ABSTRACT A PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION STUDY OF AN OUTDOOR EDUCATION/EXPERIENTIAL CURRICULUM EXPERIMENT OPERATING IN A PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOL By William Harold Martin This research was designed to describe and explain the behavior of students and teachers in a public alternative high school. Employ- ing the case study method, the researcher examined a "school within a school," a subunit of thirty heterogeneous boys and girls who were enrolled in a large comprehensive high school. Most of these students had school defined "problems" related to apathy, vandalism or delin- quency. All were voluntary members. The alternative curriculum was designed to establish an inte- grated group which the two teachers could use to influence student behavior. To help build the group and to promote student interest, the curriculum was centered on intermittent, adventurous outdoor learn- ing expeditions. These activities were both academic and active and they were planned and financed by students. The researcher sought data to answer three guide questions: (1) How did students respond to the curriculum? (2) What processes and organizational characteristics threatened the organization? (3) What processes and organizational characteristics held it together? William Harold Martin The students responded to the program by gradually organizing themselves into an integrated group led by the teachers. Most, but not all,became participating members whose behavior conformed largely to teacher expectations. Group integration developed in stages. During the first stage, students were involved enthusiastically because of their idealized expectations and the program's novelty. Students were rewarded initially by diverse activities and this con- stituted the beginning of group life. The second stage of group life began when students encountered frustration related to unrealistic expectations and to unresolved questions about the amount of control the program could exert on them. In the absence of norms and with only moderately high consensus, the second stage was characterized by divisiveness. The third stage developed as more members became consensually committed. This resulted from teacher efforts to individualize and to diversify the available rewards. As more students received rewards, the consensus grew. By midyear, the group was stable and normatively integrated. The final stage of development occurred when members removed the few non-compliant students. Members of the organization struggled with internal and external problems throughout the year. Some problems related to the unique activities and organizational structure. Frequent out-of- school expeditions inconvenienced some teachers, administrators and parents who were suspicious of the non-traditional nature of the program. William Harold Martin Other problems related to the students' heterogeneity. Dif- fering abilities and interests required the staff to spend much time individualizing instruction and counseling students, activities which drained the staff. Student heterogeneity also led to conflict over demands that certain behaviors be restricted. Necessary group dis- cussions took time away from academic instruction. Nevertheless, elements held the organization strongly together. Most important was the reward/exchange process. Students valued their involvement in the diversity of present-oriented activities which demanded responsibility and could not be monopolized by a few students. Receiving these rewards promoted two types of student responses: (l) They adopted norms to protect the program; and (2) They became obli- gated to the teachers. Teachers accumulated power through this process and became informal as well as formal leaders. They developed legitimate author- ity which, judiciously applied, enabled them to exert unusually strong influence on the behavior of their students. Teachers sustained their leadership by distributing responsibility among students, by effec- tively counseling individuals, and by resolving group problems. They were aided by maturity, wit and skill at active listening. Other elements were important. The small size was significant and so were four mechanisms for controlling conflict: (1) teacher counseling; (2) group sessions; (3) outdoor trips; and (4) the external criticism. Each of these reinforced self-protective norms, promoted cohesiveness, and increased student dependency on staff leadership. A PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION STUDY OF AN OUTDOOR EDUCATION/EXPERIENTIAL CURRICULUM EXPERIMENT OPERATING IN A PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOL By William Harold Martin A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY College of Education 1977 © Copyright by WILLIAM HAROLD MARTIN , 1977 DEDICATION To Carol with love ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS No work of this size could be completed without the sustained help and encouragement of many people. My gratitude is expressed to the students and staff of Project Involve who endured a year of nosy involvement. Appreciative memory is devoted frequently to others, especially Julian and Fred who always kept their distant dreams afire. Chuck Blackman should be thanked along with Gib Mouser who intervened at a critical time without knowing it. Neil, Jack, Myrtle, Bid and Andy kept a balance to the direction of energies and Jo and Pearl were instrumental in producing the bothersome and important final typing. Special appreciation is expressed to three others for whom this document at times represented a trial and a burden. Two of these are my parents, whose considerable and faithful support was indis- pensible and whose happiness will, I suspect, be much improved with the completion of this task. The other person to whom I remain indebted is Philip Cusick, who managed somehow to inflict on me some of the better parts of his perspective on things in the name of research and friendship. Without the help of these three the docu- ment would not be what it has become. Yet, final appreciation must in justice be given to my wife, whose self-denial and support has made this work both possible and worthwhile. Acknowledging what has been taken from the two of us, this book is dedicated to her and her dreams for a better life for all people. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. PURPOSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I Background and Guide Questions . . Conceptual Framework and Methodology Limitations of the Study . Significance . . £00301“) II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE . . . . . . . . . . 12 The Literature on Adolescents in Schools . . . . . 12 The Literature on Outdoor Adventure Programs . . . 32 The Literature on Participant Observer Studies . . . 37 III. METHODOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Conceptual Background . . . . . . . . . . . 47 IV. PRESENTATION OF THE DATA . . . . . . . . . . 70 The Community. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 The School . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Organization of the School . . . . . . . . . 74 The School Curriculum . . . . 77 Rules and Regulations Affecting Student Behavior . . 79 The Origins of Project Involve . . . . . . . . 86 The Goals of Project Involve . . . . . . . . . 88 The Curriculum of Project Involve . . . . 9O Grading and Evaluation: Part of the Curriculum . . 94 Membership in Project Involve . . . . 98 Overview: The Development of an Effective Group . . 101 V. CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 The First Guide Question . . . . . . . . . . 233 The Second Guide Question . . . . . . . . . . 237 The Third Guide Question . . . . . . . . . . 242 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 iv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Purpose There is currently considerable interest and professional dialogue about the role and organizational nature of public secon- dary schools. In the past ten years, in scattered spots around the country, educators have already experimented with alternative experiences and differing organizational structures for high schools. Yet, few descriptive or empirical studies have provided information about what effects these experiments may produce or what problems they may encounter. This research was conducted to provide such information about one alternative school. The study was designed to (l) describe the behavior, interactions and activities among participants in the school and (2) to explain how that behavior was related to the setting in which it occurred. It is the hope of the researcher that the findings may contribute to the substantive knowledge about student behavior in different types of school organ- izations and thereby add useful information to the current discussions about secondary schools. Adopting the case study methodology, the researcher examined a “school within a school," a subunit of thirty students and two teachers who were organizationally separate from the rest of a large suburban high school. This program, called Project Involve in this report, was composed of a heterogenous mixture of T6 and l7 year old boys and girls who were formally enrolled in the school. Some of these students had school defined "problems" and others did not. This alternative school is fairly representative of one type of organization in which the structure and nature of the activities are in part designed to form a new social group characterized by close relationships between teachers and students. But the program was also somewhat unique because the school year was organized around a series of vivid "learning expeditions" to different geo- graphical regions. Formal academic and physical activities were designed to prepare for the trips and to follow upon what the students experienced while there. The staff intended that the new group would develop a specific system of collective, normative behaviors which would value and reward increased student partici- pation in physical activity, social interaction, problem