THE URBAN LEARNING FOUNDATION AND THE NOTION OF A LEARNING COMMUNITY.

Ian Bliss

ABSTRACT

The Urban Learning Foundation works with schools and trainee teachers in the East End of London. It is in the nature of the inner city that diverse groups and individuals seek to accommodate to each other in circumstances of social and economic stress. For many students that means that they are in an unfamiliar and even threatening environment, learning the unfamiliar culture of the teaching profession, and working with pupils from unfamiliar cultures. There is an examination of some of the “stories” told by the students as they seek to apply their skills in the “diverse and contested processes” which make up those cultures. The notion of inducting students into learning communities is explored. The aim is first to identify some of the referents students use as they develop their “communicative competence”, and secondly to examine the support which students need and are given by their course in London.

Keywords: urban schools, initial teacher education, competences, teacher expectations, multculturalism, anti-racism.

A PERSONAL STATEMENT

I am worried about bolt-on courses on multicultural education or anti-racism, about courses which give students information without giving them the experience to make sense of that information I am worried about notions of culture and competence conceived as static inventories of items rather than contested processes, and I want to question courses based on such notions: you are given some lectures on the cultural heritage of one group or another; you write an essay about it; you visit an inner city area; you have a debriefing session; and you answer a question on what you have observed. I suspect that such courses at best run the danger of teaching students to say or write the things their tutors want them to say or write, and at worst of providing just enough information to reinforce the stereotypes that students bring with them - or both, in that they write the one and believe the other.

Tate accuses trainee teachers of being corrupted by relativism. I want to argue that Tate is wrong. These trainee teachers worked from very clear moral and professional principles, but recognised that the struggle to apply them appropriately to the complexities of the real world admits of no simple resolution. Polonius established an entirely reasonable set of general rules in “Hamlet”; all of them when applied at the wrong place and in the wrong way led to disaster.

THE URBAN LEARNING FOUNDATION

The Urban Learning Foundation was described by HMI (1991) as being “in many ways a model for the organisation of urban teaching experience for provincial ITE students”. It is more than that, and perhaps if it were not more than that , it would not be able to do that particular job so effectively. However it is on that aspect of its work that I want to focus.

The Urban Studies Centre was established by the College of St. Mark and St. John in 1972/3 as a unit for “action research in the initial training of teachers”. It continues its work as the Urban Learning Foundation from centres in Tower Hamlets and Newham. The core of its work was to provide courses in London of a term for students from Marjons and later from other Church of England teacher training colleges; increasingly it is moving in the direction of providing its own teacher training courses, initially PGCE Upper primary, but with the aim of its expanding its provision in future. It works with schools, teachers and other agencies on small scale, locally based research projects, like for example one completed recently on the use of interpreters in schools. Another recent project is a co-operative

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scheme on managing primary education for teachers from Bangladesh - obviously a significant group in relation to the Bangladeshi communities in Tower Hamlets.

An intention in 1972 was to explore some of the professional implications of Plowden and Halsey, in particular, to “explore the relationship between school and community in the inner city”.

Among the formal aims was

“to provide an all year round supplementary service in an inner city area which links the activities of the school with the life of the neighbourhood and with other social activities and develop new forms of activity.”

Writing in 1985 the Director defined the rationale in relation to students from provincial teacher training institutions:

“teachers and others are better able to make contact with young people and so develop deeper understanding of needs, interests and cultural values thorough practical involvement in a variety of community settings....Tower Hamlets and Newham can prove to be something of a culture shock but one which may gradually bring them towards a deeper understanding of themselves as individuals and of the institutions or organizations of which they are temporarily a part ... a residential course located in an inner city area which is witnessing rapid social change has an immediacy and relevance that students are quick to appreciate.”

As a result of an evaluation by John Raynor in 1977/8 (Raynor J 1981) the statement of aims was expanded to include “to develop in- service courses for local teachers , particularly those who have completed their initial training at the Centre and who are now teaching in the area.”

And that is a matter of some significance in terms of numbers. HMI (1991) refer to ULF as a major source of recruitment for Newham and Tower . Last year two thirds of the NQTs appointed to Newham were from ULF - 60 out of 90 last year, and that has been the general pattern in Newham for five years.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE COURSE FOR “PROVINCIAL STUDENTS”

It is a residential experience, and it is very rare for students not to live in the residential accommodation provided by ULF, and the kitchens and the bedrooms provide a focus for discussion within the student community. Some of that is personal as students seek to come to terms with experiences that have disturbed them, - that might be the student who reported herself sobbing over the telephone to her boy friend that no she hadn’t been raped or mugged but some five year olds had been really horrible to her, or the group of young male PE students who didn’t get served in a pub and were told later that it was because they looked too much like police officers on a drugs bust, or others who were abused in a pub because they were students and anti-Nazi slags.

Living together is demanding - but living as a part of a community is demanding.

The occasions when students said

“I really needed to talk about it to N when I got back home. Thank goodness for N.”

were matched by

“Living in the house can be a strain at times. it is of course very supportive, but I have been tolerant of so much since I have been here”

or

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“The only place you can be on your own is in the bath and there’s always a queue for that so you can’t stay even there for very long.”

or

“Relationships are intense and personal, and this can be quite difficult to handle. It can be personally invasive.”

Much of the talk is professional. The students share ideas about teaching, sometimes at a pragmatic level, sometimes at a theoretical level as they try to make sense of what they are doing. Examples will be given later, though they would probably reject the word theory. Theory they tend to define as what they do in College, and that they have on numerous occasions suggested is unrelated to the world of their experience

“Most things are covered in college, but when you’re sitting in a lecture room you can’t relate to it - you’re the pupil there and it all goes over you”

“You come back to college and you get shut up in a lecture room, and the adrenaline stops and you lose all your enthusiasm.”

Needless to say they see no contradiction between that position and their frequent complaints that the colleges do not do enough to prepare them for work in London.

***

For most student teachers work at ULF will include, in addition to the time spent in school a community or complementary experience, a community project, an adult literacy project, or a drop-in centre, a parent and baby group, or an exploration of agencies dealing with refugees. The complementary experience is intended to develop an understanding of children and of the processes of teaching by developing an understanding of the communities which shape them.

