Ethnography has at least two potential contributions to make to the practice of educational evaluation. The first of these has largely been realized: to help educators recognize the value of descriptive research conducted in natural settings rather than to rely so wholeheartedly on experimental research in contrived or controlled settings. If descriptive research&endash;or "qualitative" research, as it is fortuitously called&endash;is not about to unseat quantitative research as education’s king of the mountain, it has at least earned a place as one of education’s legitimate and important ways of knowing.
Anthropologists are not alone in adhering to a long tradition of descriptive research, but educators seem to have taken special pleasure in proclaiming that their embrace of descriptive research has added an anthropological dimension to their research repertoire. Although educator pronouncements sometimes imply a wholesale embrace of anthropology that includes all four major subfields of the discipline&endash; physical anthropology, cultural anthropology, linguistics, archaeology&endash;their fascination is limited essentially to cultural anthropology and, even more specifically, to that part of cultural anthropology that deals with ethnographic research. It is the work of the cultural anthropologist as ethnographer that has captured the educator imagination, including those educators whose special interests lie in evaluation. And thus, although it borders on being a contradiction in terms, we hear educators talk about ‘‘ethnographic evaluation."
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Appreciation is expressed to James R. Sanders, Associaie Director of The Evaluation Center, western Michigan University, who directed the ThinkA bout study, and to Saul Rockman, Director of Research at the Agency for Instructional Television, Bloomington, Indiana, for their support during the original project and critical reactions to early drafts for this retrospective examination of the project.
It is hardly surprising that ethnography has achieved its primary recognition among educators through serving evaluative interests (cf. Smith, 1982: 590). Evaluation is at once education’s new source of rigor and its Achilles’ heel, a perspective that requires objectives to be precisely stated so that accomplishments can be properly assessed. Evaluative concerns predominate in an educator language comprised of competencies, goals, objectives, tasks, and measured performance &endash;from teacher evaluations of student assignments ("Is 8 out of 10 very good?") to administrator evaluations of teacher performance, school board evaluations of administrative performance, or voter approval of school boards, budgets, and programs. The ethos of evaluation hangs as a spectre over educator subculture, and one’s status and power in the system is a function of who one evaluates and by whom one is in turn evaluated.
Ethnography could not help but get caught up in this educator preoccupation with evaluation. The term "ethnography"&endash;virtually unknown in educator circles prior to the 1960s&endash;has provided a new, convenient, and comprehensive label for referring to the people, processes, and products associated with this recently awakened interest in on-site, descriptive studies: Educational "ethnographers" pursue "ethnographic" research and produce "ethnography." As the intent of these inquiries has often, although not invariably, been evaluative, it was not too long before ethnography became linked to and even synonymous with evaluation, at least in the eyes of some practicing educators understandably skeptical of any researcher who claimed to be "observing but not evaluating" them. The title "ethnographic evaluator" well served a new breed of self-proclaimed experts ready to take project assignments or district-level employment. If the work of the ethnographic evaluator is not satisfyingly ethnographic to an old purist like myself who insists on cultural interpretation rather than fieldwork techniques as the ultimate criterion for doing ethnography, these people are nonetheless helping build the case for, and demonstrate the utility of, employing descriptive research in assessing educational efforts and outcomes.
Ethnography’s other potential contribution to the practice of educational evaluation makes headway more slowly and less dramatically and, to some extent, makes headway at the cost of the first. That potential is to recognize that ethnography can serve as an alternative to rather than merely as an form of evaluation. Ethnography viewed as an alternative to evaluation suggests a descriptive and interpretive activity whose purposes are to understand rather than to judge and to examine facets of human behavior as part of larger cultural systems.
The ethnographer views human events in broad social contexts and explores them for multiple meanings. In that regard, processes and circumstances surrounding a set of activities that constitute an evaluation event belong properly within the ethnographer’s purview as part of the broad context in which educators work, for evaluation is fraught with different meanings to people in different positions within the educational system. Nevertheless, placing educational evaluation in a cultural perspective is not the critical issue in ethnography viewed as an alternative to evaluation. What is critical is to focus on classrooms and other educational settings as cultural scenes and on how the individuals directly or indirectly involved in those scenes make sense of and give meaning to what is going on. To the anthropologist, evaluation&endash; whether formal or only implicit&endash;is part of that total scene, not apart from it.
Traditionally, ethnographers have endeavored to defer judgment rather than to render it. In school research that does not prove easy to do, either professionally or personally. Most of us who do ethnography in educational settings have occupied other educator roles; all of us have spent untold numbers of years in schools. We "know" what school is like and what we like in schools. We know the school setting so well that, unknowingly, we become our own best informants. We forget to ask others how they make sense of what goes on because we already know what to make of it ourselves. Thus the recent and growing tendency to make evaluation of performance the "bottom line" in every school activity is augmented by personal experiences in a society that is at once proud of and perennially dissatisfied with its schools. In the 1970s it was quality; in the 1980s, it has become cost, but the underlying theme is the same: There is always room for improving schools. Evaluation provides the focus and the arena for action in the constant call for educational improvement and reform. Given the evaluative ethos dominant within the educational establishment and the critical stance that virtually everybody takes toward the public schools, I must concede that school ethnographers (at least those recruited from our own society) probably cannot divest themselves of evaluative tendencies any more than they can afford for practical reasons to exclude themselves from evaluative assignments if they wish to remain involved with education.
Under most circumstances, traditional ethnographers insist that their commitment is to understand the peoples with whom they study. Anthropologists have often viewed with alarm the efforts of members of other groups (missionaries, educators, developers, colonial and other dominant powers) to "improve" the lot of a people by reforming or modernizing them. Among our educator colleagues, by contrast, ethnographers are most often called upon to augment or, at least to chronicle systematic efforts at directed change. In the recent past, ethnographers have occasionally had the opportunity to proceed in the traditional manner with rather basic descriptive studies; the climate of the 1960s and 1970s nurtured the work, and we have been ~ cumulating a solid foundation of ethnographic research about schools (cf. Burnett, 1974; Herriott, 1982; Smith, 1979, 1982; Spindler, 1982; Wilcox, 1982; Wolcott, 1975). Today, opportunities are more likely to be associated with short-term efforts to evaluate and improve specific educational programs than with long-term efforts to understand entire educational systems. We have to take opportunities as they come and try to provide the help requested of us, even as we endeavor to help educators become better aware of the ethnographic potential for understanding rather than evaluating.
Still, I would insist that an explicit ethnographic orientation should be apparent in anything labeled "ethnography"&endash;an orientation clearly reflecting a tradition committed to discovering how things are and how they got that way in contrast to educator preoccupation with how things ought to be and how to move them quickly in that direction. "Evaluation for improvement and change" is the educator ethos; ethnographers working in educational settings need to be aware of it, but they do not have to adopt it for their own. As ethnographers, their commitment is to examine behavior in the broad social context in which it occurs, while evaluators ordinarily concern themselves with specific educational programs or relatively brief moments in educator&endash;and educatee&endash; lives.
For ethnographers who might prefer to help educators better understand how things are but who find their opportunities iii education limited to assignments in ethnographic evaluation oriented to how things ought to be, a workable arrangement may lie in an evaluative compromise that I will call "ethnographers sans ethnography." Accepting roles as ethnographers sans ethnography would allow ethnographers to exercise their traditional practice of describing and interpreting rather than judging, and of attending to broad contexts rather than to isolated elements. The trade-off is the recognition that they are not free to indulge themselves in the professional luxury of conducting full-blown ethnographic studies.
I think there is currently more tolerance in educational circles&endash;and perhaps even more support &endash; for old-fashioned, descriptive. nonjudgmental ethnographers and their ethnographies than we sometimes recognize. Ethnographers do not have to go to the extremes of abandoning their ethnographic orientation and becoming evaluators if they are willing not to go to the other extreme of insisting they will only do traditional ethnography.
Following another anthropological tradition, let me turn to case study material and firsthand experience to illustrate how an invitation to participate in what seemed at first blush an out-and-out program evaluation actually provided an opportunity to observe, interpret, and report in essentially nonjudgmental ways not inconsistent with the ethnographic tradition. The purpose of the project I am going to describe was to learn (monitor) what happened during the implementation of a newly produced series in instructional television intended for classroom use.
In the fall of 1979, the Agency for Instructional Television (AIT) distributed among the 38 consortium-member state and provincial educational agencies in the United States and Canada that had helped sponsor its production a new 60-program television series called ThinkAbout. The series was designed for in-class television viewing and was intended primarily for use in fifth and sixth grade classrooms.