solving and academic achievement. It was the nature of this collective behavior, as it developed over time, which the research sought to describe and explain. Background and Guide Questions The researcher accepted the notion that individual and group behavior is significantly influenced by the social and organizational context in which it occurs. This principle has been long established 1 Yet, despite its widespread accep- in sociology and anthropology. tance as a theoretical base for research on social behavior, there are comparatively few studies which have examined the behavior of students within the social or organizational context of schools. Existing studies do provide some patterns of information, however. Early research on the behavior of youth indicated that adolescents tend to form and attach much importance to informal social groups which are based on social class or on activities of mutual interest.2 Studies which examined the behavior of these groups, as it occurred in schools, indicate that the social/cultural characteristics of the large comprehensive high school tend to encourage student activity in the social group and to discourage involvement in the formal academic activities of the school.3 Socio- logical analyses of the high school as an organization suggest that 1John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1922); George H. Mead, Mind Self and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934); Melville Herskovitz, "Some Further Comments on Cultural Relativism," American Anthropologist 60 (1958); Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality, a Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1966). 2August B. Hollingshead, Elmtown's Youth, the Impact of Social Class on Adolescents (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., l949); C. Wayne Gordon,TThe Social System of the High School (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, l957); and James S. Coleman, The Adolescent Society, The Social Life_9f the Teenager and Its Impact on Education (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 196l). 3Philip A. Cusick, Inside High School, The Student's World (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, l973); and Richard J. Ayling, "An Exploratory Study of the Formal and Informal Relationships differences in role, responsibility and expectations between students and teachers promote a social distance between these two groups which can interfere with learning, encourage student grouping, and be a source of conflict.4 But, with one exception the above cited studies have been conducted within traditionally organized high schools. Alternative schools have often been organized with very different goals or assumptions about learning. For example, teachers in some alter- native schools have deliberately attempted to reduce the social distance between teachers and students, in the hope of stimulating increased student involvement in academic or social activities. The few studies which have examined the nature of student-teacher relationships have found that it was possible to change the inter- actions, but teachers could not alter authority relationships without encountering difficulties.5 Taken collectively, the results of these earlier studies provided guidelines for the inquiry into Project Involve. The researcher sought data which would answer the following questions: Between White and Black Students in a Racially Mixed, Urban, Secon- dary School," Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State Uni- versity, l973. 4Willard Waller, The Sociology of Teaching(New York: Russel and Russel, l932); C. Wayne Gordon, Social System of the High School; Robert F. Dreeban, On What is Learned in School (New York: Addison- Wesley, l958); and Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Rebellion in a High School (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964). 5Center for New Schools, You Can Talk to the Teachers: Student-Teacher Relations in an Alternative High School (Chicago: Center for New Schools, l973). 1) How do students respond to the curricular activities, the demands and expectations they encounter within the alternative school. 2) What activities, processes and organizational character- istics hold the larger organization together? 3) What are the actual or potentially dysfunctional elements which threaten the organization internally or externally? Conceptual Framework and Methodology The research was based upon acceptance of the theory of symbolic social interaction.6 This concept of human behavior is characterized by three central propositions according to Kinch.7 l) The individual's personality--the distinctive patterns of behavior that characterize him as an individual-- results from and is reinforced by his day-to-day association with those about him. 2) The individual's behavior or conduct follows a direction that is the result of reciprocal give and take of interdependent men who are adjusting ‘ to one another. 3) The culture of the group is a reflection of those agreements about pr0per conduct that emerge and are reinforced by man's continual communication as people collectively come to terms with life's con- ditions. As the individual encounters a world of objects, peOple and situations, he selects a course of action towards those things in accordance with his perspective. Perspectives are combinations of beliefs and behaviors which are continually modified by social contact. 6Herbert Blumer, "Society as Symbolic Interaction." from Human Behavior and Social Processes. Edited by Arnold Rose (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, l962); Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality, 1966. 7John W. Kinch, Social Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1973), p. ll. As individuals seeking rewards of esteem, status and recognition interact with others, they tend to fit together their individual lines of action. From this dynamic process, collectivities are formed, acting units which themselves are made up of acting units. These collectivities tend to develop a common frame of reference 8 This collective as they interact within an institutional setting. behavior and frame of reference developed over time by participants in Project Involve was the subject for this research. According to Blumer, the procedure most suitable for studying a social situation is for the researcher to involve himself in the dynamics of the social environment. The participant observer metho- dology allows the researcher to assume the role of participant, to observe behavior as it occurs over time, and experience the setting in which the behavior took place. As described by Geer it allows proximity and yet interrupts the flow of events as little as possible. A participant observer in the field is at once reporter, interviewer and scientist. On the scene he gets the story of an event by questioning participants about what is happening and why. He fills out the story by asking people about their relation to the event, their reac- tions, opinions and its significance. As an interviewer, he encourages an informant to tell his story, or supply an expert account of an organization or group. As scientist, he seeks answers to questions by setting up hyBotheses and collecting data with which to answer t em. 8Howard S. Becker, Blanche Geer, and Everett Hughes, Making the Grade (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1968), p. 28. 9Blanche Geer, “First Days in the Field," from Sociologists at Work, edited by Phillip E. Hammond (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1964), p. 383. One advantage of participant observation is that the metho— dology does not overly prestructure data collection and impose ‘0 Most researchers who use the methodology unimportant questions. guide their inquiry with initial questions, but maintain that hypothesis formation must remain tentative until the behavior and setting are examined. Once in the field, the researcher explores repeated patterns and inconsistencies in the data. From these he forms working hypotheses which are continually tested with new data and accepted or discarded. This process is particularly appropriate when studying a social phenomenon, such as alternative schools, about which little is known. It is reasonable to expect the researcher to uncover unexpected relationships ofinterest which a more distant and prestructured methodology might obscure. In the description and explanation of the behavior of parti- cipants in Project Involve, seven months of field observations were conducted. During this time, the researcher participated in the social, physical and academic activities of the organization, approximating as nearly as possible the role of a student member. Extensive notes on the actions and statements of participating stu- dents and teachers were made daily. These observations were analyzed on a weekly basis to detect patterns and relationships and to indi- cate further directions in which data should be gathered. During the course of the research, inferential concepts and tentative hypotheses 10Bernard Glaser and A. Strauss, Discovery of Grounded Theory (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1967). were drawn from the data to suggest possible relationships between the observed patterns of behavior and the social and organizational setting. Participants were periodically asked to confirm, deny or explain the validity of the inferred relationships. Limitations of the Study There are two standard objections to participant observation studies. The first deals with questions regarding validity and reliability. The response to this depends upon an acceptance by the researcher, and those who examine the results of his efforts, of the principles of symbolic interaction. As the researcher continues to involve himself in the activities and processes of the social situation, his observations concerning acts and matters of importance possess an intimacy seldom available in research. By constant appraisal of his observations and inferences in light of continuing developments, and