The Inventive Mind: Portraits of Rural Alaska Teachers.

183 Pages·2007·2.41 MB·English

DOCUMENT RESUME
ED 302 365
RC 016 890
AUTHOR McDiarmid, G. Williamson; And Others
TITLE
The Inventive Mind: Portraits of Rural Alaska
Teachers.
INSTITUTION
Alaska Univ., Fairbanks. Center for Cross-Cultural
Studies.
SPONS AGENCY
Alaska Council on Science and Technology, Juneau.
PUB DATE
Jan 88
NOTE
183p.
PUB TYPE
Reports - Descriptive (141)
EDRS PRICE
MF01/PC08 Plus Postage.
Alaska Natives; Elementary Secondary Education;
DESCRIPTORS
Interviews; Perso :ial Narratives; Profiles; *Rural
Education; Surveys; *Teacher Characteristics;
*Teacher Effectiveness; Teacher Role; Teaching
Experience
IDENTIFIERS *Alaska; Native Americans
ABSTRACT
This series of case studies profiles six teachers
thought by colleagues, students, and the rural Alaska communities
they serve to be good teachers. The case stuaies reported here
describe the techniques that make these teachers responsive and
perceptive in their interactions with Alaska Native students. The
names of the teachers and the villages have been changed to avoid
inadvertently embarrassing the teachers or their students. The
studies report that effective rural teachers learn about the context
of their community and use this knowledge in their teaching. The
local context consists of social, economic, political, historical,
and linguistic aspects, all of which influence teaching and learning.
Other contextual influences are indirect, such as the knowleu.ge,
skills, and values that students bring with them to school. An
appendix includes these sections:
(1) Identifying Effective Teachers;
(2) Instruments; (3) Collecting Our Data;
(4) Analyzing the Data;
(5)
Dispositions; (6) Dispositions toward the Context; (7) Limitations of
the Portraits. (ALL)
Roproeuctions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made
from the original document.
*
THE INVENTIVE MIND:
PORTRAITS OF
RURAL ALASKA TEACHERS
G. Williamson MeDiarmid
Judith Kleinfeld
William Parrett
U S DEPANTMENC OF EDUCATION
"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS
Office of Educational Research and Improvement
MAT RIAL H S B EN GRANTED BY
EDUCATIONAL. RESOURCES INFORMATION
CENTER (ERIC)
INS do,ument has been reproduced as
received from lino person Of organization
originating it
El Minor changes have beer made to improve
reproduction quality
POints of view or opinions stated in this ducu
TO THE: EDUCATI NAL RESOURCES
meat do not necessarily represent official
INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)."
OERI position or pC0ocy
Center for Cross-Cultural Studies
Institute of Social and Economic Research
University of Alaska
Fairbanks, Alaska
i
2
AVAILABLE
UST COPY
G. Williamson McDiarmid is
an assistant professor of education at
Michigan State University. He completed this
research while a faculty
member at the University of Alaska. Judith
Kleinfeld is a professor of
education at the University of Alaska. William
Parrett is an associate
professor of education and head of the
Department of Education at the
University of Alaska.
Copyright 1988 by the Center for Cross-Cultural
Studies,
University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska.
Published by:
Center for Cross-Cultural Studies, Rural
College
University of Alaska
F airbanks, Alaska 99775
January 1988
Typesetting by Dragon Press, Delta Junction, Alaska
Printed in U.S.A.
ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We want to express our appreciation to the
many rural educators in
Alaska who contributed ideas to this study. These educators include
Lamont Albertson, Lance Blackwood, Rick and Lois Carey, Dawn Christy,
Joe Cooper, Paris Finley, Sue Hare, Dorothy Jordan, Bruce and Merely
Kleven, Judy Mielke, Edith Nicholas, Elizabeth Simpson,
Dorman Wilson,
and Jim Zuelow. We greatly value their experience and their
insight. The
errors and limitations of these portraits are entirely our own responsibility.
Dick Mansfield of McBer and Company in Boston,
Massachusetts,
graciously came to Alaska and provided assistance
to us in using
interviewing techniques that have been successful internationally
in
identifying the characteristics of competent
pe , formers in diverse career
fields.