Many students commented on the difference between reading about issues and negotiating relationships with people. For one the thing that stuck in her mind was the fact that some young lads refused to accept a cup of tea from her when she was serving in the canteen of a youth club because they had identified her as a teacher. For another it was a matter of being brought up against inter-ethnic tensions:

“A blind Sikh was standing outside in the gateway as we approached. He asked N to read a letter he had just received. N did so but afterwards explained she had been apprehensive because he was a Sikh and there’s a lot of tensions between Asians and Sikhs. And last night two Sikhs had entered a mosque and stabbed an Asian. I’m not surprised she was worried. She said she stopped because he called her sister. I wonder if she would have stopped if I hadn’t been there.”

It will be necessary , though easy enough, for that student to clarify her terminology - but the details of the use of the word sister and the reality of the fear are things which it would be much harder for that student to get at second hand. Students extend their experience of social contexts, of people and cultures seen not as abstractions but as human beings. There is evidence that they are developing confidence and competence in making relationships and a genuine insight into themselves as people and as teachers. The images of people and cultures seen not as abstractions but as human beings.

***

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There are also course meetings.

“The function of these meetings is to support and strengthen students’ practical activities by examining some of the theoretical implications of their work and to share common experience.” - again this is a formal statment of aims given by ULF. They were seen as providing a useful opportunity to listen to or work with people they might not otherwise meet, from the language service perhaps, or people with specific expertise in child protection issues. Often though, particularly when course meetings took up a regular weekly slot, they were seen as problematic interruptions to the intensity of their focus on school.. For these students the time after their return to the colleges has provided the opportunity for reflection - for sorting out their understanding of inter-ethnic tensions or the politics of unemployment. However some have suggested that the tutors in the colleges lack the experience and the knowledge of inner London schools to help them, and maybe even the inclination to do so.

Students perceive as being more important the personal and professional support given informally by ULF tutors in addition to the normal processes of supervision / mentoring in schools. The tutor responsible for the Newham centre suggests that their success in recruiting and retaining students is influenced by the fact that students have to walk past a glass fronted tutor office in order to reach the living accommodation. So there is always a possibility of what has been referred to as “by the way” discussion;

“Students won’t want to bother you, and they won’t want to make the effort to come downstairs to see you, they don’t want to bother you, but if you say “hello, how’s things” then they can talk about the happy day they had or the terrible day they had, they feel looked after and supported and if you can catch the little things early on then its easier to deal with the big ,ones.

They feel supported but they make open-eyed decisions about coming; that’s why the head teachers want them. By the end of ten weeks here they have made friendship groups and they are making open-eyed decisions - and the support continues when they get a job here - they have their induction meeting in June and they meet every other week - it’s educational but they build strong ties as a social group. And because we keep them they work with teachers who have done the same things and know the same people. Most of those who come here want a job here, and head teachers want them, and they stay.”

The issue is presented as an architectural one - but it is clearly also one that is about people as much as buildings. It depends of the negotiation of particular kinds of relationship between tutor and student. It is also demanding on the time and the skills of tutors - weakening the boundaries between tutor and student can be demanding on both.

CULTURE AND COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

For the Director , writing in 1981 (in ed Raynor J (1981)), “the centre itself is not a static institution but a focus for the ever-changing relationships between the staff, the students and the people who live and work in the east end of London.” A teacher-tutor scheme was established in 1980. The rationale at that stage stressed that, “the training processes is undertaken as a collaborative venture.” That was written in 1981, and schools in Newham have been happy to see ULF taking the lead in a PGCE consortium in 1996. The experience of placing students over the years in a range of community agencies has built up another network of communication. There has been an increasing emphasis on Continuing Education. There have been projects seeking to recruit local people into the teaching profession, by working with them to identify their views and their needs, by giving them information, and increasingly by recruiting onto courses people from within the local population. Research activities have had a local focus and have stressed the importance of wide local involvement. The students who pass through ULF

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take jobs in local schools, they continue to live in the area, and they help to induct the next generation of teachers into the profession.

And this introduces the idea of a learning community.

A learning community , like any other community is defined by its culture and the course at ULF assumes that culture is best seen not as “a scientific object nor a discrete and stable symbol system....(but an)...internally diverse and actively contested...process”. (Said E, quoted by Jackson R (1995)) To become a part of that community is to learn to take part in that process, to develop communicative competence.

Communicative competence within a culture was defined by Hymes (1971) who stresses that it involves the ability to apply (and sometimes not to apply) the rules appropriately, in other words to take part in the process of negotiating the rules as members of a community,:

“He or she acquires competence when to speak, when not, what to talk about, with whom, when, where, in what manner...”.

Those who have communicative competence can “accomplish a repertoire of speech acts....and evaluate their accomplishment by others”, and this competence is “integral with attitudes, values and motivations”.

For Hymes competence - unless you are talking about the unreality of ideal fluency in a homogeneous and static community - cannot be usefully defined as a “systematic inventory of items”; the controlling image underlying such a view is “of an abstract isolated individual, almost an unmotivated cognitive mechanism, not except incidentally, a person in a social world.”

And what Hymes says of communicative competence in general, is equally true of that kind of communicative competence which defines the skills of a teacher. In looking back to Hymes for a notion of competence I am seeking to question whether mechanical models of competence defined in terms of inventories of skill and knowledge represent any more of the truth than definitions of language to be found in traditional grammar books. Obviously there are close connections with the work of Schon (1987), or the notion of professional craft knowledge as defined by Brown and McIntyre (1993), or the processes of “critical self reflection” defined by Mezirow (1990), but I am anxious to hold on to a perspective which stresses the importance of community and which suggests a way of thinking about the notion of competence.