Although each program was self-contained within a 15-minute time frame and viewers were never handicapped by having missed a previous program or being unable to view a subsequent one, the programs all reflected an underlying concern with situational "problem solving," most often in meeting and solving some problem in an out-of-school setting designed to appeal to 10-, 11-, and 12-year-olds. At the anticipated rate of telecasting two new programs each week, the series was planned to extend for 30 weeks of school. A teacher’s guide was available to help teachers prepare their classes for each program and conduct a follow-up discussion. The guide also listed activities related to the topics of individual programs and to each of the 13 topical "clusters" (e.g., collecting information; finding patterns; judging information) that comprised the series.
The series had been in preparation since 1973 and the investment included the time and effort of hundreds of educators and millions of dollars ($3 million from consortium members, $1.4 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and another $200,000 from Exxon Educational Foundation to assist with dissemination activities). An early release hailed the project as "the most ambitious instructional television series developed for national use."
In conjunction with the introduction of the series and consistent with the evaluation ethos of the times, AIT also commissioned an ambitious independent study of the program’s introduction and effects, hoping even to assess the extent to which the program might actually improve students’ problem-solving skills. To carry out that independent study, AIT contracted with the Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University.
Encouraged by a broad charter to document what actually went on in classrooms where ThinkAhout was used, the strategy proposed by the staff at the Evaluation Center called for augmenting two standard inquiry approaches, the use of mailed questionnaires. and 11w use of before-and-after testing in both user and nonuser classrooms, by commissioning case studies to be conducted independently 1w experienced but uncommitted outside observers. And that is where I came in.
For me, the assignment sounded just right. The schedule was convenient, the money good, the opportunity to get back into classrooms to do some observing quite welcome. I accepted the offer to become one of three project consultants contracted as independent case-study researchers.
Project meetings and formalities were held to a minimum. I had a full school year in which to locate teacher-users and visit their classrooms. Interim reporting requirements were modest. With such ample advance notice, I was easily able to plan time to complete my final report by the due date the following summer.
Working relationships remained pleasant, and my final report was eagerly and graciously received at the end of the project year. To my surprise, the three independently researched case study reports not only were forwarded to the sponsor exactly as written (as we had been promised) but were subsequently lithographed arid bound intact as three of the five separate volumes that constitute the complete report prepared by the Evaluation Center and distributed by the Agency for Instructional Television.1
My only other surprise in connection with the project came quite early, during the first few minutes of my initial telephone contact with the project director. He explained that this venture into qualitative-quantitative research was a first for him, and because he was familiar with my work he had contacted me. "We want an ethnographer," he explained, "but we don’t want you to give us a full ethnography."
Those words have continued to ring in my ears and prompted my title for this chapter. But those words, too, had a context, and the director’s full statement and intent are important for understanding the sense of purpose shared by him and by AIT’s Director of Research:
In our initial telephone conversation I said, "We want an ethnographer. but we don’t want you to give us a full ethnography. We want a case study, limited in setting, time, act (WS, and to selected issues, but still open-ended to add new insights." What I was trying to communicate was that we did noticed a wide-scope study of the ‘culture" of a school building or school district or even a school classroom. We wanted a study directed toward our objectives rather than your theories of cultural transmission or some other interest of yours [James Sanders, personal communication. 1982].
As I listened to the explanations and the outline of the assignment, I felt that as an "experienced" ethnographer I could compromise without feeling compromised. I would endeavor to provide ethnography without giving them "an ethnography." That is, I would try to provide an ethnographer’s way of viewing, with attention to cultural context, to multiple points of view, and to unintended and unanticipated consequences as well as to intended ones. Assuming that my major (and possibly only) audience was the producers, I felt I should also offer whatever suggestions-I might have for them to "think about," just as they had attempted to do for their intended audiences.
One specific request made of the three of us contracted to do the independent studies was that we include observations in one or two classrooms in which we would make sustained visits. Originally I planned to build my report around that case or cases. But during the fieldwork I found it helpful&endash;even critical&endash;to talk to many educators, to visit several classrooms, and to interview a number of teachers about instructional television in general and ThinkAbout in particular. In writing my final report, I reversed my original plan: I organized the first and major part of my discussion around several pervasive issues, and included two brief classroom case studies as part two.
For my purposes here, I have drawn only indirectly upon the main body of the report as it was directed to issues of special interest to the producers. What I have selected for illustration is one of my two case studies, this one from the classroom of a sixth grade teacher whom I call George Walker. Although I have slightly edited and abridged the original report, I have endeavored to leave it essentially as submitted in order to illustrate what I consider a satisfactory resolution to the issue of ethnographers sans ethnography.
I hope&endash;and believe&endash;that the case study both demonstrates and attests to the value of looking "ethnographically" even when it is quite likely that the ethnographer may have felt somewhat constrained by imposed limits on setting, time, actors, and issues and that the sponsor may have felt comparable misgivings about ever having invited an ethnographer at all. Further, I hope&endash;arid believe&endash;that the case study both demonstrates and attests to the value of describing what is going on and how people are making sense of it rather than of judging what is (or is not ) going on and how it ought really to be done differently (and. by implication, better). I did not feel obliged to evaluate either ThinkA bout or George Walker’s teaching in meeting my ethnographic commitments. Yet I think that even in this brief case study, based on relatively few visits to only one classroom and focused on (but not limited exclusively to) their viewing of a 15-minute television program twice a week during only a portion of the school year, there is much to be learned and the implications are satisfyingly broad. In the formal report I submitted to the Evaluation Center those implications were spelled out in the discussion that preceded the presentation of case data; here I will recap some of them in my concluding remarks.
SIXTH GRADE’
Twenty-two years have passed since I taught sixth grade; yet when I made my first visit to George Walker’s class, I had the feeling that things have not changed much. I could have "taken over" at a moment’s notice. I felt completely at home in the class and relatively unobtrusive. My first school visit was in mid November 1979; my last taped interview with George was made after the close of school in June, 1980.
The text materials the sixth graders were using had changed somewhat, though I was not sure they were much improved. A newly adopted social studies text on Latin America looked so familiar that I had to check the date of publication to see if perchance it was the very book I had used. George was teaching the same folk dances I had taught (from what sounded like the same recording) and had chosen some of the same stories to read to his class that I once read to mine.
We bore other similarities as well. I was about George’s age when I taught my class. I don’t remember having a beard then&endash;but that was because the superintendent of schools told me when I got the job (it, too, was a small town, with a few large schools inside the city limits and a number of small rural schools spread out over a huge outlying community) that he "hoped" I was going to shave the beard before school opened. As was true of my interests in those days, George enjoyed hiking and camping, and he managed to weave those interests into his classroom program through a curriculum in Outdoor Education that included a one-week experience at camp for sixth graders during the school year.
Even the composition of our classes was similar. Among my otherwise white pupils I. too, had one boy of "slightly dark complexion" and one girl of Asia background (my pupil was Japanese&endash; American; George’s pupil had been born in Hong Kong). I too had a class of about 25 pupils, with just a few more boys than girls (George had II girls, 14 boys). There may have been fewer pupils from blue-collar homes in my class, but both classes had children whose fathers were doctors and each of us had one pupil related to a school board member. It’s a small world.
Under current operating definitions both our classes were "self-contained," though in retrospect I think my class was more self-contained than George’s. My pupils went as a class to other teachers for shop and for art but otherwise were with me all day, every day. George’s class was instructed in music (by the high school music teacher), in interpersonal skills (by the counselor), and, in the school library, in library skills. In addition, pupils came and went throughout the day to a series of special programs (math, reading, counseling); three boys consistently missed the ThinkAbout program each Monday and Wednesday afternoon because of a special remedial math lab (though they often returned just in time to participate in a follow-up activity or written assignment).
George also had access to one hour of assistance each day from a classroom aide. Rather expectedly, he chose to have that help during Reading, the second major period in each morning’s regular activities. The aide usually came to the classroom and assisted with one of the three reading groups by hearing them read orally, presenting new vocabulary, or helping them check or correct a reading assignment. If there was a backlog of papers to correct, George sometimes asked her to spend her time correcting papers and recording grades.
Somewhat to his surprise after teaching at Washington Elementary School for six years, George found himself the "senior" teacher on the faculty. The principal and media-specialist-cum-librarian had been at the school many years, and some teachers had taught in other schools in the district, but George had been at Washington the longest of any teacher. He was beginning to enjoy a security borne of longevity.
