time
during the period of the study, the data showed, that
fifth graders were able to choose their topics. With
the exception of the daily Journal writing, that was
the first time Tz’s students participated in creative
writing. Class time was not allotted, however.
Students wrote during free time or at home.

Inspection of the facts identified that
fifth-grade teachers registered concern about the Young
Author assembly as the day for it drew nearer. At a

bank-day grade-level team meeting teachers said their

165
students hadn’t done any writing, and, therefore,
didn’t have any writing to share at the assembly.

“We Just don’t have time to have the students do
the kind of writing the committee wants us to do,“
commented one of the teachers. “We don’t have time to
do everything we’re supposed to do now,“ she continued.

“If our students had time to do any writing, it
would be reports, not stories, anyway,“ said another
teacher.

Investigation of the data supported a
determination that the relegation of the fifth-graders’
creative writing efforts to spare time or at home was
an adaptation to such feelings.

The data were analyzed for evidence that students
read and edited each other’s work. Students were
encouraged by teachers to read their work to each
other, but they did not edit each other’s writing. T1
had her students share their writings as a part of the
summative activities for the theme of the month
proJects.

T2 had some students share book reports with the
class. Two students, who wrote something to present at
the Young Author assembly, shared their writing with
the class before the assembly. T2 wanted them to

“practice reading for an audience,“ she said.

166

Teachers did not have students edit each other’s
work because having students edit each other’s work
took too much time. I‘Students don’t know how to do
that,“ said a fourth-grade teacher.

Investigation of the data showed that sometimes
adults or peers helped other students to write down
what they wanted to say in their essays. This occurred
in Tl’s class when she felt that the actual writing
process and a particular student’s lack of reading
“skills“ was preventing the student from completing an
assigned task (e.g., a letter to his pen pal).

The data were closely studied to determine if
students and the teacher wrote a classroom or school
newsletter. Analysis showed that the school newsletter
was written by the principal, and that T1 wrote the
classroom newsletter she regularly sent home. She used
the newsletter to communicate about the focus of the
learning activities in the classroom and about the
requirements for the do-at-home monthly proJects.

Data showed that teachers did not use basal reader
skill lessons, blackline masters, and workbooks in
context with agreed-upon obJectives and learning
purposes relevant to students’ real life needs and
applications. The basal materials set the obJectives
and the learning purposes. As discussed in previous

sections of this chapter, even teachers who called

167
themselves “creative'I and “risk takers,‘I such as T1,
still taught to the obJectives contained in the
standardized curricular materials. Both T1 and T2
discussed skills to be mastered by students so that the
students would be “successful in the next grade.“

The data indicated that teachers and students read
non—textbooks together to develop additional learning
activities from.what was read. T1 and the second-grade
teacher next door to her, the writing specialist, based
some of the learning activities in their classrooms on
literature they read together. These were components
of their whole language pilot proJects. The data
showed no such indicators in Tz’s class.

Teachers rarely used lessons from various
disciplines of knowledge as parts of learning
activities in which the lesson was relevant to real
life needs and applications and was needed to continue
the activity (e.g., mathematics lessons as part of
banking and retailing simulations). As discussed in
section five of this chapter, standard subJects based
on commercially-produced materials were the vehicles
through which the various subJects were taught.
Relevance to students’ real life needs and applications
occurred by chance.

The data were scrutinized for evidence that

teachers and students verbalized strategies for

168
comprehending what had been read, for answering
questions, and for solving math problems. Such
verbalizations occurred often. Students were
reinforced positively for verbalizing their thinking
processes. Such strategies were called processes and
they were taught as procedures for getting the right
answers to questions or math problems contained in the
standardized curriculum materials. Teachers asked
students to memorize them. T2 made charts of "steps“
for students to use. One example was her chart of the
steps to follow in long division.

On several occasions, as discussed in section
seven of this chapter, T1 used “so you will become
better readers“ as rationale for strategy work. One
example was when she was working with the students in a
learning activity focusing on story grammar. More
often, however, T1 communicated "so you will know what
to do in third grade“ as a purpose for learning.
"Think alouds' in her room were strategies she asked
students to use for those purposes (e.g., to be better
readers or to do well in third grade).

The data were examined for evidence about what
information and skills students were required to learn.
Information students were required to memorize in

social studies and science was usually tested on

169
paper-and-pencil tests of factual knowledge, but was
not used in a functional way.

Sight word memorization and automaticity of math
“facts“ were tested in isolation but were applied to
standardized course work involving reading and
mathematics. T1, for example, periodically asked
students to read lists of vocabulary words either to
her and/or to each other. The word lists were those
from the standardized basal reader textbook.

Memorlzation of math I'facts" was required in Tz’s
class. Such memorization was tested through the use of
“timed tests“. Students used math facts to work out
multiplication and division drill problems.

If students demonstrated that they knew the
process (e.g., of multiplying three digit numerals by
other three digit numerals), but that a mistake in
multiplication facts, not a mistake in the process, was
the “cause“ of an erroneous answer, T2 took off only
one point, however. She was interested in learners
knowing the “process“ of multiplying the numerals to
get the right answer.

Sum

The bar graph (Figure 4.1) shows that 34% of the
events observed and recorded (62 of 175) had indicants
of a process approach to instruction. Teachers in a

public elementary school in 1991-1992 sometimes use a

170
process approach to instruction including a regard for
books and reading as tools for learning.

Further examination led to two related findings.
First, teachers use a process approach that is really a
product approach focused on students being able to get
the right answers on paper-and-pencil tasks of the
standardized curriculum materials or on standardized
tests. Second, reconfirming a determination from
section five, relevance to students’ real life needs
and applications happens by chance as students and

teachers proceeded through the standardized curriculum.

W

The purpose of the study was to describe and
explain if and how Deweyan pedagogical practices have
been implemented in a public elementary school in
1991-1992. The presentation and analysis of the data
in this chapter ends with models of Deweyan pedagogy

and elementary classrooms today.
The maJor conclusions and related findings are:

1. Teachers in a public elementary school in i991-1992
develop and work within classrooms that are cooperative
social organizations in some ways.

a. Classrooms are authoritarian, teacher—dominated

organizations.

2.

b.

171
Students must comply with adult-structured

norms and procedures.

A public elementary school in 1991-1992 is a

cooperative social organization regarding some

interactions.

a.

Teacher-to-teacher and teacher-administrator
decision-making interactions relate to
procedural matters, not to substantial issues
of teaching and learning.

Parents, community members, school support
staff, and students are usually excluded from

participation in decisions about curriculum.

Scientific problem solving is seldom integrated

into learning experiences in a public elementary

school in 1991-1992.

a.

Scientific problem solving is virtually
excluded from the curriculum.
Teachers view scientific problem solving as a

separate subJect.

Teachers in a public elementary school in 1991-1992

infrequently focus on student development of self

direction.

a.

Events and activities in the school reflect
teacher direction, not student self direction.
Teachers perceive their learners as

self-directed when students do not need much

172
teacher assistance and monitoring, know the
assignments, and produce the assigned work.

Teachers in a public elementary school in 1991-1992

seldom design and use interdisciplinary units of

study that incorporate the active involvement of
students as they address problems relevant to real
life.

a. Teachers use standardized commercial curriculum
materials to address the various disciplines of
knowledge as separate subJects.

b. Relevance occurs by chance.

c. Students are not actively involved in the
learning experiences.

d. Discontinuity of learning experiences prevails
over continuity.

Teachers in a public elementary school in 1991-1992

rarely use cooperative learning approaches to

instruction.

a. Students are expected to complete assigned
tasks alone, especially in the upper grades.
Teachers in a public elementary school in 1991-1992

generally do not use knowledge of students’

experiential backgrounds and developmental levels
to make the various disciplines of knowledge part

of a total and growing experience.

