Curriculum Resources for the Alaskan Environment

APPENDIX

by
Ray Barnhardt
University of Alaska Fairbanks

This article was originally published by the Center for Cross Cultural Studies, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 1981. 

Any approach to educational development is a multi-faceted affair, with many dimensions on which decisions must be made, and numerous alternatives from which to choose on each dimension. Of primary importance, however, is that the alternatives selected be commonly understood and agreed upon, and that they reflect consistency from one dimension to the next. A common thread throughout most formal education programs for minority people has been the relative absence of either of these conditions. Only rarely are the ends toward which minority programs are directed made explicit, and when they are, different interpretations exist so that the means used to attain the ends are often inconsistent and sometimes conflicting.

 

The School and the Curriculum

The four basic dimensions of any educational program are, 1) the goals or function, 2) the content, 3) the structure, and 4) the methods used. If an approach is to be effective, all four dimensions must be functionally integrated, and consistent with the underlying processes through which they interact to form a whole. That is, each dimension must be mutually reinforcing of each of the other dimensions if the total educational experience is to be cumulative and integrative for the student. To achieve such interrelatedness requires close attention to underlying processes of education, such as communication, cognition, and social interaction. We will examine some alternative goals and content for education as they relate to those processes first, and then turn to the structure and method through which they may be attained. In each dimension we will work toward a cross-cultural approach in the development of educational programs and practices for cultural minorities.

Schools: For what purpose?

One of the most difficult, yet most important tasks in the design of any educational program is to make explicit the goals toward which the program is directed. When the task is complicated by such extensive and pervasive educational functions as those of potential interest to the school, and by the often conflicting and divergent expectations regarding schools in a minority setting, it often appears insurmountable. It is necessary, nevertheless, to attempt such a task, and we shall do so by first examining some of the goals of education in general, and then looking at the two most commonly espoused goals for minority education-"cultural assimilation' and "cultural pluralism". An alternative goal of "cultural eclecticism" will then be offered as the basis for the ensuing discussion.

In most instances, school goals are bound to universalistic intellectual or social functions associated with the dominant society. The most explicit function to which the schools are directed is to the inculcation of the particular knowledge and skills deemed necessary for individual participation in the larger society. This is sometimes refined to place a more specific emphasis on the development of the mind, with a primary concern for factual knowledge and intellectual skills. In other situations, the emphasis is placed exclusively on the development of particular occupational or practical skills. Either approach is obviously narrowly selective from the totality of human experience, and is inevitably bound to a specific cultural definition of appropriate knowledge and skills. A less direct, but often explicit function attributed to the school is that of developing "citizenship" and the appropriate attitudes and understandings necessary for participation in a democratic society. Again, the emphasis is on preparation for the roles and expectations associated with membership in the larger, state society.

Some of the least direct and least explicit functions of the school become apparent when it is viewed in the context of cultural minority education. The traditional intellectual and social functions indicated above are then confounded by the additional and seemingly invidious factors associated with cultural differences, such as conflicting values, varied learning styles, diverse behavior patterns, non-conforming social allegiances, and alternative perceptions of reality. These factors, when thrust into the amalgam of traditional school policies and practices, reveal the extent to which the school serves a concomitant function of inducing acculturate influences in the domains of values, attitudes, beliefs and social behavior. In an effort to more directly accommodate these additional cultural factors, schools involved with minority education have been called upon to adopt some variant of the goals of cultural assimilation or cultural pluralism.

CuIturaI assimilation:

Though it is rarely made explicit, and is often unintended, one of the most distinguishing features of schools in cultural minority settings is their overwhelming press toward assimilation into mainstream cultural patterns. Whether intentional or not, the basic thrust of schooling is toward the breaking down of particularistic orientations and developing in their place, a universalistic orientation. Even where accommodations are made to include ethnic studies or bilingual education in the curriculum content, the structure, method, and processes through which the content is organized and transmitted are usually reflective of mainstream patterns and exert a dominant influence on the student (cf., Bayne, 1969). Schools are agents of the dominant society and as such, they reflect the underlying cultural patterns of that society. As long as they reflect the structure and social organization of the dominant society, they can be expected to perpetuate its values, attitudes, and behavior patterns within an implicit framework of assimilation.

What then, does a school goal of assimilation have to offer the cultural minority, and what are some of its limitations? On the surface, a cultural assimilation orientation would seem to offer the minority student an opportunity to gain access to the skills and resources necessary to participate in the larger society on equal terms with others. This expectation often goes unfulfilled, however, because of the school's inability to adequately respond to the differences in learning styles associated with differences in thought, communication and social interaction on the part of the minority student. Consequently, the requisite skills are not learned, status differentials are reinforced, and access to societal resources is further impeded, thus thwarting the minority students' aspirations. The school cannot contribute effectively to the assimilation process without careful attention to the unique cultural conditions out of which the minority student emerges.

If assimilation is desired and is to be achieved in full by a cultural minority, it must be supported by social, political and economic forces beyond those available through the school. Though the school may serve a useful, and even necessary function in the assimilation process, it cannot accomplish the task alone (cf., St. Lawrence and Singleton, 1976). If cultural assimilation is not desired, alternative goals must be adequately articulated so as to be able to assess the extent to which schools may or may not be able to contribute to their attainment One such alternative goal that has received widespread attention is that of cultural pluralism.

 

 Cultural Pluralism:

Whereas assimilation stresses the ways of the dominant society, cultural pluralism is intended to stress the ways of the minority society. Cultural pluralism is advocated as an educational goal by those who seek a pluralistic, multi-cultural society in which each ethnic, racial or religious group contributes to the larger society within the context of its own unique cultural traditions (cf., Banks, 1976). The school's task, therefore, is to recognize the minority culture and to assist the student to function more effectively within that culture. Heavy emphasis is placed on ethnic studies and minority language programs, but, as pointed out earlier, these are usually offered within the traditional structural framework of the school and have only tangential effect in terms of minority development goals. The primary beneficial effects are in the symbolic implications of the formal recognition of the minority group's existence by the school, and in the access to broader societal resources and experience by the minority group members who are employed to carry them out. Such access can result in positive influences of minority groups on the functioning of the school.

As presently espoused, however, with an emphasis on cultural autonomy and homogeneity, cultural pluralism falls short of being a realistic goal toward which the schools may direct their efforts. In addition to participating in various ways in the cultural traditions of their own society, most (if not all)' minority group members also participate in varying degrees in the cultural traditions of the larger society. To maintain true cultural pluralism, a structural separation of cultural groups must exist (Gordon, 1964), and this is not the case in American society, with the school being but one example of structural interaction. Different cultural groups interact with each other in various ways for various purposes, resulting in diffuse acculturate influences and constant adaptation, within the context of a national social order. Under such conditions, the goals of education must necessarily extend beyond minority group boundaries, if the student is to be prepared for the larger social reality s/he will face as an adult.

Even if cultural pluralism were to be viewed as a realistic goal (and it may be, under certain conditions of oppression), we would still have the problem of using an institutional artifact of one society (i.e., the school) to promote the cultural traditions of another. To change the subject-matter (content) without a concomitant change in the structure, method and processes through which that content is conveyed, may in the end, only strengthen rather than weaken the influences of the larger society. To achieve educational independence does not necessarily lead to cultural independence, if the educational experiences remain within the structural framework of the dominant culture.

It would appear then, that neither extreme of complete cultural assimilation or separation is appropriate or adequate as an educational goal, nor are either realistically attainable through the traditional framework of the school. We must, therefore, seek an alternative goal that rests on the middle ground between assimilation and pluralism, and then devise a means by which such a goal might be achieved.

Cultural eclecticism:

Since there are features of both the assimilationist and pluralist perspectives which seem desirable in developing educational programs for minorities, we will devise an eclectic approach, which allows for minority selection and adaptation of those features which they deem most desirable, and attempts to overcome the previously stated limitations. The goal of this approach will be referred to, therefore, as "cultural eclecticism." This is not to imply that the school is to present a hodgepodge of cultural practices from which students choose at whim, but rather that the school will assist the student in understanding the nature of the diverse experiences which are a natural part of his/her existence, and thus contribute to the development of an integrated cultural perspective suitable to the student's needs and circumstances.