There were three teachers at each grade level, grades one through six. George was friendly with and helpful to the two female teachers who taught the other sixth grade classes. He reported that the three cooperated on organizational matters more than on curricular ones. Although they occasionally shared texts and worksheets, their interactions usually involved music or dance programs, cafeteria and playground deportment, or plans for the outdoor education program in which all three classrooms and teachers were involved. Thc sixth grade teacher in the adjacent classroom told me she had never heard of ThinkAbout and did not realize that George was using it wit ii his classroom until she talked with me. I noticed that she was a frequent user of films and filmstrips; she said she had never used instructional television.
George’s classroom was of standard width but was unusually long, and the extra space allowed for a large old sofa and easy chair at the back of the room, favorite spots for leisure reading. George frequently rearranged the seating pattern of the individual desks and chairs. The customary seating arrangement was some variation on a U-shape. open toward the chalkboard at the front of the classroom. When the room was so arranged, the children were often allowed to sit on a large rug in the center of the room while they listened to a story or watched a film, filmstrip, or television. Early in the year, when George’s class watched ThinkAbout with a fifth grade class as guests in that classroom (before the teacher decided not to continue with the programs), I noticed that strict attention was paid to having pupils sit rather than lie on the carpet. Protocol was relaxed in their own classroom. The children usually sprawled on the carpet in what I took to be a "living sociogram" of the interpersonal dynamics of the class. (At sixth grade, of course, the proximity was boy-to-boy, girl-to-girl; although by the end of the term there were some budding romances, members of the two sexes ordinarily kept their distance.)
Three idiosyncracies that I observed give some hint to George’s style with the class. First was his red kitchen stool, a perch from which he always read the after-lunch story and often conducted classroom discussions. George used the stool the way some teachers use the corner of their desks, to sit in a slightly higher, more commanding position. Since he frequently relocated his own desk in the classroom, the red stool solved the problem of where he would sit regardless of the furniture arrangement.
Second was the considerable use George made of the overhead projector. More than any teacher I can remember, George relied on the overhead projector as an instructional aid for introducing words, giving assignments, drawing diagrams (or projecting diagrams already drawn), and keeping track of ideas presented during discussions. The projector was always at the ready at the front of the classroom, and if the class was not already at work when it was switched on, it gave a signal that they soon would be. Windows did not extend the full length of the long classroom, so on even the brightest days the front of the classroom was sufficiently dark that the overhead projections, film images, or television were easily seen without the necessity of closing the blinds. A screen for the overhead projector was mounted permanently above the chalkboard, and the projector itself was on a mobile cart that could he quickly swung into position directly under it.
Third was George’s use of a number of abbreviated commands (e.g., "10:06," "Clear desks") and classroom rituals for handling organizational routines. Like George, many teachers use variations on a point system&endash;more often noting negative than positive points&endash;but I have never seen a teacher keep a tally of such demerits on his sleeve. In George’s class, if particular students seemed to be having particularly bad days (invariably the same students, invariably boys), lie would put a piece of masking tape on his sleeve and keep track of points that could lead to having to spend time after school. Recording of demerits was public: "OK, Randy, that’s two!"
Another set of rituals were those in which the entire class responded in unison in acknowledging announcements or action. For example, announcements made by pupils from other classes (e.g., "Our class is having a cupcake sale on Friday so be sure to bring your money") were acknowledged by a single clap of the hands given in unison by all members of the class at the direction of the teacher, "Let’s give them a hand."
My request to have pupils write about how their home viewing and school viewing of television were alike and different inadvertently produced a minor classroom revolt that resulted in George’s adding an extra assignment of arithmetic homework as well. By my next visit all was forgiven and students were even pressing me to learn whether some of their papers were going to be "sent to Michigan," but George felt that since my request caused the commotion in the first place, my complicity should not go unrecognized. I got the "watermelon treatment," a ritual that I assume was restricted to "insiders." Each pupil took an imaginary slice of watermelon and pretended to devour it in one giant sweep from left to right. And the seeds? They were directed at me, in what became one loud Bronx cheer. But, and this is important, that was the end of it! Annoyance voiced, issue closed.
The "watermelon treatment" reveals George’s style with the class: a sense of humor, tight but not intrusive control, a teacher-directed class, with room for "kids to be kids." I felt that George had adequate control over the class in spite of their obvious high energy and that he enjoyed them. As he noted during the year, he "probably had the hardest class" (of the three sixth grades) but they were also "the neatest" (i.e.. best). In an interview after the close of school in June, however, George expressed frustration in terms of his impact on the class and stated, "If I had to teach a group of kids like that one, year after year. I just wouldn’t stay in teaching." lie explained:
My ability to communicate with them was unsuccessful. I felt at the end of the year they were doing the very things they did at the beginning that I didn’t like. I felt that as a teacher I had very little influence &endash;&endash;less than in any year I’ve taught It sure is nice that it’s over.
George’s frustration relates to the class as a whole and to their collective impact on him: "They got me upset, got me mad. . . . There were times when I’d shout, ‘Shut up! Put your heads down!’ That happens every year, but not as often as it did this year." He added, "I’ve always thought of myself as being lenient and open. But at times this year I felt I was just the opposite of what I want to be as a teacher."
Frustrated as he may have been&endash;or was he simply worn out at the end of the school year?&endash;George was not gloomy in his assessment of the progress made by the children individually. He felt that some of the pupils had made as much or more progress as he had ever seen. All was not lost; he simply hoped that he would not have "another class like that one."
A DAY IN CLASS
Flexibility has been much touted in education in recent years. The implication has been that new, alternative arrangements to building design or classroom organization are the way to achieve it. My visits to Washington School reminded me of the remarkable flexibility inherent in the self-contained classroom. In George’s class one could never be sure exactly what was coming next.
At the same time, the class was organized around a strict timetable of routines. I think the daily schedule reflected George’s (and perhaps most elementary teachers’) perception of the ideal classroom day: the morning is for basics, the afternoon is for "other things." Let me describe an actual and rather typical day: Wednesday, February 27, 1980.
School began at 8:30 a.m. at Washington Elementary School, but so many pupils arrived earlier via school bus that classes were virtually "in session" by the time the morning bell rang, especially if the weather was cold (by local standards) or rainy. That morning about half the children were already in the classroom (some working at their desks, some playing the two-player board game of Kalaha, two girls practicing a dance the class would be presenting later in the month), while others were in the halls or playing outside in gentle rain.
A set of math papers, corrected the evening before, had been distributed on each desk. The teacher was preparing math problems that could later be flashed on the screen with the overhead projector. Without spoken direction, class members quickly seated themselves after the bell. George gave an opportunity for pupils who wanted to share current events (on this day the news focused on results of the New Hampshire primary elections). Again without announcement, George turned on the overhead projector to project five multiplication problems. Pupils immediately began copying and solving the problems and then proceeded to work for the next 45 minutes on individual assignments in arithmetic while the teacher (and visitor) answered questions on a request basis. Students who finished their day’s assignment in math could go to the back of the room to play Kalaha; by about 9:25 a.m. ten children were doing so.
Then it was time for the class’s scheduled period in the multipurpose room to practice for a forthcoming dance program to be presented for parents. After about a twenty-minute dance period, George dismissed the class by stating the time ("10:06") when he expected all pupils to return to their desks, following a brief interval when they could use the toilets, get a drink, visit, and so on.
Pupils, teacher, and teacher’s aide converged in the classroom and proceeded immediately to their Reading Period tasks. An abbreviated schedule written on the chalkboard divided the class into three groups and distributed them according to the three elements of George’s reading program: "R" (recreational reading), "M" (meet with teacher or aide as a group), "D" (desk work, consisting either of reading a story in a reader or completing an assignment). There were five pupils in the top group ("We’re doing seventh grade reading," the one boy in the group informed me); and ten pupils in each of the other two groups. A boy from the middle group assured me that although the top group had "the hardest" reading, his group was also doing "advanced" work. He referred to the third group, using a reader entitled Easy Going, as "the flunkies." A boy from the Easy Going group immediately came to ask me, "What did he just say about us?"
During the one hour reading period all children were scheduled into each of the three facets of the reading program. The end of the reading period was signaled by the instruction, "Pink sheets," a reminder to record the number of pages read during recreation reading time.
"Clear desks" was the next direction, the signal to begin the third and final leg of the morning’s instructional journey. On alternative mornings the music teacher visited, so the third "hour" in the morning was not entirely under George’s control. When it was, however, it was given to academic tasks, including the completion of work begun earlier in the morning. As one pupil explained, ‘‘What we do next depends on what he tells us to do."
