educational access and the social creation of inequality
TRANSCRIPT
Educational Access and the Social Creation of Inequality
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June 14, 1984
Abstract
The current application seeks support for the following activities:
I. Conduct research on the construction of educational activities appropriate for extremely heterogeneous classroom populations.
2. Apply this research to concrete, model educational activities that impart basic, skills in reading, mathematics, and computer literacy.
3. Train scholars to engage in this kind of practically useful cognitive/educational research by embedding this research activity in the training efforts of the University of California. Through undergraduate and graduate teaching, cultural psychology will be applied to community needs for those of their kids whom the schools cannot help.
4o (A.) Sustain a medium of interaction for cultural psychological ideas. Maintain a small communication network that employs the general approach to national, international, and intercommunity networking on technology and educational change.
(B.) Support efforts of former LCHC fellows to communicate with each other and the larger social environment via The Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition.
1
A critical feature of each of the experimental systems is that they defeat various forms of the separation of mental abilities into tw kinds, such as Jensen's distinction between Level 1 (rote) and Level 2 (conceptual) abilities or between ''basic skills" and "enrichment." Within contemporary cognitive psychology, it is widely recognized that this dichotomizing leads to a situation where, in principle, cognitive change and development are impossible. Yet, in practice, for a great variety of reasons, curricula in American education and psychometrics embodying such reductionist distinctions have gained the ascendency. Existing approaches to remedial and compensatory education inadvertently produce the widespread outcome that the intellectually rich get richer thereby exacerbating social inequality and robbing the U.S. of much needed human resources.
In addition to creating_model curriculum systems in traditional topic areas, we use our long history of concern with the tools of the intellect to create mixed models that introduce children to basic concepts of computer literacy as a medium for mastery of the more traditional "basic skills" because the medium enables us repeatedly and successfully to defeat the Level 1 - Level 2 distinction.
June 14, 1984 2
The specific curricular models are themselves in a model system for creating educational change at the University level by showing how our research/teaching techniques can be used to recruit non-mainstream students to UCSD and retain them once they are here.
Dissemination through an international computer network and a newsletter help propagate this work.
Introduction
For the past two decades I have been attempting to come to grips scien
tifically with the problem of how culturally organized experience influences
the development of cognitive processes. From the very first, this theoretical
enterprise was carried out under the practical necessity to make my research
relevant to people interested in designing educational change.
As described in my Progress report, this work has undergone a number of
developments over the past decade and half. When I began we were in the hay
day of enthusiasm over project Head Start and a variety of school-based inter
vention programs. In 1969 Arthur Jensen summarized his frustrated conclusions
as a stimulus-response psychologist who bad failed for years to produce effec
tive implementation of his ideas for ways to engineer cognitive change. He
settled for a "two factor" theory that mapped on to a genetic hypothesis about
differential distribution in the human race of two kinds of mental ability.
Since then there has been a slow erosion of scientific conviction and public
support for the idea that societies can organize significant variations in
intellectual achievement. The current ·--''back to basics" movement easily com
bines with the ascent of biological theorizing about human nature to generate
the present educational situation. In currently fashionable terms, since
schools "mirror society," we are not surprised when we see biological theories
of mind dominating the many spheres of social discourse.
June 14, 1984 3
In the face of these changes in the social and political context of our
work, the focus and nature of the research has also changed. We started in
West Africa, a case that poses in extreme form many of the issues of education
and social change which occupy Americans. From this "cross-cultural" base we
moved to a "cross-ethnic" base in New York City. We named our group "The
Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition," where all kinds of dimensions of
population contrast were involved. We obtained training monies that focused
on ethnic group comparisons. Simultaneously, we emphasized the methodological
requirements for taking cultural variation seriously, in particular the abso
lute necessity of a methodology to make comparisons in a variety of organized
human activity outside of school.
According to many public criteria, this line of work has been extremely
.successful. The Laboratory has been asked to write articles for such standard
setting publications as the Annual Reviews of Psychology and Anthropology,
Sternberg's Handbook of Intelligence, and Mussen's Manual of Child Develop
ment. I have personally been elected to such high prestige clubs as the Amer
ican Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of Experimental Psycholo
gists. I have been made part of a NRC advisory group on science and technol
ogy, the International Affairs Committee of APA, and various editorial boards.