Orr (1987), quoted in OECD (1991), in examining the learning of trainee photocopier technicians stresses the importance of sharing experience and exchanging stories. These stories “almost never concern routine maintenance or problems that everyone knows how to fix....they deal with the machine and customer behaviour within the context of the specific situation...they not only provide new information that illuminates the working of the machine but also specific applications of the information...in ways that are useful for persons of differing levels of expertise, with different understandings of the model.” That relates to the statement of the constructivist position in Haste H (1996): “communities are multiple, and we are members of many communities which offer us identity and personal meaning, and within each different elements and skills are salient. Cultural narratives, stories, and traditions feed directly into our identity, signalling valued attributes and behaviours and giving an explanation for our past and present.” She argues for a self-conscious appreciation of the processes which generate meaning and therefore behaviour. The point is the same as that made (e.g. Donaldson M (1978)) between language use and language awareness; it is relevant to communicative competence and to the competence of teachers.

It is in the nature of the inner city that “communities are multiple”; diverse groups and individuals seek to accommodate to each other in circumstances of social and economic stress. For student

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teachers that means frequently that they are learning the unfamiliar culture of the teaching profession, working with pupils from a range of cultures with which they are unfamiliar, in a context which, such is the pattern of recruitment into the profession, will be strange and even threatening to the majority. ULF provides opportunities for students to share such stories, it provides the emotional support which is necessary to cope with the stress of articulating events which often posed a fundamental threat to students’ views of themselves, and it provides the opportunity for students to find ways with others to learn from those stories - and that appears to be a definition of a learning community.

That is the basis for my exploration of some of the stories told by students - some of them were the result of conversations with students when I was sharing their accommodation, some are from reflective diaries they kept, some are from more formal debriefing sessions. With the exception of the section on language they are drawn from students working at ULF over the last two years.

“Learning how to use available and appropriate tools effectively, whether the tools are physical, symbolic, or social, is deeply influenced by the way members of a community see the world. Their individual experiences and insights combine to create a culture in which novices must participate before they can become expert in using the tools of their profession or workplace.” (OECD (1991))

These stories can give some insights into that process.

THE QUESTION OF EXPECTATIONS AND STANDARDS

Unsurprisingly students are influenced by the views presented in the press. These are authorities which appear at the bottom end of all league tables based on raw data:

“ In schools serving the most disadvantaged areas, less than 15 per cent of pupils achieve five or more GCSE grades A-C. The best schools in these areas achieve average GCSE point scores per pupil which are only about one third of that of schools in more advantaged areas.” (Woodhead 1996)

And there is a political consensus about the causes of the problems of inner city schools.

John Clare, Daily Telegraph, 02 Nov 95:

“We know from Chris Woodhead, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector, that the main barrier to raising standards is the culture of the teaching profession and its resistance to change. ILEA's crimes, however, went far beyond ending selective education in London. It actively encouraged the development of a capital-wide culture of flabby teaching, laissez-faire discipline, a ready acceptance of pitifully low standards of achievement, hostility to competition in the classroom and on the playing field, and continuous whingeing about 'resources'.”

And David Blunkett M.P. of the Newlabour Party (Guardian 9/8/95):

“For too long we have had a culture of complacency which excuses failure for working class children and tolerates the low expectations which perpetrate (sic) social divisions.”

However Babad et al (1989) (B.J.Ed.Psych. Vol 59 pp 282 - 295) raise the central question about teacher expectations: are they “appropriate, reality based, and open to corrective feedback”? And of those criteria the last subsumes the others, and seems of central importance to those involved in training teachers. It is argued that the thinking of the students suggests that their experiences in schools, whatever the strengths and the weaknesses of those schools, left them willing to think, to test their

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assumptions, and to be open in collecting evidence which will make possible the processes of “corrective feedback”.

Predictably students all went into the practice expecting low standards of academic work and low standards of behaviour. They were supported in these expectations by their colleagues, their friends, and even their families, some of whom were particularly concerned about the female students and the dangers to which they would be exposed.

“Before I ventured to the east end my family and friends expressed their opinions: it’s very rough; it’s a down and out area; it’s full of young people with nothing better to do than just hang about.”

And“In an inner city school there is inevitably [my italics] a higher proportion of children with special needs than would be expected in a different setting, and this adds to the pressures that teachers face.”

ULF gave to these students a continuing opportunity to articulate their pre-conceptions, and since they were articulated it became possible for them to be for them to be challenged and modified. They identified their assumptions:

“The first time that I heard of the school I was told that it was in a difficult area. On hearing this I assumed that it would be a very difficult school to work in., and that standards would be lower than in other schools I had experienced.”

And that made it possible for them to challenge their assumptions:

“I had asked to teach in a school with Afro-Caribbean pupils. With hindsight I realize that I had been affected by the stereotypes commonly held in white society of Afro-Caribbean children as being difficult to teach.”

Most were impressed by the quality of the schools in which they were working - and slightly surprised to find good teachers and lively, but amenable pupils. HMI (1991) said that students they spoke to found schools welcoming, and liked the openness and the diversity.

However some schools were felt by students to be insufficiently systematic in their organization - and it is worth noting that these complaints were by no means confined to London schools - the first two examples are drawn from students referring back to inner city teaching practices elsewhere. Both comments were made by students themselves from ethnic minority backgrounds:

“After witnessing a so-called ‘progressive school’ which housed mainly Asian children I was driven to the conclusion that such an experiment would not take place in white suburban England, as parents in those areas would not allow it. As in America Black people are constantly used as guinea -pigs, and they justify it by claiming that these are the most underprivileged.”

And

“There’s progressive and there’s progressive. If they had been dealing with white English speaking middle class parents able to stand up to them then they wouldn’t have dared try to get away with what they did there, or what they didn’t do there. I don’t see how they can cover the National Curriculum without any organization. ‘We don’t bother much with records,’ one of the teachers said.”

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There were concerns about inadequate teaching methods and curriculum coverage:

“There was no reading corner in the room, all it had was a single bookshelf while the remaining books were displayed either on window sills which the children could not reach, or they were kept in a box under the teacher’s desk which the children did not touch. There was very little print in the environment, the school library was not used by the class, and the school bookshop was not promoted by the teacher. There were no bilingual books in the classroom, no phonic work was done, and no shared reading and writing activities carried out.”

