The Meaning of Scholarly Activity and the Building of Community

ver 30 years ago, I was a sixth-grade teacher in a fast-growing suburb of Los Angeles. The school was new; the district was building a new school every year. (It was a time when people could buy new houses for $100 down.) Some students in my class had been to as many as 12 schools. Many came from poor families; some were students of the military; others had moved to Califor­nia from the Midwest for the promise of a new life. Educa­tional change was in the air; it was the era of "individualiz­ing instruction" and "modern math." But there were 45 students in my class, and I was responsible for teaching more than 10 subject areas. I had a teaching credential from UCLA where I had par­ticipated in what was to be the last year of a teacher-preparation program based on the teachings of John Dewey. I had learned to teach by participating in the creation of all the materials and activities that I was to use as a teacher: for example, original songs and rhythms, books and artwork for a social-studies unit on Brazil. I felt well prepared and well qualified. I saw social studies as the core of the curriculum, and knowledge as more than the rote learning of discrete subjects, but rather as flowing from and integrated with the core. The role of the teacher was to create the conditions for students to engage actively in learning. I found out, when I began to teach, that creating these con­ditions was much more difficult than I had ever imagined. So I did what many other teachers before me had done: I tried to keep the students busy, tried to follow the cur­riculum, and most of all, tried to survive the isolation and loneliness and the fear of losing control. I stopped thinking about the ideas I had learned at UCLA. The questions that mattered most were: Were they learning anything? When would I stop having a stomachache? Should I become a social worker? One day the principal called us to a meeting at 3 o'clock. We dragged ourselves to the teachers' room to be met by a woman there who gave us a form to fill out concerning our principal and our school. I zipped through the questionnaire, finishing first, which allowed me time to talk to her. She told me that she was doing research, and that the questionnaire was attempting to get at the type of organization of this school, the style of the principal, and the influence that all this had on the teacher. I remember being fascinated by the idea that someone was studying ws. After all I was just a teacher. But could she possibly understand? Where in the questionnaire was the terror of losing control o 4f5 students? Or that what we had learned in preparing to teach had little to do with what we were actually doing? Or that we had no time to really reflect on our practice, and that we teachers rarely talked to each other about teaching? Did she know that the district curriculum people who were supposed to help were too distant from our problems to understand them and never asked us our opinion? Did she have any idea how wonderful and exhilarating it was to talk about intellectual ideas with another adult? It never occurred to me that before too long, I would be standing where she was. Indeed a few years later I went to graduate school and became involved in a research project that connected 18 schools in 18 different districts to UCLA—the League of Cooperating Schools. My job as research assistant (there were 12 of us: 11 men and 1 woman) was to go to assigned schools to encourage discussion and action to improve schools, while documenting the process (Goodlad, 1975). The idea of a partnership between university people and public schools to implement and study the change process Was a bold idea for its time. (Studying the change process in schools requires a long-term relationship, and there were few models.) We were exposing the schools to new ideas in curriculum, instruction, and school organization, observing the impact they had on the functioning of the principals and teachers. In my new role I found myself thinking: Why weren't these teachers more willing to be open with each other? How come they don't read more? Was my principal so paternalistic? Was I this docile when I was a teacher? It is not surprising, then, that trying to understand and resolve the contradictions in my own professional life, and in the professional lives of educators as a group, has become one of th main thrusts of my work. It has taken a long time even to figure out the right questions to ask, let alone pro­vide the answers. Can we connect schools and universities, building community that provides for growth and change, and sharing responsibility for and involvement in practice and research? Can we develop frames of understanding that consider and give voice to the inner and observed lives of teachers and schools as partners, rather than solely as ob­jects of study? Is it possible to study schools, programs, and practices to enhance knowledge as well as aid in the improve­ment of practice?