My books and papers on methodology and specif~c comparative enterprises are
widely used.
Visibility from the high prestige sectors of science and society is fine
as an "ivory tower" enterprise. More satisfying personally has been our suc
cess in creating practical model curriculum systems that use the methodology
of cultural psychology to do work that people believed could not be done.
June 14, 1 984 4
In the early 80's, as I watched the onward march of biologizing in foun
dations that once supported us and the politicization of NIE and other govern
ment agencies~ I began to work on an alternative strategy for carrying on the
study of cultural psychology. I began to study children called learning dis
abled. This population has many important properties which we have been able
to exploit in order to carry.on our work:
1) The population is ethnically heterogeneous; class children are included.
and many middle
2) It is a quasi-medical category, which opens new sources of funds.
3) The schools don't know what to do; they are begging for help which they are happy to give in tenns of settings and equipment access.
4) My science does not know what to do, providing us with an excuse to do science at the same time we are concerned with practical problems. (As we show in our recent paper for Glaser's Cognition and Instruction volume, the LD problem is intimately connected methodologically to the cross-cultural and inter-ethnic problems.)
In short, by taking on the children that neither my profession nor the
school system can deal with in a way they eacb find satisfactory, we provide
ourselves with a medium that allows us to pursue the issues of how society
shapes mind in a socially accepted context.
Field College: The focal context
The bulk of the requested money is to provide minimum support for a sys
tem of activities centered geographically on an elementary school in a mixed
ethnic, working class neighborhood about 8 miles from UCSD. Here we work
closely with school personnel to provide new models of ways to re-mediate
June 14, 1984 5
deficiencies in children's acquisition of basic skills. This system uses the
intelligence and energy of University undergraduates, working under my direc
tion, for whom work in the model system is part of a practicum course in the
Psychology and Communication Departments, the two departments where I hold my
appointment. The coordination of field site, undergraduates, and specific
research projects is carried out by Peg Griffin, a sociolinguist with exten
sive classroom experience as·Field Director. Dr. Griffin's appointment is in
the Center For Human Information Processing, the institutional home for the
research side of my work. We work directly with approximately 24 children and
24 undergraduates at a time, although the number fluctuates up from there
pretty often. These children come twice a week to the afterschool setting
where they engage in specialized reading and computer activities that we
design as mixed diagnosis/remediation systems. The undergraduates read
books, take quizzes and field notes for the practicum class, providing them
with the necessary background to make academic use of this form of education.
They also spend a few hours a week with individual children in a community
setting. Graduate students work for part of the year in this class/research
project. Postdocs participate for part of the~r visit. This research site is
the medium for specific, content based, psycho-educational experiments.
Without some form of support the enterprise, which has been maintained in
skeleton for this year, will cease altogether. This setting is organized
around two content areas, reading and computation.
J. Reading
June 14, 1984 6
We have now worked out, and have had a chance to do pilot research on,
several concrete model systems for remediating early reading difficulties
which employ carefully designed activity structures. Some of these activities
are conducted in the form of a "drama" involving several "charactersn and a
script for how reading enters into the drama. In brief, these systems apply
current "interactive activation models" which have been tested out at the
level of individual lexical items to the comprehension of prose passages.
The "scripted drama" aspect of the procedure enables us to create volun
tary systems of activity involving text comprehension with children who have
resolutely failed to understand adult concepts of what reading is about.
These systems explicitly counteract an approach to remediation which "starts
at the beginning" with small tmits and builds toward large ones. We use the
scripted drama to provide the structured whole within which the developmental
process of reading to comprehend can be invented by the child- These systems
act simultaneously to accomplish diagnosis and remediation. Other remedial
reading activities rely heavily on computers as media within which to embody
systems properties that will defeat the "level-I - level 2" strategy that dom
inate modern school practice.
Descriptions of both kinds of research are enclosed in the appendix-
You will note that each research proposal covers only a single aspect of
the research domain. Each proposal was written keeping firmly in mind the
need to make the project conform to existing disciplinary requirements for
"clean" research. Each is only a part of the overall sys tern we believe neces
sary on cognitive and pedagogical grounds. It is precisely the piecemeal
nature of the individual projects that motivates my request for programmatic
June 14, 1984 7
support. Without money to glue the pieces together, these pieces are unlikely
to cohere and have a chance of effecting educational change. The problems
facing the synthetic research and training we have been pursuing is illus
trated by the fate of our research on learning disabilities.