That student was apppointed to a job in that school, and it will be interesting to follow her progress. In another school the resources were there but left unused, at least according to the perceptions of the student:

“The school has a good selection of dual language books, and a wide range of simple picture based books with clear sequencing and storylines. There are dual language tapes and listening stations are present in each classroom. However they are not used very much. Dual language books are displayed in the corridor area and there are notices saying that books may be borrowed, but these have tended not to be working displays, and are little used. The school policy claims to "value the ability of the children to read and write in their home languages and to be dedicated to promoting home languages around the school through displays and through giving them equal status around the school". Again I have not seen a great deal of evidence of this except in some of the lower school displays where an Asian member of staff has produced some labels in various Asian languages.”

And staff laziness was seen by one student (herself from a Punjabi background) as an important factor:

“During my practice the school had an INSET day on reading which was received with little enthusiasm by many of the staff members. A lot of the teachers in the school knew they had found a cushy number, there was little problem with discipline , the parents were Asian and did not interfere very much, and so they did not put a lot of effort into their teaching, they had all the required policies on paper and no one to check whether they were being implemented or not.”

Some schools were badly managed, and the blame for that was clearly directed at headteachers:

“The headteacher was not considered to be very effective among the staff because he did not take a lot of interest in what was going on in the classroom, and was always too busy “with the budget”. There seemed to be very little communication and sharing of ideas among the staff, everyone concentrated on their own class and there seemed to be little scope for continuity and progression. The school had three English language support teachers, two full time and one part time. Their role was not understood by anyone.”

Relationship between home and school were not always positive. A student reported:

“Many of the staff had been there for a long time - and for five of them it was their only school -and they were very traditional in their teaching style and in their approach to parents. The issue of parental involvement seemed to have missed them. The only contact they had with parents was enforced by the headteacher. Contact with parents automatically registered stress with many of them avoiding it at all costs.”

And in one school the negative approach to parents was thought to be reinforced by the head teacher:

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“The headteacher did not see a place for parents in the school, he felt that because of the barriers which made understanding difficult the parents would be a hindrance and interfere with the running of the school.”

The exasperation of one student showed itself in the comment:

“This school is due for an OFSTED inspection in the near future. That might be precisely what they need to get their act together.”

I do not know how far the criticisms were justified - we all know how unforgiving and intolerant of the weaknesses of other people students can be. The important thing is the criteria they were learning to use in thinking about their own professional values. Students were equally clear in their criteria when they attempted to define about what they wanted from a school and what they saw as being effective in schools they experienced, and in particular they were clear in their expectations of headteachers:

“My assumptions [about low standards and unmanageable behaviour] were proved wrong during the time I was in the school. One of the most notable points in its effectiveness was the involvement of the headteacher, not only in her management role but also in the way in which she was continually involved in the everyday life of the school. The school was run very efficiently and each of the teachers was encouraged to hold a position of responsibility. The staff were all involved in any curriculum or policy decision making , and there was strong emphasis on planning, evaluation, record keeping and assessment with the head being very supportive. Another side of the heads character was her obvious enthusiasm for the pupils. Children were always keen to share their work or their news with her, and they were always greeted in a welcoming manner. And on the occasions when a teacher was absent from school she took on the role of a class teacher and showed great enthusiasm in doing so. The support given by the headteacher to teachers, to children, and to parents made it easier to be a good teacher in that school.”

They valued team work:

“Every policy statement, or background paper for a policy statement has to have had a staff meeting dedicated to it and all staff have to examine it and agree or disagree on it. this enabled the teachers to comment on the [policy. they could say whether they understood or not ( and this was easy due to the relaxed attitude in the school and among the staff) add any additional information if it had been overlooked and further more the teachers were fully involved and knew what was occurring in the school, nothing came to them as a shock.”

They all valued a supportive staff, and the following comment was typical of many:

“The school contained a staff who were friendly and helpful which allowed you to relax and to teach to your full ability.”

And they looked for a structured curriculum:

“Being bilingual myself I can see personally as well as professionally how important it is to have a structured and systematic whole school programme for reading. For many of the children for whom English is the second language there is little contact with English at home apart from the television. To offer these children equal curriculum opportunities to those of white indigenous English speaking children it is essential that there should be a structured approach to English in school. In using reading schemes the teachers should choose the books for the children so that

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they can build on their existing skills. Children need to be heard reading regularly and their reading records need to be maintained thoroughly. A wide variety of texts need to be accessible to the children in school. Reading has to be taught; there is a misconception that children just pick up reading when they go to school.”

The students were concerned with what they saw happening in schools. Equally they could not escape the pressures created by the context, real pressures, rather than excuses for their own incompetence. A student toyed with the ideas of the school shutting itself away from the problems of the community outside:

“There is unemployment, poor housing, young people who left school at 16, or before 16, just hanging around the streets, and a definite problem of drug use.

As the school is of the colour grey it did not look very appealing, nor did the security coded lock at the entrance. This was a school which you could not just walk into. I questioned one of the teachers about this. The school had been broken into many times. All outside classroom doors were locked and bolted during there day. the children were very used to this as the last one in had to bolt the door.. During dinner time all the classrooms were locked. Whilst I was there were two break ins; the teachers claimed they were quite used to this.

Although from its appearance the school was not very inviting from the outside, once you were inside your opinion would change. The school had a very welcoming entrance hall with pictures of all the staff including non-teaching staff, lots of comfortable chairs, and displays created by the children.”

That image, though, of the school as cut off from the world outside was only a part of her experience; for this student as for others the notion of the school as separate from the world outside was only a part of the truth. The world outside did keep breaking in, metaphorically as well as literally.

And government were seen by many as a part of the problem rather than a part of the solution. Many commented on poor morale in schools and the sense that teachers were feeling under attack. There was a feeling that the low morale and the poor standards found in some schools were also the fault of the politicians and the press:

“The government appears to blame teachers. It blames them for underachievement, for illiteracy. It blames them for inadequate teaching, boring lessons, and for being underqualified. It blames them for poor discipline, for abusive behaviour, and for exclusions. However the problems of an inner city school are not just related to one factor. Teaching is only one component of a multi-faceted problem. Teachers are not to blame for unemployment, poor housing, malnutrition. they are not to blame for the breakdown of the family, for crime and for the drugs culture which has its impact on many families and communities. They are not to blame for the under-resourcing and increasing class sizes which makes it difficult to meet the literacy and numeracy needs of children. They are not to blame for the lack of recognition and the low morale which make it even more difficult to tackle the problems.”