by formulating additional questions to check the validity of his insight, the researcher is able to continually improve his validity. As a clearer picture of the nature of the social phenomenon emerges, more standardized research methods with higher reliability can be applied. Such methods would be premature, however, until sufficiently good descriptions are collected of unique and isolated situations. . The second objection to participant observer studies is that they deal with unique and perhaps limited samples and may therefore be ungeneralizable. The response to this is that the uniqueness of a social phenomenon need not prevent learning from it to occur through intelligent study. Furthermore, the study of the unusual can often provide information about the common or ordinary. And finally, a degree of sameness transcends human action, making underh standable the behavior and perspectives of other individuals given enough information about the setting. Significance Educators and other social scientists have a standing need for further evidence about the nature of student behavior within a variety of organizational settings. As emphasized by Roberts After decades of studying teacher effectiveness, researchers are just now recognizing the fact that direct observation of classroom interaction is the only productive way to learn what happens. Over a thousand investigations provide few guidelines for teaching effectiveness because teaching behavior was not observed in the classroom. For example, subjective ratings of teachers' qualities are not highly correlated with changes in children or any other measure of learning. Further- more, using student change on standardized tests as a measure for teaching competence is obviously invalid since learners' abilities and motives interact with teacher' efforts.11 This research, then, constitutes an effort to expand the amount of information that specifically examines those interactions where they occur. Its findings, in this sense, contribute to a generalized need for substantive knowledge about student and teacher behavior in school. In another way, the research is a contribution to a more specific need for information. To those with a personal or pro- fessional curiosity about the education of youth, the past several decades have introduced great and often conflicting demands for 1lJoanI. Roberts, Scene of the Battle: Group Behavior in Urban Classrooms (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971 , p. 8. 10 reform of both curricula and structure in the public schools. Alter- native schools have proliferated, with mixed results. Interest in further change in secondary schools is currently high. But, in a recent study of the effectiveness of various types of schooling, Rand Corporation investigators stated that "Research tells us little about how effective these vastly different forms of education might be. . . . Experiments or demonstrations of these different forms of education should be implemented and carefully observed and 12 While acknowledging that the findings of the study evaluated." of Project Involve relate to that specific program, and are limited in generalizability due to the uniqueness of that program, it is that same uniqueness which makes its information valuable. As educators seek to diversify school curricula and the nature of exper- iences made available to youth, more information will be needed about how youth behave and what types of organizations promote learning. This research was designed to meet, in part, that need. And, finally, this study was conducted to provide further information about how individuals and groups respond to planned stressful contact with the wilderness or semi-wilderness environment. During the past decade, there has been a substantial growth in the number of schools and agencies which provide young people with adventuresome and often risk-filled activities. The advocates of such programs suggest that they can stimulate more satisfactory behavior or more personally rewarding lives. But. few studies have 12Harvey Averch, How Effective is Schooling? A Critical Review and Synthesis of Research Findings (Santa Monica, California: The Rand Corporation, 1971). 11 examined the behavior of participants in such programs in an extended and controlled fashion. For this reason, this study should provide evidence to support or refute the claims of those who advocate stressful and adverturesome experiences for young people. CHAPTER II REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE This study was conducted to describe and explain adolescent behavior within an alternative school that used outdoor adventure activities as a major part of its curriculum. The review of literature was therefore drawn from and is organized into three separate areas. The first section deals with studies of the relationship between adolescents and schools, including the very few studies of student behavior in alternative schools. The second section examines the studies of groups which experienced planned outdoor adventure activities. And the last section reviews selected studies conducted in differing social settings using the participant observer methodology. The Literature on Adolescents in Schools From the vast quantity of studies of adolescents and schools, the researcher selected those which considered adolescent behavior as it occurred in differing educational or cultural settings. These were predominately sociological investigations conducted to under- stand how factors inherent in the organization of schools or society tend to promote patterns of common behavior among youth. The early research conducted by Margaret Mead1 conclusively demonstrated that the behavior patterns of youth are not universal, 12 13 but vary from culture to culture. Her two studies in Samoa and New Guinea showed that normal patterns of adolescent behavior were quite different in the two cultures. Depending upon the society, individuals were more influenced by either family rela- tionships or by standards of behavior set by peer and age groups. Mead suggested that both types of influence are experienced by children growing up in America. She felt that grouping young people by age, excluding them from participation in adult activi- ties, and providing many of their experiences in institutionalized settings encouraged the development of behavior, values and interests which were shared by youth but were in some ways alien to adults. The nature of such distinctions between youth and adults has been of continued interest to sociologists. In his study of the Z noted that the concerns of youth and sociology of teaching, Waller teachers were at such variance that these two groups formed what he termed "warring camps." He suggested the existence of a youth culture, promoted in part by the legal and customary requirement that students must spend much of their time in formalized educa- tional institutions. Students bring to the school the norms and values of their neighborhoods and their informal peer groupings, 1Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1928) and Growing Up in New Guinea (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1930). 2Willard Waller, The Sociology of Teaching(New York: Russell and Russell, 1931). 14 making the school the prime focus of their social interactions. To protect this social life from influence or redirection by teachers, students organized themselves as a group. In response, teachers develop countervaling patterns of behavior towards students. 'Because student behavior represents a potential threat to their obligations to promote orderly learning, teachers devote considerable time to mechanics of control, thereby in- advertently affecting the nature and amount of instruction. Waller describes the relationship between students and teachers as one of sustained, unstable tension. He concludes that this potential for conflict is one of the fundamental social character- istics of schools as institutions. Following the publication of Waller's book, researchers conducted several important studies to examine the nature of the student social world. Hollingshead3 studied the social organization of adolescents in a small town high school. His evidence, based upon extensive field work in the school and community, supports the notion that the separation of youth from adult society is significant but not a complete one. He found that students in a single school organized themselves into an amazingly large number of social cliques, each composed of two or more students who engaged in common activi- ties. He observed that membership in the cliques was voluntary and 3August 8. Hollingshead, Elmtown's Youth, The Impact of Social Class on Adolescents (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1949). 15 and informal, with no explicit rules for participation. Yet, each clique possessed a commonness of value and rules for behavior to which individuals strongly conformed. Hollingshead suggested that the cliques filled a need for security, provided a sense of power and belonging, and reinforced individual decision making. In large measure, the composition of the groups mirrored the social and economic organization of the adult society. Thus members of each group tended to occupy similar positions on the social ladder in the community. Additionally, academic achievement was related to social class. Activities of the cliques often came into conflict with parents, the school and the neighborhood. Despite this, both parents and teachers appeared to be largely ignorant of how the groups functioned or of the importance students attached to group membership. Further information about the nature of adolescent social behavior was provided by Gordon4. His intensive study of the social grouping and interactions within a public high school showed that student groups were organized according to age and extra- curricular interests. Academic achievement, of importance to the school staff, was of minimal importance for determining membership or status in the social groups. According to Gordon, involvement in extra-curricular activities occupied the majority of student attention and interest, since it was that system which provided for the 4C. Wayne Gordon, The Social System of the High School (New York: The Free Press, 1957). 