In developing an eclectic approach, we are assuming that each minority group has unique characteristics that distinguish it from other groups, and that all groups share characteristics common to the larger society. We are also assuming that variations exist within and between groups, in orientation toward minority vs. dominant cultural characteristics. Some individuals and some groups wish to stress the minority culture, while others are oriented toward the dominant culture, wit, still others desiring the "best of both worlds." Our concern then is with the development of an educational approach that respects this vast diversity, while introducing everyone to the range of options available, so that they themselves are able to exercise some degree of choice in their individual or group life style and goals. Such an approach must recognize the multifaceted and dynamic nature of a large, complex, open, continually evolving society, and must allow for the varied cultural expressions of ethnic, religious and political beliefs and practices within the broader framework of that society. It is through such variation and diversity that the vitality of the society at large is maintained, and our understanding of the range of human potential and capabilities is deepened. We are building, therefore, on the notion of "multiculturalism as the normal human experience" (Goodenough, 1976) and are attempting to make evident and accommodate to a condition that already exists, but is largely ignored.

Thus, we present a goal of "cultural eclecticism" for minority education, in which features of both the assimilationist and pluralist ideologies are incorporated with the emphasis on an evolutionary form of cultural diversity to be attained through the informed choices and actions of individuals well grounded in the dynamics of human and cultural interaction processes. Eclecticism implies an open-ended process (rather than a dead-ended condition) whereby individuals or groups can adapt and define the functions of the school in response to their changing needs, assuming that they understand those functions and are in a position to influence school programs sufficiently to make them fully compatible with their needs. How then, might the school be made flexible enough, in structure and method, as well as content, to accommodate such potentially diverse demands?

To respond to that question, we will build upon the perspectives outlined above, seeking ways to restructure the social organization of the school so as to foster a closer linkage between socialization and formal education processes. To accomplish this, we will work toward an experiential, community-based approach to learning, in which what is learned derives its meaning from the context in which it is learned. We will begin with an examination of instructional content, since the structure and method we develop should be built upon and consistent with what it is we are trying to teach. The content should, in turn, reflect the full range of processual and situational features necessary to achieve the goal of cultural eclecticism. With such a goal in mind, we will turn now to the development of a curriculum framework for minority education.

Curriculum:Process and Content

Curriculum, in its conventional usage, refers to the "scope and sequence" of the subject-matter conveyed in a school Curriculum development, therefore, generally focuses on the selection and organization of specific knowledge and skills to fit particular developmental needs of the student and the unique operational structure of the school. Curriculum development usually does not explicitly address the social context in which learning takes place, nor does it consider the underlying cultural processes by which the content is acquired and utilized. These considerations are usually implicit to the cultural framework from which the curriculum is derived, with the school considered a "given" in that framework.

As the previous discussion has indicated, however, content, context and process are all intertwined, so that any one dimension can be affected by cultural variables and thus affect the outcome of the educational process. In the context of this discussion, curriculum development will, therefore, encompass all discernible dimensions that enter into the determination and implementation of the directed learning experiences by the school. From this perspective, the scope and sequence of the curriculum will be extended to include the interaction between content, process and context, and thus go beyond the usual culture-bound determinations that are associated with an emphasis on content alone. The approach developed here will proceed from an assumption of the unique social and cultural conditions of the child as a "given," rather than the universality of a particular body of knowledge or a particular mode of learning. We will begin the discussion on the latter assumptions, however, with a look at the subject-oriented approach currently reflected in school curriculum, and then move toward a more cross-culturally applicable alternative.

The subject-oriented curriculum:

The approach to curriculum design currently reflected in the schools is drawn from the classical Western tradition of the categories of knowledge. In their most general form, these categories are represented by the major academic disciplines of the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, languages, and aesthetics. In their more specific form, they are represented by the list of typical subjects taught in the schools today. At the elementary level, this includes subjects such as the language arts (reading, writing, spelling), arithmetic, science,social studies, and art. At the secondary level, the categories become more specialized with subjects such as history, literature, algebra, biology, drama, and French. If a secondary program includes a vocational emphasis, the curriculum may extend beyond the knowledge categories to include a variety of occupational skill-oriented subjects, under general headings such as industrial arts, distributive education (business), home economics, or agriculture.

In all of these subjects, the emphasis is on transmitting a predetermined body of knowledge or a particular set of skills from those who possess such knowledge or skills to those who do not. Thus, to a large extent in a subject-oriented curriculum, the learning process becomes subordinate to, or is determined by the nature of the content. Such an approach to curriculum presents at least two sets of problems in minority education, one in regard to content, and another in regard to process.

The content problems derive from the presumption that the classical Western categories of knowledge are universally applicable and can be appropriately adapted to any learning situation.In an examination of the academic disciplines as a basis for curriculum planning, Lawton (1975:72) identifies four different justifications for their use:

 1) Because reality is like that. The disciplines are presumed to be close approximations of how the "real world" is organized.

2) Because different sorts of questions are being asked. The various disciplines use different approaches to gain alternative perspectives on the world.

3) Because children develop in that way. The disciplines reflect the processes by which children classify experience.

4) Because disciplines promote more economical learning. The disciplines provide a structure for organizing and disciplining thought, and thus, simplify understanding.

Such justifications for the disciplines may be considered adequate if viewed within the context of a culturally uniform and stable Westernized society. They do not, however, take into account the confounding variables created when the disciplines are confronted by cultural perspectives divergent from those reflected in the Western categories. The categories used to analyze and organize reality from an academic perspective often have little relation to the categories required to carry out the functions of everyday life and, therefore, often appear irrelevant or artificial outside the academic context. If the categories of learning employed by the school cannot be tied to the experiences of the student, they will not stimulate much interest or understanding.

 

Another problem with the subject-matter approach to curriculum content has to do with the emphasis on static, discrete knowledge and skids in a rapidly changing and expanding social and cultural environment. Although the subject areas of the curriculum are occasionally updated (often in a piecemeal fashion, however) to account for new understandings and changing societal conditions (e.g., "new math," computer programming, or "modern art")' much of what is taught remains rooted in out-moded knowledge and obsolete skills. An emphasis on knowledge and skills will inevitably reflect a lag between what is known and what is taught, and thus provide little preparation for the changing conditions of the future, and may even necessitate unlearning as new conditions are encountered.

In addition, the subject approach separated knowledge into discrete categories which are dealt with independently of one another, disregarding the overlap and inter-connectedness between subjects. The student who is not axquainted with the cultural patterns that would normmaly serve to integrate academic subjects with one another and with reality, will find thier content disjointed, unpredictable, and thus of little value. The task of transfroming academic subjects into a meaningful and coherent educational experience is difficult enought with Anglo students who are presumabley already familiar with the requisite underlying cultural patterns of organization and use. To do so with minority studetns for whom such "equivalence structures" may not be available requires more resources than are available to the teacher or the school. Modivications in content or teaching method to make the subjects more palatable or to "fit the students' abiliteis and interest,'[ are of minimal value without situational and prcessual changs as well.

 

This bring us to the process problem associated with the subjec-oriented curriculum. This problem derives from what Freire(197d1) has critically labeled the "banking concept" of traditoinal schooling, in which "knowlege is a fit bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgable upon those whom they consider to know nothing" (p.58). Though Freire presents his case in the framework of cultural oppression, his analysis of the attitudes and prqactices that accompany a traditonal educational approach is not limited to such considitons. He lists the following as characteristics of the banking concept of education (p.59):

a) the teacher teaches and the students are taught;

b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;

c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;

d) the teacher talks and the students listen_meekly;

e) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;

f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;

g) the teacher acts and the studetns have the illusion of acting tyhrough the action of the teacher;

h) sathe teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;

i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his own professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of the student;

j) the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.

 

Though this may state the conditions in the extreme, it illustrates how the academic world of knowledge and learning cam become disassociated from the esxperiential relities outside the school, and potentially interfere with students' own processes of inquiry. When viewed in a minority context, the implicit patterns of interaction and cultural assumptions that are reflected in the baking concept (as an expression of the subject-matter approach), are clearly stacked against the student. The teacher's authority is predominant and the student's role is that of passive recipient.

The problem lies not with the teacher or the student, but the structrual framework within which the teacher snd student interact. The educatoinal process leaves little room for accommodating to the unique cultural and situational needs of the minority studnet(cf., Chance 1973). Even when the curriculum content is opened up to include subject matter electives such as "ethnic studies" or "bilingual eudcation," the content is still cast in the structura adn processual framework of prevailing educational idealogy, with only limited opportunites for alternative categores of reality and patterns of interaction to be included. Community patterns and categories are modified to fit the framework of the school, rather than teh school midifying its patterns and categores to fit the framework of the community. In effect allresponsibility for establishign ewuivalence structures is related to the student.