Sharon Young, now with the Alaska Association of School Boards,
did
numerous analyses of patterns of achievement test scores and their
limitations. Bob Silverman of the Alaska Department of
Education also
assisted us in thinking thrt ugh the appropriate
uses of achievement tests.
Mary Maxwell West of the Harvard Graduate School of
Education
completed careful and sensitive analyses of the videctapes
which served
as an important data source.
Meredith Ottenheimer at the Center for Cross-Cutural
Studies
prepared this manuscript for publication and patiently
worked her way
through many drafts and revisions of drafts. We also
appreciate the
assistance of Pam Toal, Barbara Sundberg, Carol Choy and Dorothy Edy
in transcribing lengthy interviews.
We wish to express our appreciation to the Alaska Council
on Science
and Technology for providing funding for this research
project.
Iii
FOREWOrlD
These portraits were written to provide richly detailed descriptions
of rural Alaska teachers for people thinking about becoming village
teachers. We have tried to capture the individual personalities of these
teachers as well as how they learn about their context and how they
use
this knowledge in teaching. We hope these portraits will be especially
valuable to students in teacher education programs.
Each of the teachers portrayed was selected by three expert groups
rural teachers, rural administrators, and community members
as an
"effective" teacher in a specific community. Some readers may disagree
with the judgments of these groups. We hope that such disagreements
stimulate useful discussion and debate about what it means to be
an
"effective" teacher in different communities.
The teachers portrayed here come from different ethnic and cultural
backgrounds. In addition to Caucasian teachers, one of the teachers is Black
and another is Alaska Native. We regret that the portrait of
an Oriental
teacher, available in draft form, was not completed in time for publication.
We did not begin this project with any intention of preparing portraits
of rural teachers from different ethnic groups. On the contrary,
we sought
only to prepare portraits of teachers judged to be effective by their teaching
colleagues, by administrators, and by community members. We do consider
it of interest and importance that oar three expert groups perceived
teachers from diverse backgrounds to be "effective" rural teachers.
In order to preserve confidentiality, the names of these teachers have
been changed along with any information that may identify the
communities in which they taught.
Judith Kleinfeld
Project Director
Effective Rural Teachers Research Project
v
"Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate
arts directly out of themselves. An iiitermediary inventive mind must make
the application, by using its originality."
William James
Talks to Teachers
vii
i
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1
AUSTIN
9
KATHERINE
37
EVAN
67
N ORA
93
MATT
119
HANNAH
139
APPENDIX
169
REFERENCES
179
Note: "Austin," "Katherine," "Evan," and "Nora" were written by
G. Williamson McDiarmid. Judith Kleinfeld wrote "Matt" and William
Parrett wrote "Hannah."
ix
INTRODUCTION
Purpose
How do rural teachers learn about their context and how do they use
this knowledge in teaching? To find out, we studied twenty-one rural
teachers. In this book we describe in detail the backgrounds, teaching
hilosophies, and activities of six of these teachers whom village parents,
supervisors, and teaching colleagues viewed as especially effective. We
appreciate the fact that "effective" is an elusive term, depending for its
definition on the criteria of the evaluator. Our intent here is not to defend
the selection of these particular teachers as effective. Rather
we attempt
to show how these teachers develop an understanding of their context and
use this contextual understanding in figuring out how to teach village
students. (For further information on the selection process
as well as a
description of our data collection efforts, see the Appendix.)
In every environment, the local context
social, economic, political,
historical, linguistic, and so on
influences teaching and learning. Some
of these contextual influences are direct as, for example, in th.: formal
actions of the town council, the informal activities of individual parents,
and the language children speak. Other contextual influencer
are indirect
as, for instance, in the knowledge, skills, and values students bring with
them to school. In some environments, the local context as embodied in
students, has particular salience to teaching. Philip Jackson (1986)
argues
that the amount of knowledge teachers need about students' backgrounds
depends primarily on two factors: the subject matter being taught and the
extent to which the teacher can presume a shared Identity. In rural Alaska,
most teachers are non-Natives from either urban Alaska or outside the
state. Teachers can, thus, presume little shared identity with their students
who are typically Natives born and reared in villages. Consequently, if they
are to acquire the knowledge of the local context critical to teaching so
that children learn, teachers must set out, actively and consciously, to do
so. Given the complexity of the local context, the question is: To what
events and phenomena in the local context should teachers attend? While
1
the answer to this question will vary from one setting to another, we found
that the teachers we studied did attend to similar things.