16 distribution of prestige and status rewards among the student body. Since at least minimal academic activity and achievement was a prerequisite for participation in other school activities, students met minimal expectations and manipulated teachers in order to reduce academic demands. Gordon concluded that the student's social sub— culture was sufficiently strong to dominate their attention and to insulate them from the academic goals of the school. Extending the study of the student social world beyond a single school, Coleman5 conducted a systematic investigation of the social organization in ten high schools of different size and social class background. Like Gordon, Coleman found that the students maintained active membership in and achieved social status through a complex web of social cliques. He found these cliques to be organized around value themes which differed for boy and girls. High status was associated with participation in athletics, social or extra-curricular activities but it was not associatedwith academic achievement unless such achievement was coupled with talent in the approved activities. Gaining approval of peers was important but teacher and parental approval was not. Coleman suggested that the emergence of separate values and status systems among youth is related to characteristics of modern technological society. Because education now takes place for increasingly extended periods of time in formalized institutions, youth are set apart from the larger 5James S. Coleman, The Adolescent Society (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961). 17 society. "As an unintended consequence, society is confronted no longer with a set of individuals to be trained toward adulthood, but with distinct social systems which offer a united front to the over- tures made by adult society." Coleman suggests that for schools to direct the behavior of youth effectively towards adult sanctioned activity, they must provide rewards of activity, status and achieve- ment which are as equally desirable to students as those provided by the youth culture. Other sociologists have agreed that their social world occupies much of student attention. But, there is disagreement about the amount of distance between that and the adult world. Epperson6 agrees that the contemporary adolescent is less involved with family life than preceding generations. Yet, he does not believe that the influence of either the school or the social world is able to dis- attach youth from the cultural values and behavioral norms of the family. Epperson characterizes youth as possessing multiple loyalties to both family and peer groups. And this view is supported by the findings of a study by Elkins and Westley7 who investigated the rela- tions between adult and adolescent values. They found sufficient differences to suggest psychological tension between adults and adolescents but enough similarities to suggest cultural continuity. 6David C. Epperson, "A Reassessment of the Indices of Parental Influences on the Adolescent Society," American Sociological Review, Vol. 29 (February, 1964), pp. 93-96. 7Frederick Elkins and William Westley, "The Myth of Adolescent Culture," American Sociological Review, Vol. 20 (December, 1955), pp. 680-6842 18 Nevertheless, the involvement of students in social cliques does appear to occupy a large part of Studenttime and activity while in school. Cusick8 conducted a participant Observerstudy of the activity of such groups in a traditionally organized secondary school. He found that the school provided only minimal amounts of the type of rewards that Coleman suggested were important if schools wished to reduce the distance between the adolescent subculture and the formal organizational goals. Teachers spent considerable amounts of student time in maintenance and supervisory activities, distracting from instruction and forcing students to become passive spectators. When instruction did occur it was usually dominated by the teachers, sub- ject matter oriented, and dyadic in nature. The students gave teachers minimal complaince and redirected the majority of their attention to the activity in their social groups. Rather than pro- vide students with activities which they valued, the school,. by default, reinforced the attractiveness of membership in peer groups. Cusick described the overall organization of the student social world as a fragmented one. Rather than a unified perspective, he found that groups maintained separate perspectives and seldom interacted. This separateness among groups was itself a potential source of conflict within schools. Cusick's and Ayling's9 later 8Philip A. Cusick, Inside High School (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973). 9Philip Cusick and Richard Ayling, An Exploratory Study of the Formal and Informal Relationships Between White and Black Students in a Racially Mixed, Urban SecondaryASchool, U.S.O.E. Grant No. 0E6- 5-72-0036(509) Project No. l—E-179, l973. 19 study in a biracial high school found that real or potential inter- group conflict forced the school staff to reduce even further the amount of activities which could provide the rewards suggested by Coleman. Again, by default, this reinforced the importance of the social group as the only available source of status and activity. As the school administration instituted more rules and regulations, relationships between students and teachers became more impersonal and the organization became more formalized and bureaucratic. In his analysis of the traditionally organized school, Dreeban1O suggests that the social-cultural characteristics of the school do tend to separate students from formal academic involvement, but that these same characteristics are nevertheless functional. He states that schools exist as organized institutions to promote both knowledge aquisition and to bring about the psychological and behavioral changes in youth necessary for their successful future conduct in adult society. To accomplish the dual sets of goals, the school possesses, according to Dreeban, two curricula. The formal curricula is designed to promote knowledge attainment. But, the second curricula, embodied in role relationships, structural char- acteristics and methods of instruction, is a hidden curriculum which serves to socialize youth to adult behaviors. The hidden curriculum contributes to the learning of four adult norms: inde- pendence, achievement, universalism and specificity. Independence 10Robert Dreeban, On What is Learned in School (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1968). 20 is learned by encountering tasks and testing procedures which can only be completed by individual effort. Achievement is stressed by the competitive and formalized evaluation system and the limited reward structure. Universalism is a norm which requires people to interact with others as equal members of categories rather than as individuals. The school contributes to the learning of this norm through the type of relationship between staff and students. These tend to be impersonal and based upon authority and role differences. Finally, specificity is a norm which requires people to limit their interactions to those which concern the specialized tasks of the organization. The process of schooling, from elementary through secondary school, promotes progressively narrowing interactions based increasingly on tasks and areas of discrete specialization. According to Dreeban, the central activities of both the formal and the hidden curriculum are impersonal and future oriented, alien to the types of relationships and activities naturally sought by youth. As such, a sizeable number of student clients of the school are placed in the position of receiving services which they do not value or desire. This would tend to separate those students from the teachers and the school as an organization. The ultimate result is sustained instability and conflict between them. It was the nature of that conflict and the social and 11 psychological factors promoting it which Stinchcombe studied. 11Arthur I. Stinchcombe, Rebellion in a High School (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964). 21 He states that the student teacher relationship is one of the few authority relations in modern society which is consistently character- ized by expressive alienation and overt rebellion. His data, gathered in a single high school, indicated that rebellious behavior is encouraged in certain groups of students by characteristics of schooling and society. Such behavior is a rejection of the school itself, promoted by three identifiable factors. The first is the inability of the school to offer any desirable status beyond high school to some students. Those students who are unable to relate present activity to a desirable future status are most likely to rebel against the school. Secondly, those students which are con- sistently punished by the official grading and the informal status system attached to different curricula were found to reject both the standards and the authorities who applied them. Finally, some stu- dents rebel against the doctrine of adolescent inferiority. This refers to the visible social fact that teachers and other adults openly possess the symbols of freedom and consumption. Youth, by virtue only of age and status, are denied these symbols. Stinchcombe felt that these sources of conflict lay within the society itself and occurred in the school because it was the agent of socialization for that society. As such, he believed that there was little the school could change, in curricula or structure, to reduce that conflict. "For the reasons that the school cannot promise much is that the society cannot promise much." 22 12 did not see the source of student alienation from Bidwell school to be related to the larger society. He related it to the organizational nature of schools which he described as fundamentally bureaucratic and characterized by: 1) a division of labor, 2) dis- tinct role separation between staff and students, 3) hierarchic ordering of offices with staff occupying high offices and students in lower ones, 4) a limited reward structure, 5) routinized activity, 6) a formalized system of rules and regulations with accompanying sanctions and 7) a task orientation with universalistic expectations which apply equally to all students. Bidwell suggests that taken collectively, these characteristics tend to allign students as a loosely organized group against the school. He felt that there were few ways to reduce successfully the distance between teachers and students or to bring the students closer to goals of the organ- ization. He suggested that efforts to deformalize or debureaucra- tize the organization and establish closer relationships between students and teachers would inevitably present severe internal problems for the school. The use of punitive grading was seen to have little value for promoting greater student involvement with academic activities. And the only avenue for increasing such involvement lay, in Bidwell's estimationsin modification of the curriculum to correspond more closely to the naturally occurring interests of students- 12C. Bidwell, "School as Organizations" in J. March (ed.) Handbook of Organizations (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965). 