On this day the class was directed to return to the five problems in multiplication assigned earlier. "Now we’ll see who is ready for the seventh grade," George chided. He had them pass papers so each was corrected by a different classmate. At student direction he completed the problems, working them for all to see on the overhead projector. Scores were then reported orally and recorded.
With about 35 minutes to go before lunch, and with several threats that he might have everyone "take out your English books instead," George divided the class into five team to work together to try to figure out "which number comes next" by discerning the pattern in a series of numbers. He later said that he’d had the number game ready for several weeks and finally saw just the right opportunity to present it.
Hot lunch was served for the upper grades in the cafeteria/multipurpose room promptly at noon. Because of the rain, pupils returned immediately to the classroom after lunch, playing games under the supervision of a classroom aide to allow teachers their "duty-free" lunch break. With shepherding his class through the lunch line, eating his own lunch, and going to the staff room to make himself a cup of tea, the 40-minute lunch period passed quickly. As we headed back to a classroom of children who had already been confined for four hours (8:30-12:30) and still had three hours to go (12:30-3:30), George made one of the most important comments I recorded during the entire year’s research:
Now comes the part of the day I don’t like. The afternoon drags on, and I’m tired. And by evening I am too tired to do a lot of preparation.
The highly structured, basics-oriented, purposive teacher of the morning seemed, by both his perception and mine, to be a different, more casual&endash;but also more uncertain&endash;teacher in the afternoon, a critical point to which I will return. But let me first continue with this detailed account of one particular day in George Walker’s class.
The impending dance program was on several teachers’ minds. No sooner had George returned to his classroom than he received a message that a teacher in another class "needed some girls" to serve as partners so that her class could practice their dances for the program.
Unhesitatingly George sent the required number of volunteers; then he faced the question of what to do with the remainder of the class until the others returned. (Cagily, no. girls volunteered until they had secured George’s promise that he would not continue with the regular after lunch story reading until they returned.) Deciding to capture the sudden burst of interest lie had seen that day in playing Kalaha (before school, during math, and at lunchtime) he proceeded to the chalkboard, and, without comment, drew the playoff pattern for a tournament. Then he announced "A Big Event, The First Annual Kalaha Derby." He quickly had pupils draw starting partners and got the tournament going with the two Kalaha boards in the classroom. Amid excitement and laughter the tournament ran quickly but far exceeded the ten-minute maximum he declared at its outset. By about 1:05 the tournament had ended, the girls had returned from their dancing, and he began storytime, concluding his reading aloud to the class a short story, "The Most Dangerous Game."
I found variations in the duration of storytime to be an indicator of the teacher’s and class’s mood after lunch. Between an occasional impromptu discussion, inspired by events of the morning or during lunchtime, and occasional rapt attention to the story being read, the story-reading period sometimes lasted so long that there was no other formal activity between the end of lunch (12:40) and the beginning of ThinkAbout (1:30). On other days, in other moods, and capped by inattentive listening, the story period might be finished by 12:55. All quite different from the tight, purposeful scheduling of the morning’s activities.
On this day, story-reading lasted till 1:25p.m., in part because George had gotten so far along in the story that he realized he had to conclude it. After sending a pupil to bring the television "cart" from another classroom, he invited a brief discussion about which of the stories he had recently read was the favorite.
Sensing that the class still had not settled down after the Kalaha tournament and interruption from dancing, George announced that at 1:45 p.m. (i.e., after ThinkA bout) he would need a "Noise Break," a totally quiet time while pupils worked individually at their desks. Having now committed himself to a Noise Break, it occurred to him to tie in whatever assignment he would give (at this point he hadn’t invented it) with the program the children were about to watch. As he switched on the television set, he anticipated aloud the possibility that the program shown might be out of sequence, as had so often happened in previous weeks: "I don’t know what the show will be about today . . . but I’ll be giving you an assignment on this program."
The ThinkA bout program aired that day was the first program in a new cluster "Judging Information." George had told me earlier that he hoped the telecast program would begin the new cluster rather than go back to a "missed" program on Maps and Models. But, he added cheerily, "I can do ‘Models’ if that’s what they show." When the title of the day’s program did prove to be from the new cluster (Program 44, "Should I Believe It?") he gave a sigh of approval and commented to the class, "Ah, this is a good one.
The classroom audience for this day’s program consisted of 10 girls, 11 boys, the teacher, and one observer (me). At lunchtime a boy who had been absent during the morning returned to school, so the headcount increased to 24 present of 25 enrolled; however, at 1:25 three boys left the room for their regular session of special help in math.
While the big black and white television set warmed up, George gave directions to establish which pupils could have first choice for places on the carpet (not that there was any shortage of space, only the perennial competition to see who can be first). Pupils ordinarily were free to sit (lie) wherever they wished on the carpet, remain at their desks, or sit in the easy chair or on the sofa at the back of the room. The carpeted area was the favorite of most pupils, and they seemed to attend more closely to their proximity to friends than to their proximity to the television. Teacher’s Guide in hand, George sat at a student desk at the side of the room. Invariably he would need to adjust picture or sound during the program.
The Teacher’s Guide for Program 44 listed two teaching points: "It is important to question information and its sources" and "When judging the reliability of a source, ask yourself: ‘Should I believe it? Who says so? Who else says so?’ " The "After the Program" suggestions direct the teacher to "Talk about . . . how to decide if you can believe an information source" and suggest some questions about the story and some ways for students to relate the issue of reliable information to their own lives.
But George didn’t want a "talk about" activity. He needed a written assignment for pupils to do during his announced Noise Break. The lesson he made out of the telecast was a lesson on "sequencing." Sequencing was one of twenty-four different follow-up activities listed on a set of teacher-made wall charts permanently posted high along one wall of the classroom, activities that could be used as "instant assignments" in conjunction with almost any reading done in class. Sequencing was task # 17: "Skim your story. Write the events in sequence."
Immediately after ThinkAbout, George turned off the television and a pupil stepped forward to roll the sturdy cart into the corridor so the next users of the set would not have to interrupt the class. George rolled the overhead projector into place, switched it on, and began to list the characters in the story, a visit by two aliens from outer space: Sue, Eustace, Roto, Nurk, Dr. Davis. "What about Hank?" queried a student. "Who’s Hank?" asked the teacher. "The guy’s father," came the response. Add Hank to the list. Under these names he added the two interpretations suggested in the story: "Aliens Invade" and "Friendly Aliens Scared Away." Then he announced the assignment:
OK. I need a break. I think this [program] is worth discussing, but I’m going to give you a "put-it-down-on-paper’ assignment for ten minutes. We’ll discuss it afterwards. When you get your paper done, just take out your book and read.
Your assignment is activity number 17 [referring to the wall chart of written activities. Skim the program and write the events in sequence as to what happened. Instead of writing out whole sentences, just write down the events in sequence. What happened? White paper. Any questions? . . . This is called "Ten-Minute Noise Break."
The children turned immediately to the task, taking (their own) writing paper from their desks. They worked without discussion and without asking the teacher for word or spelling help. He stepped into the hall briefly, then returned to the classroom and did some minor straightening up. The mood was not punitive, it was simply a time for quiet, a teacher "Time Out." Except for the sound of the pencil sharpener, no one violated the silence.
Promptly at 2:00 p.m. George announced recess. Pupils grabbed jackets and lined up at the classroom door. The playground included a covered "shed" area, so although it was still raining lightly, everyone could go out-of-doors without having to stand in the rain. Most of the girls remained in the shed area with the teacher, while the boys played a game of Four Square outside. This was the regular afternoon recess period for George’s class, but he had to supervise it himself because his class was the only one on the playground. With his shout of "O.K., that’s it!" recess ended and pupils returned to class.
Wednesday was Library Day for George’s class, when the media specialist presented a brief lesson on library use and then allowed time for book selection. Library period was 2:30 to 3:00 p.m. Settled in the classroom again at 2:20, only ten minutes remained for a quick review of the steps the pupils had identified in their analysis of the sequence of events in the ThinkAbout program. George listed the events on the overhead projector as pupils suggested them, guiding the discussion with comments like, "No, something happened before that," if he felt someone had skipped a step.
The emphasis was entirely on "What happened next?" the lesson George made of the program, rather than on the reliability of information sources, the lesson proposed in the Teacher’s Guide.
During the discussion the teacher had the class examine how there were really lwo sequences of events, one leading to each of two different conclusions. The "star" of the program&endash;invariably a young person just a hit older than the pupils watching it&endash;needed to understand what people thought was happening as well as what was actually happening. As George noted in a hasty summary just prior to dismissing the class for the library, "That made the sequencing a little confused."
