The larger the pumpkin, explains 6-year-old Marisela to her class, the more seeds it must have inside. She creates a plan to verify her prediction. Heriberto, 5, states confidently that counting the number of chairs in the room next door will give him an “estimate” of how many children are in that class.
These children from Ochoa Elementary School in the City of South Tucson, Arizona, have eyes that are bright and eager. They are clearly as capable as children anywhere. Already linguists, they and their classmates have formulated a complex understanding of one, two, even three languages—Spanish, English, and Yaqui or Tohono O'odham. They also are young scientists (as we shall show later), constructing their own theories of the world, testing them against their observations, and adjusting the theories accordingly.
However, recent national, state, and local demographic data suggest that Marisela, Heriberto, and their classmates are more likely to drop out of school than to graduate (Center for the Study of Social Policy 1992, National Commission on Children 1991, Arizona State Data Center 1992). Should they graduate, they have little hope of going to college, if they choose, or of participating fully in society.
Why is this so? What happens to Ochoa's children—90 percent of whom are Hispanic and 9 percent Native American—during their years of schooling?
The staff at Ochoa School believe that these children should have the opportunity to capitalize on their own insights and ultimately to contribute to society. As part of a school restructuring project, the teachers, the principal, and many parents of Ochoa have made a commitment to confront the traditional way that these children experience schooling. They are attempting to reinvent their beliefs and practices through collaboration with colleagues, parents, community members, district administrators, and researchers from the University of Arizona.
The goal of the Educational and Community Change (ECC) Project is to create and enact a vision of education that can make a significant difference in the future of Ochoa's children. In doing this, the faculty's “beliefs in action” about curriculum are being challenged and changed (Nias et al. 1992). And although the project is only three years old, the way that most of the Ochoa staff perceive curriculum has altered dramatically.
Altering Beliefs and Actions
The beliefs of teachers, principals, and parents about curriculum and school organization are central to how they behave in their classrooms, schools, and families. We suggest that curriculum will change as educators examine, reinvent, and re-enact their beliefs in classrooms (Argyris and Schon 1974, Nias et al. 1992).
The idea of creating conditions that encourage change is fundamental to the ECC project and to altering beliefs and actions. The project seeks to discover what conditions allow members of the school community to become the inventors of a transformed educational network. We anticipate that the conditions themselves, not the details of the reinvented curriculum and school, will be valuable and perhaps replicable.
The project began with and continues to use a simple technique—dialogue among the participants—to question old beliefs and actions and to encourage new ones. Every week for half a day, interested Ochoa School staff members, relieved of teaching duties, are encouraged to discuss issues that are important to them with other project members. In these dialogues, the teachers articulate their theories and examine the assumptions that drive their decision making. Together the participants explore such issues as how the school is structured and organized, how the adults interact with one another, and what practices and content most benefit the children.
Parents are a fundamental facet of the project and are often urged to participate beyond their traditional roles as classroom volunteers or Parent Teacher Organization fund-raisers. For example, they might be asked to share with students their physical skills—such as carpentry, gardening, or cooking—but more important, to share their knowledge of a culture heritage that is pertinent to the students.
Often teachers conclude the dialogue sessions with a specific plan to investigate an aspect of teaching. Several sessions, for example, focused on what knowledge children bring with them to school and how learning conditions can capitalize on this. Following such a discussion, two teachers had an experience that influenced their beliefs and actions about curriculum.
The Pumpkin Investigation
Delia Hakim is a 1st grade teacher at Ochoa School. During most of her 20 years of teaching, the focus in her classroom was on the teacher. She felt that the children who came to her lacked many important experiences, and her duty was to provide them. As Hakim explained, “I had a curriculum guide and I followed it. If I taught the vowels by a certain week and covered all the topics in the guide, I was satisfied.”
Hakim's classroom was largely a visual and verbal place in which she expected the children use correct spelling, write neatly, and conform to what she believed to be correct. The foremost question in her mind was, “Am I doing what `they' (the district, parents, other teachers, university educators) want me to do? Am I fulfilling the requirements?”
Today, Hakim's classroom has a different focus. She now believes that the most meaningful experiences are those that emerge from the children's own naturally inquisitive questions. Rather than expecting the child to fit the curriculum, she expects the curriculum to fit the child. She recognizes that adults rarely imagine the questions that intrigue children, such as: What makes the wind sing? How can I poke a plastic straw into Styrofoam? Why is there a button on the bottom of a pumpkin? Investigation of such questions invites children to examine physics, probability, and biology.
Last year, Hakim and Chris Confer, an instructional support teacher, began a unit on pumpkins. In the past, they might have decided what activities the children should do. But this time, the teachers let the children examine the pumpkins freely, in their own way. They followed the children's lead in deciding how to begin the study. As the two teachers watched closely and talked with the children, they discovered that the children had extensive funds of knowledge (Moll 1991) about pumpkins, certainly more than the teachers had anticipated.