The subject-oriented curriculum appears to be inadequate, therefore, in both content and process of instruction, for the educational needs and circumstances of cultural minority students. The content is often divorced from the experiential and situational framework of the student, and the resultant process is usually culturally biased. Such an approach to curriculum design obviously cannot contribute much to the goal of cultural eclecticism. If we are to overcome these limitations, we must seek an alternative form of curriculum content that is applicable to a wider range of cultural conditions and allows for greater flexibility in the processes of instruction.

 

A process-oriented curriculum:

One approach to the alleviation of some of the problems of a subject-oriented curriculum in minority education becomes evident when we rephrase the core curriculum development issue of "What should the schools teach?" to "How do the students Learn?" The emphasis is immediately shifted from content to process,and from the school to the student. Such a shift does not negate the need for content, but recasts it as a means, rather than an end, and it estagblishes the student's need to learn as the determinant of the instructional process. We must, therefore, anticipate the varied and changing needs of the student, adn provide a curriculum that can accomodate to those needs. If students are to be prepared to cope with new and chaing conditions, they must be exposed to maore than current factual knowledge and occupational skills. They must be familiar with the generalized processes by which such knoweldge and skills are acquired and utilized under new and unforeseen conditions. They must learn, for example, how to think, cummunicate, organized interact, make decisions, solve problems, and assign priorities, but most of all, they m ust learn how to learn.

A curriculum design built around processes such as these can, in addition to better preparing a student to encournter the unknowned, accommodate a wider range of patterns by which an understanding of present and future conditions may be axquired and utilized. An open-ended, process-oriented curriculum is potentially less culture-bound, and thus may be more readily adapted to alternative settings without intruding on thier cultural and situational variabilityu. If appropriately conceived, process skills can be taught by building on those patterns indigenous appropriately conceived, process skills can be taught by building on those patterns indigenous of the background of the student, and then extending the processes to include the patterns of the wider community. To the extent that a minority student is able to employ such process skills in his/her daily encournters within his/her won and the larger society, s/he will be better able to blen those encounters into a lifestyle and world view that will contribute to the goal of cultural eclecticism.

Obviously, this can happen only under conditions in which the social, cultural and instituational milieus are able to nurture the development and exercising of such skills--conditionss which are not easily attainable in the society at learge, let alone in minorty communities. As a step in that direction, however, the schools can formulate a curriculum that has as its purpose the development of process-oriented persons who posess the intellectual and social skills indicated above, and consquently, "are able to handle themselves and the situations of which they are a part with adequacy and ease" (Berman, 1968: 10). Just as the persons who make up contemporary society must possess a degree of flexibility, adaptability, creativity, and tolerance to accommodate to rapidly changing conditions, so must the curriculum reflect such characteristics if it is to effectively contribute to the educatoinal development of those persons. Processes, with thier open-endedness and capacity for self-renewal, can provide the basis for such a curriculum design.

Process, in its general sense, may be defined as "a function of change in the relationships among variables" (Kimball 1976:269). More specifically, when applied within the domain of human influendcee, processrefers to the sue of particular rules, methods, procedures, actions, or operations to reorganize events, conditions or energies toward some end. Within the context of education, "process" may be further restricted to refer to "the cluster of diverse procedures that surround the acquistion and utilization of knoweldge" (Parker and Rubin, 1966:1). Since our interest here are not in the full range of natural or man-made processes encompassed by the first two definitions, we will settle on the latter definition, but include in our discussion the social as well as intellectual processes associated with teaching and learning. IN that contexzt, we may consider processes at two levels -in terms of process as content, and in terms of process on instruction.

At the first level, we are concerned iwht the content of education. If process skills are to become the "end" and the content is to serve as a means to that end, then the content itself should be organzied around processes. In a process-oriented curriculum, therefore, processes should be reflected in the content, so that what is taught is consistent with the goal toward which the teaching is directed. One way by which this may be accomplished is to replace the traditional list of academic subjects with a list of appropriate general processes and devise an educational program aimed at developing an understanding of those processes. Such a process-oriented curriculum could overcom many of the limitations of the traditional subjec-oriented approach. An outline of the content of such a curriculum is offered by Berman(1968), who identifies the follwoing process skills as the minimum essential ingredients:percieving, communicating, loving decision-making, knowing, organizing, creating, and valuing. IN her model, the4se skills would serve as the core aorund which the educational program would be organized. She paresents several alternative orgainzing shemes, some that emphasize provesses alone, and others that blend processes with traditional subjects.

Another effort to employ process as content in school learning is that of Parker and Rubin (1966), who summarize the tasks to which process-oriented curriculum developers must address themselves as follows:

 

1) A retooling of subject matter to illuminate base structure, and to insure that knowledge which generates knowledge takes priority over knowledge which does not.

 

2) An examination of the working methods of the intellectual practitioner, the biologist, the historian, the political scientist, for the significant processes of their craft, and the use of these processes in our classroom instruction.

 

3) The utilization of the evidence gathered from a penetrating study of people doing things, as they go about the business of life, in reordering the curriculum.

 

4) A deliberate effort to school the child in the conditions for cross-application of the processes he has mastered-the ways and means of putting them to good use elsewhere (p. 48).

 

 

They too, offer several models for incorporating processes into the standard curriculum, with a particular focus on the reformulation of subject-matter to emphasize the underlying structure, rather than the surface features. They seek to use subject content to acquaint students with the processes by which knowledge is formulated and put to use. Their concern, therefore, is with inquiry processes, such as analysis, inference, classification, synthesis, integration, and evaluation. They caution, however, that extensive study is necessary before we can determine which processes may be appropriately incorporated in the curriculum. "What seems most clear is the pressing need to research the kinds of processes inherent in different subject matter and to determine how and where they are most useful to the purpose of the school" (p. 51). The tendency to limit process education to the intellectual domain (cf., Cole, 1972) is one of the drawbacks that needs to be overcome if such an approach is to address the broader communication and social interaction processes referred to earlier.

 

Both of the approaches to a process-oriented curriculum described above go a long way in reorganizing the curriculum content to shift its emphasis into a process framework which is more readily accommodating to the learning needs of minority students. Neither approach, however, goes far enough in addressing the second-level question of "How are these process skills to be learned?". To change the content of the curriculum to include processes is not adequate if the structural framework in which those processes are to be learned is not itself changed to reflect the process emphasis. If students continue to sit in a typical classroom setting, under the authority of a teacher, and proceed to learn only about processes, in the same manner in which they learn about history or science, they will not make much progress over the traditional subject-oriented curriculum. Parker and Rubin point out the need for an alternative teaching approach when they state that "the requirements posed by a process-based curriculum deal primarily with the identification of worthwhile processes to which students should be exposed, the design of instructional strategies that make effective use of the processes, and the realignment of subject matter so that it complements the instructional strategies" (p. 44). Berman also acknowledges the need for a revised approach to teaching in her statement of the conditions necessary to acquire process skills. She lists those conditions as:

1) the opportunity to experience the use of the skill in a wide variety of contexts and,

2) the chance to verbalize the meaning of the skill so an interplay can exist between the logical and the intuitive (p. 10).

 

 

The experiential emphasis implied by Berman coincides with the need to bring schooling in closer alignment with community socialization processes. What we need then is a way to link the content of a process-oriented curriculum to the experiential and situational framework of everyday life, so that what is learned and how it is learned can be more effectively merged into a meaningful whole. We also need a flexible and adaptive curriculum design that will accommodate the diverse needs of minority students, and that can be incorporated into a school program in various ways and to various degrees, since the existing curriculum is not likely to be wholly transformed to accommodate a totally different approach. As a means of synthesizing the promising aspects of the approaches described above into a coherent framework for minority education, we will focus now on the development of a project-centered curriculum design.

 

 

The project-centered approach:

We now have two frameworks within which to establish curriculum content categories and organize learning activities-the subject-oriented curriculum built around the academic disciplines, and the process-oriented cuniculum built around the procedures associated with the acquisition and utilization of knowledge, though the latter needs to be expanded to include social processes as well. The subject-oriented approach appears to be least accommodating to the immediate needs of minority students, but it has the force of tradition behind it and serves functions compatible with the needs of the society at large, and, therefore, cannot be disregarded. The process-oriented approach, on the other hand, has greater potential for the adaptation of curriculum content to fit varied cultural settings, but does not adequately move that content into an everyday experiential framework where it can be tested against reality and put to use.