George led his pupils through the hall to the library and then headed to the staff room for a cup of tea. He returned to his classroom but kept an eye on the clock so that he would not be late meeting the class at the library door promptly at 3:00. At his direction the class returned to begin a new activity, social studies. ("So-so studies," a bright pupil mumbled for my benefit.) Today the class viewed a filmstrip describing the exploits of one of the Spanish explorers in Central America. From a pupil perspective the challenge of the activity seemed to lie in getting called on to read the captions.
At 3:25 George terminated the filmstrip lesson, reviewed names of pupils with homework assignments, distributed one handout, reminded everyone to "put up your chairs" (to make it easier for the custodian to clean) and dismissed pupils at the door. Students did not linger, though many said a ritual goodby as they exited and a few directed their goodby specifically to the teacher: "Goodbye Mr. Walker. See you tomorrow." In less than a minute the classroom was empty except for two boys detained after school for accumulating "too many marks" against them during the afternoon.
REPEAT PERFORMANCE: ANOTHER AFTERNOON IN CLASS
I was visiting George’s classroom when the same ThinkAbout program was repeated on a Monday afternoon a week and a half later. By this time the ThinkAbout sequence had become hopelessly garbled. Five days earlier George had prepared the class for the expected program by having them write out directions for how to tie your shoe, a suggested follow-up activity for another program. However, the program was not broadcast that week. As the television set was warming up, he mused, "The assignment I gave you last time about tying your shoes was for the wrong ThinkAbout program. Maybe today that is the program we will see." George was scanning his Teacher’s Guide as the program began. From the curiously enthusiastic response of the pupils he knew that it was not the program he expected and that it was a repeat; he soon realized it was the program "Aliens Invade" seen earlier. "Oh, let’s not watch it," he said in a somewhat teasing manner. The pupils groaned in protest. and he changed his tone:
"Would you like to see it again?" The class cheered, and George commented, "All right! Don’t say I never did anything for you."
Attention was as rapt as on the first viewing, for this program was lively, action-packed, filled with imagination and humor. There was quite a bit of laughter. The classroom mood was light. And instead of jumping to his feet to turn off the set and take charge at the end of the program, George left the set on The next program on the public broadcast channel was "The Letter People." George asked the class if they wanted to continue watching, and got another affirmative response. But pupils were soon laughing at a story aimed at younger viewers in which Mr. "Y" was explaining what would make him the "happiest person in Letterland," and after four minutes George turned the set off, accompanied by only a ritual moan of dismay.
George asked whether the class felt they had learned any more by watching the repeat broadcast of ThinkAbota or whether they learned it all the first time. One boy who always had a ready comment volunteered that he had not realized the girl in the story ~vore braces the first time he viewed the program. The teacher jokingly responded:
"Well, that’s important. Anything else?" There were no other comments. "I guess you learned it all the first time," he concluded.
And now what? Ten minutes to go before recess; no new ThinkAbout material to discuss. "I’ll have to give you something else," George announced, "but it will have to be a bit more instructional." Apparently he was still in a teasing mood, for he filled the next few minutes with one of his popular short "filler" activities, having the children guess artist and title from his personal collection of old 45 LP records. (George referred to this lightly as "Music Appreciation.") At 2:02 he took the class out for recess.
After recess the pupils returned to their classroom for their regular Monday afternoon session with the school counselor. On this day her lesson was to show and discuss the film, "The Shopping Hag Lady." (I noted that although the picture was large and in color, in contrast to the small black-and-white television screen, the counselor had trouble with both sound and frame while showing the film. The sound was ~o poor that she stopped the film to ask whether everyone was able to understand it. Prior to showing the film she asked if anyone had seen it before; 10 of the 22 children present had already seen it, but she proceeded with her lesson as planned, pausing only to add, "And if you’ve seen it before, see what else you can learn.")
George returned to the classroom at 3:01 and the counselor promptly departed for her last session of the afternoon. The final period of the day was devoted to social studies, students taking turns reading orally from a text about Latin America until it was time to prepare for the 3:30 dismissal.
During the afternoon visit I wrote in my notes:
George’s style seems to be to keep things moving. lie’s always got something he can pull out to fill the time, nothing ever takes too long, and there is not a lot of follow-up. Also, his own mood &endash;or his reading of the mood of the class&endash;seems to be a big influence on the activities he chooses.
A number of events that day suggest how George’s mood affected his choice of activities. The day had gotten off to a slow start, with 70 minutes devoted to another rehearsal of the forthcoming dance program that involved six classrooms. "Reading" was, rather predictably, on schedule. The third period of the morning has been devoted to rewriting "on good paper" an assignment that had been drafted earlier. After lunch George was about to begin his daily story-reading, but he sensed that the pupils would not be receptive to his reading that day. Instead, he put them to work on an assignment doing individual worksheets that required them to pair off and record a number of measurements (in centimeters) of themselves, made with the help of their partners. That activity had continued until ThinkAbout time. It had gone slowly but well and had ended on a light note as some (carefully chosen) measurements were shared. Although he intended to make no instructional use of it, he allowed the class to watch a repeat ThinkAbout broadcast (conceivably he might have turned to the intended lesson on information sources, but apparently he was "through" with the program). In the same mood he let the class watch a few more minutes of "The Letter People" (on another day, in another mood, they once watched a soap opera when ThinkAbout repeated), and then let them play the music game.
I emphasize mood rather than moodiness or brooding; I think the pupils did not find George at all bewildering and they seemed quite used to a style in which they did not always know what was coming next. There was a certain spontaneity about the class, a sense of give and take. But these elements were much more apparent in the (long) afternoon, after the more serious and structured part of the day was past. ThinkAbout was subjected to that same "mood." The class watched most, but not all, of the programs during the year. Sometimes programs were discussed; sometimes not. Sometimes the lesson taught was the lesson suggested in the Guide; sometimes the follow-up activity had little to do with the program itself.
WHY THINKABOUT?
I think the basic problem George was trying to solve was how to make constructive use of the long afternoon period when his daily ration of ideas and energy ran low. He himself noted how differently he perceived his morning and afternoon programs:
Basically the morning subjects are Language Arts and Math. I guess because I’ve done them every year and they kind of stay the same. I feel more confident or competent in teaching those subjects. I think I’m more prepared and have more to fall back on. So we do those in the morning, and everything pretty much goes as planned. As long as I’ve got things planned, classes go pretty well. And in the morning, we do a lot of work in writing, math problems, and meeting in small groups.
In the afternoon it kind of shifts when we’re in the science or social studies areas. This year we’ve spent most of the time as a large group. And I just don’t feel as good teaching those subjects as I do the others. For one thing, the social studies textbook is new. If ThinkAbout came in the morning, I probably wouldn’t use it. There’s just so much under Language Arts and Math that you have to cover&endash;passing district objectives, all the things you want to cover that the kids will be tested on&endash;that you don’t want to give up the morning as much as you would in the afternoon.
It’s a lot easier to give and take in the afternoon. If kids miss a lesson in social studies or science, it’s not going to hurt them at all. If they don’t get their math one day, I almost always have to be sure they get it later.
ThinkAbout does also come on in the morning here. We did take one morning to watch it because I thought the program was worthwhile (Program 26, Cultural Patterns, which most of the class missed during the afternoon of a Christmas program], but we wouldn’t watch it regularly if that was the only time the program came.
He reflected further upon his use of ThinkAbout during the first year:
I don’t think of ThinkAbout as a specific skill or something that’s listed under our objectives. I think there’s room for things like this, hut you have to really pick and choose.
At this point, I just think of ThinkAbout as a good resource. I haven’t looked that much up or planned that much around the programs. If the program has pertained to what we are doing, then we go with it from there. It it doesn’t, then we just watch it and enjoy it and talk about it a little if we want to.
PUPIL REACTIONS
I never felt successful in my efforts to elicit "spontaneous reactions" to ThinkAbout from pupils in George’s class. They knew that my interests were related to the program and had made the assumption that I was somehow responsible for its production. If that made their candid assessments about the series difficult to obtain, I should note that it provided an otherwise satisfactory explanation for my presence in their classroom. I heard one pupil explain my presence to a boy in another class, "That’s Harry. The ThinkAbout guy. Doing research." The more outgoing students approached me easily, asked for help with their assignments, brought me up to date on any recent events, and scanned my notes thoroughly. But my efforts to get them to analyze ThinkAbout never got beyond their individual review of the programs they "remembered," their "remembering" standing as an implicit measure of the programs deemed to be "best." In a general discussion at the conclusion of the entire series, the class gave ThinkAbout a global rating of "about 8" (on a scale I assumed to be from one to ten). At that time 5 of 1 8 students present said they felt the program was best suited for 6th graders; the other 13 felt it was most suitable for grade five.