173
Even though teachers get to know students’
experiential backgrounds and developmental
levels, the standardization of curriculum
overrides a teacher’s knowledge of students as
individuals.
Although teachers use standardized curriculum
materials to be in control of the teaching and
learning which goes on in their classrooms, in
reality, such use means teachers are not in
control.
Teachers perceive knowledge as something
external and that others (e.g., textbook
authors and university professors) have, but

which they themselves don’t have.

Teachers in a public elementary in 1991-1992

sometimes use a process approach to instruction in

which books and the ability to read are regarded as

tools for learning.

a.

When teachers use a process approach, it is
really a product approach to instruction in
which students are taught strategies to answer
questions and do problems in textbooks and
workbooks and on copies of blackline masters.
Relevance of learning activities to students

and their real life needs and applications is

174
by chance as teachers and students proceed

through standardized curricular materials.

Sum

John Dewey began to lay the foundation for changes

we

in American public education almost 100 years ago. For
the purposes of this study, eight pedagogical practices r
rooted in Deweyan writings were selected and validated.

Through observations and interviews in a public

0--h-“n- _- ‘_u.n ‘- .:

elementary school in 1991-1992, a determination was ‘
made regarding if and how teaching practices in accord r
with what Dewey devised and described have been
implemented 100 years later.
This chapter contained the presentation and
analysis of the data from the study. The conclusions
and related findings for each of the research questions
were presented. Through analysis of the facts of the
observations and interviews, it was found that Deweyan
pedagogical practices in a public elementary school in
1991-1992 are not evident in terms of a pattern, but
flickers exist. The direction of movement appears to
be toward Dewey’s ideas, not away from them.
In 1893, Dewey visualized schools as democratic
institutions in which schools and the classrooms within
them would be cooperative social organizations. In

this study, however, classrooms of a public elementary

 

175
school in 1991-1992 are more teacher-dominated.
authoritarian organizations.

A public elementary school in 1991-1992 was found
to be cooperative and social regarding some procedural
interactions between and among teachers and
administrators. In relation to others with whom school
personnel interact, including students, the school is
not really a cooperative social organization.

Dewey conceived of thinking as the method of an
educative experience. Consequently, he envisioned
problem solving as integrated throughout the teaching
and learning in an elementary school. Analysis of the
data of the study. however, led to a determination that
scientific problem solving is segregated and usually
excluded from the learning activities in a present day
public elementary school.

Dewey urged educators to focus on student
development of self direction. It was concluded in the
study that the emphasis in 1991-1992, however, is
usually on teacher-directed learning activities, norms,
procedures, and assessments.

Dewey envisioned teachers and students actively
participating in interdisciplinary units of study. The
units should center on problems of relevance to
students’ real life needs and interests (i.e., purposes

for learning). In a public elementary school in

176
1991-1992, the various disciplines of knowledge are
most often segregated as “subJects" for students to
study in a passive, receptive manner, however.

Students should work cooperatively in the schools
Dewey described. In this study students sometimes
worked together, but they usually worked individually.

Dewey depicted teachers in an elementary school as
getting to know their students’ backgrounds of
experience and using that insight to provide learning
activities for total, continuous growth. Teachers in
this public elementary school in 1991-1992 came to
know students’ experiential backgrounds and
developmental levels but allowed the standardized
curriculum to override that information.

A process approach to instruction including a
regard for books and reading as tools for learning was
set out by Dewey 100 years ago. Today, however,
although a process approach to instruction is used, it
usually focuses on paper-and-pencil products.

Figure 4.2 depicts Deweyan pedagogy. Almost 100
years ago, Dewey envisioned schools in which teaching
and learning were characterized by mindfulness,
continuity, relevance, and emergent, subJective
knowledge.

According to the results of the study, however,

current pedagogical practices feature likemindedness,

 

177
discontinuity, chance relevance, and obJective. stable
knowledge. A summary of the findings is illustrated in

Figure 4.3, elementary classrooms today.

In the next chapter, Summary and Conclusions, a
theory and model to explain the findings are proffered.
Implications of the results are discussed, and
recommendations for further research are included. A

section of reflections contains a correlating theory.

178

Continuity

    
  
   
   
 
       
        
   
 

Cooperative social classrooms

   

  
   

lnteg ration of scientific Cooperative
problem solving social
schools

Self directed learners

  

Interdisciplinary studies
with active students Cooperative
leamin-

Mindfulness

Use of students’ backgrounds

to provide experiences for

total, continuous growth Process
Approac

afipapnoux angioafqns ‘meflJawg

Relevance

Figure 4.2 Dewey one hundred years ago (innovative)

179

Likemindedness

Teacher authority

Students working alone

epnpoad "sued pus Jaded

Discontinuity
omiqm pen-601609

Adult structured norms
efipewoux eiqeis ‘ennoelqo

Sindardlzed curriculum

Teacher and administrator cooperation

Chance relevance

Figure 4.3 Elementary classrooms today (traditional)

 

Chapter V
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Those who are concerned with progress, who are
striving to change received beliefs, enhasize the
indivimal factor in knowing: those whose chief
business it is to withstand change and conserve
received truth emphasize the universal and the .
twat

--John Dewey

_ T [4.1-i.

Introduction

 

The purpose of the study was to describe and
explain if and how Deweyan pedagogical practices have
been implemented in a public elementary school in
1991-1992. The central concepts in this study were
instructional behaviors set out by Dewey almost 100
years ago. These were selected by the researcher and
validated by a panel of experts. The validated matrix
of pedagogical practices was the standard through which
interactions were viewed and analyzed. Data were
collected through observation and interview.

In Chapter Four, the data from the study were
presented and analyzed. Conclusions and related

findings relating to each of the research questions

were stated.

180

181
This chapter has four sections. First, an
explanation for the findings of the study is presented.
Second, implications of the results of the study are
discussed. Third, recommendations for further
research are set out. The chapter ends with a section

of reflections.

An_Exoianation_ot_tno_Eindinoo
Introduction

It was found that Dewey’s innovative ideas have
not been implemented, at least not in any substantive
way, in a public elementary school in 1991-1992.
Flickers of Dewey’s ideas exist, but Deweyan pedagogy
is not evident in terms of a pattern. Instructional
strategies in the school can be described as
“conservative.“

Although classrooms have become less formal than
they were in the 1890s, there have been no significant
modifications in the processes of teaching and learning
(Cuban, 1984: Jackson, 1968). In his last published
work on education, Dewey (1952, cited in Dworkin, 1959)
discussed changes in the “life-conditions“ of the
classroom as a success of the progressive education
movement: A

There is a greater awareness of the needs of the

growing human being, and the personal relations

between teachers and students have been to a

 

182
noticeable extent humanized and democratized. But
the success in these respects is as yet limited:
it is largely atmospheric: it hasn’t really
penetrated and permeated the foundations of the
educational institution . . . [Tihe fundamental
authoritarianism of the old education persists in r
various modified forms . . . there is far more ,
talk about [education being a cooperative ;
enterprise] than the doing of it. (pp. 129-130) L
The results of this study echoed what Dewey said. I
The question to be answered, then, is, “Why are only
flickers of Dewey found in a public elementary school
in 1991-1992?“ The theory generated to answer that
question is proffered in the next section and

illustrated in Figure 5.1.

WWW

The maJor conclusions of the study include that a
public elementary school in 1991-1992 includes more
teacher authority than behavioral indicants of
classrooms as cooperative social organizations.
Teachers and administrators cooperate (mostly on
procedural matters), but students are asked to comply
with adult-structured norms and have little input into
procedures or purposes for learning.

The curriculum was found to be standardized and

commercially published. The various disciplines of

183

knowledge are segregated as separate subJects, and
students usually work alone to produce paper-and-pencil
products. Scientific problem solving is viewed as a
separate subJect--science--and is excluded from the
curriculum.