 As a means of integrating the useful features of the subject and process orientations outlined above and putting them into a functional experiential framework for minority students, we will explore a project-centered approach to curriculum design and instruction. In pursuing such an approach, we are seeking to establish a framework that has maximum flexibility, so that it can be used at all levels, in varying situations, and to any degree considered desirable or appropriate by the school and/or community.

 The term project, as used here, refers to a planned task or problem undertaken by one or more persons for the purpose of achieving some goal. A more specific definition is provided by Harrison and Hopkins (1967: 455) in reference to a cross-cultural training program, where "project" is used to refer to a process-oriented activity requiring a learner to:

 

1) Obtain information from the social environment (communication);

2) Formulate and test hypotheses about forces and processes present in the environment (diagnosis);

3) Select and describe some part of the situation which is to be changed or altered (problem definition);

4) Plan action to solve the problem (commitment, risk-taking);

5) Carry out the action, enlisting the help and cooperation of others (influencing and organizing);

6) Verbalize attitudes, perceptions and tentative leanuings from the experience (cognition and generalization).

 

Though Harrison's and Hopkins' description focuses primarily on problem-solving activities, the listing of processes (in parenthesis) associated with each step of the activity illustrates how effectively content, process and experience can be integrated in a project approach. The content is not considered in an isolated context, but is assessed in terms of its functional contribution as a means to the solution of the task at hand. Content and process cannot be dichotomized in a project approach, because they are implicit to one another and to the approach itself. Likewise, to engage in a project implies engaging in some form of experiential activity, so that all the requisite characteristics for a productive learning experience are merged in the project approach. The task, then is to determine how such an approach can be incorporated into educational programs, particularly in a cultural minority setting.

 

A primary virtue of the project-centered approach is its nearly unlimited flexibility. A project can take almost any form: it can be a lesson plan, a unit, or a year-long effort; it can take place inside or outside the school; it can involve one student, a class, or the whole school; and it can be incorporated in nearly any subject or learning activity. Examples of some common educational practices that reflect aspects of the project approach are field trips, work/travel/study programs, intemships, practicums, and apprenticeship programs. Although these are not often organized as formal projects, they all engender some sort of loosely defined experience-based learning through active involvement in a flexibly structured activity. The students, therefore, have a great deal of flexibility in defining the nature of their participation and pursuing their own avenues of interest. Most of the examples listed, however, are usually employed outside of, or incidental to the formal educational framework of the school and, thus, do not adequately utilize the full educational potential of a project-centered approach.

 

If a project-centered approach is to be effectively utilized to cany Out a substantial part of the educational responsibilities vested in the school, then the projects themselves will have to be deliberately and carefully planned with particular learning tasks in mind, blending the academic functions of the school with the cultural patterns of the community. Projects will have to be developed that incorporate and blend, implicitly or explicitly, the subject and process skills determined appropriate and necessary for the students involved. A project such as a school store, for example, can combine subject skills in math, business and language, with process skills such as organizing, planning, decision-making and interacting. A class project conducting a survey of energy consumption in the community can incorporate elements of science, math, and social studies, along with processes of problem-solving, communicating, analysis and evaluation. Any combination of knowledge, skills or processes may be represented in a particular project. The important thing, however, is not which of these specific ingredients are involved, but whether or not the experience gained from involvement in the project is contributory to the educational needs of the individual student, the local community, and the society at large.

One of the best (and only) examples of the use of a project-centered approach for a total education program is provided by Helser (1934), in his description of what he calls a meaningful experience curriculum," as developed for the rural Bura people in northeastern Nigeria. Though the specific content of Helser's curriculum is not always transferable to a contemporary minority setting in America, it does provide a useful illustration of how a project approach may be applied to a specific set of conditions and problems. The children in Helser's program spent about half their time on school projects and the other half on home and community activities in which these projects "take on flesh and blood" (p. 23). His primary purpose was to build an experience-based educational program around the conditions in which the children lived, utilizing local as well as outside resources, to help them become contributing members of their community, as well as of the national society. He sought to foster appreciation of various situations and wholesome attitudes toward situations, along with controls and specific skills" (p. 35).

 

To accomplish this he built a curriculum, with the help of community members, around four general areas (home and social life, health, agriculture and livestock, and crafts), each of which served to generate a series of "problems". Each problem was presented to the students as a task for inquiry in school, as well as a task toward which they addressed their energies outside of the school. Thus, the schooling process was closely linked with local patterns of interaction, communication, and socialization. Some examples of problems addressed in Helser's curriculum are as follows:

 

1) What difference does it make where a compound is built?

 2) Why do crowds of people go to market?

 3) How can we be strong?

 4) Where can we have our farms?

 5) What can we make from the skins of animals?

The extent to which this curriculum linked school life with home life is illustrated by the list of "objectives" Helser associated with the problem of, "How much corn ought each family represented in the class have in order to have enough to last throughout the year?" (p. 217).

a) To create interest in the vital question of an adequate food supply.

b) To learn to calculate the approximate number of granaries and the approximate number of baskets of corn in each compound in the community.

c) To learn to take more interest in the work of the homefoiks.

d) To learn to calculate the number of baskets of corn per person in each compound.

e) To see what a shortage of corn means.

f) To discover how much corn the average family should have.

g) To find out the number of granaries required to hold the family's supply of corn.

h) To determine the most desirable size of granary.

i) To see the relation between the piles of pebbles and the numbers on the blackboard.

j) To appreciate the desirability of being able to calculate in the sand or on the blackboard or on paper.

k) To get the thrill of helping to make a community chart.

l) To do a valuable piece of work for each compound in the community.

 

This single project brought together a wide variety of subject matter and process skills and focused them on a real-life issue in that community. The learning that took place was for the purpose of solving the problem, not to make a good grade or to please the teacher. The project incorporated valuable learning experiences with a useful social function, thus helping students learn new skills while addressing a problem in a way that fit their particular cultural and situational needs.

Helser's summary of the "curriculum principles" upon which a project approach should be built reflects many of the points to which this article has been addressed and therefore, is included here in its original form (p. 304-305).

1) Educational aims should arise out of a study of the life needs of the child and his environment. All that makes life richer and more abundant which other agencies are not supplying should be the responsibility of the school.

2) Educational aims should include the ideals, attitudes, dispositions and appreciations to be striven for, as well as those for knowledge, habits and skills. The analysis of these aims should be continued until they are reduced to units small enough to be specifically worked for in the activities requiring them.

3) Educational aims should cover every phase of essential life experience and make possible healthy living and surroundings; helpful home membership; wider social interaction and shanng; an understanding of the privileges and the responsibilities of citizenship; appreciation of the world's practical and intelligent use of its products; such use of leisure time that it truly recreates and invigorates; such ethical and religious ideals as will develop socially valuable character and service, and such command of fundamental processes and techniques as will enable the individual to successfully meet and solve difficult problems and activities.

4) Educational aims should include not merely the adjusting of the child to his environment, but the development of such attitudes and abilities as will enable the child to adjust the environment to meet his higher ideals, wants and appreciations.

 5) True simplification of the curriculum involves a conception of education as growth and life. The school should be thought of as a place where pupils may receive stimulating guidance and help in carrying out their valuable environmental activities, so that they may not only successfully complete them, but profit by all the moral, social and accessory interests which arrive.

6) Changed ways of behaving (conduct) should be the test for learning, rather than the oral command of subject matter. If this is to result, the emphasis in teaching must be upon the actual living through a valuable experience, rather than the mere reading about it.

7) The school environment and procedure should be such as to emphasize the purposing of worthwhile activities, the developing of them on the child's level of interest, and his need for them here and now, rather than as a preparation for the vague future.

8) Subject matter should be thought of as the vital experience necessary for the child's fullest enjoyment and understanding of life. It should be used to supplement the child's own experience, the old and the new being organized into the necessary new way of behaving. Such supplementary experience should come from the local inheritance and from world culture. The test of its value to the child is the extent to which he can use it in furthering his activities and in securing more satisfying and effective

9) The curriculum for the first four years of school life should be general, in the sense of providing a common equipment for life and citizenship for all pupils, with the fullest use of the local environment as a starting point and as a source of interests and materials in furthering the educative process.