The teacher asked pupils to do two written assignments for me during the spring. In one assignment I asked pupils to compare home viewing and school viewing. Excerpts from three papers provide some flavor of their responses:
Sixth grade girl: When I am at school I watch television with the class and Mr. Walker and Mr. Wolcott. On the rug I sit by Donna, Barbara, Alice, Tina, and Joanne. At home I watch television with my sister and my dad.
At school I watch television at 1:30. When I watch television at home I watch it at 4:30 and then between 8:00-10:00.
At school I watch television on the rug. At home I watch television in my room. We have two television sets, one in my room and one in the living room. I mostly watch television in my room. My sister and I were in the same room and then my dad made a new room and I moved into the room. My sister got the stereo and I got the television.
I watch ThinkAbout at school. I watch mostly comedies and movies at home. At school I watch television to learn. At home for something to do.
Sixth grade boy: At home I watch television with my mother. my father, my sister, and my brother. At school I watch it with Mr. Walker, Harry, and my class.
At home on school nights I watch television from 3:30 to 10:00. On weekends as long as I want. At school I watch television at 1:30.
At home I watch television in the living room. We have another one in my mom and dad’s room but I never use it. At school I watch television at my desk.
At home I watch mostly comedy. At school I watch ThinkAbout.
At home on school nights I watch television about 7 1/2 hours, on
weekends about 10 hours. At school 15 minutes.
At home some of my favorites are One in a Million, Star Trek, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Fantasy Island. At school there’s only one show so I don’t have a favorite.
At home I watch television because I like to and there’s nothing else to
do. At school I watch television because we have to.
In the fifth grade we watched a history show and book show called
Cover to Cover.
Sixth grade boy: At home I watch television with my morn and dad. At school I watch television with Steve and Tom. Well, the hole class
watches.
At home I watch television in the family room and on Saturday morn
in my room. At school on the rug.
At home I watch after school and after dinner and Saturday in the morn and at night and on Sunday at night. At school I watch television at 1:30 Mon. and Wed.
At home I watch Flintstones, Happy Days, Brady Bunch, Mork and Mindy, Eight is Enough, Hulk, Dukes of Hazzard, Hogan’s Heroes, Charley’s Angels, and cartunes. At school I watch ThinkAbout.
At home on weekdays I watch about 5 hours, on weekends 4 hours.
At school 15 mm.
I watch television at home when I don’t have nothing better to do. At
school to learn.
CONSERVING ENERGY
Too quickly we may forget the sense of panic felt across the nation during 1979-1980 as fuel costs soared and fuel shortages loomed. Thermostats were turned down, tax breaks were given for improved home insulation, and a nation with a seemingly insatiable capacity for fuel consumption suddenly became energy conscious. The new realization was that each individual’s efforts at conservation could (or at least might) make a difference. For the skeptical, rising costs that saw gasoline go from about $99 to $1.25 a gallon helped bring the point home. Everyone started reexamining ways to save fuel/money. Even school boards.
In early spring, 1980, the school board of the district in which Washington School was located joined the national effort by attempting to economize on the district’s huge transportation expenditure. Included in that reorganization was the "revolutionary" idea of having school close at the same time each day for all elementary school children, thereby eliminating the doubling back that brought buses to its eleven elementary schools at 2:30 each afternoon for the primary children and again at 3:30 for pupils in the intermediate grades. I describe the decision as revolutionary because on other grounds (lack of preparation time for intermediate-grade teachers, too long a day for pupils and teachers alike) the board for years had steadfastly refused to consider a shortened day. When, several years earlier, they had finally acceded to having intermediate-grade pupils dismissed early one afternoon a week&endash;a Thursday afternoon early dismissal still in effect&endash;they had done it begrudgingly, almost punitively. And now, for reasons entirely unrelated to pupil or teacher welfare, the decision was accomplished in a moment and effective immediately.
The decision resulted in the saving of teacher energy as well. With a 2:30 dismissal, George Walker’s class no longer needed a 15-minute afternoon recess, but nonetheless his instructional time was reduced 45 minutes a day, almost 4 hours a week. I do not think it a coincidence that after the "big bus schedule change," George’s class no longer viewed ThinkAbout on a regular basis. I rather wonder whether he would have watched the final programs at all had I not contacted him in April to ask if I might return once more to "see how the class was doing."
The bus schedule change provided about the nearest equivalent an observer has to a natural experiment. The fact that George’s Think-A bout viewing came to a virtual standstill when the afternoon schedule was shortened certainly does not prove my notion that George experienced a resource shortage of his own during the long afternoons (a notion suggested in part by George’s own perception of the "afternoon program"), but it does lend support to it. The school district’s efforts to save energy inadvertently, and unintentionally, reduced a drain on teacher energy as well. That savings in energy may have resulted in less dependence on an outside resource like Think-About. With the shorter schedule, George had less worry about how to fill up the day and could concern himself with covering topics that needed to be covered.
CASE-STUDY SUMMARY
George Walker was open to exploring the possibilities of instructional television and was, I believe, consciously looking for ‘help" (in both the sense of assistance and the sense of direction) with his instructional program. As George candidly admitted, ThinkAhout offered "15 minutes twice a week that I didn’t have to plan or teach." In that regard, it was an energy-saver and a welcome one. George felt no misgivings if the children enjoyed the program or found it entertaining. He did not insist that everything he did in class had to be "good" for his pupils.
And yet he felt that ThinkAbout was good for them. It was a source of specific ideas (brainstorming, giving reports, getting information, becoming conscious of patterns, improving one’s memory, analyzing issues), it addressed the broad issue of problem-solving (which "tied in nicely with a unit on the scientific method" that he presented briefly but was also of interest throughout the year), and it addressed problems related to science and social studies, two curricular areas in which George felt somewhat inadequate and unprepared.
George was part of the ThinkAbout audience; my assessment was that more attention might be paid to teachers like him in that audience. He turned to the program for help and it helped him. It could have helped him even more if&endash;either in the program or in a supportive network of other users&endash;he had found ideas for his teaching methods, including how to use the ThinkAbout program itself. He explicitly stated that he would have liked to hear how other teachers were using the program. But he was the only teacher in his district using the series. On the one day in the year when the opportunity arose to attend a ThinkAbout workshop offered at the county media center, George was still saying goodby to his pupils in a classroom some 35 miles away when the meeting was convened.
George said he planned to use ThinkAbout again and felt that his familiarity with the program the first year would make it "more valuable" next year: "It’s just like knowing a social studies book. You can pick and choose and you know where you are going with it. It will be much easier to tie in with what we are doing. And I don’t think it will be at all dated."
The introduction of ThinkA bout helped George solve some resource problems. A new district-wide rescheduling provided at least a partial solution to his energy problem. If George uses ThinkA bout again it will be for the help he seeks in curricular areas. He is the ultimate judge. only a month after the close of school, the question of whether his pupil had liked the series was only academic. Nest September they will be in junior high school; George alone remained behind to repeat the sixth grade. If ThinkAbout turned him on last year, he will probably turn ThinkAbout on in the year ahead.
Wish though I may that ethnography can someday achieve both separate and equal status with evaluation in the field of education, and steadfast in working toward that goal as I intend to remain, for practical reasons I believe that ethnography will make its major contribution through its applications as an adjunct to, rather than an alternative for, evaluation. Most frequently I think that contribution will be in modest case studies like this one of George Walker’s sixth grade.
Wishful thinking aside, there is much to celebrate in the increasing receptivity of educational researchers and evaluators to case study data and naturalistic inquiry. To those of us long committed to ethnography in education, it was heady stuff to watch our popularity grow during the 1970s. We had trouble keeping sufficient perspective of our own to realize that the interest was not in ethnography per se but in descriptive, on-site research in general. I think the issue of whether or not someone is really following an ethnographic approach is, and will probably continue to be, of rather little consequence to most educators although it is of paramount interest to those of us who insist that ethnography presumes a commitment to cultural interpretation (ef. Spindler, 1982; Wolcott, 1980, 1982a, 1982b). But a willingness not only to consider but to insist on qualitative, descriptive data and along with this a willingness to trade off some of the seeming obsession for measurement with some consideration for context and meaning is becoming increasingly evident among educators, even those whose own forte is quantification.