CULTURE AND RACE

The truths of the world outside was seen to involve not only unemployment, crime, poverty, and drugs but also the diversity of culture and ethnicity found in the inner city. Akhbar S. Ahmed (1995) Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol 18 No 1 “Ethnic Cleansing: a Metaphor for our time” points to a global increase in ethnic tensions, and a worldwide rewriting of history to “buttress ethnic and religious polemics”:

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“The failure of the nation state to provide justice and inspire confidence and the frustrations that it engenders is another consequence of the collapse of modernity and the rise of ethnic identity.”

And the rise of a sense of ethnic identity has often meant a rise in conflict, locally and globally.Even if global tensions are not directly reflected in the inner city areas of Britain it is clear that schools cannot be unaffected by the larger problems. They involve questions about what it is to be British or English, and the curricular implications of the answers which are given. They involve also personal relationships within in schools and between schools and communities.

Sometimes they also involve tensions within individuals.

A Muslim student was troubled by the contradictions within her own thinking and feeling. She recognised in her mind, she said, the horrors caused by anti-Semitism in Europe, and she agreed that pupils should be taught to understand something of the nature of the Holocaust, but she was distressed by her own response when she heard a Jewish person denouncing racism; her emotional response was that Jewish people have no right to object to racism because they are rich and successful and are enslaving her Muslim brothers and sisters.

The questions posed for teachers were summed up for a student in the following experiences of her teaching practice school:

“I heard shouted across the classroom one afternoon “Get out paki head”. This was directed at an Afro-Caribbean boy by a Turkish boy who himself had been crying the day before because of a racial remark directed to him from outside the school gates.

The borough was complex. A child arrived at school with their day carer in the family Mercedes; another arrives without breakfast, without socks and a jumper that he has worn for the last two weeks. There were children of Spanish, Afro-Caribbean, Turkish, Bangladeshi, English, Greek, Chinese, Vietnamese and Romanian heritage. At a superficial level relationships were harmonious in the classroom, but there were problems. For example three Turkish families had an ongoing disagreement. One girl felt she was being persecuted because she had come from the country unlike the others who came from the city. She was quite right to speak in this way as I spoke to a “city” mother later in the day, and she said “Why but it is true, they are dirty and unintelligent who do not strive for anything There was a fear of racism, violence and crime, which extended from adult to child and child to adult. Some saw this as a normal part of life and accepted it; other parents expressed their dissatisfaction that the school was not dealing with the problems.”

A teacher described to a student what he saw as being an increasing sense of ethnic identity among Muslims. He saw this as a problem, and as problem that was only to be resolved by greater flexibility on the part of the Muslims, a mark perhaps of the ways in which that teacher was erecting barriers around his own sense of ethnic identity, and the fact that both teacher and student - like everybody else - have views that might be open to question:

“The great majority of the parents are Muslims. Recently the media has pointed to an increase in fundamentalist activity in this group. My teacher believed this was slowly entering the whole region, with the implications in the area clear to see. Over the last two to three years he had noticed an increase in women wearing black, and young girls expected to cover up from the age of 11. A similar trend had been noticed by the headmistress on a recent visit to Bangladesh. The girls in my class asked whether they could wear leggings during the PE lessons. In addition a substantial number of children “forgot their swimming wear” each week. A conversation with

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a Year 5 girl about whether she would like to go to college showed that wouldn’t want to leave home because she would miss her family very much . According to the class teacher problems such as these are a result of conflict between Western and Islamic cultures; unless Islam becomes less rigid they will persist.”

And there weren’t any easy answers. Sometimes the values of the parent were simply unaccceptable to the student:

“During a parents evening I was discussing the behaviour of a child in my class. He had begun to get disruptive and wanted to know from his family did they know of any reason for the change in his behaviour. The mother’s reply was “do you beat him? I attempted to explain my position but she did not appreciate my justification. Her final words were “let me know and I will beat him.”

“The other incident concerned a child in my class who called another member of staff “big ears”. he was severely reprimanded by the headteacher and a letter was sent home asking for him to be punished. I believe that this procedure by the school was very wrong. It is admitting to failure by the school. It will add to the confusion already experienced by many parents.”

And on the matter of swimming:

“There was a child in my class who had missed eight consecutive swimming lessons. Each week she would inform the school that she couldn’t go for various reasons. During discussion with the child it became clear that there was more to the situation. It was the headteacher’s decision to send the Education Welfare Officer in. The report indicated that the matter was of a cultural and religious origin, notable that the father had told the child that if she showed her legs in public she would go to hell. The school had an immense need for effective parental involvement for the benefit of the whole school community. However with the schools’ current structure it is unable to do that.”

was set against

“Farzana kept ‘forgetting’ her swimming things. The teachers did not make a fuss because they felt that as Muslims the family probably objected to her swimming. It turned out though when a bilingual assistant did make contact with the parents that they had bought swimming things for her and did think that she was going. She just didn’t want to do it. I remember trying the same sort of thing when I was at school..”

There was a feeling that negative language and behaviour directed at members of other ethnic groups was derived from the families and communities within which children lived:

“I asked a five year old what he was doing in the water tray, only to be given the reply that he was “drowning Pakis”. When asked about it the child did not really understand the meaning of the word “Paki” as it was something he had heard his parents say. This then leads to the issue of how we deal with such a thing in the classroom. At the time I let it wash over and made some comment about it not being appropriate language to use. What do we do when a five year old is receiving negative input at home?”

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On another occasion it was the policy of the school to deal with racism as a specific disciplinary offence:

“A six year-old was brought to the staffroom at dinner time by a welfare person because the child had told an Afro-Caribbean child that she was “only allowed to play with English children”. The child was upset and had gone to the first person in authority she could see. Whether the child was upset because the other did not want to play with her or because she did not like being told she was not English is something I am not sure about. This was something that child had brought with her from home, but the head teacher was called and immediately told of the behaviour. The head made it clear that this was not the correct thing to say and the child was punished by being made to stand on the fence, the punishment used for fighting or very bad behaviour in the school.”