 

Helser's detailed description of a project-centered approach to education points out that it is not a new approach, but it is one that is particularly well suited and adaptable to cross-cultural situations, because of the experiential linkage it can provide between school leaming and cultural practices. While his is but one example of how it might be employed, it indicates the potential of a comprehensive project orientation where a large part of the program is built around projects, rather than a limited number of projects being built into some component of a conventional program. A project-centered approach does not preclude the necessity for more formalized forms of learning activities at various stages, but the attention is shifted from the use of projects as a supportive activity for academic learning, to academic learning as a supportive activity for projects.

 

To the extent that a program is project-centered and process-oriented, it has the potential to accommodate learning to situational and cultural differences and to prepare students to cope with future life experiences. It is through the flexible use of projects as a means for structuring process-oriented learning experiences linking school and community, that schools can assist minority (and majority) students and communities in achieving the self-determining goal of cultural eclecticism.

While the focus of this section has been primarily on goals and content issues, the more critical features of a project-centered approach are reflected in the actual social organization of the educational setting (structure), and the experiential processes by which learning is achieved (method)-topics which will be addressed in greater detail in the next section. As indicated earlier, the goals and content of an educational approach must be made explicit before the appropriate structure and method can be developed. Having established "cultural eclecticism" as the goal, "processes" as the content, and "projects" as the means, we can now pursue the situational and cultural implications of alternative approaches to structure and method, which together make up the instructional process.

 

 

The Community and the Classroom:

In seeking to develop an approach to education that has the potential for application to varied cultural and situational conditions, we must go beyond the simple revision of curriculum content or classroom teaching practices. We must take into account the interactional setting itself, and find ways to restructure the social organization of that setting to allow the participants to pattern their interaction to fit the goals they are attempting to achieve. As with the content, we need a structure that is flexible and adaptable enough to accommodate a wide range of cognitive, communicative, and interactional patterns, while maintaining some degree of order and continuity in terms of overall direction and effort. We will, therefore, examine the suitability of formal education as a vehicle for addressing structural and methodological issues in minority education.

 

 

Teaching and context: The situational variable

 

In the development of a social structure for an educational program, we must take into account the contextual features of the settings in which learning is to take place, because context is a major influence in the shaping of any learning process. Of particular concern are the varied cultural and situational patterns reflected in the learning experiences associated with school vs. community settings. Is one type of setting more appropriate than another for panicular kinds of learning experiences? The features of formal vs. informal education indicate that the social structure of the school is best equipped to support academic, subject-oriented learning, whereas the natural community setting is most appropriate for experience-based, process-oriented learning. Though schools may engage students in active learning experiences and deliberately attend to certain learning processes, if that learning remains within the detached and unique social context of the classroom, it remains subject to the distortions associated with transference from an academic to a real-wofid setting. The process skills most effectively learned in a school context are those required to continue school learning and to function in an academic-oriented environment. Process skills required to function in daily life outside of the school setting can be most effectively practiced and learned in a broader community context. The more natural the situation in which learning takes place, the greater the potential for integration with the functional learning system of the learner, and the less the potential for distortion in the transfer of such learning to future situations.

 

Let us look then, at some different approaches to the merging of community and school experiences in the development of educational programs. We will look first at efforts to shift formal processes of education to "nonformal" contexts, and then at an attempt to recreate a "micro-society" within the formal structure of the school. Finally, we will examine a combination of those two approaches as reflected in the "school without walls" approach.

 Nonformal education: In addition to the institutionalized form of education reflected in the school, there are other forms of organized, formal educational activities in which persons may participate at various stages in their life, such as youth clubs, adult literacy programs, apprenticeship programs, and cooperative extension programs. Since these usually take place outside the formally organized educational system, they are sometimes referred to as "nonformal" education, even though they often involve formalized processes. In its usage, nonformal education tends to be restricted to the discussion of occupational training in the context of economic, human resource, or manpower development in developing countries. In most cases it is viewed as an extension of, or complementary to the formal educational system, and serves as a means for translating formal learning into marketable skills. This interrelatedness is indicated by some of the questions posed by Harbison (1973:7-8) in regard to planning a nonformal education program:

 

1) Can nonformal education activities satisfy educational needs that cannot be met by the formal education system?

 

2) Are nonformal education projects, because of their flexibility in comparison with the rigidities of formal education, more susceptible to innovation? 

 3) Do successful innovations in nonformal education induce desirable innovations in the formal education system?

Harbison goes on to conclude that, "In some cases, nonformal education is the only practical means of skill and knowledge development; in others, it offers an alternative, and often a more effective one, to education and training in formal schooling; in most cases, it can supplement, extend, and improve the processes of formal education" (p. 11).

Nonformal education may, therefore, offer a model for adapting formal education to the informal context of the community. To determine its potential, we will take a closer look at some of the assumptions and characteristics reflected in a nonformal approach.

 

Brembeck (1973), in an analysis of the uses of formal and nonformal education, provides the following premises as the basis for the development of nonformal education programs:

...learned behavior is determined by the environment in which it takes place. Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences. The learning environments of formal and nonformal education tend to be of a different character. They shape and maintain different kinds of behavior. The goal, then, of educational strategy should be to determine the kind of behavior sought and create those educational environments which most clearly support and encourage it (p. 63).

 

Whereas formal learning tends to focus on the detached acquisition of knowledge, nonformal learning is geared to action and the application of knowledge. The structural characteristics of nonformal education "derive from its proximity to immediate action, work, and the opportunity to put learning to use. These elements of the environment close the gap between learning and doing, find intrinsic motivation in the learning situation, imbed objectives in work and activity, and associate learners and teachers in meaningful lines of action" (p. 58).

 

Nonformal education thus, has many of the characteristics we are seeking in the development of an alternative educational approach for cultural minorities. It draws on community resources, incorporates experiential learning, allows considerable flexibility for varied types of learning experiences, and provides opportunities for student and community influence on the form and direction of learning (cf., Paulston, 1973). It provides a structural framework consistent with that required for the project-centered, process-oriented approach toward which we are working. In fact, many nonformal education programs, such as 4-H clubs, Boy Scouts and home extension services, do actively employ projects as a primary vehicle for their educational efforts. The task then, is to expand the use of such projects so that the structure of nonformal education can be extended to encompass more of the functions currently carried out by formal schooling.

 

The persistent calls for school reform would seem to indicate that there is a continuing need for a thorough rethinking of the fit between structure and function in educational processes. Brembeck emphasizes this need in calling for a careful assessment of the capabilities of both formal and nonformal education before the latter is put to widespread use.

 

...both formal and nonformal education have built-in structural elements which condition their capabilities to contribute in defined ways to the attainment of certain educational objectives. Perhaps the fundamental task is to analyze more precisely the structural properties of each, to determine the potential of each for contributing to particular kinds of educational goals, and to build programs which utilize these strengths within a more unified and coherent policy of educational development. If this were done, investments in both school and nonschool education might yield better payoffs (p. 55).

Whereas nonformal education attempts to move learning out into the community, it may also be possible to move features of the community into the school to enhance learning experiences. In reference to schools, however, Brembeck indicates that "their success as places of learning depends in part upon their ability to recreate within their walls a learning environment as naturally compelling as that existing on the outside. That environment must be created; it is not naturally built into the structure of school learning" (p. 60). Though teachers often attempt to recreate bits and pieces of the community environment in the school, seldom do they go beyond superficial aspects, and even less often are their efforts part of a comprehensive and well-thought-through plan. One exception to this is the "micro-society" school, devised by George Richmond (1973).

 

The Micro-Society approach:

Richmond, while working in the public schools of New York City, devised an approach to schooling that attempted to recreate critical aspects of society in microcosm in the context of the schooL He, with the help of the students, created social learning experiences such as the micro-economy game, the micro-capitalist society, micro-politics, and a judicial system, all within the social and academic framework of the school. He sought to "create a society small enough for the student to manage and large enough to breed the kind of expertise that convinces individuals that they can have some measure of control over the environment" (p. 275). Instead of moving learning out into the community, he attempted to create a sense of community within the schooL He describes the premises for such a model of schooling as follows:

As an approach, it must be a dynamic process, one that will liberate students from a curriculum without any apparent fit to life, one that will orient students to jobs in the service industries and the professions, and one that will obtain for students a better appreciation of the world of experience. The process must have the power to penetrate the classroom and alter its way of life. In so doing, it must make the inmate-custodian operating in many traditional schools untenable. And although the connection with work bears emphasis, the model must also offer students opportunities to become involved in academic pursuits, in recreation, in civic projects, and other productive activity (p. 189).

