BENET, SARAH L.; EDD
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 1981
EDUCATION, CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION (0727)
Curriculum innovations have been introduced to school systems through the recruitment
of individual
teachers who were trained in the use of the new methods and materials. The expectation
was that the
curriculum would spread from the model teachers to their colleagues. This intended
diffusion process,
sometimes called the 'lighthouse model', often failed to take place. The Cross-Age
Learning and
Teaching Project in China Studies (hereafter the CAP) was aimed at revising
teaching about China in four
high schools, two urban and two suburban. Its structure involved teaching secondary
students about
China Studies, curriculum development and teaching pedagogy to enable them to
teach units of their
own design in elementary schools in their communities. Its diffusion depended
on having the Project
Teachers demonstrate the usefulness of this program to their teaching colleagues
in the Social Studies
Departments so that through their example of innovation would spread to other
teachers. However, the
CAP was not able to change the way China Studies was taught at any of the participating
schools.
However, a year after the CAP was introduced into the four schools the traditional
method of teaching
China Studies was still in place. I questioned the Project Teachers' reactions
to the CAP, the organization
of the school systems in relation to the program and my own perception of education.
Documentation
includes the original proposal funded by the New World Foundation, correspondence
with the
foundation and the Hanover school administration, staff minutes from CAP meetings
with Project
Teachers, case studies on Chinese culture used in the classroom by the Project
Teacher and his
students, evaluation sheets and taped interviews with the Project Teacher and
students and the final
report on the CAP submitted to the New World Foundation. The study that follows
uses these
documents as the basis for reconstructing and analyzing the CAP as it took place
at Hanover High
School. It examines the behavior and experiences of the Project Teacher at Hanover
in an effort to
understand what the impact of the CAP was on the teacher, his students and the
school system.
Incorporated into this analysis is a review of the literature concerning teachers
and the culture of schools.
(Abstract shortened with permission of author.)
Social
Systems Simulation Group
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