Another student reported a rather different set of tensions:

“A has had behavioural problems throughout his school years. he had a violent father who left soon after his younger sister was born. His mother is young and currently in full time education. he and his sister live with their grandparents. the grandparents attempted to compensate through monetary rewards and letting the boy do as he wished . In school he would push his way into friendship groups, disrupt their play and take over; if they did not let him he would hit them. The children reported it to the parents and the parents came back to the school. He was put as an emergency case to be statemented. he was excluded from the classroom for a week. For that week he remained with the Head. later in the term he saw the psychologist. the school was addressing the problem in a positive and constructive manner. However the parents felt that he had had too many chances and should have been excluded a long time ago. One mother said: “If that child had been black he would have been out, no second chance, no third chance, out, and he wouldn’t be coming back.”

The relationship between ethnicity and employment prospects was an issue for many, even in the primary school:

“I planned a lesson on what do you want to be when you grow up. It took a long time for the children to understand what I meant, but I had previously done the same lesson with white children in a suburban school and they knew what they wanted to be. perhaps it is because they do not have successful role models. Because of the recession and because many of the parents cannot speak English many of them are unemployed.”

And another student struggles with the ethnic and class dimensions of employment and education:

“Race problems lead to the frustrations of unemployment, so self employment is quite high, especially in the line of taxi work and in the line of people working on specially funded projects - but this happens in white areas too so it is predominantly a class problem. Outside employment opportunities are more open to the men whilst the women are expected to stay at home. Because of this the women take on home work - industrial sewing for example - which is poorly paid. Many children see education as a way out, but there are problems with colleges. Some parents are worried about sending their girls away to college. There are language problems - though that is a class matter too because many white children also speak poor English. Many of the Colleges have special courses for Asian students, but that leads to ghettoisation because the other mainstream courses are not open to Asian youths.”

And there was a recognition that racism affected teachers just as it affected pupils. A student struggles to relate debates about African Caribbean achievement to her experience of school. She was interested in the evidence on teacher expectations, on pupils achievement, on social circumstances and on

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parental involvement. She drew on all of these issues in attempting to think professionally about her own experience, to test explanations, to find appropriate ways of dealing with her work in school:

“Mac an Ghaill cites the experience of the probationary teacher interviewed during his research. Whilst on teaching practice in the same “school during his introductory talk he was told to “look out for the West Indians”. The most striking thing about this quote was the similarity with my own experience. I was told by the teacher of Class 5 to “watch out for” Nadine and Letroi.

“Letroi was an Afro-Caribbean boy of 6 who turned seven while I was teaching him. He lived near the school in a high-rise flat with his working Mum and a brother of eighteen. He was frequently looked after by his Granddad. Nadine was an Afro-Caribbean girl of the same age. She was very tall and physically very well developed for her age and could easily be mistaken for a nine or ten year old.. She lived with her Mum in a flat 40 minutes bus ride away from the flat. She had once lived within the school’s catchment area but when they moved away both Nadine and her mum wanted her to stay at the school because she was succeeding academically there. Because of the distance Nadine travelled to school and the unreliability of the buses in the area (I knew this from experience as I used the same bus route) Nadine was frequently late or even absent.

“Reminders about lateness were sent home most weeks and were the cause of much tension between Nadine’s mum and the school. As I handed her such a note Nadine said, “Is that a late note, Miss? My mum don’t read em; she just puts em in the bin.” Nadine and Letroi were inseparable in the classroom (though at playtime Letroi played with a small group of Afro-Caribbean boys from class 6. Nadine would flit between different friendship groups but was often left on her own. When they were together they would conspire to irritate and upset the children around them, or they would irritate each other and argue. Both were intelligent and sat at the top ability table (along with a Chinese girl, a Hindu girl born in India, a Muslim girl born in London, and a white English boy). Letroi excelled in maths and his reading and writing were also very good. Nadine was a very competent story writer and a good reader. She was also very good and imaginative at dance and PE. Letroi did not enjoy dance and would frequently refuse to take part in lessons or refuse to take them seriously.

“When I first came to the class I asked the teacher for some background information on the pupils, and Nadine and Letroi were the first two she told me about. She described Letroi as being arrogant but very capable, and I was told to “squash” both of them from the very beginning to keep control over them, though I must point out that I was also told to “squash” Jack a white English boy.

Another Afro-Caribbean boy in class 5 was Kane. The teacher described him as “capable but lazy, a very slow worker”. Kane lived with his Mum and Dad in a house some distance from the school but travelled to school by car. His Mum was a policewoman and a keen basketball player and his dad was a painter and decorator. Kane had a sister a few years older who had also attended the school and had achieved very well there.

“I felt that the teacher’s description of Kane as lazy was unfair and potentially damaging. It emerged that his Mum and Dad were frequently checking up with the teacher about Kane’s work and he was under pressure to do as well as his sister had done at school. One morning he became upset when I asked him to read to me. He said he didn’t want to read any more because his granddad had called him stupid the previous night for “getting the words wrong”. I began to think that perhaps Kane was a slow worker because he was afraid of getting things wrong. I worked hard to make Kane feel secure in his work and praised him as much as possible for having a go. It remained a struggle to get Kane to work and he remained very easily distracted. perhaps because his home environment remained unchanged. However Kane was

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not described as aggressive or truculent. He was a very pleasant child who had very little interest in written work but who excelled at P.E.

“Admittedly there were other children described by the teacher in less than favourable terms but only Nadine and Letroi were described in terms of their behaviour when in fact there were other children in the class whose behaviour was just as bad. While working at the school I did find that Nadine and Letroi were boisterous and noisy, but this did not apply to any of the other Afro-Caribbean children in the class. Nadine, Letroi and Kane did have tendency to sulk if expected to do something against their wishes, but there were at least seven non-Afro-Caribbean children in the class who employed the same strategy.”