Thus, through a simulated situation, Richmond attempts to bring the school into a closer alignment with conditions in the surrounding community. Though he retains the broad framework of the school, he seeks to modify the content and method of education to improve its usefulness and effectiveness. Instead of studying the society around them, students and teachers engage in the evolutionary process of creating their own model of society and coping with the economic, social and political exigencies that such an effort entails. Gradually, as the school society expands, it incorporates characteristics of the surrounding environment. "As the Micro-Society matures, the school will integrate aspects of the local community-for example, ethnic traditions-with the traditions it evolves as a separate society. At more advanced stages still, students and student groups based in the school will explore ways and develop the means to contribute goods and services to communities and organizations operating in the shadow of the school" (p. 197). Schools, which are now almost completely consumers of goods, are to be restructured by the micro-society approach to become producers of goods and services as well.

 Through such experiences, the students are expected to learn the knowledge and skills necessary to eventually move out and become contributing members of their own community.

To facilitate this transition into the real-life community, Richmond suggests that the detached, somewhat protected form of society that is created in the earlier stages of schooling gradually give way to actual participation in the larger society outside the school at later stages. The emphasis at the secondary level would shift from building a micro-society in school, to "building society from school" (p. 220). He suggests that students could become involved in numerous economic enterprises, some that they would operate (e.g., newspapers, day-care centers, stores, theaters), and others that they would affiliate with, as managers, employees, or researchers. In addition, secondary students could become involved in social development activities, such as "preserving and revitalizing the history, traditions, and other cultural patterns of the locale," or "developing personal, community, and institutional ways to cope with social deviance" (p. 222-23). He sees the micro-society school as having the potential, therefore, not only to prepare students for life in society as it is, but to prepare them to serve as agents of social change. One of the premises on which the model is built is that "children who create a society of their own in school, need reach only a few steps beyond-possibly only to secondary school-and only a few inches inward to appropriate the power to transform themselves and their immediate environment" (p. 190).

 

To the extent that the micro-society approach can achieve a restructuring of the schooling environment and create a realistic microcosm of society, it has the potential to overcome many of the inadequacies of the existing school system for cultural minorities. Such a task will not be accomplished, however, unless the students' educational experiences encompass the full range of situations and conditions they will encounter as minority persons in the real world. It is when the students get out into the surrounding community, therefore, that they will learn the critical survival and action-oriented skills they will need to gain control over their future in the larger society.

Richmond's design for moving students into the community at the secondary level brings us to the third approach to the linking of school and community experiences, that of the "school without walls," which combines features of both nonformal education and the micro-society school.

 The "school without walls":

One of the most widely publicized approaches to the merging of school and community has been the Philadelphia Parkway Program, otherwise known as the "school without walls." As originally designed by John Bremer, the program was literally without boundaries-physical or educational. Instead of placing students in formal classrooms, the program operated in and around the social, political, and economic institutions along a parkway in the city of Philadelphia. Instead of following a formally structured academic curriculum, the program was designed to engage students and teachers in a continuous process of creating their own curriculum, within the framework of school district requirements. Bremer summarized the program as follows in a recruitment letter to potential students:

 

The Parkway Program will not be a school with classroom or bells. The organizations around the Benjamin Franklin Parkway will provide laboratories, libraries, and meeting space. Although participation will only be required for the length of the normal school year, study and work programs will be available year-round. Students and faculty will form small groups for discussion, study, counseling, and self-evaluation. Learning situations will vary from films, jobs, and lectures to special projects (Bremer and von Moschzisner, 1971: 281).

 

Students primary participation in the program was through membership in tutorial groups, consisting of a faculty member, a university intern, and fifteen other students. It was in the context of the tutorial groups that students worked out their program activities and acquired the basic skills in language and mathematics required to work in the participating institutions along the Parkway. The program combined formal courses with work programs in civic institutions, social agencies, and local industries and businesses. Some courses were taught by program staff, while others were taught by members of the participating institutions. In addition, students were directly involved in the management of the Parkway Program itself, through membership in "management groups" and participation in "town meetings." Such involvements were designed to afford the students maximum opportunity to learn and acquire management, organizational, and human relations skills, while contributing to the functional needs of an ongoing program. As Bremer saw it, the whole program was to be the curriculum and, therefore, not only content, but structure and method as well, were to be built around the learning needs of the students. "It is a learning community, and the problem is to provide internal structuring or grouping in such a way as to promote learning, not hamper it or simply be irrelevant to it" (p. 23). Thus, there were not artificial, formal age or grade distinctions. Secondary level students sometimes worked side-by-side with elementary level students. Students participated, according to interest and ability, in all aspects of the program. They learned from each other as well as from their "teachers" and the surrounding community.

 

Since the program was not housed in a conventional school building, facilities such as abandoned warehouses, offices and schools along the Parkway were used for meeting places and to store materials and resources. Students and teachers met on a flexible schedule for various learning activities, depending on outside involvements and individual or group needs. Teachers served as tutors and counselors, and supervised student activities with cooperating agencies and institutions in the community. The purpose of the program was to provide means for the students to learn in the community, rather than about the community, so the emphasis was on active participation in real-life enterprises, and coping with the many, varied and complex aspects of society. Through such participation and coping, students learned "to reflect on, to understand, and to control more effectively their own lives" (p. 292).

Learning was not to be restricted to society as it is, however. From Bremer's point of view the Parkway Program had two challenges: "how to help the student to live learningly within his present life space, and, second, how to expand this life space" (p. 291). To meet these challenges, Bremer sought to change the social organization of education to bring the roles and relationships embodied in the pursuit of formal learning in line with those extant in the surrounding community, where such learning must ultimately be put to use if it is to be of any value. And it is in this context that the Parkway Program provides a useful model for minority education. By moving learning activities into the real-life environment of the community, the detached and artificial nature of traditional schooling is avoided and natural situational frames are provided, within which students can acquire the process and subject-matter skills necessary to function in whatever roles they choose as adults.

The "school without walls" provides a well-articulated and comprehensive model for accommodating schooling to the cultural and situational patterns of a particular community. The Parkway Program was not without its problems in its evolution as a new form of institution, however, and consequently, it underwent some structural revision following the departure of Bremer as its first director, in an attempt to bring the program more in line with the traditional and predominant educational system with which it was presumed to be competing.

A "school without walls" is indeed a radical departure from conventional educational practice, but the potential and promise that such a departure holds for overcoming existing inadequacies in the formal system of education will not be realized if the program's implementation is not approached in such a way that it can overcome the inertia of the present system and prove its worth over the span of generations. To attempt educational reform of the magnitude required to address the issues that have been raised in this article requires a long-term commitment, and a transcending and wholistic perspective. We cannot expect to significantly alter and improve the ultimate effects of the educational system by tinkering with elements within the system, such as the classroom or the cuniculum. We must instead consider the relation of the system itself to the social and cultural environment in which it operates. Only then will we be able to make the kind of long-lasting and significant changes sought by Bremer in his design and creation of the "school without walls.

Social organization of community-based education

The three alternative frameworks for education that we have looked at all have a common concern-to fit formal education processes more closely to the real-life conditions reflected in the surrounding community, that is, to make the community the basis for education. Two ways are available by which this can be accomplished: 1) by moving everyday life into the school; 2) by moving the classroom out into everyday life. The first approach is represented by the micro-society school, and the second by nonformal education and the school without walls. As was indicated earlier, such approaches require major changes in the social organization of the school, particularly in terms of school/community and teacher/student relationships. The greater the departure from traditional school practices, the greater the need to restructure the social organization in which learning is to take place, so that the structure and function of education are compatible. Without such restructuring, and without community-wide understanding of the need for it, any alternative approach to community-based education is likely to be short-lived and of little consequence in the improvement of education. It is necessary, therefore, that we give careful consideration to the implications of community-based education for the social organization of learning and determine its appropriateness for the process-oriented, project-centered approach to minority education we outlined earlier. We will look first at the social and cultural implications of the community as a classroom, and then at the consequences of such an approach for the roles of teacher and student

 

 

 

 

 

Classroom and community

A basic theme throughout all of the previous discussion has been the need for a closer alignment between schooling and community socialization processes, particularly in minority communities. We have been seeking ways to overcome the detachment of learning from reality, and the cultural biases of the social organization reflected in current school practice. Toward that end we have espoused a process-oriented curriculum set in a project-centered format, steps which in themselves, if implemented in a conventional school context, can go a long way toward opening formal learning to a wider range of cultural experiences. Such steps do not go far enough, however, in adapting schooling to the functional learning system of the minority student To accomplish this, we must go beyond the framework of the school and look at the real-life environment in which varied cultural and cognitive patterns are expressed, and find ways to adapt formal learning to that environment We have, therefore, examined various approaches to community-based education as a means to that end.