In the beginning, this work was financed by the Office of Special Educa
tion (The Bureau of Educationally Handicapped). At that time, we proposed to
work with the existing framework set up by the schools to discover where the
handicap called learning disability arises and where incoherence in its treat
ment is arranged.
As documented in the long progress report, after 1 1/2 years of work
within existing frameworks we reached the end of the scientific road on the
trail of a solution to the pedagogical problems of the reading disabled. When
we took responsibility for creating change as a way to develop and test our
theories, we stepped outside the bounds of accepted scientific practice into a
never never land caught between theory and practice. When we reapplied for
money from OSE, reviewers complimented us for being on the cutting edge of
research. But they turned us down for two interconnected reasons: 1) none of
us had a degree in special education and (2) we were not practical enough.
So, next I took the idea to NSF where I know a seasoned staff officer
very well. There is even a small part of NSF specially set up to try to do
research relevant to learning handicaps. But, we were told that in no way
were we to allow it to look like we were interested in any clinical phenomenon
or use clinical techniques. That condition can be met; but to do so would
violate some of our own theory. We cannot cut out all clinical-style activity
(as that is typically defined) because we believe that combining diagnosis and
June 14, 1984 8
remediation in a single system is the path to follow in the case of learning
disabilities. This is the path that leads not only to diagnosis and remedia
tion for individual children (which is why NSF.doesn't like it) but also the
path that leads to the development of cultural psychological theories of read
ing and of learning disability (which is why OSE doesn't like it).
So, next I wrote to a prominent foundation with deep involvements in edu-
cational research. The response I got was, in part, the following:
I continue to be deeply interested in the research you do, and if your ventures in field experiments and school improvement are not funded, I hope we can explore some of the other ideas to which you refer (in the area of basic units of analysis for communicative teaching/learning events).
Is the nature of the catch 22 clear? My writings on methodology win
praise, fraternities of experimentalists elect me, the local educators send us
their torn up kids and UCSD students flock to the associated contexts and
activity systems. Within our overall system we can make real progress on
working out, explicitly, what it means to intervene practically in a vexed
area of education as well as what it means to do basic science. Eut the work
fits no acceptable category; it violates at least one rule for each potential
funding agency.
2. Computational Skills
A second content area we have worked on in recent years centers on compu
tational skills. There are two interrelated senses of the word computation:
having to do with arithmetic and having to do with computers.
June lli, 1984 9
It is a striking fact about many children who have trouble learning to
read that they also have difficulty in elementary mathematics of a very
specific kind; they find it difficult to count backwards, even from a small
number such as IC. They become very confused when asked to locate various
landmarks on the number line between 1-100 (not to mention larger numbers).
Consequently, we find ourselves working on elementary arithmetic, focused on
representations of the number line and on more complex activities like long
division which provide a system in which number line representation and a
variety of elementary arithmetic operations are functionally integrated.
Mathematics is of particular value for the development of the theory and
methodology of cultural psychology. First, it is a cultural domain that mani
fests interesting variety in the ways it appears within a culture (school
mathematics, "just plain folks" shopping and cooking and carpentering
.mathematics, work mathematics) over time (Euclidian geometry, projective
geometry) and between cultures (number system differences, abacuses and calcu-
lators). Second, like reading for comprehension, doing mathematics requires
that rigidly specified elements be subordinated in a non-teleological system.
On the one hand the domain is explicit, tightly constrained and has well
specified procedures that can be modeled and taught; on the other hand, it is
a most creative and dynamic domain where "getting it" can be neither well
specified nor explicitly taught. Generally, the treatment of beginners who
fail to "get it" is to provide more practice on specific component procedures.
This strategy results in failure to.transfer into the full, complex ill
structured task, producing again the appearance of Level I and Level II
learners. Our work show that in many cases time we can specifically locate
the problem as "iatrogenic," it is caused by the treatment that the
June 14, 1984 10
intellectually rich are saved from.