The findings are summarized as: V;

1. Teacher authority

Adult-structured norms

. Standardized curriculum

.J‘h a-.. .-0.-.o .
w.- 4 ‘

Segregated subJects

2
3
4
5. Paper—and-pencil products
6 Students usually working alone

7. Teacher and administrator cooperation
8

Exclusion of scientific problem solving

Through the analysis of the data of the
observations and interviews, it was determined that the
intended effects of the pedagogical practices
discovered are:

1. To increase individual teacher’s control of

classroom teaching and learning

2. To decrease the level of difficulty of

classroom teaching

3. To have common goals and obJectives, thereby

reducing the complexity of different standards for

different students

184

4. To provide large groups of students (27 and
29) with success

a. on state tests of minimal basic skills

b. on standardized achievement tests

c. on tasks perceived as important for success

at the next grade level r
d. as shown by student adherence to established I

norms and procedures

0.0-“

5. To meet governmental requirements and

‘2'!“- J -'
.

incentives for funding (i.e., core curriculum,
school improvement plans, student performance on
state tests)

6. To meet community role expectations for what
school should be like

7. To decrease the risk of being evaluated
negatively by a supervisor (i.e., to comply with
centrally imposed procedures and mandates)

8. To decrease the risk of being evaluated

negatively by peers

Unintended effects identified through further analysis

are:

1. Master developers (i.e., policy makers, test
developers, university professors, textbook
authors, commercial publishers, and district
central administrators), not teachers, are in

control of classroom teaching and learning.

185
2. Students are treated as if they are the same:
the standardized curriculum overrides knowledge of
individual student’s developmental levels and
experiential backgrounds.
3. The process approach to instruction is focused
on production of paper-and-pencil products with
right answers.
4. Scientific problem solving is treated as
science.
5. Self direction is viewed as student compliance
to teacher direction.
6. Professional development is called training
and seen as having “experts" show teachers how to
"do" something (e.g., cooperative learning)
because knowledge is perceived as external.
7. Prior knowledge is treated as knowledge
students should have, not knowledge students

already have.

W:

A cycle of reinforcement is shown in Figure 5.1.
The behaviors found in the study (Findings) lead to
both intended and unintended effects. Those effects
combine and result in the reinforcement of conservative
instructional strategies that feature high degrees of
likemindedness among teachers and students,

discontinuity of learning experiences, chance relevance

 

186
of instructional activities to students’ real life
needs and applications, and perceptions of knowledge as
obJective and stable. At the same time, the
reinforcement of conservative instruction preserves
both the effects and the behaviors discovered in the
study.

Innovative practices such as those recommended by
Dewey are characterized by high degrees of mindfulness
among teachers and students, continuity of learning
experiences, relevance to students’ real lives, and
views of knowledge as emergent and subJective. Such
characteristics contrast with the features and effects
of traditional classroom practices. The cycle of
reinforcement generated by conservative pedagogy and
the intended and unintended effects virtually drives
out patterns of such Deweyan-style innovations. New
pedagogical practices enter the process of conservative
reinforcement in a one-way pattern only. Consequently,
Deweyan pedagogy is implemented only in bits and

pieces—-flickers.

ImpJJoation§_of_tn.e_Stuox

This study shows that the effects of conservative
instructional strategies combine to preserve both such

taedagogy and themselves. If it is felt that Dewey’s

 

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188
ideas should be more evident in public schools today,
then the implications of this study include that
interventions must break the cycle of reinforcement.
Teachers or reformers working toward innovations
such as those recommended by Dewey must be
knowledgeable about the context and nature of

pedagogical practices in a public elementary school,

Tenn-II

first. Then, elementary teachers, who are not really
in control of the teaching and learning which occur in

their classrooms, must regain control from the master

 

developers.

Duffy, Roehler, and Putnam (1987), recommend
working toward more teacher control over substantive
curricular and instructional decisions at three levels:
(a.) preservice teacher education, (b.) inservice
teacher education, and (c.) policy making. They cite
the Holmes Group (1986) in recommending that creative
people who are attracted to the independent
decision-making possibilities of classroom teaching
should be recruited. Then, encouragement and support
both through teacher education programs which develop
“reflective adaptation“ (p. 363) as well as throughout
their induction years must be consistently supplied.

At the level of practicing teachers (e.g.,
inservice teacher education), teachers can collectively

bargain the right to adjust the curriculum when

189

necessary. They must insist to master developers that
they want to act as professionals, not as technicians.
and they must become critical of their own practice.

Practicing teachers, administrators, and master
developers must work as collaborating professionals to
develop policies in which teachers are “empowered to
modify ’master developer’ directives as classroom
situations demand“ (p. 364). Elmore and McLaughlin
(1988) address the need for policymakers to charge

practitioners with the development of solutions.

RooomonoationijoLEurtnoLRooeaLon

Conceptions of knowledge, teaching, and learning
can be studied in schools or in the family and
community. Before entering the classrooms of the
public schools, however, researchers must be sensitive
to the classroom teacher and the complex world she or
he faces. As a demonstration of that sensitivity,
researchers should become aware of the difficulties
involved in implementing innovative instructional
behaviors such as those Dewey depicted.

Reformers, and consequently, most researchers have
assumed that innovative teaching which corresponds to
new conceptions of knowledge, teaching, and learning

would be easy because it is natural (Cohen, 1988,

190
p. 22). That is a false assumption. Even Dewey and
the teachers in the school of which he served as
director were not aware of how difficult it would be to
teach as he wished (Cohen, 1988, p. 41, citing Mayhew
and Edwards, 1936).

This study and others (Cuban. 1984: Jackson. 1968:

mils-III

Lortie, 1975) show that certain teaching behaviors
persist over time. One recommendation for further

study is to find out more about such behaviors and the

 

knowledge and skills involved. Determinations about
what is stable and what is changeable need to be made.
As Cuban (1964) suggests, the results of such studies
could be used to accurately estimate what classroom
changes are feasible.

Another recommendation for further research is
also from Cuban (1984). He suggests locating and
studying experienced teachers who have adopted and
persisted in maintaining innovative pedagogical
practices. How are their beliefs about knowledge,
teaching, and learning different from those of their
colleagues? What kinds of problems do they have to
solve? What kinds of resources do they use? How are
they able to maintain teaching behaviors which go
“against the grain“? How is assessment in their

classes aligned with learning?

191

Similarly, it is recommended that a teacher who is

knowledgeable about Dewey and who shares his
philosophies be located and studied. How does such a

teacher implement his or her Deweyan philosophy? How

are his beliefs about knowledge, teaching, and learning

different from those of his colleagues? What problems
does he have to solve and what knowledge, skills, and
resources does he need for solutions? How does he
focus assessment on learning rather than on teaching?
Cohen (1988) discusses how Dewey and subsequent
reformers have written almost exclusively about the
practice of learning, not about teaching.
Dewey, Bruner, and others offered extended
accounts of how children learned, or should learn.
but they gave little attention to how teachers
taught, how they should teach, or to the nature of
teaching practice. One reason for this curious
state of affairs is that these theorists
considered teaching to be a simple reflex of
learning. They seem to have thought that they
were writing about teaching when they were writing
about learning--an assumption that most
psychologists and many others in education make.
(p.9)
Because of a lack of inquiry into the nature of

teaching as a practice, further research into the

iflflael

 

192
problems faced by teachers and the knowledge, skills,
and other resources required to solve those problems is
suggested.

Connected to this study of Deweyan pedagogical
practices is a proJect discussed by Duffy (in press), a
four-year staff development proJect in which university
personnel and practicing elementary teachers created
“intellectual communities." The development of
creative, innovative teacher mindfulness through the
establishment of more “intellectual communities“ in
public elementary schools is recommended for further
research. How are principles and aims developed? How
can assessments align with principles and aims? Do
notions of what constitutes success need to be revised?
How can teaching practices align? How can university
personnel best facilitate the development of teacher
and student mindfulness?

Few direct studies of the nature of teaching and
learning in families and the communities exist.

Because “school instruction floats on a sea of
generally traditional popular instruction, and such
instruction has a life of its own“ (Cohen, 1988,

p. 18), much must be learned from further research that
focuses on how teaching and learning occur outside of
schools. What are the conceptions of knowledge,

teaching, and learning to which families and members of

193
the community are most loyal? How deep are the

loyalties?