That receptivity was already present among both the client-sponsor for the ThinkAbout research, the Agency for Instructional Television, and project staff at the Evaluation Center.3 That the nuances and full potential of ethnography were not critical is apparent in their preference for commissioning an ethnographer but not ethnography. Nonetheless, they contacted me; my participation in the project was their idea, not my own. Furthermore, they had a clear idea of how a set of independently conducted case studies could augment other, more traditional ways of monitoring the introduction of an educational innovation.
The constraints they imposed were similar to those noted by others doing "contract ethnography": constraints of time, scope, detail, and interpretation. Admittedly, those constraints can "ruffle the fur" of any free-thinking ethnographer (ef. Clinton, 1975). Collectively they also have the effect of making the target of most evaluation efforts (or "monitor" studies) loom disproportionately large and significant. Given the opportunity to pursue a purer ethnographic approach, the two brief ThinkAbout segments viewed each week by George Walker’s class unquestionably would have appeared less important in the total picture of life in that classroom. Rut that was part of the trade-off. It is not unseemly for people to ask an ethnographer to turn attention to what interests them, and it is not unseemly for ethnographers to provide a perspective on a particular program or problem. Even ethnographers, after all, must look at something rather than at everything.
The ThinkAbout project provides a reassuring illustration of how broadly the task of "evaluation" has come to be interpreted. As noted in the Executive Summary accompanying the Evaluation Center’s final report, the project was not designed to assess the value of the ThinkAbout curriculum for its potential consumers: Consortium members who funded the development of the series had already committed themselves to the worth of the endeavor (Sanders & Sonnad, 1982: 2). The intent of the study&endash;to see what could be learned about the initial use and impact of the series&endash;was sufficiently broad to spark ethnographic interest. However, it quickly became apparent to those of us engaged in the case-study research that we would have precious little to say about "impact." We learned far more about classrooms and teachers than about students and their thinking or problem solving, and that is what we discussed in our reports.
The locus of the research setting tended to circumscribe what we learned. Directed as we were to classrooms and classroom (i.e., teacher) use of the program, our case studies are most revealing about those processes. They are a bit less revealing about instructional television per se, and reveal almost nothing of what is going on in the minds of the student viewers. As a fifth grader summarized all too neatly. "It’s just television. It’s an interesting way to get out of work in the afternoon." But that "morning versus afternoon" contrast proved a fascinating one for me as I discovered that instructional television tends to be regarded as an "afternoon" activity. George epitomized that view with his comment, "If ThinkAbout came in the morning, I probably wouldn’t use it."
Drawing my summary comments essentially from the case study conducted in George’s classroom, I think I can point to the kinds of observations one can expect from inviting an ethnographer’s attention and perspective, even when underwriting an all-out ethnographic effort is clearly out of the question.
Ethnographers are always interested in context, and ultimately with the broad social context of "cultural" behavior. I could not help but draw upon that perspective in my portrayal of George’s classroom. Although most of my classroom visits were conducted for (lily the brief period immediately preceding, during, and following the twice-weekly viewing of ThinkAbout, when the time came to decide how to tell the "story" of that classroom I turned to notes made on an occasion when I had spent the entire day with George and his class. In so doing, I hoped not only to convey a sense of the classroom but also to serve reminder that a twice-a-week viewing of a 15-minute television program is something less than the focal point of classroom life for children who are intensely involved with their teacher and classmates for a minimum of 35 hours a week. Much as the children seemed to enjoy the programs, I could not escape the feeling that the content was no match in importance to them for such matters as where they would be allowed to sit to view the program, who they would sit with, or what "work" they might otherwise have been assigned.
In broader context still, the tight and purposive activities of the morning&endash;nicely distributed among the three Rs with Wading as the central organizing activity of the entire classroom schedule&endash;contrasted sharply with the relatively easygoing pace of the afternoon. At times individuals, communities, even the whole nation seems to rise up in indignation at any hint of educational easygoingness, but after almost 30 years as an educator and an observer of educational processes, I am ready to suggest that the morning/afternoon contrast reflects rather well the combination of "certainty plus confusion" about what our society demands of, expects from, and condones in its schools.
Schools and communities alike seem to be in basic agreement about the basics. Teachers at every level transmit basic literacy skills with a rather keen sense of purpose. George’s "morning program" reflected that certainty. His afternoon program represented its complement:
What else are the schools supposed to do besides teach the basics? For some teachers, those we refer to as "naturals," that quest ‘on poses the challenge and reward of teaching; for others, like George, it posed something of a threat. I pondered why George had begun using ThinkAbout when no other teacher in his building or school district (a unified district of about 200 teachers, 3000 students) used it. Energy conscious as we had all become in those days, I saw an analogy between his use of a twice-weekly instructional interlude supplied by television and someone in need of a mid-afternoon snack as a physiological energy boost. George was looking for a boost to help him fill out his daily program. In ThinkA bout, he found it.
A question came to mind: What would happen if an agency like AIT were to target its efforts at teachers like George who willingly seek help rather than diffuse its efforts in an educational broadside addressed to an entire nation’s fifth and sixth grade pupils and teachers? Pursuing that idea in the discussion contained in the first part of my report, I proposed a rudimentary taxonomy of teacher-users of classroom television. I suggested that the producers of any curriculum materials might take a close look at the kind of help their most-likely-users need. The typology that I proposed consisted of three major categories: non users, casual users, and committed users.4
The first category, nonusers, includes the huge residual group of teachers who do not have access to or necessarily even hear about a curricular innovation. For ThinkAbout, that group included entire states and provinces that were not consortium members as well as teachers within member states who simply were not reached by a rather intense promotional effort. A case in point: George’s class watched the program twice a week; the teacher in the adjacent classroom told me she had never heard of it.
Another important group of nonusers includes teachers opposed to particular kinds of instructional aids. Films and television programs produced for classroom use seem especially likely to provoke strong opposition. Many teachers feel that children spend far too much out-of-school time as passive viewers and certainly do not need to watch TV in school as well. Program quality is not the issue with them. I would think that the developers of curricular materials would want to know more about the teachers most likely to adopt them rather than try to design materials to appeal to everyone.
Casual users proved an interesting group in the ThinkAbout research. It might be worthwhile to refine some subcategories to better identify variations among this type of user. I began to suspect, but could not adequately document in a project of only one year, that some teachers who spoke enthusiastically about ThinkAbout had probably been just as excited about something different the year before and have eagerly sought out new curricular packages in the years since. When implementation research focuses on programs rather than people, we identify such users as "early adopters"; we usually do not remain on the scene long enough to learn whether it may be innovation itself that attracts them.
Another kin(l of casual users are teachers who describe themselves&endash; and probably think of themselves&endash;as regular users but whose actual use is spotty at best. George himself became a casual user of the program after the school board shortened his classroom day, although he regarded himself as a regular user of the ThingAbout series and as one of its staunch supporters. I met other teachers whose actual viewing of the program was sporadic but who regarded themselves as faithful viewers. These are the respondents who confound questionnaires and surveys when we rely on self-reporting to assess behavior.
Committed users, the third category in my taxonomy, includes teachers like George who seemed "committed" to giving the program an adequate trial. Admittedly, it was critical for the three of us contracted to do case studies to locate a few committed teachers, and it is possible that there were "observer effects" in all the classrooms where we were regular visitors. (One must remember that teaching can be a lonely business in terms of peer interaction and that some teachers enjoy having another adult in their class, especially someone present long enough to see the "ups" as well as "downs" and to get a sense of the full instructional program.)
Even in talking to teachers whom I did not visit regularly, I found that those who felt committed to the program were quite forgiving of problems reportedly driving other teachers up the walls. ‘[he technical quality of the series was high, yet never once during the year did I watch a live program on a color screen in a classroom. Each of the two classrooms where I did my most extensive observing relied on a poor picture from antiquated black-and-white TV sets with "rabbit ear reception because each happened to be located in a section of the school that did not have a cable television hook-up.
Far more disconcerting than poor reception was a problem (at least in our state) of having programs appear out of sequence or being repeated. Teachers frequently prepared their classes for the wrong program. As the case study shows, George took the scheduling problems in stride&endash;to such an extent that I wondered if he regarded television viewing as instructional time or simply as "time out." My tentative conclusion is that it was a bit of both. George regarded ThinkAbout as instructional and was prepared to defend it on that basis (e.g., to a principal "lukewarm" to the idea of classroom television or, had the issue been raised, to parents who might question its use), but once written into his plan for the days events, the time was allocated to television per se. As George himself declared, "Not everything we do in class has to be instructive."
