A note for Prof. Gu's doctoral students

I was asked to post this note to Prof. Gu's doctoral students:

Prof. Gu,

I felt like I did not do a very good job last night with your class. Perhaps these remarks may help (you can share if you think so):

This is an account of how research develops and may undergo maturation along the way. About 10 years ago, I was working on a project in Indonesia called Distributed Basic Education that was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The effort was motivated by a law passed in 2005 that required all Indonesian school teachers to have a four-year baccalaureate degree by 2015. At that time, only about 10% of teachers had a baccalaureate and were certified teachers. The law meant that millions of teachers would need to have the degree in just a few short years. It was a very ambitious project – not a research project but perhaps a development project of the 6.3 (demonstration) or 6.4 (large-scale implementation)  kind mentioned in class. I was working with the open university of Indonesia – Universitas Terbuka (UT) – as that was the only place that had the potential capacity to support large numbers of students required for success. The enrollment at UT went from 350,000 to 650,000 in the first year of our effort. I was responsible for developing methods, procedures, examples, and standards for offering online courses and online support, about which I had some experience. Unfortunately, the Internet failed to gain widespread use in the five years I worked on the project so many of my efforts were not realized in practice.

Meanwhile, I made many friends at UT and around Indonesia and was asked to help them develop guidance for teachers working in rural, multi-grade schools – something about which I knew almost nothing. Still, I was willing to help and suggested starting with a visit to a representative rural, multi-grade school – starting with an observation and descriptive work to gain insights. Such a visit was arranged to a multigrade elementary school in the mountainous region of Bogor. We left Jakarta in a couple of vans at 5:00 am – two American researchers and four Indonesian teachers and an adminisrator from UT. We drove for 2 hours until reaching an unpaved and barely navigable road and then drove for a half hour to a village, where we disembarked. We then walked for 2 miles to a second village where the three-room school was located. There was electricity (wired outside buildings) but no Internet at all. The headmaster greeted us and served us tea and three different kinds of bananas. He described the school, students and teachers with one of our UT colleagues serving as a translator. He also asked us about the bananas which were grown locally. I could not distinguish much difference, but then he told us how very different they were and how each one was best used in food preparation.

We then split ourselves into three groups – two for each of the three classrooms. I was with an Indonesian UT colleague observing the 5^th 6^th grade classroom. There were about 50 students in the room – about 25 in each grade split into two sides of the room, with 3 students per desk that had one note pad, one pencil and one straight edge. The instructor used a blackboard for notes; when addressing the 6^th graders he faced that side of the room while the 5^th graders worked on a pre-assigned problem. The 6^th grade students were studying science – biology and more specifically plants – that day. The 5^th grade students were studying math – more specifically geometry that day.

I understood almost nothing of what he said to the 6^th graders. When he turned and spoke to the 5^th graders, things became slightly more understandable as he worked example geometry problems on the blackboard which I could easily follow. Meanwhile, the 6^th graders were working quietly on their pre-assigned problems. The 5^th grade students were learning how to determine the perimeter of a polygon formed by adding a right triangle to a rectangle. Solving the problem required knowing the Pythagorean theorem – the square of the hypoteneuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides. This is not taught in the USA until the 8^th grade so I was a little surprised and somewhat doubtful that those students could solve such problems. After working several examples, the instructor turned and said something to the 6^th graders who got up and went outside. Then the 5^th graders started working on problems to determine the perimeter of a problem presented on the blackboard. I went behind each group of 3 5^th grade students and saw them working in collaboration and with success solving the problem – much to my amazement.

When I was satisfied that the 5^th graders had mastered the task, I became curious about the 6^th graders. My Indonesian colleague explained to me that their task was to find plants outside that could regenerate by grafting. I went outside to observe what they were doing. They were working in small groups (3 or 4 to a group) with one knife, finding and grafting plants. They were unsupervised. They were sharing and collaborating and not fighting over the knife. Again I was amazed. This would never be allowed in the USA.

At the end of the school day (around 3:00 pm or so), many of the parents came up from the fields and joined us in the school yard along with the students and teachers. They asked us what we would recommend by way of improving the school and the teaching. We had nothing to offer  other than praise for how well they were doing with so few resources. We then asked them about their goals for the school. The parents said they wanted their kids to go on to middle and high school – that meant a long bus ride to the city of Bogor and not coming home except on holidays. I then asked how many go to further education now – about 10% was the answer. How many of those 10% return to the village – almost none was the response. What was their goal, I then asked. I was told by several that they wanted at least 75% to continue their education. I was surprised as that seemed ambitious but not unrealistic. I asked what would happen to the three villages served by the school if they achieved their goal. The parents simply shrugged in response – I pressed again asking if the villages would survive if so many left and did not return. The answer was  a repetition of their desire to have their kids receive a good and comprehensive education.

After we left and returned to Jakarta, we talked at length about our experience. We decided to find out if it was an anomaly. We visited two more multi-grade schools not so far away for shorter visits (extending the descriptive and observational nature of that early research). We found similar situations and then decided to recruit an American doctoral student to do her dissertation studying a dozen rural, multi-grade elementary schools around Indonesia. This was a kind of multi-case qualitative study aimed at determining attitudes, quality of instruction, student learning outcomes, and related matters. Along the way, it was learned that some multi-grade schools were being discontinued but not all as many were in quite remote and undeveloped areas of Indonesia. The research then took on a more interventionist nature (in our recommendations) – how to train and support multi-grade teachers. The project ended so we were not able to follow the effort as it matured, although the student's dissertation was successfully defended.

The point of this story is that research undergoes maturation and having or being associated with a research stream can be rewarding and may even yield positive outcomes and have an impact.

I remember Bob Gagné saying on many occasions that our task is to help people learn. The task is not to help ourselves or our careers – as educational technologists, the goal is to make effective use of technologies and techniques to improve learning and instruction.

That is my story of the day. which I should have used with the class.

mike

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J. Michael Spector, PhD
Prof. of Learning Technologies, College of Information
University of North Texas
3940 N. Elm Street, G182, Denton, TX 76207
http://aect-president-2009-2010.blogspot.com/
https://sites.google.com/site/jmspector007/