http://www.ianmergard.com/?p=3081758041#comment-55
http://robeywankenobe.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/drugs-can-be-fun-but-they-sure-make-you-dumb/#comment-38
Showing posts with label Education Foundations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education Foundations. Show all posts
Monday, May 2, 2011
Jane, Part 2
Jane Part 2
In the first post, I discussed how issues of accessibility, affordability, and education as a “basic need” were impacting Jane’s students; the huge amount of time spent in transit on the way to school and other challenges linked to education in rural settings seemed of critically importance. But the new information that many of Jane’s students are not “physically developed” forces us to consider some other serious issues that may be causing ill health, like poverty, malnutrition, family problems, stress, drug use and physical abuse. Reasons for the high rates of ill health that Jane is observing have been described as “a mix of economic, physical, social, environmental and sociocultural factors. The experience of these factors is increasingly shown to have psychosocial repercussions and to mediate how different groups define health and subsequently engage in health-promoting behaviours. (Dixon and Welch, 259).” Other research has shown that for rural adolescents, “structural disadvantage in rural areas (limited educational, employment opportunities, and recreational facilities) impact adversely on health outcomes, particularly mental health outcomes, and contribute to risk-taking behaviour” (Quine et al, online). So whatever the specific causes of their ill health, simply by virtue of being rural adolescents, they are not well-positioned to get the help they need.
What will students want and need from me? Profound health issues may be well outside the scope of what a teacher expects to address. But Jane can do a lot to promote her students’ well-being: she can talk to them, build rapport and gain trust, and advocate for them whenever possible. She has duty of care for her students, and in legal terms, might be held responsible if they were injured or very unwell and she didn’t report her observations. In ethical terms, she may be one of a very few concerned adults in her students’ lives, and her care and attention are hugely valuable. She might try approaching her teaching in a non-interventionist model, focusing on her students’ basic needs for belonging, power, freedom and fun (Krause, 465). If they trust her and feel supported in her classroom, they may experience more enjoyment and reduced stress, and have a clear friend and ally in the event that they need to seek adult support in dealing with a specific health concern.
Even children in basically good health who live in functional and supportive situations, but who have to travel great distances to get to school may not have time to eat healthy meals and get plenty of sleep and exercise; and their geographical isolation may make it more difficult for them to integrate with their peers in town, which can cause stress and social discomfort for them, as we see in Jane’s observation that some students find it difficult to “mix with the kids from town.”
Another thing Jane should consider is what cultural values she can do better to honor in her classroom. What are the cultural backgrounds of her students? What kind of learning is valued in those cultures? How might her worldview and understanding of intelligence be different from theirs? If she’s working with Indigenous students, it’s likely that schools have had a problematic relationship with communities in her region for a long time, and continue systematically to exclude Indigenous language and culture from curriculum: “Apart from some notable exceptions, most government schools in Australia provide a Western model of education. They follow a Western calendar, celebrate Christian holidays and provide education that reinforces Western culture and ways of learning” (HREOC, 70). Jane may have to think way outside the box of her experience and existing pedagogy; by learning more about where her students are coming from culturally, she might be able to align her teaching more with what they want to learn and how they want to learn it. If she can find the energy, despite her fatigue and low morale, it would actually a great opportunity to learn and expand her understanding of her students, herself and her world while becoming a better teacher.
References:
Bourke, L. et al (2004): Developing a conceptual understanding of rural health practice. School of Rural Health, University of Melbourne, Shepparton, Australia
Aust. J. Rural Health (2004) 12, 181–186
Quine S et al (2003): Health and access issues among Australian adolescents: a rural-urban comparison. In The International Electronic Journal of Rural and Remote Health Research, Education, Practice and Policy.
Dixon, J. and Welch, N. (2000): RESEARCHING THE RURAL–METROPOLITAN HEALTH DIFFERENTIAL USING THE ‘SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH.’
Aust. J. Rural Health (2000) 8, 254–260
Accessed 10-4-2011 at: http://www.haliburtoncooperative.on.ca/literature/pdf/H-681_Rural%96Metropolitan_Health_Differential.pdf
Boyd, CP et al. (2005): Issues in rural adolescent mental health in Australia
Pedagogy, Culture & Society Vol. 17, No. 3, October 2009, 251–264
Monday, March 7, 2011
Blog comments: James and Hannah
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Ed Foundations first blog post: JANE
Jane’s first year teaching has been difficult and not as effective as she hoped. As a result, she’s tired, stressed, badly discouraged, and needs to cultivate a sustainable and “transformative teaching practice” (Churchill, 34) to be able to continue. She should ask herself the provocation TO WHOM AM I ACCOUNTABLE? Clearly, she has obligations here to herself, who is burning out, to her students, who aren’t learning as well as they could, their families, who are sometimes hostile, and of course to the school, the government, and all the usual stakeholders.
She will have to clarify some of the compelling factors within and outside her classroom that could be affecting her students’ learning. According the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s National Inquiry into Rural and Remote Education (2000),
Access to education is compromised by ill-health, disability, poverty, isolation, high mobility and transience, natural events such as floods and even heavy rain. It is denied by remoteness coupled with the language and cultural inappropriateness of the instruction on
offer for hundreds of Indigenous children. (2)
In the sense that “accessibility” encompasses ability to physically get into the classroom, affordability and a reasonable degree of appropriateness, Jane must be accountable for improving her remote students’ access to learning.
Because of her personal background in a “nice suburb” with two professional parents, Jane’s school experience was probably substantially different from that of her current students. She probably had all of her basic needs met, didn’t have to travel a great distance to get to school, and it’s likely that her professional parents placed a high value on her education and were generally supportive of her studies. Examining some of the research into rural schools in her area would illuminate for Jane some of the issues that might be affecting her students and their families—what are the road conditions and costs of travel for her students? How far do they have to travel to get to school?
The form of transport, the amount of time taken for travel and the cost involved can all have a significant impact on school education. Many children in rural and remote parts of Australia travel to and from school in extreme conditions due to distance, road quality and climate. (HREOC, 5)
Along with transport, other difficulties remote students may face include extreme climate, lack of internet access or even reliable electricity at home (HREOC). These could be powerful influences on a student’s wellbeing, energy levels and preparedness, and on the family’s ability to support the student.
In addition to studying the research, Jane is in a position to “negotiate a path” (Churchill, 35) between the school and the parents. Perhaps if she pursued a substantive conversation with some of the parents in her new school, she might identify some causes of the hostility she observes, and perhaps even see it soften if the families feel their needs are being heard and met. Can families be invited to participate more in the school? Perhaps greater transparency would improve relations.
Another inevitable question for Jane is, how relevant is the curriculum to the students in that rural school? Are there Indigenous students in her class? Are there language and cultural barriers between them and the curriculum? How does she perceive the general wellbeing of her students? Jane might find creative ways to make her teaching more fundamentally student-centered, adjusting the content and generally focusing on students learning rather than the teacher teaching (which must be very challenging to new, self-conscious teachers, getting easier with experience). Then perhaps her wish to “control” the students would lose some of its imperative; she will actually begin answering the provocation, HOW WILL I CONTROL MY STUDENTS? in ways that develop her students’ learning better.
Put simply, if teachers meet the basic needs of children (from material needs for food and shelter to less tangible needs such as respect and being valued), their behaviour is unlikely to be problematic (Lawson & Petersen 1972, as quoted in Churchill, 56).
By pursuing a greater, more holistic understanding of her students’ lives beyond the classroom, she will be doing more to make them feel respected and valued, taking important steps toward meeting some their basic needs, reducing problematic behavior in class, and helping them learn.
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