A concomitant question is: Where and how do rural teachers find out
what they need to know about the local context to enable ther to teach
so that students learn? As the portraits reveal, the answer to this depends
not only on the context itself but on the backgrounds of the teachers. One
of the teachers, Nora, is Native and grew up in the village in which she
now teaches. She can assume a degree of shared identity with her students
that teachers who come from outside the village cannot. At the same time,
she, like her non-Native colleagues, actively seeks information on her
students' outside-of-school lives.
For each of the teachers, we have identified elements in their context
to which they attended as well as where and how they found out about
these things. Below, by way of introduction to the teachers, we describe
briefly one or two factors in their c. atext to which they attend. The
portraits themselves reveal additit,nal contextual factors that the teachers
take into account.
Austin
As this portrait reveals, Austin is a student of public behavior. He
carefully and non-judgmentally observes his students and others in the
village. He learns which behaviors are expected in which situations. The
first incident described in the portrait
the hearing-aid episode
demonstrates how this knowledge informs his teaching.
Austin wants to create an opportunity for one of his students, Curtis,
to become comfortable wearing his hearing-aid in school. To talk openly
about the hearing device violates several norms, one of which is to avoid
focusing attention on any individual. Another norm of which Austin is aware
is that men do not publicly talk about physical weaknesses.
The knowledge that Curtis will not learn to read until he begins to
hear outweighs, for Austin, the risk of alienating Curtis and other students.
Austin's knowledge of the norms enables him to minimize the risk involved
in creating an opportunity for learning. He allows the topic to come p
"naturally" ;- the course of a discussion of vocabulary words. When the
discussion is underway, he takes himself, literally, out of the picture (he
leans back in his chair, away from the students who are huddling over
the hearing-aid) and allows the students to direct the conversation.
This episode reveals that Austin knows behavioral norms both for the
situation and for Curtis. Like the other teachers we studied, Austin knows
what constitutes "normal" behavior for individual students
in this case,
Curtis
as well as what is generally considered appropriate in the context
2
5
of the community. He has learned this by observing and interacting, with
his students. We see this most clearly in the conference during which
Austin breaks the news that Curtis is to be retained. In this episode, Austin
watches carefully for nonverbal cues, knowing that Curtis is unlikely to
say anything that will reveal how he is receiving the news.
Where and how did Austin learn what he knows about normative
behavior? Like the other teachers portrayed in these pages, he intentionally
created opportunities or put himself in situations and settings where he
would be likely to learn about social norms. For instance, he had his
both to help them develop fluency in writing
students keep journals
and to tell him what was significant in their lives. Organizing a school band
with his Native aide and coaching sports created other opportunities for
him to learn from and about his students in non-classroom settings.
As many rural Alaskans continue to view the school as alien territory
and teachers from outside the village as a peculiar species, Austin
recognized that his identity as a teacher would limit his access to
information and experiences. Joining a village basketball team, however,
allowed him to interact with teammates as a basketball player rather than
as a teacher. As part of the subculture that men's basketball in rural Alaskan
villages constitutes, he was privy to information, developed relationships,
and observed behaviors he may not have encountered as a teacher.
Katherine
Like Austin, Katherine is a student of adolescent behavior. The mother
of five, she brought with her to teaching in Kalkano knowledge of teenage
moods and posturing. She then put herself in positions that enabled her
as an advisor
to observe and interact with students in a variety of settings
to a teen club, as advisor for the Upward Bound program, as a chaperone
"on call," and as an adult who welcomed visits from village youth. From
these opportunities, she gleaned additional information on youth behavior
and attitudes. She learned about her students' capabilities and limits.
For instance, in her individual conferences with students, Katherine
knows when to pressure, when to cajole, and when to comfort. Confident
that her expectations are appropriate and are supperted by the community,
she refuses to accept excuses or acknowledge teen insouciance as in her
conference with Darrell at the beginning of the portrait. Insistently, she
reviews the steps involved in taking notes, sets a realistic deadline
and
gets results. She adjusts her tone and approach to each student. While
she affectionately bullies Darrell who has done no work on his research
paper, Katherine acknowledges Robbie's effort at the same time she guides
him toward a more logical organization of his paper.
3
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