Thus, mathematics as a domain of inquiry provides us with a way to coor-
dinate with a variety of scholars, nationally and internationally, where our
special contribution to the discourse can be exceptionally useful. Technolog
ical innovations have made mathematics and science instruction, as well as
research on them, a major concern in a variety of countries; funding opportun
ities in this area have increased but at present there is amazing lack of
coordination among those studying "experts" and those studying learning and
development, between those studying school mathematics and those studying
everyday mathematics, between those studying estimation processes and those
studying precision processes. We are again in the situation where pieces of
our work are valued and accepted by different audiences, and again in need of
keeping the "whole" of our research approach together so that the parts can
develop and make sense.
Over the last several years there has been a tremendous increase in edu
cational software aimed at mathematics instruction. Members of our laboratory
have constructed a few micro-worlds in the a~ea of basic arithmetic that
implement cultural psychological principles to defeat rote practice and maxim
ize transfer. "Basic skills" and "enrichment" are combined so that they rein
force each other. These microworlds are crude by state of the art standards,
but they have still demonstrated some remarkable successes when they are
accompanied by appropriate social systems support. While we are interested in
these software "packets" we believe that tutors, peers and micro-computers can
place children in a complex activity which they cannot enter if alone, but
-which they need to have access to in order to become competent in the "basic"
Jm>.e 14, 1984 1i
skills that will allow them to function independently. The systems are again
used to provide a structure of the whole in which the child can develop the
prerequisite parts.
We know from the ethnographic work of Mehan and his colleagues, as well
as work from other centers, that the microprocessor "inundation" is not a
revolution. Poor /minority kids are getting rote drill and practice; middle
class/white kids are getting enrichment. Level 1-Level2 strikes again. A
special feature of our microworld/educational approach is that we include a
specific analysis of the context of the microworld, the social-microworld that
the computers are embedded in. When the two approaches are combined, as we
have done on occasion, they produce some really striking effects (see attached
preliminary descriptions).
A specific topic that requires elaboration in the years to come is the
concept of "computer literacy." Here our long background in the study of
literacy and the fact that we use a mediational approach to cognition have
been a real help. Last summer we began experimenting with an approach to com
puter literacy focused squarely on the problem-of access and transfer. Our
goal was to create a curriculum that could include enormously different kinds
of kids defined along all sorts of dimensions (culturally different, learning
disabled, hearing impaired, emotionally disturbed). We created a computa
tional medium and an introduction to computing that seemed to result in really
productive basic knowledge.
June 14, 1984 12
Our version of "basic computer knowledge" provides a re-interpretation of
basic skills (the children work on reading, writing and arithmetic) and basic
activities (they work in functional micro-worlds where the basic skills are
motivated), and basic understandings of what computers are and how they work.
Many approaches to the definition of computer literacy and to problems of
access and transfer proceed from the assumption that there is one correct
path. We find it productive instead to engineer effective mixes of computers
used to support traditional instruction, to introduce modern tools for tradi
tional domains of instruction (word processing, geometry micro-worlds), and as
an entity of inquiry in their own right.
A third line of research uses the networking capabilities of micro
processors connected through phone lines. Several studies by members of LCHC
have shown how variations in the temporal organization of interaction enabled
by off-line message systems can be exploited to empower less active learners
and build basic text production skills. We are currently employing these
ideas with college students who have difficulty producing written text: they
include severely hearing impaired, dyslexic and_ students for whom standard
English is not the language of the home. We have also begun to hook up chil
dren who live in ethnically isolated neighborhoods to each other through
microprocessors and UCSD using students in our practicum classes as intermedi
aries.
We have empirical evidence that prope!lY constructed systems of this kind
permit children to discover the importance of basic skills, which they prac
tice on their own. These systems also build self awareness concerning the
teaching/learning process. Although in its infancy, we think this line of
June 14, 1984 13
work is very promising and we want to help it spread.
Putting it together
The synthetic system toward which we are moving seems to be a combination
of computer-based activities and reading-doing activities. But we are not
dealing with a single, "correct" system. Different populations and settings
call out different mixes of the initial set of possibilities. For example, in
the bilingual version of this program, a special feature is the use of Spanish
to help build English-based achievement; in the Black version the reading
doing activities draw on the C.Ommunication Department and its media students.
