Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 20:33:13 -0900
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Subject: A Community-as-Text Approach to Learning
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EDUCATION WEEK
Published: November 10, 2004
Commentary
Creating a Culture of Attachment
A Community-as-Text Approach to Learning
By Milbrey McLaughlin & Martin Blank
Both content and context make students want to learn and demand their
full and concentrated attention.
The teacher could not understand it. The only time 10-year-old Paul
seemed awake all semester was during a unit on plants in his
community. He did his homework, participated in class, and earned
good marks. When she asked him why he was so interested, he said: "My
Dad's work is taking care of lawns."
For Paul, the reason was simple. He wanted to learn about things that
he already knew something about and that someone he loved cared
about, too. Paul's experience reminds us that learning isn't about
test scores or even preparing for the future. For most young people,
learning matters when it is personal and serves a purpose. When
students have an opportunity to use or share what they know, they
want to learn more. It is time educators and policymakers paid
attention to what our children-and the research-are telling us.
A special 2004 issue of the Journal of School Health documents that
40 percent to 60 percent of all students are chronically disengaged
from schools. This "culture of detachment," argues Johns Hopkins
University's Robert Blum, decreases their prospects for academic
success and promotes a variety of high-risk behaviors. Blum says that
rather than engaging students and helping them feel a sense of
belonging, "essentially, we're telling kids: 'You're on your own.' "
According to Temple University's Lawrence Steinberg,
less-than-expected national student performance-including soaring
dropout rates and low literacy rates-results not from inferior
ability but from low student interest in the content and value of
what is being taught.
A 2003 review of research in multiple disciplines conducted by the
Coalition for Community Schools confirms that students learn best
when they are actively involved in understanding and helping solve
meaningful problems. This is true across all ability levels and
grades. A 2003 National Academy of Sciences report found that schools
successfully engage students when they "make the curriculum and
instruction relevant to adolescents' experience, cultures, and
long-term goals, so that students see some value in the high school
curriculum."
If we are serious about leaving no child behind, we must present the
content that young people need to meet high standards in a context
that has meaning and relevance in their everyday lives.
Despite these findings, many schools that are under the gun to show
improved student performance continue to soldier on in the wrong
direction. They have narrowed the curriculum, hammered away at direct
instruction as a "one size fits all" strategy, and confused
high-stakes testing with achieving accountability for high standards.
If we are serious about leaving no child behind, we must present the
content that young people need to meet high standards in a context
that has meaning and relevance in their everyday lives.
Community schools, using a community-as-text approach, are showing an
important way to do this. They know that local communities and
neighborhoods, whether rich or poor, provide a rich context for
learning that matters to children. Because they understand this, they
use local resources and issues to meet challenging curricular
standards and motivate students-right in their own back yards.
A community-as-text approach to teaching and learning uses hands-on,
authentic learning strategies to breathe life into a standards-based
curriculum. Service learning, place-based education, environmental
education, civic education, work-based learning, and youth
development are some of the arenas in which a community-as-text
approach is being applied. Though each strategy is distinct, they
share common features:
* The community provides the context for learning;
* The content focuses on community needs, issues, and interests;
* Students serve as resources to their communities and as producers,
as well as consumers, of knowledge;
* Community-based partners collaborate in teaching and learning; and
* Learning in after-school and community-based venues is connected to
core standards and brings together knowledge from diverse disciplines
across the school curriculum.
We encourage this approach not as the only way to promote learning or
to suggest that schools simply need to do a better job of keeping
students amused. We know that motivation and concentration are needed
for learning to occur at high levels. Reed W. Larson of the
University of Illinois has found that students interrupted in the
middle of school tasks report that they were concentrating on their
work but not motivated by it. When interrupted with friends, they
report the reverse. Activities like athletics or structured volunteer
activities-those that are physically engaging and require a variety
of skills, knowledge, and personal autonomy-typically combined both
concentration and motivation and were most likely to promote real
learning. Our experience has convinced us that a community-as-text
approach does the same. Both content and context make students want
to learn and demand their full and concentrated attention.
The most obvious value of this approach is its effect on student
motivation and achievement. Engagement in real issues spurs focused
and consistent work, builds students' confidence in their own
abilities, and carries over to other areas of study. In East
Feliciana, La., for example, test scores improved significantly in
all subjects for students involved in hands-on learning in the woods
and wetlands surrounding their school. Research in the different
community-as-text arenas confirms the academic promise of this
approach.
Equally important is the unique contribution that community-as-text
strategies provide to civic engagement. In a world in which
democratic freedoms are at the center of global strife, American
youths cannot afford to be disengaged from the democratic process.
Yet, in the 1972 presidential election, about half of those aged 18
to 29 voted. By 1996, the proportion had dropped to less than
one-third. Identifying and taking action on real issues shows young
people that their voice, when informed by knowledge and diverse
perspectives, can make a real difference.