They also discovered that the children had a curious misconception: that pumpkins were filled with pumpkin juice. During the activity, a pumpkin fell and split open, exposing a rather dry interior. The children were shocked. Where was the juice? One child ventured that it had leaked out. Another thought that the worms drank it. This question, one that adults might never have thought of, dominated the entire discussion.
The children cut open several pumpkins. Not one contained juice. Then, to further their study, the teachers took the class and several of the pumpkins to the home of one of the students, where the student's mother cut open more pumpkins to make empanadas (turnovers). Still no juice. As the mother cooked the pumpkin mixture, she intuitively addressed the issue. Pumpkin juice, she explained, is within its pulp. When the pulp is cooked, the juice is released, and she showed the children the hot juicy pumpkin mixture.
Did the children then revise their “theories” about pumpkins? Hakim and Confer asked the children to select one of two statements, “Pumpkins do have juice inside” or “Pumpkins do not have juice inside.” Half of the children agreed with the first statement; the others agreed with the second. At first, the teachers thought that only the children who selected the second statement had changed their conceptions. As the discussion continued, however, the children pointed out that although pumpkins did not have juice sloshing around inside, they most certainly had juice—it was inside the pulp.
Hakim and Confer learned that children often have “theories” very different from what teachers think they have. Discussing with children what they are thinking, what their theories are, and, thus, what they know has become an important new curriculum practice for Confer and Hakim. In this instance, a unit on pumpkins provided a dramatic learning experience when the children's own questions became the basis of investigation.
Several weeks later, the children decided to plant their pumpkin seeds. They went outside and gathered the nearest dirt—from the school's sandbox. As Confer watched the children fill their empty milk cartons with the rocky, sandy dirt, she thought, “Those seeds certainly won't grow. Well, at least the children will learn about the kind of soil that plants need.” Instead, the learning experience was hers, when several weeks later she returned to the room to see rows of healthy, green pumpkin plants!
By then, Hakim and Confer had realized that the children had a significant base of knowledge on which the unit could build further—and the children exceeded even their teachers' most optimistic predictions. The children were sure that seeds needed water, sun, and soil in order to grow—but only in certain amounts: too much or too little would stop a seed from growing. The children explained that some soil was especially rich and fertile, and they told the teachers where in the neighborhood this kind of soil could be found.
At one point during the discussion, Manuel, usually quiet and withdrawn, began to talk about all the things he knew about seeds. Manuel, it seemed, had planted grass seeds next to a tree at home and had watched them grow. He had opened up seeds and found that they have minute baby leaves within. All seeds have tiny holes, Manuel explained, and the baby leaves emerge through the holes and grow into larger wing-like leaves. The teachers looked at each other with surprise as Manuel talked faster. He had smelled many different kinds of leaves, and he believed that each seed smells like the plant it will become. He further explained that there were different categories of seeds—flower seeds, food seeds, and plant seeds.
Later, Hakim and Confer examined the 1st grade science textbook to see what it would have presented to these children. The science book said three things: (1) plants need air, water, soil, and sun; (2) plants are green; and (3) plants are everywhere. Period. At best, turning to the science textbook would have seriously underestimated the knowledge that the children brought with them to school. At worst, it would have taught the children that their ideas were not valued, that true knowledge lay beyond them. Instead, a usually shy child had blossomed into a confident expert, and his 1st grade classmates had revealed an astounding amount of collective knowledge.
As a result of the experience, Hakim now believes that children should experience a subject or theme. I only stimulate their interest and curiosity. I let this curiosity bring out the knowledge they already possess. Hands-on experience touches children in emotional, spiritual, physical, and intellectual ways. Isn't that what we want learning to be?
As a result of their classroom collaboration, Hakim and Confer believe that the children's own questions are the most powerful source of curriculum topics and investigations. They also realize that all children, even those who live in poor neighborhoods, are rich in experiences that can be built upon.
The Importance of Dialogue
Through the Educational and Community Change Project, we believe that dialogue is a significant condition contributing to the reinvention of beliefs in action. However, we do not know that dialogue is the “right” condition, and we certainly don't assume it is the only condition. We present it tentatively as part of our continuing investigation.
The issues that the Ochoa School staff explore are the same questions that weigh upon the entire educational community: What knowledge and skills are essential for our children to develop? How can knowledge and skills best be acquired? What is intelligence, and is it innate? Is the teacher's job that of diagnostician and imparter of information? What characteristics do we hope children can develop so they can make the world a better place?
Ultimately, the Ochoa School staff's questions have determined the focus of their dialogues. Just as children are empowered by investigating their own questions, so are teachers empowered by investigating theirs—in their own time, in their own way. The exposure to different points of view has led Ochoa teachers to experience school in a new light. Every staff member appears to have changed, each according to his or her own experiences.
At the end of this five-year project, we hope that our investigations into this and other conditions that foster change will reveal that Marisela, Heriberto, and Manuel bring to school knowledge that is an advantage to them. To support this, many aspects of the curriculum will probably have to be reinvented; structures, norms, and activities will also need to be established to encourage continuous examination and change. Ultimately, our goal is to promote a new work life for teachers that includes time and opportunity to reflect, dialogue, and create new shared curriculum beliefs and actions.