Snmarx

It has been recommended that further research
focus on the nature of teaching inside public schools.
on innovative teachers, on the development of
intellectual communities and student and teacher
mindfulness, and on the nature of teaching and learning
which occurs in families and communities. In all such
research, researchers must be sensitive to the

classroom teachers and the world they face daily.

8mm

introduction

Classroom teaching in a public elementary school
in 1991-1992 occurs in a context of complex
interactions and traditions. The nature of public
school teaching in America needs to be fully understood
before the mistakes of past reform attempts are
repeated. In order to contribute to additional
understanding, beyond that offered in this study,
assumptions more generally applicable to American
public school teaching as a whole are offered here.

Cohen (1988) was interested in the ways educators
and reformers have viewed the improvement of teaching

and the slow pace of reform. Theories drawn from his

 

194
work apply as a further, more global explanation for
the finding that conservative instructional strategies
persist over innovative strategies such as Dewey’s.
Cohen reconsidered the nature of teaching in order to
understand it. His theories lead to a broader
understanding of the nature of teaching in American
public schools and its lengthy historical and social
inheritance.

In his work, Cohen placed traditions of reform in
the larger history of instructional ideas and practices
(i.e., inherited pedagogical traditions). Next, he
located instructional innovation in the larger social
organization of teaching and learning (i.e., the social
context of our inherited pedagogical traditions).

Then, Cohen analyzed the nature of teaching as a
practice of human improvement that embodies “the great
problems of defining and delivering human progress, and
of deciding about the adequacy of what has been
achieved“ (p.24).

According to Cohen, pedagogical practices in a
public elementary school have been shaped by
conceptions of knowledge, teaching, and learning which
have roots in medieval Europe. Dewey’s ideas, which
feature innovative conceptions of knowledge, teaching,
and learning, occurred relatively recently in a

900-year-old tradition.

I

‘2” (Minimal 7;“: '_"- '

 

 

 

   

195

Consistent with Cohen’s ideas, a further
explanation for the persistence of conservative
instructional strategies in a public elementary school
in 1991-1992 is that public school teaching is a human
improvement function with traditional pedagogical
interactions shaped by a lengthy historical and social
inheritance and reinforced by the problematic nature of
the practice itself. However, we are on the brink of a

gathering “collision“ between traditional, inherited

wine‘s?“ I: and M 2;,

ideas and innovative ideas such as Dewey’s, Cohen

(1988) believes. He says:
Our struggles over Dewey’s Progressivism,
Discovery Learning, and related reforms are only a
few episodes in a gathering collision between
inherited and revolutionary ideas about the nature
of knowledge, learning, and teaching. In the long
perspective of this historic clash, recent reform
ideas resemble early manifestoes in a long
revolution, or fumbling steps down an unfamiliar
path. It seems possible or even likely that these
episodes will turn out to be only the first

chapters in a much longer saga. (pp. 14-15)

W
In Figure 5.2, the chronological relationship of
Dewey in relation to 900 years of inherited pedagogical

traditions is depicted. In Figure 5.3, conceptions of

196
knowledge, teaching, and learning as inherited over a
900—year period and as conceived by Dewey are compared.
According to Cohen (1988), innovative views of
knowledge, teaching, and learning are a “recent, still
controversial. and very weakly developed product of
modern intellectual culture“ (p.10). In the long

tradition of the old views, respect for the authority

r.maq

of the written word was rooted in the Church and

strengthened by the Protestant Reformation. Even

 

during the age of Newton and Voltaire such deference
persisted. Early modern scientists began to replace
“reverence for the authority of revealed text or
established church with reverence for the authority of
obJective and rational natural facts“ (p. 11).

In medieval Judaism and Christianity, the teacher
was the “pipeline“ for "Truth,“ knowledge that
originated elsewhere. Teaching as telling was
reaffirmed from its roots in the churches, the only
institutions of popular teaching until the nineteenth
century, and “appears to have survived early modern
Europe more or less intact“ (p. 12).

Learning as a passive process of accumulation was
a logical view considering that learning in medieval
Europe meant assimilating material external to the
experiences of the people. Early Protestantism in

which children were seen as willful, disobedient, or

197

Deweyan

PWNOGY
(100 years

   
  
 

 

Classroom Instructional
Interactions

Inherited edagoglcal traditions
900 years)

 

Figure 5.2 Chronological relationship of Dewey to tradition

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198

 

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199
devilish served to reinforce the idea. Didactic
instruction and strict discipline were needed, it was
thought, to tame the wild spirits (pp. 12-13). It was
the end of the eighteenth century before ideas that
“children would make sense of things on their own and
would learn the right lessons if left to themselves“

appeared (p. 13).

W1
traditions

WM "ire-em?» "7

Cohen (1988) refers to the social context of the
inherited pedagogical traditions as the “social
organization of practices“ (p. 15). Included in the
social traditions are the family and community
traditions of teaching and learning which exist outside
of school and the scholastic traditions and practices
in schools and universities.

Figure 5.4 contains a diagram of the main points
of this portion of Cohen’s ideas. Knowledge, teaching,
and learning do not exist inside schools only. In
families and in communities (e.g., factory work groups,
neighborhood gangs), instruction occurs. Most of it is
informal teaching and learning. In schools, formal
learning is dominant.

Within the processes of instruction in families
and communities are embedded ideas about knowledge,

teaching, and learning which have been researched

200

 

Social context of
inherited pedagogy

 

 

 

 
       
    
  
     

 
       
 
   

Family and community Universities
traditions and
of Schools

teaching and learning

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generation eaohing as telibg between research oommunloatlon
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assimilation and would of nature of
practice practice

families
neighborhoo -
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Figure 5.4 Social context of laberited pedagogical traditions (based on Cohen, 1938)

201

directly infrequently. However, a great deal of
indirect evidence supports family instruction as mainly
traditional and corresponding to inherited historical
conceptions. Some studies show that family and
community influences on children’s learning and
attitudes predominate over the influences of the
school. Children are influenced by the content as well
as the conduct of the instruction which occurs in the

family and community (pp. 15-17). As Cohen states:

mafia—finr-nm ‘1

[Tiraditional teaching in school echoes and
reflects popular practices outside schools. The
conceptions and practices that reformers wish to
replace thus are not simply the needless
impositions of bad old boring teachers, as Dewey
and most reformers since have asserted. The
instructional practices that reformers wish to
eliminate contain views of knowledge, teaching,
and learning to which many parents, teachers. and
students have deep loyalties. (pp. 17-18)

In schools, much of the stimulation for the
implementation of pedagogical innovations (e.g., new
conceptions of knowledge, teaching and learning) has
originated from academic intellectuals at selective.
research universities such as Columbia, Harvard. The

University of Chicago. Massachusetts Institute of

202
Technology, and Brown. Such institutions are removed
from the pedagogical context of public schools.

Most teachers, however,.are prepared in other
colleges and universities which are not so selective.
Teaching is a low priority function of faculties at
many universities whose mission centers on “research
and the production of new knowledge“ (p. 19). Those

who do teach usually model the traditional pedagogy.

”w-rhem‘jl.’.ms
1‘. ‘s. .. n a ' .
I

However, teaching is the reason the mass of colleges, 3

universities, and K—12 public schools exist. i
In addition to the gap between the centers of new

knowledge and the “thousands of higher and lower

schools in which nearly all teaching and learning

occurs“ (p. 19), communication about the nature and

reform of practice is lacking. The decentralized and

fragmented organization of American schools and the

large size of the country do not facilitate nor sustain

close communication. Communication about the

substantive issues of teaching and learning has been

limited and sporadic. (pp. 15-20)

W
AM

Some interactions involved in teaching as a
practice of human improvement are illustrated in Figure

5.5. As a practice of human improvement, teaching is

203
an “impossible profession“ (Cohen, 1988, p. 23). He
explains:
Practices of human improvement are children of the
belief, only recently invented in human history,
that humanity can make itself over in the image of

its own aspirations. These practices all propose

'1

to solve individual and social problems that not
long ago were regarded as our inevitable burden,
at best to be eluded in a world beyond death.