SOME LANGUAGE ISSUES

Students were quite clear about the importance of language, or perhaps more precisely the combination of linguistic diversity and other social and economic pressures.

“Keala was admitted to Year 5 of the XXXX Junior School two days before the end of the Christmas term. He is Angolan by birth. He is said to speak a "tribal language" but was educated from the age of 6 in French. He came to England when he was deprived of both parents to live with an uncle.

8.50 Keala reluctantly lines up with the other children, pushing and shoving but not talking.9.05 Sits on the mat with children but hiding half behind a cupboard. Staring into space.

Jumps when his name is called, mumbles a barely audible reply, language unidentifiable.

9.30 Class doing Maths. Keala works with Ginn workbooks which he gets through very quickly, leaving out everything not understood.

9.45 Keala pulls my sleeve for attention - "look, look" - presents Maths book. Knowing a little French I try to explain the capacity page in litres and demilitres. A smiling response.

10.15 Keala wandering around and teasing other children who respond with annoyance. Class teacher tells him to sit down. Keala does so and just lies across the table not apparently involved in anything.”

And so it goes on through the day.

The student continues:

“It's difficult to decide how much is being done for Keala, certainly more than would have been possible if I had not been in the room to provide some support. Little language was actually used by Keala who was disruptive of the class.

On the way home he was cornered by two Year 6 boys who were defending some younger children being tormented by Keala.

Keala was found to be 12 years old and removed from the school.

In Keala's class there are also:

9 Punjabi speakers, 5 of them literate in Punjabi5 Urdu speakers, 2 of them literate in Urdu4 Bengali speakers, 2 of them literate in Bengali2 Tamil speakers1 German speaking African2 French patois speaking Mauritians1 Malayalam speaking child

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1 Indigenous English child

3 of the children are beginners at English. Three more need a great deal of help; they can understand more than they speak, but they are limited to basic conversational and organisational contexts, and do not have adequate access to the curriculum through the medium of English

90 children in the school were of New Commonwealth origin. Of these 83 were categorised as absolute beginners, made up of 52 in Year 3, 26 in Year 4, and 5 in Year 5.

Not one was categorised by the school as a "fluent speaker of English in most social and learning contexts".

There were 22 pupils whose country of origin was outside the New Commonwealth, 15 of these were categorised as absolute beginners in English, with 6 in Year Three, 6 in Year Four, and Three in Year 5. Again, not one was categorised by the school as a "fluent speaker of English in most social and learning contexts The school cannot afford extra teachers in each class to provide language support. In Year 3 pupils are withdrawn from the classroom for short spells of language work by the 0.5 Community Language teacher. After Year 3 the only special help is given is by a monolingual ESL specialist. She produces photocopied material using sequencing and cloze procedures, simple letter and word sheets for colouring, and other printed material which is brought to the classroom for the teacher to use when the time is available.

There were other and different concerns about bilingualism

B. is alert, lively, and extremely hard-working. The language of her home is Urdu, and her mother speaks only Urdu. Nevertheless her English work was quite exceptional by any standards.Her father went to school in the area himself. He started in the top juniors when he first arrived in the country. He spoke no English and because of his frustration, he soon saw truancy as the only way of coping with the intolerable situation in which he found himself in school. He is anxious that his daughters should be as well educated as possible. He wants a better education and a better life for them than he was able to achieve for himself. I do not know how good B's written Urdu is - but suspect that nobody has been able to help her to develop it to the same degree of sophistication as is apparent in her use of English. It is interesting to speculate about the languages which her children, if eventually she has children, will be brought up to use; it would be sad if they did not have the Urdu to communicate with B's mother, who would be their grandmother.

There were also puzzles about relations with parents:

“The school was sympathetic to the language each parent spoke, being careful to hand out letters in Bengali as well as English. However the classteacher pointed out that many parents were illiterate, and that it was most likely that the children would have to translate for them anyway. The measles inoculation forms sent out at the time showed that most children had filled out the English versions themselves.”

And one student was concerned about the role imposed on her by her own bilingualism:

“When I was a child my parents did not get involved with my school at all. My mum could not speak English so she was unable to go to the school at all, because the school did not have many Asian children resulting in them thinking that they did not need any multilingual support. My dad would go along to parents evening every year, be told that I was doing okay, and that was the end of it. As an adult now and during my final block teaching practice I was able to make use of my bilingualism a great deal. Many of the mums came along to parents evening

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because they knew I would be able to talk to them in Urdu and Punjabi. Some of the dads though resented the fact that as an Asian woman I was in a position of authority which made it a bit difficult for me at times.”

Clearly there are no easy answers to any of these puzzles. However in defining the role of ULF it is worth mentioning here the recently completed pilot project produced there on “Interpreting in Schools.” (Gardener S et al 1996). It based on work with all those involved in delivering or using the service. It identified problems - the lack of training, the lack of language awareness and/or knowledge of the educational system among interpreters, misunderstanding about the difference between interpretation and advocacy, the lack of clearly defined job descriptions and roles, role conflict, lack of space. It proposes an action plan for development; the research was in that sense professional rather than academic. It drew on the community as a whole, and involvement in the pilot project was a step in setting up the patterns of communication which will help to resolve the problems raised by that student.

TOWARDS SOME CONCLUSIONS

Louis K.S. and Miles M. (1990) report research in the USA on improving the effectiveness of urban high schools. They suggest that many teachers are trained in the USA to teach only average children and so cannot cope with setting appropriate work for those who are not average: the result is that “one cannot help but be struck by the helplessness of the situation in which teacher and student fail each other on a daily basis.” They point to cultural diversity, to problems compounded by unemployment and poverty, and to the turbulence of the urban political context. Together these problems give rise to a sense of fatalism in schools: “No matter what the school does, the outside world seems to be battling over and controlling its fate”.

Teachers, they say, are not helped to improve by injunction, a culture of blame, and a generally punitive attitudes taken up by outside authorities. They are helped by; “a stance towards coping that stresses learning from experience; strong support for implementation efforts; adequate time and energy set aside for coping through regular meetings; use of external assistance to expand the coping repertoire and extend skills. They need a clear and precise understanding of the issues; they need to be able to connect that knowledge to their own experience; they need to be well motivated; they need the skills to put their knowledge and understanding into practice.” (Miles (1987), quoted in Louis and Miles op cit.).