By using the community as a classroom, we are in a position to use natural situational frames as a means for integrating learning and practice and fitting patterns of formal learning to local patterns of informal learning. Instead of depending on the unique setting of the school to establish a simulated form of learning environment in which to teach subject-matter skills, we can use the natural setting and events of the community to bring students into the flow of real-life experiences where they can acquire more pervasive and useful process skills. Students can interact and communicate with people through responsible participation in the full range of natural community situations that they might encounter as adults, and learn-through observation, reflection and practice-the skills necessary to effectively function in those situations. Through their involvements in the community, the students can serve useful social functions and maintain their cultural identity, while learning how social systems operate and by what forces they are changed. They will then, be in a position to act on the goal of cultural eclecticism and contribite to the continuing evolution of a dynamic social order.

All of the above is of little use to anyone if it cannot be put into a framework that schools and communities can identify as realistically attainable. Obviously, we cannot simply turn students loose in the community without some direction and supportive structure within which to function. That would not be acceptable or helpful to the school, the community, or the students. But neither is the rigid structure of the existing school system acceptable or functional as a means for organizing learning experiences for minority students. Between those two conditions there are unlimited options, however, from which schools and communities can choose to organize learning environments suited to the educational goals they hold for their students.

The option that has been proposed here is the project-centered approach, because it is flexible and adaptable to nearly any situation considered desirable for learning and can accommodate any form of knowledge or skills a community considers important for their children, with a minimum of cultural intrusion. If conditions are such that learning experiences cannot be provided in the community, projects can readily be incorporated into a school-based program as well But the project approach is particulatly well-suited to the education of minority students in a community setting, because it engenders widespread interaction between school and community participants, and thus, provides built-in mechanisms for community influence on the direction and form of learning. In addition, projects can be designed around natural patterns of interaction and groupings of persons, while addressing actual tasks and problems in a minority or a majority setting.

Combining projects with community-based education provides a powerful alternative to conventional schooling. It shifts control of education into the hands of the community and it opens up opportunities for meaningful learning experiences to a broader sector of the population. Instead of imposing externally derived categories of learning on students, the categories are derived from the natural conditions surrounding the student's daily life experiences. Project activities are flexibly structured to allow students to fit the learning to their individual learning styles, needs and abilities, and to community values, norms and cultural practices with a minimum of discontinuity. Educational performance is judged by task-oriented standards, rather than test scores, thus reducing the discrepancy between ideal and real. The vast diversity of situational and cultural conditions extant in any community is accommodated, therefore, by an organizational structure that is supportive of the differences, but still provides a means for the development of equivalence structures by which productive interaction and social order can be achieved.

The success of any attempt at a project-centered, community-based approach to education is highly dependent, as is any educational endeavor, on the orientation of the persons involved in its implementations. The critical persons in formal educational processes are the students and the teacher, so it is to an examination of the consequences of our approach for their roles and relationships that we turn next. Without appropriately oriented and prepared teachers and students, we cannot expect any alternative approach, no matter how well conceived, to go very far in practice.

 Teacher and student

The adaptation of formal education to a project-centered, community-based format can have a dramatic effect on the traditional roles of teacher and student. In general, the power and authority for the control of learning is substantially shifted from the teacher to the students and community. The source of skills and understanding is lodged in the setting, rather than the person of the teacher. Any situation, person or event is a potential source for learning, and the student has considerable latitude in defining the nature of that learning. Through their direct participation in the educational process, community members can acquire the power to influence the direction of learning. Learning can become a two-way process, whereby students learn through the activities organized by teachers, and teachers learn through their active involvements with students in the community. It is through this two-way flow of learning, that educational experiences can be made meaningful and adapted to changing conditions. In a community-based approach, the teachers employ their process skills to assist students in acquiring similar skills of their own, through joint exploration of the real-life opportunities available in the surrounding natural physical and social environment. Students are able to engage in projects that bring them together in natural groupings related to the requirements of the task and needs and interests of the learner, rather than artificial grouping by age-grade or test scores. Attention can be paid to the processes by which students function as a group, so that they can learn from each other as well as from the learning activity itself Through such group experience, students are able to build and solidify their own identities, and acquire the skills and attitudes necessary to function as contributing members of other social groups. Students are able to develop their individuality through the natural processes of group interaction. Thus, the social group takes on a greater responsibility in the shaping of learning experiences in a community-based approach to education. The student serves as teacher as well as learner, through participation in a group process of educational and social development. While such processes occur naturally in a community setting, they are often thwarted by the one-way flow of experience reflected in the conventional social organization of the school.

 Along with the student role, the role of "teacher" changes too, from that of transmitter of knowledge and skills, to that of organizer of learning activities. Instead of doing things to students, the teacher works with students, as a tutor, counselor, facilitator and supervisor, in the development and carrying out of learning projects. The teacher's role is to organize community resources into productive learning experiences contributory to student needs, rather than serving as the only source for such learning. Those learning needs that cannot be met in the community context can then be provided through more formalized means, with the teacher working with the students as a resource person in developing the knowledge and skills necessary to carry out particular responsibilities in the community. Only at the advanced stages of schooling, for those students who wish to pursue avenues of interest that cannot be tied to expedience or where the opportunities for experience are not readily available, is it necessary to pursue a detached form of learning. Below university level work, such instances need be few in number, given adequately prepared, experientially-oriented teachers.

 Since a community-based approach involves the teacher more directly in community activities and fosters more personalized involvement with the students, it is necessary to distinguish between the roles of local community members vs. non-community members as teachers in such an approach, particularly in the context of a minority community. A minority teacher from the same cultural background as the student is in a position to establish a much more productive relationship with that student than a non-minority (or other-minority) teacher (cf., Barnhardt, 1974). The minority teacher, as a representative of the student's culture, is able to identify with and directly relate to the cultural patterns indigenous to the community and the student, and thus avoid many of the conflicts and discontinuities associated with schooling for minority students. Because of the similarity in communication and interaction patterns, the minority teacher does not have to go through the process of building appropriate situational frames and establishing equivalence structures to engage in productive interaction with the minority students. These are inherent in the relationship. This can be particularly helpful in the early years of schooling, when the students are especially vulnerable to discontinuities in educational experience. The minority teacher can provide continuity in the student's transition from informal to formal learning, and thus reduce the chances of the student developing a negative, dysfunctional stance toward learning.

The opportunity for a minority teacher to serve the positive functions outlined above is predicated on two conditions, however~ 1) that prior experiences, particularly while in training, have not impeded the indigenous characteristics necessary to function effectively in the cultural minority setting; and 2) that the schooling environment itself is open to the establishment of alternative roles and relationships. The first condition is sometimes lacking because of the attitudinal and behavioral changes that often accompany four years of university expenence. This can become a serious problem if the teacher training program inculcates a structured form of teaching behavior that is incompatible with the indigenous patterns of behavior and interaction in the minority community. The minority teacher with such training will be placed in the untenable position of having to resolve two conflicting modes of interaction-One in the school, and one in the community. The implications of this problem for teacher training are obviously numerous.

The second condition-the flexibility of the schooling environment-is of even greater importance than the first, because the appropriate teaching environment can oftentimes overcome the inadequacies of the training, whereas the reverse is more difficult. A minority teacher in a minority school setting can greatly improve the quality of the educational experiences in that setting, both as a role model and as an effective interactant. This is assuming, however, that the improvement of conventional school experiences is in the student's best interest. If such experiences are oriented, implicitly or explicitly, toward assimilation, the minority teacher might become a vehicle to enhance the goals of the school, rather than the goals of the minority community. Such issues must be dealt with at a situational level, because the goals of education will vary from one context to another, and individual teachers will be supportive of different goals for themselves.