Practices of human improvement are living

w-T‘".m m!- -"\l.
: “

testimony to our faith that ignorance, poverty,

crime, anxiety, and other problems that have

plagued humanity for time out of mind will yield

to organized knowledge and skill. (p. 23)

Human improvement practices are difficult and
risky. Protective organizational and social
arrangements (i.e., resources of practice) are
incorporated into some human improvement practices
(e.g., psychotherapy, organizational consulting, some
parts of social work, and sex therapy). Selectivity,
client choice, social consensus about the results of
practice, and clients being assigned most of the
responsibility for results are such resources. Public
school teaching, as a practice of human improvement
which occurs in “compulsory and unselective

institutions“ lacks such protections, however. In

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205
fact, the social arrangements of public school teaching
in the United States “heighten the common problems of
practice“ to a great extent (p. 35).

Uncertainty about the nature of client improvement
and how to achieve it, disputes about the results of
schooling, lack of selectivity, and many uncommitted
clients are social arrangements that lead to incentives
for teachers, as practitioners, to adopt conservative,
instructional strategies as substitute resources of
practice.

Efforts to improve teaching lead to increases in
uncertainty, difficulty, and risk. One way to lessen
uncertainty, difficulty, and risk is to simplify and
clarify results. When that occurs, conservative
traditions survive over the intended innovations.

Disputes about the results of schooling lead to
uncertainty about the nature of client improvement and
how to achieve it. Conservative instructional
strategies are one way to adapt to that increase
because defining knowledge rigidly reduces uncertainty
(pp. 24-39).

Figure 5.6 illustrates how teaching as a practice
of human improvement is affected when attempts are made
to improve (reform) it. Deweyan pedagogy is demanding,
difficult, and risky. Its implementation as an

instructional improvement would multiply uncertainty

 

206
and raise the level of difficulty and risk. In Figure
5.6, it can be seen that the resulting interactions are
likely to reinforce conservative instructional
strategies.

The survival of traditional pedagogy cannot be
explained easily. Traditional instructional behaviors
are functions of complex interactions between a
900-year-old historical and social pedagogical

inheritance and problems inherent in the nature of

WTfiJ’dfi-Iir’u' x 1‘. i =3-

teaching as a practice of human improvement. Figure
5.7 illustrates Cohen’s theories.

When combined with the explanation of the findings
of this study, Cohen’s theories lead to a deeper
understanding of the nature of public school teaching
in American public schools in 1991-1992. Before
attempts are made to “reform" teaching in the public
schools, it is recommended that reformers should have
not only a grasp of the essence of teaching in American
public schools, but also knowledge of the interactions
which result when improvement attempts are made.
Summarx

If one who adheres to Dewey’s philosophies reads
only the conclusions of this study, he or she might be
disappointed that Deweyan pedagogical practices were
not evident in substantive ways. There is reason to

hope, however. Flickers of Dewey were located, and we

207

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209
appear to be moving toward Dewey’s ideas rather than
away from them.

Dewey’s ideas are relatively new, but they
favorably align with the newest research about
knowledge, teaching, and learning. There appears to be
more agreement now than ever that progressive, student
centered, Deweyan style education is what children need
(Tuthill, 1992). As Cohen (1988) says, "It is
reasonable to suppose that we are working on the
frontiers of [a] great collision“ (p. 15) between
traditional and “revolutionary“ conceptions of
knowledge, teaching, and learning.

As we progress toward such a collision, we can
expect to learn more about both traditional and
innovative pedagogies “as the arguments sharpen, and as
some advocates on both sides try to practice what they
preach“ (Cohen, p. 15). However slow such learning
from argument and practice is, it focuses on the
substantive, not the procedural, issues of teaching and
learning in American public schools today. We have
reached a new plateau, and we are progressing.

Such argument and practice can be looked upon in
ways similar to that of how the researcher viewed this
study. The study was considered an:

experience which has the promise and

potentiality of presenting new problems which

man-r5177 .- “3‘3" "1

210
by stimulating new ways of observation and
Judgment will expand the area of further

experience. (Dewey, 1938, p. 89)

‘---_H—Iu-
'\

APPENDIX A

WW '- -.- --»- -.1

 

Matrix of Deweyan Pedagogical Practices

1- EEDA§Q§l§bL_ERA§Il§E: Classrooms that are cooperative social
organizations

a. At the beginning of the school year, teacher and students
decide together some of the classroom.rules.

b. Teacher and students collectively share responsibility for
knowledge of and behavior according to the group-designed plan.

r-

2
c. Teachers, staff, and students decide together some of the b
building rules and policies.

d. Teachers, staff, students, and community members decide
together schoolwide academic and social obJectives.

e. Teachers and administrators decide together the action plan to
meet the schoolwide academic and social obJectives.

f. Teacher and students decide together their learning
purposes--goals and obJectives--in accordance with a Jointly
developed curriculum.

9. Teacher and students decide together how to accomplish the
learning goals and obJectives.

h. Teacher acts as a facilitator. a group leader, who guides
students in group decision making processes.

1. Teacher acts as a facilitator who introduces students to
learning activities which the teacher perceives have immediate
interest to students as well as long range implications for growth
and which relate to the Jointly developed curricular goals.

J. Teacher provides opportunities for parents and community
members to share in the learning process.

211

212

k. Students are allowed to work together whenever working
together correlates with the learning activities.

1. Teacher and students meet regularly--perhaps each morning--to

evaluate learning experiences and to problem-solve goals and
further experiences.

m. Teacher guides the students to choose and implement service
proJects in the school and in the community.

n. Teacher helps students assess their own quality of adJustment
in social interaction.

0. Teacher focuses learner assessment (tests, report cards, file
data) on evidence of the learner’s individual growth as shown in
the quality of the learner’s work.

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1'

213
2 EEDA§Q§195L_ERAQILQE: Schools that are cooperative social

organizations

a. Teachers consider themselves as specialists regarding some
subJect matter but are also sensitive to the interrelationships
between and among the various subJect matters--the larger context.

b. Teachers reflect with each other regarding the needs and
progress of students and development of learning activities in

 

accordance with agreed-upon academic and social obJectives. ‘F
c. Teachers, on an informal basis, discuss with other teachers 3
the needs and progress of students. g
d. Teachers, with input from administrators, support staff, ‘

community members, and students, Jointly develop curriculum.

e. Teachers plan with other teachers learning activities which
best meet the needs of students and which the teachers perceive
have long range implications for growth.

f. Teachers spend time reflecting with other educators regarding
student growth and their own professional growth.

9. At regularly scheduled formal meetings, school staff
(administrators, teachers, support staff). community
representatives, and student representatives discuss the
underlying principles and aims of the school and how practices in
the school align with those principles and aims.

h. Teachers have input into the management of the school, e.g.,
allocation and distribution of financial resources, placement of
students, school starting and dismissal times, development and
allocation of times for certain social and learning activities
(lunch, recesses, music, physical education, etc.), the school
calendar, selection of personnel, etc.

 

214

3. EEDA§Q§195L_ERA§ILCE: Integration of scientific problem
solving into learning experiences

a. Teacher helps students develop skills in problem solving and
decision making.

b. Teacher guides learners in use of scientific problem solving
across the curriculum.

c. Teacher guides students in the use and development of
scientific problem solving as it relates to social organization
and solving social problems which the students experience, e.g.,
on the playground, in the iunchroom, etc.

d. Teacher arranges the classroom environment so that situations
and activities of interest to the students will present
opportunities (problems/purposes) for learning which are in
accordance with a Jointly developed curriculum in which the
teacher him- or herself and other teachers have had input.

e. Students have opportunities to be actively involved in
determining problems they want to solve, their purposes for
learning.

f. Teacher encourages input into formulation/statement of
curricular problems and purposes-~goals and obJectives for
learning.