The work of all these students suggest that they have learned many of the skills needed to put their knowledge and understanding into practice; in particular they are learning about the ways in which children are to be seen as individuals rather than averages.

Cook C (1984) expresses reservations about the work of the centre, on the grounds that its courses are “ahistorical, astructural, and apolitical”; they mask the “real connections of schooling with the exercise of power in society and the exigencies of social control”.

For Cook what ULF does have to offer is:

“Knowing how children behave and react in the different circumstances that students are likely to encounter in homes, schools and community work activities is seen as the basis on which to develop the skills of communication in schools and outside. The process of coming into close contact with an urban working class community [and the use of the singular here is perhaps open to challenge], and experiencing something of its cultural life, facilitates rapport with pupils, through an empathetic understanding of their milieu. Rapport on this basis makes for better teaching: an enhanced relationship with pupils assists the communicative aspects of teaching.”

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He quotes one the staff of the centre who felt that the “approach could best be articulated in terms borrowed from Wilson and Pring that theory already exists in practice...theory in this sense would be the set of reflective critical thoughtful features of the practice”.

Cook grants that seeing the theory in this sense might then be fruitful in the critical reflection on practice which the centre was intended to achieve. However he suggests that this is unacceptable because it restricts the understanding of the student to that which the student sees as important and relevant to his or her own experience.

I am dubious about the view that teacher training courses should contain theoretical perspectives which students find unimportant and irrelevant to their experience. It is one that some teachers claim has influenced too many courses of teacher training, and one which has lent spurious credibility to the views of those who claim that the preparation of teachers should be confined to competencies narrowly defined. However Cook is right that students need to be helped to become aware of the processes involved in making sense of their experience it is the distinction between awareness and use again. There is in that sense a need for theory and it may well be for the kinds of student that I have been talking about that the processes of reflection that started in London need to continue in their College based courses. Educational theory courses were described by one student as “interesting depending on who your tutor is, but unhelpful”. It follows perhaps that the “provincial colleges” need to set up structures which will enable their tutors to have a closer involvement with the work of ULF, so that they too can become a part of that learning community.

So I do not like the notion of bolted on courses of multicultural education or urban education or cultural background. I do not like the notion of competencies defined in terms which might be appropriate to the building of a steam engine destined to run on tram-lines. I do not like the notion of a mentor. Mentor flitted around the Mediterranean, prepared the ships, ensured the wind was in the right direction, put appropriate precepts into the mind of Telemachus, turned away arrows and deadly lances, and generally knew all the right answers. She also felt a little glow of satisfaction when Telemachus paid her the respect due to age. But Mentor was a goddess, in drag, but a goddess nevertheless. So by definition she knew all the right answers, she could cope with the emotional and academic pressures of being solely responsible for supporting as well as assessing her protégé and could ensure that even the wet Telemachus passed his final teaching practice. All the students with whom I have worked have ideas of their own, they are critical and thoughtful, they need help often, but they need many different kinds of help from many different people - just as those tutors who are not Mentor need help from their students, and the pupils of their students, and the communities within which they work in order to maintain some kind of communicative competence within the dynamic, changing, contested, cultures within which we work.

The students are learning the competencies involved in working in complex inner city areas. They are beginning to think like teachers. They are in Noordhoff’s (1993) terms “critically evaluating educational purposes and strategies against the goal of providing equal access to subject matter learning opportunities for diverse students.... and most of all as teachers [they] are themselves learning”. Noordhoff was writing about Alaska, but the point is equally true of the work of ULF.

Cook complained that students left USC lacking in critical discontent. The evidence quoted here suggests that this is not the case, or is no longer the case. The Urban Learning Foundation reflects in its work the untidy complexities of real people in real classrooms . Its strength is its openness to the community and to human beings as individuals. In Schon’s terms it has helped students to “move betweeen the details of the particular design and the process of designing.” They do come away with critical discontent; they also come away with the ability to use some of the tools which might help towards doing something about their discontent.

And yet the children they teach continue to achieve low grades, inequalities continue, and teachers continue to be blamed for it.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Akhbar S. Ahmed (1995) “Ethnic Cleansing: a Metaphor for our time” in Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol 18 No 1Babad E et al (1989) “When less information is more informative” in B.J.Ed.Psych. Vol 59 pp 282 - 295Brown S and McIntyre D (1993) Making Sense of Teaching Open UniversityCook C (1984) “Teachers for the Inner City; Change and Continuity” in ed G.Grace (1984) Education and the City RKPGardener S et al (1996) Interpreting in the Education Service Urban Learning Foundation1 and Making Training WorkHMI (1991) Training Teachers for Inner City Schools HMSOJackson R (1995) “Religious Education’s Representations of Religions and Cultures” in British Journal of Educational Studies Vol 43 No 3Haste H (1996) “Constructivism and the Social Construction of Morality” in Journal of Moral Education Vol 25 No 1.Hymes (1971) “On Communicative Competence” in ed Pride J and Holmes J (1972) Sociolinguistics PenguinLouis K.S. and Miles M. (1990) Improving the Urban High School CasssellMezirow J et al eds (1990) Fostering Critical Reflection in Adulthood Jossey-BassNoordhoff’ K and Klienfeld J (1993) “Teachers for Alaska - preparing teachers for multicultural classrooms” in Teaching and Teacher Education Vol 9 pages 27-40O.E.C.D. (1991) Learning and Work: The Research Base OECD Directorate for Social Affairs, Manpower and EducationRaynor J ed (1981) Teachers for the Inner City Gulbenkian FoundationSchon (1983) The Reflective Practitioner Temple SmithWoodhead C (1996) “Boys who learn to be losers” in The Times 6 Mar 96

Ian Bliss 11 September, 1996.

Portland House, 1 Portland Place,Lancaster LA1 1SY.

1 Available from Urban Learning Foundation, 56 East India Dock Road, Poplar, London E14 6JE

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