23 In the past decade, educators have initiated numerous innova- tions in both the organizational characteristics or the school and with its curriculum. Most of these efforts were designed to increase academic achievement, but some were attempts to reduce consistently problematic_ conflict between students and the staff. Research data from these experiments substantiates Bidwell's prediction that changes in the relationship between students and the school could not be accomplished without considerable difficulty. Smith and Keith13 conducted a participant observer study in a newly Opened and innovative elementary school. This school was designed to have democratic leadership, shared authority, and coopera- tive decision making. Its purpose was to provide individualized instruction and to promote close relationships between teachers and students. The researchers found that the egalitarian authority relationships led to inneffective problem solving and increased con- flict between staff and students. The individualized instruction, requiring personal scheduling, led to great complexity of planning, misestimation of pupil skills and ultimately to aimlessness and confusion among pupils. Smith and Keith concluded that the problems of the school were fundamentally related to the amount of change attempted and an inadequate understanding of the unanticipated consequences of such change. The overburdening of the system, and poor functioning of the administration reduced the probability of success of the program and led to high teacher turnover. 13Louis Smith and Pat Keith, Anatomy of an Educational Innova- tion (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1971). 24 Gross, Giacquinta and Bernstein14 conducted a similar par— ticipant observer study of an attempt to implement an individualized instruction curriculum in an urban elementary school. The researchers identified a number of unanticipated consequences which promoted frustration of both teachers and students. Individualizing instruc- tion increased the need for materials and planning. The chief source of difficulty lay in the lack of an effective feedback system to keep teachers and administrators supplied with information about needs and problems. In the absence of effective communications, the organiza- tion became fragmented and conflict arose between staff, students and administration. Because of the inability of the administrators to solve internal problems, the experiment was largely a failure. Palonsky15 investigated student social behavior within a secondary school which developed a flexible schedule with a sizeable amount of unstructured free time for students. This organizational change was enacted to give students more responsibility for planning and engaging in independent learning activities. Palonsky found that students devoted the additional time, not to the intended academic activity, but to the activity in their informal social cliques. The 14N. Gross, J. Giacquinta, and M. Bernstein, Implementing Organizational Innovations (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1971. 15Stuart Palonsky, A Participant Observer Investigation of the Students and Their Social World in an Urban Integrated and Inno- vative High School, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1974. 25 experiment resulted in a sufficient increase in attendance problems and a simultaneous decline in academic performance among a sizeable part of the student body that it was abandoned at mid year. Palonsky's explanation was that the school was unable to offer academic rewards which were more attractive than those offered by the active, power- ful but fragmented student body. Studies of other organizational and curricular innovations provide additional information. The recent growth of alternative schools has represented, in most cases, efforts to make schooling more personalized and flexible, thus hopefully producing greater student involvement. But, no consistent set of findings has yet emerged. Little research has examined the abundant differences in method, organization and setting of these schools. A few studies have been conducted in schools which share the organizational characteristics described by Deal,16 (1) Teachers, administrators parents, community members involved in the learning process, (2) Wide variation in the curriculum material, dictated largely by student interest, (3) Emphasis on affective learning, (4) Methods vary as greatly as the curriculum, (5) Emphasis on doing and experi- encing, (6) Wide variation in the location of learning; could be private homes, libraries, businesses or forests, (7) Learning takes place with little regard to scheduling - no standardized segmentation into separate classes. 16Terrence E. Deal, "An Organizational Explanation of the Failure of Alternative Secondary Schools," Educational Researcher, Vol. 4, No. 4, April, 1975. 26 Numerous schools with these goals or characteristics have been set up in the past decade. Generally they have sought to promote close relationships between staff and students, to share decision making, and to have students assume a more active role in planning their Own learning activities. Many of these schools operated for a year or two and then closed. 17 addressed himself to the problem of why so many of Argyris these alternate schools had failed to fulfill the hopes of their innovators. He found no evidence to suggest that students who attended alternative schools learned more or less than students in traditional schools. Argyris described a characteristic series of behaviors in the schools which failed. The schools began with good will. As problems accumulated, cliques formed and came into open conflict. Though administrators wished originally to initiate democratic problem solving, these techniques proved inadequate to resolve the conflict and provide needed planning. The staff was then forced to assume traditional teaching or administrative roles or the school dissolved. Students had failed to become involved in organi- zational planning and they had failed to assume responsibility for their own learning. Argyris traced much of the school's problems to a failure in communication and a clinging to traditional roles. 18 A similar analysis was made by Deal vNu) based his conclusions on the results from three participant observer studies conducted in 17Chris Argyris, "Alternative Schools: A Behavioral Analysis," Teachers College Record, Vol. 75, No. 4, May, 1974. 18 Deal, op. cit. 27 alternative schools. He described a characteristic three stage cycle in the life of an alternative school. During the first stage, students and staff experienced euphoria over the novelty and freedom of the alternative environment. Shortly, in the absence of teacher directed curriculum, Stage Two began, which he termed the psychic upheaval stage. This period was characterized by normless confusion among stu— dents, crisis counseling between staff and students, and overwork of teachers. Organizational problems led to demoralization and dissat- isfaction among all participants. Without role separation, standards 0f directions or leadership, the staff faced the choice of reestab- lishing traditional authority or dissolving in leaderless confusion. A third option found in one school, was to find an organizational middle ground which preserved the individualistic freedom and curri— cular flexibility, but still retained a relatively traditional system of authority and decision making. Research conducted by the Center for New Schools19 investi- gated whether informal student and teacher relationship could be maintained over time in an alternative school. The school they investigated had deliberately sought to alter the norms of specificity and universalism identified by Dreeban. They found that students and teachers could interact on topics related to both subject matter and personal matters. Teachers could serve as counselors and students 19Center for New Schools, You Can Talk To The Teacher§_ (Chicago: Center for New Schools, 1973). 28 could receive highly individualized, non-universalistic attention. The school they described had fewer rules and regulations but there were unanticipated problems which remained through the year. Personalized academic counseling attention led to teacher fatigue. Planning was made much more complex and some teachers were unable to ad0pt newly demanded teaching styles. The increase of personal attention and mutual knowledge between teachers and students raised the vulner- ability of school members to each other. 