Teachers and school staff members markedly benefit. Collaboration
with community-based educators provides resources and personnel aimed
at helping schools meet their achievement goals. Teachers are exposed
to new instructional methods that strengthen their teaching
repertoires, and their classroom efforts are bolstered by the
broadened and deepened subject-matter learning that students acquire
in other settings.
For most young people, learning matters when it is personal and
serves a purpose. When students have an opportunity to use or share
what they know, they want to learn more.
Finally, a community-as-text approach improves the school climate,
engages community members, and has the potential to improve the
quality of community life. It can change-for the better-how people
view schools, families, and students. When a school's staff works
with students, parents, and residents in community-based learning,
power relationships become more equitable and mutual respect grows.
Community residents better understand school needs and are more
willing to support them. They are more likely to identify and use
school resources. In turn, students are given the opportunity to
become producers, not just consumers, of knowledge. In Howard, S.D.,
for example, market research conducted by students led merchants to
change business practices. Improved sales increased tax revenues.
Budget cuts were forestalled, and basic services were maintained.
A community-as-text approach can easily be used to enrich an existing
course, but it is most effective when it forms the framework of an
integrated curriculum. Ad hoc additions, while valuable, cannot be
expected to have more than marginal impact on schoolwide teacher
effectiveness, school climate, community well-being, and student
success.
Experiential, community-based learning requires a reconsidered view
of teaching and learning-one that recognizes the prior knowledge of
students and the wealth of teaching expertise available in every
community. Schools will need to adapt expectations, policies, and
practices to allow the community inside the school, and students to
go off site during the school day. New instructional methods may have
to be adopted, learning during nonschool hours recognized and built
upon, and adjustments made in staffing, planning, and scheduling to
make new methods work. In order to make sure new approaches take root
and grow, every change must be institutionalized in school policies
and curricula.
The experience of local community schools and work in the different
community-as-text arenas have shown that all of this can be done.
With the participation of school districts, teacher education and
professional-development programs, policymakers, and the larger
community, we can address key issues that will enable many more
children to benefit from this important learning strategy.
*Curriculum Development. Numerous national groups already have
developed standards-based curricula of this kind, though more work
clearly needs to be done. School districts, through their offices of
curriculum and instruction, can assist schools by identifying, making
available, and supporting the use of such materials. They can also
facilitate innovation by providing training opportunities and on-site
support that encourages new approaches.
*Professional Development. Clearly, teachers and subject-matter
specialists must have the skills to develop high-quality
interdisciplinary projects. Preservice teacher education, as well as
in-service professional development, can help practitioners
understand how to study core concepts in real-world settings and link
standards-based competencies to existing community issues and
resources.
Principal-preparation programs must ensure that school leaders
understand, value, and know how to promote community-as-text
learning. The Principal Leadership Institute at the University of
California, Berkeley's graduate school of education, for example,
teaches community mapping as a way to introduce future principals to
the power of community-based learning.
*Policy. Educational policy and practices designed to set standards
and increase testing have shed important light on where students are
failing, but they have done little to encourage methods that might
help. The test-focused, rote instruction seen today in many
classrooms threatens to crowd out hands-on experiences and meaningful
content-the very things we know motivate students to achieve their
best. Carefully designed policy innovations can encourage efforts to
seek out community-based learning opportunities as an important
contribution to effective learning strategies; make it easier to tap
existing funding sources to pay for them; and broaden the kinds of
evaluation used to determine student success.
*Community Institutions and Organizations. Public and private
community institutions from a variety of sectors-notably higher
education and youth development-are reaching out to schools and
becoming their partners in strengthening the curriculum. By sharing
their own community-as-text strategies in both after-school programs
and school settings, they can help school staff members broaden their
instructional methods and tap additional resources. Community-based
providers of learning-rich content can also describe what they do in
standards-based language and show clearly how it supports school-led
learning.
For the foreseeable future, schools will continue to be under
pressure to improve test scores. To the extent that community
organizations, colleges and universities, and civic and cultural
institutions highlight how what they offer contributes to school
success-by strengthening positive attitudes, motivation, behavior,
attendance, and basic achievement-the more formal relations between
schools and community partners will be formed, and schools and young
people will benefit.
Community-as-text approaches are showing that students can meet
challenging standards when they have a personal stake in what they
are learning. Their success should remind us that, like Paul, we need
to wake up; search for connections between school, community, and
curriculum; and help our children find them. Until we do, most of our
children-the broad middle-will meet only minimum school standards.
The brightest will not achieve what they might, and the failures will
be more than we can bear.
Milbrey McLaughlin is the David Jacks professor of education and
public policy and the executive director of the John W. Gardner
Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University, in
Stanford, Calif. ( milbrey@stanford.edu ). Martin Blank is the staff
director of the Coalition for Community Schools at the Institute for
Educational Leadership, in Washington ( blank@iel.org ).
Vol. 24, Issue 11, Pages 34-35
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