In the Anglo version there is a developing fantasy world that has logical
structure roughly equivalent to "MJnopoly" but a thematic line more like "lord
of the Rings." All of these systems organize an incredible variety of
computer-based and reading activities which make pedagogical and scientific
virtues of diversity by promoting active choice and involvement in learning by
the students/subjects. The approaches employ some of the lessons learned in
our work on reading activity, e.g., we combine highly scripted activities with
cross- age responsibility and a strongly hands- on approach that does not dis
dain the children's competence outside the school room.
It is this synthetic activity, not its parts, that represents the
greatest strength of LCHC. It is our goal, to combine whatever resources we
can come up with for specific pieces of the work (from OSE, NIMH, NSF, UCSD,
the San Diego Conmunity) with resources from our undergraduate and graduate
teaching and the school system. In addition, over the past few months we have
had discussions with a variety of campus administrators to determine how this
program of research can most benefit UCSD. Because of the success of our
June 14, 1984 14
practict.nn courses in retaining students who might otherwise be expected to
drop out of UCSD, it appears that a natural connection is through students who
experience difficulty meeting the special demands of UCSD's rigorous academic
program. As one example, members of the Laboratory have opened a special sup
port program for UCSD students who experience severe difficulties in producing
written text. As another example, a member of our Laboratory, with prior
experience in minority student recruiting, has established ties between LCHC
and the campus Outreach Program. In addition, the Office of Graduate Studies
has proposed ways in which LCHC can contribute to the overall effort of u.c.
to increase the participation of under-represented populations in the student
body and faculty.
In this spirit, most of the money I am requesting is for the core staff
to keep this system running. The core staff centers on Peg Griffin, who
developed much of the reading research and with whom I have been able to
develop the theoretical and practical extensions to computational research.
Her experiences in sociolinguistics and school research make her the natural
director of field studies for the enterprise. We also need one full-time
assistant to nm around and make sure that all the bits of equipment, and
forms, and people are in the right place at the right time. This person must
also be a sophisticated microprocessor "fixer-upper" because we use micros to
grease the tracks everywhere. Ov-er the past few years we have been able to
recruit from our own ranks the young people who learn to perform these activi
ties while undergraduates and then graduate-from the position into graduate
students (at UCSD and elsewhere) carrying the work further along. And there
are three graduate student RAships because that is the means for connecting
all of this to higher education.
June 14» 1984 15
Those two staff people, a secretary/administrator (to deal with granting
agencies, UCSD and typing) along with some Supplies and Expenses money would
be sufficient·to keep LCHC alive. We could run our undergraduate courses'
field work after school in one location, and do our graduate training. Hope
fully, we will receive funding for specific elements of this work so that the
core staff can expand to pr~vide technical assistance for work in other sites
that will provide more tests of the basic theory and more practical challenges
to our attempts to continue the development of a cultural psychology with
practical and theoretical clout. But the crucial work of the research pro
gram, given the mix of resources 1 propose, could get done with only the core
elements in place.
Dissemination and interaction outside of LCHC ---
A secondary part of the requested budget seeks to build on two aspects of
our prior work which are difficult to fund because they involve inter-ethnic
or international activities that have no obvious patron.
First, I am requesting a small amount for-support of the LCHC Newsletter.
This publication has won many supporters and now has a solid subscribership of
about 8 00. It is currently under the editorship of three ex-fellows, making
it, I believe, the only minority controlled publication in the area of the
social sciences that is not exclusively "ethnic" in orientation, but that
adheres to the general principles of comparative, cognitive research.
June 14, 1984 16
Second, I am asking for a modest amount of support to continue our inter
national research efforts. Here I want to argue, as forcefully as you will
allow, that LCHC is unique in its ability to engage researchers from different
countries in a genuinely collaborative effort to figure out how, as scien
tists, we can combat the very severe negative impact on human development of
school systems that select on narrow criteria of short-term efficiency
This is an area where there is already a backbone of support from other
sources, but we still lack the glue to upgrade the interactions from
occasional/fragmented to genuinely productive. We have federal money for me
to travel to Russia whenever I want and conditions permit (in my capacity as
the comnissioner for Psychology on the ACLS/USSR Academy of Sciences
exchange). I have also been able to bring Russians here to do joint research
and send graduate students there. '!he only resources I need for this are
J:>uried in the S&E budget for telexes and phone calls.