20 conducted in the same school shed Wilson's earlier study further light on how alternative schools could resolve what are apparently common organizational problems and still remain alterna- tive. The school was initiated to involve students in making organizational decisions. Yet, over time decision making was yielded to the teachers. for a variety of reasons. and the scheme proved unworkable. Though they assumed organizational leadership, teachers were still able to maintain individualized learning and to continue close student/teachers relationshps with minimal conflict. What resulted was a teacher led organizational which maintained some of the non-bureaucratic characteristics mentioned by Bidwell. There is additional evidence that changing curriculum or other organizational characteristics of the school can promote 20Steven Wilson, A Participant Observer Study of An Attempt to Institute Student Decision Making in an Alternative School, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1972. 29 2] found changes in student discipline and academic performance. Cook that group building activities and role playing conducted in one class- room was followed by changes in the social organization and activities of importance in informal student cliques. Following the activities student attention was refocused from extracurricular activities to academic involvement. Other studies of non-traditional curricula have been chiefly evaluation reports for alternative schools which designed special curricula for underachieving students. Evidence gathered by Johnson 22 shows that achievement as measured and Parker, Sulack and Nelson by nationally normed tests was improved. Attitude tests showed a general improvement in attitude towards school. Where measured, students showed improvement in self-concepts. All three studies showed much improved attendance among students who had formally demonstrated poor attendance records. Yet, the evidence from these later evaluations was not gathered by experimental means and the results are therefore open to some question. Furthermore, no examinations of the internal organizational characteristics were conducted to reveal the sociological and psychological variables which promoted the changes found in students. Several of these 2ILA. Cook, "An Experimental Sociolgraphic Study of a Stratified 10th Grade Class," American Sociological Review, Vol. 10, 1945. ' 2Zoavid L. Johnson and Jackson Parker, "Walden III, An Alternative High School Survives Evaluation Quite Nicely, Thank You,"; Shirley M. Sulack, "The Turnabout: From Boredom to Interest," and Ralph T. Nelson, "FOCUS: An Alternative Model That Works," all found in Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. LVI, No. 9, May 1975. 30 reports recommended that anthropological observer studies should be conducted to describe the organizational characteristics and processes, seeking their relationship to student behavior. That such information is important is demonstrated by the research conducted on the social psychology of educational groups. This literature was systematically reviewed by Bany and Johnson,23 24 and by Roberts.25 They establish that the Schmuck and Schmuck behavior of students in school, the relationship between students and teachers and the nature of student involvement with subject matter are affected by social factors operating within individual classrooms or programs. Each classroom or program, possesses unique role relationships, teachers expectations, customary modes of enforcing discipline, and manners of instruction which promote differing norms among students. Differences in classroom norms have been demonstrated to have an effect on student achievement, student perceptions of teachers and school, patterns of interaction among students, as shown in the studies by Brookover and Erickson26 27 and Roberts. In theory at least, individual teachers and administrators have some latitude to manipulate these factors 23Mary Bany and Lois Johnson, Classroom Group Behavior (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964). 24Richard A. Schmuck and Patricia A. Schmuck, Groungrocesses in the Classroom (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown and Company, 1971). 25Joan Roberts, The Scene of the Battle (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971). 26Wilbur Brookover and Edsel Erickson, Society Schools and Learning (East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 1969). 27 Roberts, op. cit. 31 to achieve desired educational goals. However, since these factors are situationally specific, information about them can best be gathered by direct observation of their occurrence in the specific social settings. It is clear from the sociological and social psychological studies of adolescents in both traditional and non-traditionally organized schools that much remains to be learned about adolescent behavior within specific contexts. Yet, some generalization can be made from a review of the literature. 1. Adolescents tend to engage in voluntary memberships in informal social cliques which occupy much of their time and attention both in school and out. These groups seem to be organized on the basis of age, socio- economic status and interest. 2. These cliques provide valued rewards of status and activity and serve as referent groups for their members. As such they strongly influence member behavior. 3. According to most researchers, these groups collectively form an adolescent subculture which rejects adult authority and is specifically problemmatic for teachers. The attractiveness of activities in the individual groups appears to draw student attention away from the formal academic activities of the school. 4. Efforts to alter the structure or the curriculum in an effort to promote increased student involvement in academic activity seem generally to encounter organiza- tional problems and have often proven to be of limited success. Student involvement in decision making within the formal organization has been generally ineffective. Efforts to provide individualized instruction and per- sonalized informal relationships between teachers and students can be successful, but they place an additional burden of leadership on teachers and administrators. 32 The Literature on Outdoor Adventure Programs In both the United States and Europe there has been a nearly a century long history of programs designed to bring adolescents into contact with the outdoors. Advocates of outdoor experiences for youth have contributed some research to substantiate their claims that such activity can promote change in self regard and behavior. Like the studies of student social behavior, the research instrumentation, treatments and findings have been varied. Much of the research has examined changes in the self concept of subjects who attended a week long outdoor educational experience 28 for elementary children. Beker found that the self concept of school students became more positive following a week long camp experi- ence. A control group of similar students did not experience the same 29 3O shift. Similar results were obtained by Davidson and Cragg. Cragg found an increase in enthusiasm for classroom learning by 6th graders 28Jerome Beker, The Relationship Between School Camping Social Climate and Change in Children's Self Concepts and Patterns of Social Relationship, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1959. 29Morris Davidson, Changes in Self Concepts and Sociometric Status of Fifth and Sixth Grade Children As a Result of Two Different School Camp Curricula, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Berkley, California, University of California, Berkley, 1965, DA 26,7,3752. 30Nadine Cragg. An Evaluation of the Year Round School Camp of Long Beach, California, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan, 1953, DA 13,3,333. 33 following a camping experience. Change in teacher behavior also was promoted by outdoor education experiences, as evidenced by Hauserman's 31 1.32 study and one by Heppe Research on a mixture of programs for older youth have 33 found that a work/learn demonstrated equally mixed findings. Cole camp for potential drop-out adolescent boys produced desirable changes in behavior and attitudes, but had mixed effects on increasing the 34 found that a summer camp exper- holding power of the school. Hunt ience for secondary school girls did not result in consistent improve- ment in self concept. Using both controls and experimental groups to study the self concepts of high school boys from low income inner city families, Alexander35 found that a six week summer camping experience did not produce positive changes in the experimental group. 3IBilly D. Hauserman, The Effect of an Orientation to the Outdoors on Teaching Behavior in the Classroom, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Buffalo, New York, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1963, DA 26,9,5264. 32Ruth Heppel, Determininnghanges College Students Undergo in Selected Categories As A Result of the School Camping_Experience, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Detroit, Michigan, Wayne State University, 1964, DA 25,10,5787. 33Roy Cole, An Evaluation Study of An Extramural School Camping For Adolescent Boys Identified As Potential School Leavers, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Detroit, Michigan, Wayne State University, 1957, DA 18,4,1299. 34Burl Hunt, An Analysis of the Influence of Summer Camp; Experience in Developing or Changing Certain Behavior Patterns of Secondary School Pupils, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Mississippi, 1960, DA 21,3,561. 35Albert Alexander, The Effect of a Residential Campipg_ Experience on the Self Concept of Boys From Low Income Families, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Boston, Massachusetts, Boston University School of Education, 1969, DA 31,629A. 34 But Washburn36 found that a two week camping experience for 5th to 12th grade students with identified low self concepts significantly raised their test performance and led to improved behavior in school. Of special interest to this study were the investigations of groups which experienced vivid and highly adventurous activities in the outdoors. Stimulated in part by the growth of environmental interest and awareness, and in part by several private organizations, numerous wilderness programs lasting from a weekend to four weeks are now widely available for people of all ages. Some of these educational ideas and specific wilderness activities had been deliberately incorporated in the school curriculum which this study investigated. Consequently, the review of this outdoor research is particularly of interest. 