The most effective use of a minority teacher occurs when the goal is cultural eclecticism, and education is community-based. Under such conditions, the minority teacher is uniquely equipped to maximize the opportunities for learning to occur in a cumulative and integrative manner. The teacher and students can adapt themselves to the surrounding conditions and carry on fruitful interaction in all dimensions of community and educational experiences. The minority teacher serves as a natural extension of the community into the educational domain of the minority students.

The teacher from outside the minority community is in a different position in relation to students from that community. The outside teacher must recognize that there is no universal form of teaching practice or method that will achieve comparable results in any cultural setting. Each situation is unique, and teaching behavior that may be appropriate in one situation may be quite inappropriate in another. An outsider coming into a new minority setting must, therefore, expect to spend a considerable amount of time (a year or more) just getting his/her bearings in the local cultural scene. Only after s/he has acquired a familiarity with local patterns of communication and interaction, can s/he expect to contribute much more than limited factual knowledge and skills to that scene. If properly oriented and placed, however, the outside teacher can be an important contributor to minority education. As a representative of the larger society (usually), the outside teacher can provide the exposure to outside experiences that is implied in the goal of cultural eclecticism. The crucial factor is the attitude reflected by such a teacher in providing that exposure. If the teacher takes a holier-than-thou position and presents the larger world in a detached context and in a glorified manner that implies "this is the only way to go," s/he will be of little value to the minority student. If, on the other hand, s/he works with the students in a community context with the intent of involving them in vanous larger-society experiences to help them understand and cope with alternative situations they may encounter as adults, then s/he is in a position to make a valuable contribution.

 

 

  

 

Outside teachers can be most useful at the upper levels, as students begin branching out into new situations and alternative avenues of interests from those indigenous to the minority community. If the students are to learn to function in a complex, multicultural society, then it is helpful for them to have multi-cultural experiences in the course of their education, provided the external cultural influences do not unfairly predominate in those experiences. A balance of minority and non-minority teachers operating in a community context provides one means by which this can be accomplished.

 

We have seen, then, that community-based education calls for major revisions in the social organization of the school. The school becomes more closely integrated with the cultural patterns of the community, and the teacher and student roles are opened up to a form of shared experiential development that has the potential for transcending cultural boundaries and bringing education into the realm of cultural eclecticism. It is that experiential focus that is at the heart of a cross-cultural approach, so it is to the relation between culture and experiential learning that we turn now to draw together the threads that have been interspersed throughout the preceding discussion.

Culture and experiential learning

In exploring the various approaches to goals, content, and structure in minority education, we have worked our way through, in each dimension, to an approach that is dependent on some form of experiential learning. Cultural eclecticism as a goal, depends on each person having the range of experiences necessary to make realistic choices in life style and cultural commitments. A process-oriented curriculum is dependent on opportunities for the experiential development of the requisite process skills. And the project-centered~ community-based structure is designed to organize learning activities in the context of real-life experiences. The "experiential learning" reflected in all these dimensions of our approach, serves then, as our educational "method."

Experiential learning is more than the "learning by doing," "discovery" or "inquiry" methods that are sometimes espoused by educators. These methods, while indicative of the value of having students "work it out for themselves," are usually employed within the context of formally structured learning activities, stopping short of the direct involvement in real-life experiences called for here. Experiential learning is more akin to the "walkabout" approach suggested by Gibbons (1974) as a means for facilitating students' transition from childhood to adult roles during the last years of formal schooling. Drawing on the Australian Aborigine practice of sending out their young to survive alone in the wilderness for an extended period as a "rite of passage" (cf., van Gennep, 1960), into adulthood, Gibbons proposes a comparable experience for American high school students. He contrasts a conventional high school experience with features of the "walkabout" as follows:

The young native faces a severe but extremely appropriate trial, one in which he must demonstrate the knowledge and skills necessary to make him a contributor to the tribe rather than a drain on its meager resources. By contrast, the young North American is faced with written examinations that test skills very far removed from the actual experience he will have in real life. He writes; he does not act. He solves familiar theoretical problems; he does not apply what he knows in strange but real situations. He is under direction in a protected environment to the end; he does not go out into the world to demonstrate that he is prepared to survive in, and contribute to, our society.His preparation is primarily for the mastery of content and skills in the disciplines and has little to do with reaching maturity, achieving adulthood, or developing fully as a person (p. 597).

As a means of pulling school experiences together and making them contributory to passage into the adult world, Gibbons proposes a modified form of the walkabout as a kind of culminating trial experience preparatory to graduation. A principal feature of the walkabout program is that "it should be experiential and the experience should be real rather than simulated" (p. 598). He indicates that it should also involve "personal challenge, individual and group decision making, self-direction in the pursuit of goals, real-world significance in activity, and community involvement at all stages of preparation and conclusion" (p. 600).

In practice, Gibbons' walkabout experiences would address five "challenge categories:" adventure, creativity, service, practical skill, and logical inquiry. Students would be required to select and carry out a major project in each category. Gibbons provides numerous examples of potential walkabout projects, such as a month-long expedition in a wilderness area, producing an original film, volunteer work with the elderly, operating a home appliance repair service, and researching questions such as "What ways can the power output of an engine be most economically increased" (p. 599). Just prior to graduation, the students would present formal reports to community and school members, summarizing the results of their walkabout experiences.

 The walkabout, in its theory, design and practice, is a prime example of experiential learning. Students learn through direct involvement in the physical and cultural environment around them. Such an approach does not have to be limited, however, to the culminating years of school experience. It can be readily adapted to any level and to cover many aspects of the curriculum. It offers one more way to more closely align formal schooling with community socialization processes.

 The experiential approach to learning outlined here reflects many of the characteristics associated with informal education. It provides for a more particularistic orientation in the organization of social relations, thus allowing critical identity and value formation processes to develop freely in a natural community context. Students and teachers are able to maintain personalized relationships and establish an informal atmosphere of mutual respect and trust. The content and processes of learning are focused on actual, real-life phenomena. with an · emphasis on observation, action and participation as a means of acquiring an understanding of those phenomena. There is a continuity between community and school related experiences, with a great deal of flexibility to fit learning to individual needs and circumstances. Much of what is learned is spontaneous and unanticipated, consistent with the loose structure and inductive nature of the learning activities. Finally, learning is evaluated on the basis of conduct and action in the course of carrying out real-life responsibilities within a natural context, rather than on the basis of achievement test scores resulting from the imposition of externally defined criteria set in a detached environment. All of these characteristics serve to indicate the appropriateness of an experiential learning approach for adapting formal education to the varied cultural and situational conditions in minority communities.

 An implicit function of experiential learning, as reflected in the educational approach outlined in this discussion, is to provide a means by which students can test themselves and the world around them, through a process of critical involvement and exploration in that world. This process is comparable to Freire's (1971) notion of "praxis"-a testing of theory through practice. Students confront and eventually learn to modify and improve their social reality through the experience gained from direct participation in that reality. This development of a critical social consciousness is a by-product of experiential learning that makes it especially suitable in a minority setting, where an understanding of the processes that shape social reality can provide a major step in gaining control over the future of that reality. If cultural minorities desire educational opportunities that will prepare them to extend beyond the boundaries of their present existence, they will need to overcome the experiential limitations of the traditional educational system. That system, with its detachment from real-life experience, is not capable of perpetuating the minority culture, nor is it capable of transmitting any more than superficial aspects of the majority culture. It is only through direct experience that a critical understanding of basic cultural processes and thus, self-determination, can be achieved. As Wallace (1970:109) has indicated in reference to processes of cultural transmission in general, "The best a culture can do is communicate the general framework of 'its' plans and ensure that the new generation is placed in situations in which they will have to reinvent the details, probably with minor modifications." The provision of such situations becomes all the more critical when the circumstances include varying conditions of acculturation, as in minority settings.

Experiential learning, as applied in the cross-cultural approach to education outlined here, is intended to serve as a means to address cultural processes, rather than cultural content. The specific cultural patterns reflected in a particular community serve as a means to gain an understanding of the more general processes by which culture defines the nature of our existence, and by which culture changes as a result of human interaction. The justification for the approach outlined here is aptly summarized by Hall (1976: 165) in the following statement "Without first mastering culture's unwritten rules, we cannot escape the binding constraints on knowledge of our species which can be seen in all situations and contexts and can be observed wherever human beings interact. Where does one begin such an inquiry?" We might begin by looking at ourselves and the processes by which we come to understand and shape the world around us. We may then find ways to build educational programs that contribute to the multiple and diverse needs of all the people, rather than a select few.

 

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