9. Teacher assists students to select and evaluate activities to
accomplish learning purposes.

h. Teacher assists students to accomplish purposes.

1. Teacher regularly assists students to organize what has been
learned.

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215
4 EEDAQQQLQAL_ERA§11§E: Focus on student development of self

direction

a. Teacher encourages students to do special proJects which
extend and arise out of what has already been learned.

b. Teacher teaches students how to set individual goals and
obJectives--how to form purposes.

c. Teacher helps the students to set individual purposes for what
they want to accomplish when they do special proJects.

d. Teacher helps students understand there may be positive and
negative outcomes in their selection of methods (means) to
accomplish their learning purposes as well as in their selection
of the purposes themselves (ends).

e. Teacher expects and assists students to demonstrate ability to
evaluate the means selected to accomplish their learning purposes.

f. Teacher expects and assists students to self-evaluate, to
determine how they did their very best and how they might have
done better.

9. Teacher plans and uses quiet time after activities to assist
students in organizing what has been learned-~what academic and
social obJectives have been accomplished, what growth has
occurred--through the activities and to formulate purposes for
further learning.

h. Teacher provides opportunities for students to share their
accomplishments with other members of the school community.

i. Teacher and students together consider and evaluate student
growth in self direction.

J. Teacher gives students honest and specific feedback regarding
individual growth in self direction

 

216

5. 2EDA§Q§1§AL_£RA§II§E: Use of interdisciplinary units of study
incorporating active involvement of students as they address
problems which are relevant to real life

a. Teacher uses units of study which integrate language arts,
mathematics, social studies, science, and the fine arts.

b. Learning activities may involve auditory, visual, and
kinesthetic learning channels.

c. Classrooms have movable furniture and plenty of space in which
to acconmodate flexibility in room arrangements for student
activities and work.

d. Teacher--and, where appropriate, students--varies room
arrangement according to student activities and work.

e. Students are active and involved in learning activities which
incorporate physical media such as math manipulatives and scale
models.

f. Students are actively involved in learning activities such as
drama--plays, skits, choral reading, role playing.

9. Students are actively involved in learning activities which
have them simulating and participating in activities which are
related to real life activities e.g., banking, the stock market,
retailing, the Judicial system (courts and the law), a post
office, carpentry or other construction, cooking, sewing, weaving.

h. Learning experiences are rooted in problems (purposes for
learning) which arise out of the participation in activities.

1. Teacher aids the students to recognize growth-oriented
problems (purposes for learning) which arise out of the
participation in group activities.

J. Teacher aids the students to select and evaluate methods and
activities to accomplish the learning purpose.

k. Teacher aids the students to organize what has been learned.

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217

i. The maJority of the class time is spent in learner

activity--physicai activities or active cognitive engagement and
evaluation.

 

218

6. EEDA§Q§195L_ERACI1§E: Use of cooperative learning approaches
to instruction

a. Students spend time working in groups on communal
proJects/activities.

b. Teacher, sometimes with student input, decides the composition
of each of the cooperative learning groups (which students are to
be in which group) in accordance with the purposes for learning;
the need for some kind of mix and representativeness within each
group; and the academic and/or social needs of individual
students.

c. Each member of the group shares responsibility for the group
task.

d. Teacher assists students to realize that each member of the
group has the responsibility to contribute to learning.

e. Cooperative learning groups work to accomplish academic tasks
related to curricular outcomes.

f. Teacher aids students in developing group decision-making and
conflict resolution skills e.g., how to disagree without being
disagreeable, how to encourage, how to look at the person who is
speaking, how to allow others to voice their opinions, strategies
which could be used to reach consensus, etc.

9. Cooperative learning groups work on social obJectives as well
as academic obJectives.

h. Teacher constantly observes groups, provides feedback, and
encourages students to share their progress on academic and social
purposes.

i. After groups have worked together, teacher encourages a large
group summary about how they’ve accomplished the academic and
social obJectives.

WIWI“ . Ligand-Ages fl,

219

J. After groups have worked together, further academic and social

obJectives for group work may be formed through group summary and
processing.

k. Teacher and students assess together student growth according
to the responsibility each student shows in doing his or her best
for the welfare of the group, not for him— or herself alone.

1. Older students regularly work with younger students.

17":

Wang-1.2.1 (v. m

220

7. PEDA§Q§195L_RRACIICE: Knowledge and use of students’
experiential backgrounds and developmental levels to make the
various disciplines of knowledge part of a total and growing
experience

a. Teacher administers an informal interest inventory to each
student and uses the results to interrelate instructional
activities and student interests.

b. Teacher elicits through webbing, K-W-L, semantic mapping,
brainstorming, advanced organizers, written pretests, or other
techniques students’ prior knowledge about topics they are
studying.

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c. Teacher uses in instruction students’ prior knowledge about
topics they are studying.

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d. Teacher helps students connect their prior knowledge to new
knowledge through webbing, semantic maps, K-W-L, or other
techniques.

e. Teacher intentionally gets to know each student’s family and
home situation.

f. Teacher visits students’ families in their homes.

9. Teacher has the students’ families into school--to share
learning accomplishments, to volunteer in the room, to have lunch.
Just to visit, etc.

h. Teacher goes out for recess with the students to get to know
them.

1. Teacher has lunch with the students to get to know them.

J. Teacher regularly communicates with students’ families through
classroom newsletters, sending home samples of student work,
writing notes home, or telephoning.

221

k. Teacher places more emphasis on the various disciplines of
knowledge as resources in solving problems than on the individual
disciplines themselves.

1. Teacher seeks to learn what each student accomplished before
the student came to the teacher’s class.

m. Teacher seeks to learn each student’s academic and social
strengths and weaknesses.

n. Based on understanding of several disciplines of knowledge,
the teacher, with student input, plans learning activities which
provide for each student’s growth in learning (“What do we need to
do next?').

0. The teacher, with student and staff input in mind, guides the
students toward accomplishment of learning purposes in a way which
utilizes learning activities closely related to students’ real
lives.

p. Teacher plans and uses a quiet time for personal reflection
and organization regarding student growth and his or her own
professional growth.

q. Teacher is involved in professional development activities
such as membership in professional associations. college or
university coursework. attendance at professional development
seminars, readings in professional Journals. and teaching other
teachers.

 

 

222

8. EEDA§Q§195L_ERA§ILCE: Emphasis on a process approach to
instruction including regard for books and reading as tools for
learning

a. Reading comprehension and writing skills are taught as part of

the learning activities and as the need arises out of the learning
activity.

b. Teacher has students use reading and writing to communicate
about their learning experiences.

c. Teacher has students use reading and writing to gather
information in order to meet the purposes which they’ve set for
learning.

d. Teacher integrates spelling into topics being discussed and
being learned.

e. Teacher encourages students to write about their own
experiences and will have adults or older students help write
those stories down if needed.

f. Teacher and students cooperatively choose topics for writing.

9. Where appropriate, the teacher has students read and edit each
other’s work.

h. Teacher encourages students to share with each other their
writings.

1. Students and teacher write a classroom and/or school
newsletter.

J. Teacher utilizes basal reader skill lessons. dittoes, and
workbooks if these instructional materials are in context with
agreed upon obJectives and learning purposes and students’ real
lives and classroom experiences, needs and applications.

k. Teacher and class read together non-textbooks (e.g., library
books, paperback books) and develop additional learning activities
from what they read.

“museum .1 Q My? :TJiT 1.1%,
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‘

 

223

1. Various subJects are taught as part of learning activities
relevant to real life needs and applications and as the need
arises out of the learning activity, e.g., banking. retailing,
stock market.

m. Teacher verbalizes strategies s/he uses to comprehend what
s/he has read. to answer questions, and to solve math
probiems--'think alouds“. metacognition, or self-monitoring.

n. Teacher positively reinforces verbally ("Very good“) and
non-verbally (smiles) student use and verbaiization of strategies
to comprehend they have read, to answer questions, and to solve
math problems.