37 found that a special program of survival training Adams for emotionally disturbed and institutionalized adolescents signifi- cantly improved the self concepts of these participants as measured on a reliable self concept scale. Additional measures of personality and mental health indicated significant positive gains in ego 36Leona Washburn, Summary Report: "ICS" ESEA Title III, Office of Education Grant 3584-4329, 1967-1970, 1970. 37Walter Adams, Survival Training: Its Effects on the Self Concept and Selected Personality Factors of Emotionally Dip: turbed Adolescents, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Provo, Utah, Utah State University, 1970, DA 31,(1-8), 388. 35 strength and reduction in level of neuroticism. A follow-up of this 38 found that a study would have proven additionally useful. Smith three week wilderness program with highly stressful adventurous activities had significant positive effects on the self esteem of high school junior boys and girls, when compared to a matched control group which did not experience the activity. However, the results did not prove durable after 6 months had passed. Presumably, reimmer- sion in the original social and family environment acted to reduce the effects produced by the program. 39 Kelly and Baer examined the effects of a severely stress- ful 26 day wilderness experience on a group of institutionalized adolescent delinquent boys. Their results showed that the recidivism rate among these boys was significantly reduced. A similar wilder- 4‘? ness program was studied by Gillette. He found that it produced mixed and limited attitudinal changes among adolescent and adult 41 participants, as measured on an attitudinal survey. Wetmore .found 38Mary Anne Smith, An Investigation of the Effects of an Outward Bound Experience on Selected Personality Factors and Behaviors of High School Juniors, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Eugene, Oregon, University of Oregon, 1971, DA 32-6141A. 39Francis Kelly and Daniel Baer, Severe Physical Challenge, Background Variables and Recidivism for Male Adolescent Delinquents, Office of Juvenile Delinquency, Children's Bureau, U.S. Office of Health, Education and Welfare, Grant No. 66013, Research Report. 40James Gillette, A Study of Attitude Changes as a Result of the Outward Bound Mountain Ski School, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Greeley, Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, 1971. 41Reagh Wetmore, The Influence of the Outward Bound School Experience on the Self Concept of Adolescent Boys, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Boston, Massachusetts, University of Boston School of Education, 1972, DA 32-1498A. 36 that a group of high school boys who had experienced the same wilder- ness activities for the same amount of time had significantly improved self concepts at the completion of the program. However, when retested six months later, the changes again did not prove durable. Examination of the research on planned outdoor experiences for youth yields a mixture of findings. Evidently, such experiences can produce positive effects on both self concept and behavior in certain circumstances. The wilderness programs are of particular interest and they seem to reveal some consistent findings. In all of the wilderness programs subjects were removed from their community for an intense but compact experience of relatively short duration. No program lasted more than four weeks and none included any follow up or reinforcing activities. When tested immediately after com- pleting the experience, most adolescents seemed to demonstrate relatively consistent gains on self concept tests and positive changes in behavior. However, when retested after six months, the earlier gains were not found to be durable. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that the intensive experience occurs in such an alien environment, for such a short time, that participants are unable to sustain the impact of the experience when they return to their original social environment. Upon becoming reinvolved in family and social cliques, with their familiar norms and status relationships, the social Inilieu acted to erase the changes and reestablish older behavior patterns. In short, if the person returns to his original social environment, changes brought about by the wilderness experiences may not be sustained. 37 In the program investigated in this research, there were some structural differences which could be of importance. Rather than having an intense, single block of wilderness experience, the staff designed a series of four week-long outdoor expeditions which occurred intermittently through a school year. Furthermore, many parts of the in-school curriculum were designed to coincide with the outdoor components, preparing for the adventure or following up on what had been experienced. Deliberate attempts were made by the staff to encourage students to integrate what they learned on the trips with what they were experiencing in their social inter- action with friends and family. The strength of the participant observer methodology becomes evident in this case. The researcher was present to describe student behavior as it occurred from the beginning of the school year. Records were made prior to, during and following trips and continued throughout the year. It allowed the necessary proximity to student and teacher behavior and it provided access to the varied settings in which activity took place. Literature on Participant Observation Studies The methodological approach was originally developed by anthropoligists during the Nineteenth Century to conduct studies of the social organization within primitive societies. Analysis was made following direct observation and recording of behavior within the on-going cultural systems. Contemporary students of social behavior, including an increasing number of educational 38 researchers, frequently rely upon the methodology when information is desired about group behavior, collective perspectives, social interaction or the conditions which promote or affect them. The settings in which these studies have been made have varied widely. Streetcorner Society42 published by Whyte in 1943 was an early sociological classic which described the political and social organization of an Italian neighborhood in urban Boston. Whyte sought answers to questions about the exchange of rewards and the maintenance of power within the community. What makes a man a big shot and by what means is he able to dominate the little guys? To answer that question, let us watch Tony Cataldo. He is a prominent racketeer, and he is concerned, among other things, with controlling the corner boys. How does he go about it? And let us watch George Ravello, Cornerville's state senator, as he organizes his political campaign. He needs the support of the corner boys. How does he get it? In order to gather his data, Whyte lived in the community, learned to speak the Italian language, and participated in the social and political activities of the community. He took care to avoid influencing developments and sought to report the behavior of community members without judging their activities. He described a series of reciprocal relationships between politicians, racka— teers, legitimate businessmen and social groups. This coalition acted as a loose and personalized organization which met the social and economic needs of individuals within the community. Little understood by outsiders, it successfully functioned to reduce violence, provide jobs and offer social cohesion. 42William F. Whyte, Streetcorner Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943), p. 39 In 1958, Herbert Gans43 also conducted a similar partici- pant observer study of an urban Italian neighborhood which was characterized by extreme poverty. His main research purpose was to study a slum and to understand the way of life of the low income people who lived there. He found their life to be a highly person- alized, distinct and independent subculture. It placed high value on peer group sociability and on maintaining extended family relationships. Despite its disadvantages, Gans believed that lower class Italian culture was an understandable response to the limited opportunities and extensive deprivations which its people faced. The high value they attached to interpersonal relationships filled understandable needs for personal status and human care when such needs were unmet by the larger society. Gans was concerned that most urban planners and social agency personnel possessed natural social biases stemming from this middle class background. He intended that his study should revise what he regarded as the inadequate and innacurate understanding of the social organization and values of lower class life. 44 employed the methodology The anthropologist Oscar Lewis for his ethnological study of the daily life and world view within five Mexican families. Each family had made the social and economic transition from rural peasant society to the urban life of Mexico 43Herbert J. Gans, The Urban Villagers, Groups and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1962). 44Oscar Lewis, Five Families (New York: The New American Library, Inc., 1959). 