I also have a grant from ONR to interact with Japanese cognitive scien
tists, all of whom share LCHC's view of development at some general level,
while dividing out in interesting ways into several overlapping subgroups. On
many things we are Japanese vs. Americans. But on many issues, subgroups of
.Americans and Japanese form. They, like we, are very concerned about the
negative side effects of a heavy concentration on technology at the cost of
severe social disruption. Here our basic "leg up" is XLCHC, the computer net9
work that operates via satellite.
June 14, 1984 17
XI.CHC is the medium for an extraordinary, international discussion about
education, social change and human nature. By this summer, it will be sem:i:
automated so that it will require only a little human intervention of the kind
that a secretary can take care of in her daily duties.
I am not asking Carnegie for any money to do research on the networking
system, but I would like the small amotmt requested to defray costs of main
taining the medium and help new users to connect if they want to. I have made
proposals to several fotmdations for some research on the basic communications
principles involved in this work. And members of the Laboratory are consider9
ing applications on their own for various interesting projects. But I have
I
made it clear that I only want LCHC in the business of maintainin~ the medium,
not making ·it expand with new activities; those have to come from the outside.
The support requested will allow us to continue interactions in the locations
listed in the appendix. The only nodes we are certain to add to this list in
the next few months is CNR in Rome and Courtney Cazden at Harvard.
Contributions from UCSD to this work. --------
Over the course of several years, I have won grudging, but non- trivial
support from UCSD to help in this effort. At present, we receive support in
the form of two staff positions ($37,236 annually) as well as equipment just::1:
fied on undergraduate and graduate teaching requirements that we can use in
the model systems to bring about the tfansformations that are the medium for
the research effort. We also receive modest funds and help from the undergra
duate minority biological research program with which we have cooperated for
some years. (See attached evaluation.)
June 14, 1984
In addition, we have several collegial connections at
us with a rich environment within which to do our work. '1h
Program, under the direction of Hugh Mehan, has recently ad,
gram that focuses on educational diversity and technology
dents and sympathetic expertise from this connection. Al.
Psychology and the Cognitive Science Program, I teach coursE
and gain access to up to date thinking from a variety of dis
into our overall effort. Importantly, I am provided a for\l
make our efforts coherent to colleagues who are mining a s
vein of contemporary thought and applied scientific activit
of Comnunication, I am provided resources both material and
developing expertise among students in new technologies of c,
curriculum build directly on the mediational approach that
"4ork in which to teach to a broad range of undergraduates. i
Center for Human Information Processing, I participate in al
gram further enriching our intellectual atmosphere.
All of this would not be possible without - the cooperat
leagues at UCSD who allow me to arrange these activities so
enough to bring substantial resources to bear on the research
this request • Few institutions off er so much support to the ;
ciplinary program that LCHC represents.
June 14, 1984 19
SUMMARY
It is a basic premise of our scientific research program that a deeper
understanding of the role of culturally organized activity is crucial to our
science and our society at this juncture of human history. !he systems of
activity that we construct are intended not only too provide a stronger scien
tific base for understanding· culture's role in development, but to do so in
educational contexts that enable the educational system to transform, not sim
ply reflect, the society of which it is a part.
Our basic strategy is to pursue analytic rigor by embedding the research
activities in cultural practices that are at the heart of the process whereby
cultural tools related to production, e.g., the "basics" of education, are
transmitted. Further, we concentrate on those children who, early in their
educational careers, have been tracked on a downward spiral which the school
system is powerless to prevent and the cognitive sciences are powerless to
explain within their own scientific cannons.
This strategy prevents us from falling into a solipsistic critique of
existing scientific practices because the criterion of success is the creation
of practical alternatives. At the same time, it maximizes the possibilities
that successful experiments will be taken up and used by the systems of which
they are a part . In order to implement this strategy, we need the kind of
·~ flexible and sympathetic sup_port which few. funding sources can offer. I hope
. that the Carnegie C.Orporation will see this work as basic support for the line
of activities it is undertaking.