0. Teacher has students verbalize for each other strategies to
comprehend what they have read, to answer questions. and to solve
math problems.

p. Information which students are required to memorize has a
functional relationship to what is learned.

q. Skills which students are required to learn are skills which
have a functional relationship to what is learned.

L
w
‘ .r e1... :5. I \T.) I. wagging?

APPENDIX B

 

APPLICATION FOR REVIEW OF A PROJECT INVOLVING
HUMAN SUBJECTS

Submit your proposal for UCRIl-IS review to:

Dr. David E. Wright. Chair
UCRIHS

Michigan Sate University
232 Administration Buldlng
East Lansing. MI 4882440“

lIyouhaveanyqrnstianorwlshtodieckmemotmpropoedmal: (517) 355-2180

 

:——

DIRECTIONS: COMPLETE QUESTIONS 1 - 11: Attach additional material as requested.

‘ nee. -.;~'\ L3H}; J)- m,
I.

1. RESPONSIBLE PROJECT llWESTlGA‘i’OR: NAME OF lNVESTiGATOR:
(lacdty or stall supervisor) . - (I dilierentl

Dr.Janet B. Alleman, chairperson of Gloria C. Rusial, doctoral student
'a'oc'ToTT—a committee

 

 

 

z. campus nooness: ' ' cmpus mousse: (or m m...
362 Erickson l-iall 'WWNONOUII

9780 Sonora DriveI FreelandI MI 48623

 

PHONE“ 353-0696 PHONE“ 517-781-3359

 

3. TITLE OF PROPOSAL:
John Dewey and Current Pedagogical Practices: Is Deweyan Pedagogy Alive Today?

 

4. A. PROPOSED FUNDING AGENCY (If any)

 

e. lSTHiSANFDAPROPOSAL i was bdNO
c. usu onoe lF APPLICABLE "/3
0. one on mica YOU PLAN TO seem oars cousc'nou "arch 16 . 1992 _

s. exempt/expanse. «mumawmmm
cat-cow. SEEINSTRUCRONS-WEMtaai-Az-O.uc.l. ‘

Category: Exempt 1-A. 1-C. 1-D.'1-B

 

 

 

 

 

For Subcommittee: . Convnerssto Pl:
Ollice Agenda: CommersstoREV:
Use Cam ‘

 

 

224

225

8. ABSTRACT. Summarize the research (its purpose and general design) to be conducted. This
can be identical or similar to the summary required when submitting to the NIH (200 words or

less). Briefly outline. In panicuur.memmu9m_tmmiimm4

John Dewey (1859;1952) was hailed, during his lifetime, as
America's greatest educator. He remains one of the best known thinkers of
the twentieth century as well as one of our most influential educators.

Almost 100 years ago, Dewey began to lay the foundation for changes in
American public education. This study is designed to describe if and
how the pedagogical practices of teachers in a typical mid—Michigan
elementary school reflect the pedagogy Dewey described beginning almost
100 years ago.

The researcher will use a method of educational research called educational
ethnography, a form of descriptive, on-site research. In order to gather data
the researcher will employ a variety of tools including observation, field
notes, audiotape recordings, collections of artifacts, and interviews.
Pedagogical practices will be the units of analysis, and subjects will be
volunteer staff members of the school who will be considered as informants
not as subjects. There will be nothing “done to" the subjects. The
researcher will be with the subjects for a period of 8-10 weeks during their
school day and will be present with them at any activities which relate to
pedagogy and which occur outside the regular work day.

The researcher has formulated a matrix which consists of eight Deweyan
pedagogical practices and corresponding behavioral indicants or each.

A panel of experts within the MSU College of Education is validating the matrix, and
the researcher will use the validated matrix 3 a.standard for viewing the pedagogical
brmg. 1C8 .

7. SUBJECT POPULATION. Willany oi the ioliowing be an prac
Yes No Yes No
Minors [x1 [ 1 Students Ix] [ 1
Pregnant Women 1 1 [X1 Lowlncome Persons 1x1 1 1
Women oiChiid-bearing age ["1 i 1 Minorities [x1 [ 1
Institutionalized Persons 1 1 [x1 Incompetent Persons [ 1 [x]
(or diminished capacity)

7a. Number oi sub1ects (including controls)? 50

7b. Are you associated with the sub1ects (e.g., your students. employees. or patients.)
I I V“ Ix] no It yes. explain native ol the association.

The subjects are being contacted
. H up will sub acts be contacted and selected?
Zfiéouéi the central administrative offices of the district and through

the building principal.

7d. Will research sublects be compensated? 1 1Yes ["1No

flyesdwurmdmcuwenhgpamhdudhgmeammuawsdudmdpaymwm
besetiorthinthelnlormedca'oem.

7e. Will you be advertislng lorresearch participants? [ 1Yes [x1No
Iiyesehacitacopyoitheadvertisememyouwiiuse. SEEINSTRUCTIONS-ITEN:

(2)

 

 

226

ANONYMiW/CONFIDENTIALITY. Describe procedures and saieguards ior insuring confiden-
tiality or anonymity. SEE INSTRUCTIONS - iTEM 3

The researcher is the only person gathering data. The researcher is the
only person who will work with the data. Although the subjects' identities
will be known to the researcher, the subjects' identities will be kept
confidential and reports of research findings will not use subjects' names
nor identities. The school district, the school building, and the locale
will not be named, only described. No one who reads anything written by the
researcher will be able to associate subjects with specific responses or
findings. The data gathered will be kept by the researcher at her home and
will be accessible only to her. Data will be coded and meaningful only to
the researcher. The research is only of a descriptive nature and is
designed only to determine how modern pedagogical practices reflect those
described by Dewey beginning almost 100 years ago. The research is of a
low-risk nature to all subjects because it seeks only to describe things

as they are. It is not of a punitive nature, nor may the results be
generalizable beyond this particular setting.

RISK/BENEFIT RATIO. Analyze the risk/benefit ratio. SEE iNSTRUCTIONS - ITEM 4. Com.
pieteiy answer items A. B, and C iIsted in the instructions. ALSO SEE item a In the Instructions
it your research Involves minors or those with diminished capacity.

The risk to benefit ratio is very small. As long as all subjects
are volunteers who have been informed regarding the purpose of the study
and any potential risks and as long as the subjects have been provided with
the right to withdraw with no reprisals, there is little risk as long as
the researcher is careful to provide for confidentiality.

As long as the foregoing is provided, the research will be of
benefit to the school in this way: Deweyan pedagogy aligns with current
reform literature,and this study may help to gather the perceptions of
teachers and students regarding the realities invdxed in trying to change
and restructure American public education. Even if the researcher does not
use the alignment with current school reform literature, the benefit to
the school is still high because Dewey was such an important figure in
education, and the teachers and staff may better understand through the
results of this study how what they're doing is what he said they should be
doing. It does all of us a lot of good to know we're doing some things right.

The researcher will follow strictly procedures which guarantee
informed consent of the participants (including consent of the parents of
any students involved) as well as procedures which ensure confidentiality:
including security for data which contains subject identifiers.

The researcher plans to establish a positive relationship with the
subjects and other peeple in the school. This study is approached from a
positive viewpoint and will be recorded that way. The benefits to all
of us as the researcher "catches reality" in a typical school outweigh any

of the risks involved. (3)

 

 

227

10. CONSENT PROCEDURES. Describe consent procedures to be ioilowed. Including how and
where Inlormed consent will be obtained. SEE INSTRUCTIONS - iTEM s on what needs to be
Included in your consent iorrn. include a copy oi your consent iorm with your proposal. ALSO

SEE Item s In the instructions ii your research involves minors or those with diminished
capachy.

The researcher will prepare and send to the homes of all the students
in the school a letter which states the purpose of the study, any potential
risks, and that they have the right to withdraw with no reprisals.

For students who are in the two classrooms in which the researcher will spend

the majority of her time, the researcher will make sure that parents have
signed consent forms for the students. Any students who will be interviewed
will be interviewed only after parents have signed consent forms.