40 City. Though he selected only a very small sample, Lewis had care- fully chosen each for the representativeness of their response to the problems encountered during social migration. By in-depth sampling, his research possessed an increased sensitivity and humanness not generally available in survey or statistical techniques. He described the different strategies with which individuals and collectivities coped with their new technological and materialistic environment. Lewis found that in cultural transition, the traditional fabric of religious values and nuclear family cohesion could not remain stable and they were ultimately replaced by varying degrees of instability, disorganization and malaise. Throughout his career, Lewis has employed the same anthro- pological field methodology to investigate the family life of Hispanic peoples. In his later book, La Vidafushe studied the problems of adjustment and the characteristics of life within extended Puerto Rican families living both in New York and in Puerto Rico. Lewis again choose the techniques of observing family clusters to avoid the tendency of statistical studies to obscure the human quality of individuals and their lives. His methodology was a combination of interview, questionnaire, participant observation and biography designed to accumulate a detailed description of households, their division of labor, family relationships, and political and religious views. Though to outsiders the families would appear to lack organ- ization stability or direction, Lewis described predictably regular 45Oscar Lewis, La Vida (New York: Random House, 1965). 41 patterns of behavior which were sustained from generation to genera- tion. These patterns, he believed, constitute a present-oriented, immediately gratifying culture of poverty which is an adaptation to the severity of the economic and social conditions surrounding the families. It is an effort to cope with the sense of hopeless- ness and despair which develop from the realization that achieving success within the larger society is improbable. A similar study of people in poverty was conducted by Liebow to examine the daily life and social organization among black men living in a poor neighborhood in Washington, D.C. During his seven months of field observations, Leibow sought to understand their life in the terms in which it occurred. His purpose was to, describe the man as he sees himself, to compare what he says with what he does, and to explain his behavior as a direct response to the conditions of lower class Negro life rather than a mute compliance with historical or cultural imperatives. Among the men, he found a culture of poverty similar to the one ' 47 It was characterized by low levels of aspira- described by Lewis. tion, a sense of hopelessness, a tolerance for psychopathology and a sense of resignation to a bleak future. The relationships among people were present oriented and highly personal, providing immediate pleasure in the absence of promising future rewards for delaying gratification. Liebow saw this cultural orientation as a reasonable 46Elliot Liebow, Tallyie Corner (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1967), p. 10. 47 Lewis, op. cit., p. 42 response by people born with initial physical or emotional disabili- ties, who had met a series of life experiences which demanded or encouraged little and provided even less. Although he was a white and middle class researcher, Liebow encountered no problems in gaining acceptance within the lower class black subculture. Accep- tance depended, in the final analysis, on engaging over time in the activities and interaction of those he wished to study. Another participant observation study was conducted by 48 and an unusual collection of former criminals who gathered Ianni data about the organization of crime in metropolitan New York. Ianni suggests that organized crime provides goods and services desired by the larger society and is therefore a functional and integral part of the American economic system. As a career it appeals to youth in ghetto areas because, in the absence of socially approved avenues to upward mobility, it provides a perilous escape from poverty. He found that criminal leaders possess their own internal social system with shared beliefs, values consensus, and an accompanying system for passing this perspective from generation to generation. But upward mobility among the older immigrant groups and a simultaneous growth in power among current ghetto people, has caused the ethnic leadership to pass form the hands of the Italian, Jewish and Irish groups to newly growing personalized networks comprised of blacks and Hispano-Americans. These newer networks were still loosely developed and based upon childhood gang member- ship, kinship or common prison experiences. However, they were 48Francis A. J. Ianni, Black Mafia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974). 43 becoming increasingly cooperative and organized to protect mutual financial interests in a highly competitive and hostile environment. Ianni regarded the consolidation of the units into the older pyrimidal organizations built by the Italians and Irish as inevitable. Using participant observation, Goffman49 analyzed the social world of inmates in total care psychiatric hospitals. Prior to his study, nearly all information about patients in mental institutions had been gathered with psychological or psychiatric techniques of inquiry. Studies of the sociology of the institutions themselves had only been conducted from the point of view of custodial per- sonnel, nurses, doctors or administrators. But Goffman reasoned that patients, like any group of people would develop their own social perspective, meaningful in terms of their institutional life. He found that when the patients entered the institutions they were collectively treated in such a way that any sense of self-determin- ation was eliminated. In response, the inmates accomodated them- selves to their new conditions of role and responsibility with a two stage adjustment. At first, they gave minimal compliance to the demands of the staff and institutional life. This was subse- quently followed by the development of techniques to work the insti- tution to the inmates own advantage. Goffman found that these secondary adjustments were carried out with intelligent self-deter- mination and resulted in a reasonable system of mutual exhange and reward between inmates and staff. 49Erving Goffman, Asylums (Garden City, New York: Double- day and Company, 1961). 44 Participant observation is becoming increasingly popular for the study of educational institutions. Educators have come to realize that schools are complex social systems, possessing multiple perspectives, differing role relationships and structural charac- teristics which pattern the behavior of participating individuals. Information about such social characteristics can and is being gained from participant observation investigations. 52 sought to learn the nature of Becker, Geer and Hughes the undergraduate student perspective on academic work at a large public university. In orderto gather information, they intermittently participated for nearly two years in the network of student social relationships. Like Coleman's study of high school students,53 they found that students maintained multiple interests divided into an academic sphere.an area of residential and extracurricular activities,and an area of friendship, dating and courtship activi- ties. Academic demands from the faculty were only partially met because of the involvement students devoted to the other areas. They state that The view that interaction between teacher and student affects students values and personalities fails, finally, to give sufficient weight to the organizational context in which that interaction takes place. As we have seen, the system of grades and credits provides an institutional framework that instructors can use to reward those who learn to meet academic requirements and punish those who do not . . . We do not argue that nothing goes on in 52Becker, Geer, Hughes, Meking the Grade. 53Coleman, The Adolescent Scoiety. 45 college classes beyond the exchange of proper performance for a grade. But we do emphasize that the exchange of performance for grade is, formally and institutionally, what the class is all about. Changes in personality or values may indeed take place, but they are not directly affected by the institutionalized system of value and reward.54 Becker, Geer and Hughes concluded that students balanced their invol- vement in the different areas according to the rewards offered by the activity. It was the system of alternative rewards that sets the stage for the separation of students from increased academic involvement. They suggested that, since universities would not be able to alter the system of extracurricular and personal activity, they should reduce the current emphasis on competitive grading to increase the attractiveness of academic activity. Participant observation studies have been conducted within schools to examine relationships other than the behavior of students. 55 investigated the role of teachers in a small New England McPherson elementary school. Seeking information about how teachers viewed themselves, what systems of status they maintained, and how new teachers became socialized to the school, she became an elementary school teacher herself. She selected the methodology in order to experience the expectations, demands, constraints and pressures which new teachers would encounter over time. She found that the enthusiasm of new teachers was met with cynicism and sarcasm. 54Becker, Geer, Hughes, Making the Grade, p. 79-80. 55Gertrude H. McPherson, Small Town Teacher (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1972). 46 Attempts to innovate or improve teaching were held in restraint by the expectations and demands of parents and administrators. Past histories of unachieved wishes had worked to dim the enthusiasm of the older teachers for change. New teachers were discouraged from speaking of their successes since that threatened older teachers who were unwilling to adopt new methods or expend further energy. New staff was isolated from the older groups until they too had begun to adopt the cynicism and had accepted the notion of minimal expectations. In time, of course, the newcomers either joined the prevailing system