Re: Individual and Community Analyses

Martin Packer (packer who-is-at duq3.cc.duq.edu)
Wed, 12 Nov 1997 12:19:49 -0400

I want to return to the topic that drew me from my quiet corner of the web;
the issues that come up when one tries to study the development of the
individual with attention to community. This message describes in a little
more detail the kinds of connections I've been tracing.

First, to set the stage, here's what I wrote a few days ago:

>[I've been in] a small community in Michigan, close to a large GM auto
>assembly plant
>which the company closed down. I've been working in the schools with both
>individual students and individual teachers.
>
>The community is caught up in historical change-the plant closing a small
>part of the general transformation from a fordist to post-fordist economy,
>plus both flavors of school reform: "market-place" reform implemented by
>Republican Governor John Engler, and NSF-funded "systemic reform," awarded
>first to the state, then to the school district I was in.
>
>The schools too, consequently, are in the midst of historical change, from
>internal (local) and external (state and federal) initiatives. And the
>reformers aim to direct history-by having schools graduate young people who
>are "prepared for the 21st century."
>
>I've been trying to grasp how the local educators are trying to use the
>schools to break the cycle of poverty and under-employment in the
>community, without at the same time destroying it. And how the larger
>efforts at rationalization of schooling are helping or hindering this.
>And, throughout, how the children are making sense of all that is going on.

The challenge has been to understand the relationships among local reform
efforts, community characteristics, state reform efforts and various
political and economic influences. To see the connections amongst
microgenesis in the classroom, ontogenesis of the trajectory through
school, changes in the institutions of the schools, community change, and
broad economic transfomation.

To understand the economic transformation I've drawn on the work of people
like David Harvey (The Conditions of PostModernity), and Robert Heilbroner
(21st Century Capitalism), as well as on the many *representations* of the
"new economy" in the media. As the conditions of production change,
there's a change in the social-contract between capital and labor, and a
change in the kind of preparation needed for labor. And debates about just
what this preparation should be, and about the role of schools in this.

The reform efforts, both the "systemic reform" of NSF and the governor's
"market-place reform" have unfolded over time, and the latter has laid blow
after blow on the schools in Michigan. I'm finding it helpful to view them
as efforts at rationalization, each drawing on a different kind of
rationality--the economic rationality of productivity, efficiency and
accountability; the political rationality that sees schools as a delivery
system and focuses on equity, coherence and alignment.

Both these clash with local reform efforts, which draw upon the
particularities of the local community, especially a story that gets
repeatedly told about its origins. A book was written in the 1950s for the
local school children, telling them the history of their community, and how
from the outset "we've been like a family." This characterization has
become a resource for the local reformers. At the same time the children
of this community have many needs, emotional and otherwise, arising from
the social and economic shape the area is in, that the schools must address
if they have a hope of teaching.

When the local reform efforts clash with the rationalization efforts, it's
the difference, I think, between "life-world" and "system" as Habermas has
put it. The reports beginning to emerge on the results of the systemic
reform efforts (e.g. Goertz, M. E., Floden, R. E., & O'Day, J. (1995).
Studies of education reform: Systemic reform: Vol. 1. Findings and
conclusions. (Vol. 1). Newark: Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey,
Center for Policy Research in Education.) are starting to stress the need
for "capacity-building," and my interpretation of this is that they're
discovering the limitations of viewing public schools as a system--
discovering that people live in the system! (Capacity includes, this
report says without attribution, the "communities of practice" that
teachers inhabit.)

The local reformers have a much richer understanding of teaching than
either systemic reform or market-place reform contains: it emphasizes the
*relationship* between student and teacher. And that brings us to
microgenesis--I've been studying classroom interaction (with both
fieldnotes and audio-recordings in several grades) to see how the
"student-teacher" relationship gets established and maintained, and how it
shapes the kind of person children are becoming.

Again, any comments and reactions, -ve and +ve, will be welcome--I'm
stretched to the limits of my capacity to grasp all of this at once, and
would welcome advice!

Martin

================
Martin Packer
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh PA 15282

(412) 396-4852
fax: (412) 396-5197

packer who-is-at duq3.cc.duq.edu
http://www.duq.edu/liberalarts/gradpsych/packer/packer.html