Teachers who are to be observed and interviewed will also have signed consent
forms. Any staff members and students whom I interview or in whose classrooms

I will observe (I will observe briefly in other classrooms of the same grade
levels as those in which I will spend the majority of my time) will have

signed consent forms on file. The major focus is on pedagogical practices
of (volunteer) teachers.

The researcher will place on the letter sent to students‘ homes a
permission form for the parent/guardian to sign in order that the

child may participate in’the study. I will'ask that of all students in the
school. .

Teachers and staff members will be sent a different, but similar, letter

and a more detailed permission form. Teachers in whose classrooms the
researcher observes will have signed the permission (consent) form.
Staff members whom the researcher interviews will have signed consent forms.

11. CHECKLIST. Check all that you have Included each at these Items with your proposal. ii not
applicable. state n/a.

1 1 Provide six (6) copies oi al iriionnation unless applying ior exempt or expedited review. Provnde
two (2) copies ii applying ior exempt or expedited. include all questlomaires. surveys. lorrns.
tests. etc. to be used.

[1 Proposed graduate and mdergraduate student research projects subm'eted to UCRIHS lor
review should be accompanied by a signed statement irom the student‘s major professor SlalIng
thathe/shshssreviswedandapprovestheproposedprolect.

[1 Provide one complete copy oi the Il.‘ research proposu. Graduate studeres shoud Iurnish one
copy oi the 'Methods' chapter oi their thesis/dissertation (i available) In lieu oi a research
proposal.

[1 Ouestlonsi -10havebaenilledoutcompieteiy.

[1 Provide the consentiorm (orhstnictionsheet. explantorylettsr. orthe scriptlororal plesenlallon
Iislgnedconserflisnottobeobtahed—SeelemSlntheinsbuctions).

[1 Advertisementinciudedlappiicabie

YOUR PROPOSAL WILL BE ASSIGNED A UCRIHS PROPOSAL NUMBER. REFER TO THIS NUMBER
AND THE TITLE OF YOUR PROPOSAL ON ANY CORRESPONDENCE OR INQUIRIES.

(4)

rVfi‘

An’ ..
1'".

fln‘u‘flm—t
I. .. _

 

‘

 

228

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

 

COLLEGE OI EDUCATION 0 DEPARTMENT OF TEACHER EDUCATION IiAhT [ANSING 0 MICHIGAN 0 488244054

March, 1992
Dear Parents.

I am a doctoral student who has been studying the
history of classroom teaching, and I am conducting a study
of classroom teaching as it exists In your child’s school.

I will be sitting in on classes, visiting school activities.
and speaking to youngsters and to staff members this spring.
As I study education in your school. there Is very little
risk to your youngster because I will be keeping Information
and writing about my study in a way which keeps the name of
the school district, the name of the school. and the names
of individuals--inciuding any youngsters whom I

interview--confldential. I will be working with
for the maJority of my study. but I
will visit other rooms on an informal basis.

Wimarmr It... ‘ . o. ~r.u.1~.hr s. g
r'

I have studied the works of a famous educational
philosopher, John Dewey (1859-1952), who began to write
almost 100 years ago about how he thought American public
education should be changed and made better. This study
will help me to be able to describe how classroom teaching
today resembles what he recommended.

This study has been approved by Public
Schools, and participation is voluntary. A code number will
be assigned to information gathered. and a parent may
withdraw his or her child from this study at any time
without penalty. The information will be gathered
March-May, 1992.

Please complete the following approval and send to your
child’s teacher so that I can begin my study. Thank you so
much for your help! If you have questions, please call me
at home--Saginaw, 781-3359--and I will be happy to speak
with you. This will be a fun and exciting study for me, and
I am anxious to begin experiencing education in your school.

szgcerely y 8.

Gloria G. Musial

I give permission for my child. .
to participate in a study of classroom teaching conducted by
Gloria G. Musial, a Michigan State University doctoral
student.

 

 

Parent/Guardian Signature Date

MSU it an A/Irmalr'r-r Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

229

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

 

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION 0 DEPARTMENT OI TEACHER EDUCATION LAST IANSlNG 0 MICHIGAN 0 488244054

March. 1992
Dear Staff Member.

I am a doctoral student who has been studying the

history of classroom teaching. and I am conducting a

‘ descriptive study of classroom teaching as it exists in your e:
school. I will be sitting in on classes, visiting school '
activities. and speaking to youngsters and to staff members
this spring. As I study education in your school. there is
virtually no risk to you because my study is for academic
purposes only, and I will be keeping information and writing
about my study in a way which keeps the name of the school
district. the name of the school. and the names of i~

 

individuals-—including any youngsters whom I
interview--confidential. I will be working with

for the maJority of my study,
but I hope to be able to visit other rooms on an informal
basis.

I have studied the works of a famous educational
philosopher, John Dewey (1859-1952), who began to write
almost 100 years ago about how he thought American public
education should be changed and made better. This study
will help me to be able to describe if and how classroom
teaching today resembles what he recommended.

This study has been approved by Public
Schools, and participation is voluntary. A code number will
be assigned to information gathered. and a you may withdraw
from this study at any time without penalty. The
information will be gathered March-May, 1992.

If you will allow me to visit your classroom and/or to
interview you, will you please complete the attached consent
form and send it to the office or give it to me so that I
can begin my study. Thank you so much for your help! If
you have questions. please call me at home--Saginaw.
781-3359--and I will be happy to speak with you. This will
be a fun and exciting study for me. and I am anxious to
experience education in your school.

Si cerely yours.

QM

Gloria G. MUsial

 

MSU it an Al/irmatr'r-v Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

230

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

 

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION 0 DEPARTMENT Oi TEACHER EDUCATION EAST LANSING 0 MICHIGAN 0 488244054

1. I consent to take part in a study of classroom teaching
administered and conducted by Gloria Musial. a doctoral
student at Michigan State University. 1?

2. The study has been explained to me and I understand the
explanation and what my participation will involve. I
understand that, if I like. I can receive additional
explanation of the study after my participation is
completed.

 

3. I understand that I am free to discontinue my i
participation in the study at any time.

4. I understand that my answers will be treated in strict
confidence and that I will remain anonymous. Within these
restrictions, results of the study will be made available to
me at my request.

5. I understand that my participation in the study does not
guarantee any benefit to me.

Signed

Date

 

MSU is an Affirmative Action lliqual Opportunity Institution

23].

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

 

OFFICE OI" VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH EAST LANSING ' MICHIGAN ‘ 488244046
AND DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

March 3, 1992

Gloria G. Musial
9780 Sonora Drive
Freeland, MI 48623

RE: JOHN DEWEY AND CURRENT PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES: IS DENEYAN PEDAGOGY ALIVE
TODAY?, IRB #92-066

Dear Ms. Musial:

The above project is exempt from full UCRIHS review. The proposed research
protocol has been reviewed by another committee member. The rights and welfare
of human subjects appear to be protected and you have approval to conduct the
research.

You are reminded that UCRIHS approval is valid for one calendar year. If you
plan to continue this project beyond one year, please make provisions for
obtaining appropriate UCRIHS approval one month prior to February 27, 1993.

Any changes in procedures involving human subjects must be reviewed by UCRIHS
prior to initiation of the change. UCRIHS must also be notifed promptly of any
problems (unexpected side effects, complaints, etc.) involving human subjects
.during the course of the work.

Thank you for bringing this project to my attention. If I can be of any future
help, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Sincerely,

"I CZ. WP

avid E. wright, Ph.D air
University Committee esearch Involving
Human Subjects (UCRIHS)

     
  

DEN/deo

cc: Dr. Janet Alleman

P.S. Extra Copies of your dissertation proposal have been sent in care of Dr.
Alleman to her address.

MSU is an A/[r‘rvnatr've Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

. n‘uflt- ' ah: u')

 

B I 81.1 OGRAPHY

 

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