Finally, I want to note that repeated observations of many observers in many classrooms provide opportunities to reaffirm, refine, or refute the understandings and generalizations we seek regarding classroom behavior. Watching teachers use ThinkAbout left me with the strong impression&endash;also noted by other observers in other classroom settings and pursuing other research objectives&endash;that the teacher is the curriculum (cf. Janesick, 1978). Put another way, the teacher decides what the formal lesson will be and whether there is to be one at all, sometimes quite independently from the lesson apparent in the materials themselves. Usually I watched teachers pursue the tack suggested in the Teacher’s Guide, but sometimes they let pupils determine the lesson or used the program content in a way quite different from the intended one. George’s transformation of a program whose explicitly stated "teaching point" was on judging the reliability of information sources into an exercise on sequencing (because he needed a "Noise Break") illustrates teacher adaptation to suit teacher purposes.
Sometimes teachers neither made nor acknowledged any lesson at all. I recall viewing ThinkA bout on one occasion where the teacher later confessed that she did not prompt a follow-up discussion because she herself was uncertain about the "point" of the program. On another occasion, involving a story about a child from a broken home, a teacher turned the class’s attention to other matters immediately after the program and explained privately that she felt the issues raised were "too sensitive" for several of her pupils in similar circumstances. One teacher who regularly used the program (the only "morning user" I found) never conducted discussion; the program ended just as recess began, and then her class proceeded to another teacher. Her assessment of ThinkAbout fit nicely into her style of using it: "It’s so goo(l that it doesn’t need further discussion.
During the year when I conducted my observations, an enthusiastic media specialist in our State Department of Education predicted that within the next three years nearly 50 percent of all the fifth and sixth grade teachers in the state would be using ThinkAbout. I appreciated such enthusiasm although I’d be reluctant going back now to ask what really happened. But I did telephone George while writing tip these reflections to ask what use he had made of ThinkAbout in the two years since I last visited his class. He told me he still used ThinkAbout&endash;a little. He has never again viewed the programs on live broadcast, but on occasion he has ordered videotapes of certain programs from the county media center. lie said he had used four or five tapes each year (he refers to them now as "movies" and requisitions them with his regular film order) and probably will continue to do so. He is selective in his requests, ordering particular programs because of the issues they raise, although he is never certain that he will receive the material on the week he orders it. He continues to rely on the original Teacher’s Guide issued in 1979 during ThinkAbout introduction. He wonders if it was ever revised.
I hardly expect to receive international acclaim for my brilliant contribution to school ethnography based on research like by study of ThinkAbout in George Walker’s sixth grade class. The report does not read like an ethnography, although it certainly is the stuff out of which ethnography is made. But it does reflect an ethnographic perspective. I endeavored to describe rather than to judge, and to place what I reported in cultural context. It might have been ethnographically more satisfying to have spent a full year in George’s classroom to have watched ThinkAbout develop from inception to premier, but, quite frankly, neither of these options is closely related to my professional interest in cultural acquisition. Further, the ThinkAbout research would by then have been long concluded, and there is some question about how many people at All would have been interested in all I might have to say. For the purpose at hand, what was asked of us was appropriate and what we provided appeared to be well received.
Perhaps next time there will be opportunity for more time and depth, but even in these modest (though by no means inconsequential) studies it was possible to serve reminder to our client-sponsor that classrooms have contexts and teachers have agendas and that the materials they prepare for classroom settings are interpreted in terms of those contexts and agendas. A narrowly conceived evaluation design or impact study would have revealed too little; a full-blown ethnography would have attempted too much. Under such circumstances&endash;and I would think they will continue to be the prevailing (though hopefully not the exclusive) ones&endash;the compromise seems warranted: ethnographers sans ethnography.
I. The complete report prepared by the Evaluation Center, copyrighted (1982) and distributed by the Agency for Instructional Television, Box A, Bloomington, Indiana 47402, consists of five volumes and two additional reports, a Content Analysis and an An Executive Summary . Volumes II, III, and IV listed below are the case study rcports prepared by the outside observers. The full report title is Research on the Introduction, Use and Impact of the ThinkAbout Instructional Television Series. These are the five volumes and locations of their authors: Volume I: Technical Report. James R. Sanders and Subhash R. Sonnad, Evaluation Center, Western Michigan University.
Volume 11: ThinkAbout: Teacher Use and Student Response in Three Classrooms. Marilyn R. Cohn, Graduate Institute of Education, Washington University, St. Louis.
Volume III: Toward a Clear Picture of ThinkAbout: An Account of Classroom Use. Sylvia Hart-Landsberg, Portland, Oregon.
Volume IV: A View of Viewers: Observations on the Response to and Classroom Use of ThinkAbout. Harry F. Wolcott, University of Oregon.
Volume V: Appendices to Technical Report.
2. Abridged from Harry F. Wolcott, "A View of Viewers: Observations on the Response to and Classroom Use of ThinkAbout, a Program Produced by the Agency for Instructional Television," pages 89-117. Copyright 1982 by the Agency for Instructional Television, Bloomington, Indiana. Used by permission.
3. AIT’s Director of Research. Saul Rockman, notes that AIT had previously made use of case studies but had not given them such a prominent role and had not commissioned uninvolved outsiders to conduct them. As he noted lightheartedly in a letter written after the conclusion of our work, he felt he encountered even more objectivity on the part of the outside observers than may have been necessary. He described the three of us as "uncommitted, unfamiliar, and, in fact, completely uninterested in the use of television in the classroom." Nevertheless, he lauded the case-study effort, commended the insights he had gleaned, and lamented the difficulty of getting his associates to read our long final reports. He also noted that, in spite of our being "actively uninterested in seeing how the technology and the curriculum in this project might have a use in the classroom," we nonetheless seemed "too kind" when he wished we had at times been more critical.
4. Elsewhere I have developed a more elaborate typology of the teacher repertoire of behaviors for coping with change (Wolcott, 1977: 195-21 1). The authors of a more recent study identified five teacher types and assigned them the colloquial labels "omnivores, active consumers, passive consumers, the retrenched, and the withdrawn" (Joyce et al., 1982: 41). More systematic attention to differing styles of teacher adaptations and adoptions and to discerning likely from unlikely adopters seems warranted.
Burnett, J. H. Anthropology and education. An annotated bibliographic guide. New Haven, Conn.: Human Relations Area Files Press, 1974.
Clinton, C. A. The anthropologist as hired hand. Human Organization, 1975, 34(2), 197-204.
Herriott, R. E. Tensions in research design arid implementation: The Rural Experimental Schools Study. American Behavioral Scientist, 1982, 26(l), 23-v.
Janesick, V. J. An ethnographic study of a teacher’s classroom perspective: I,nplications for curriculum., East Lansing: Institute for Research on Teaching, Research Series 33, Michigan State University, 1978.
Joyce, H., Bush, R., & McKibbin, M. Information and opinion from the California State Development Study, the January 1982 Report. Palo Alto. CA: Booksend Laboratories. 1982. (mimeo)
Sanders, J. R. & Sonnad, S. R. Executive summary: Research on the introduction, use, and impact of the ThinkAbout instructional television series. Bloomington. IN: Agency for Instructional Television, 1982.
Smith, L. M. An evolving logic of participant observation, educational ethnography. and other case studies. Review of research in education 6 (1978). Washington, DC:
American Educational Research Association, 1979
Smith, L. M. Ethnography. In Encyclopedia of educational research. New York Macmillan, 1982.
Spindler, G. D. (Ed), Doing the ethnography of schooling. New York Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982.
Wilcox, K. Ethnography as a methodology and its applications to the ‘~rudy of schooling: A review, In G. D. Spindler (Ed.), Doing the ethnography of schooling. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982.
Wolcott, II. F. (Ed.) Ethnography of schooling (special issue). Human Organization. 1975, 34(2).
Wolcott, II. F. Teachers versus technocrats. An educational innovation in anthropological perspective. Eugene: Center for Educational Policy and Management, University of Oregon, 1977.
Wolcott, H. F. How to look like an anthropologist without being one. Practicing Anthropology, 1980, 3(1), 6-7, 56-59.
Wolcott, H. F. Mirrors, models and monitors: Educator adaptations of the ethnographic innovation. In GD. Spindler (Ed.), Doing the ethnography of schooling. New York:
Hoht, Rinehart & Winston, 1982a.
Wolcott, II. F. Differing styles of on-site research, or, "If it isn’t ethnography, what is it?" Review Journal of Philosophy and Social Science, 1982, 7(1,2): 154-169. (b)