Eighth Article in the Series, Artistry in Teaching
In this article I am going talk about a project that grew out of personal and professional relationships among teachers from different countries. Through reciprocal exchanges among educators in U.S. (most of whom where from schools in Georgia) and Russia (most of whom were from Moscow, Pushchino and St. Petersburg) a project emerged from the ground up to creation of the Global Thinking Project, a project steeped in inquiry and humanistic education.
Thirty years ago, a Russian train left Helsinki for Moscow carrying psychologists and educators from North America who were participants in the first citizen diplomacy project sponsored by the Association for Humanistic Psychology (AHP).
That train trip was the start of a 20-year Track-II Diplomacy Project (coined by Joseph Montville–non-officials engaging in dialog to resolve conflicts and solve problems), and evolved into a global teacher and student environmental activist project that brought together hundreds of teachers and students not only from the United States and the former Soviet Union, but colleagues and students in many other countries including Australia, the Czech Republic, and Spain.
The 1983 train trip changed my life, and the lives of countless science and social science teachers, school principals, researchers, students (ages 12 – 18) and their parents in several countries.
Citizen Science and Youth Activism
We must be scholars and activists. It is simply not enough to be scientists–that is to measure and calculate, but rather we must be willing to dedicate ourselves to causes–to be activists who are willing to commit to environmental and humanitarian issues.
Citizen diplomacy, citizen science, and youth activism are not new ideas, but the forces that shape contemporary education around the globe are based on issues related to work and economics. In our capitalist system, conservative and neoliberal policies are making it more and more difficult for educators to create environments that foster the kind of inquiry and freedom needed to engage in activist projects. Put to the side in the words of Henry Giroux (2011), “are questions of justice, social freedom, and the capacity for democratic agency, action, and change as well as the related issues of power.”
During the period of 1983 – 2002, a project rooted in citizen science, youth activism, and global collaboration emerged and developed into the Global Thinking Project (GTP), a kind of hands-across-the-globe program. It became an environmental education program based on “education for the environment,” a model that embodies the principles of Deep Ecology (library copy).
Deep Ecology, coined by Arne Naess, is a deeper approach to the study of nature exemplified in the work of Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson (Devall and Sessions 1985). In this sense, teachers encourage their students to engage in projects that help them experience the connections between themselves and nature as well as advocating a holistic approach to looking at environmental topics.
Engaging students in ways that enable them to take actions and experience environmental science as education for the environment (Michel, 1996) is what Aikenhead (2006) define as humanistic science. This definition of humanistic science was the core of the approach to teaching science that was discussed and argued among American and Russian science teachers.
The Global Thinking project was a citizen diplomacy project that integrated citizen science, Eco justice and activism, involving hundreds of teachers, researchers and students who believed it was important to work together with people in other cultures to try to take action on important environmental questions that are both local and global.
The Lessons Seen Around the World
It made all the difference in the world. Who would have guessed?
We had visited School 710 the previous year, and at that time, an agreement was reached with the teachers and school’s head, Mr. Vadim Zhudov, that the demonstrations would:
- Establish classroom environments where students would learn through inquiry;
- Enable students to explore science topics in earth science and physical science;
- Create learning situations where students would work in collaborative and cooperative learning teams
We didn’t realize how significant it was for us to teach lessons in School 710. Those that taught lessons were naturally nervous and hoped that things would go well. Each room was packed with observers, teachers, the Director, and researchers. The lessons involved hands on activities and demonstrations, and small group discussion, artwork, and a take home packet of materials and a booklet in Russian for the students to share with their parents.
Our goal in these demonstration lessons was to present an approach to teaching that involved inquiry, cooperative learning and hands-on experiences to create dialogue among American and Russian teachers. In this case, we wanted the students to take part actively in learning, a practice that was not common in Russian schools (or in American schools, for that matter).
Over the next 15 years, there were many exchanges of teachers and students, and it became tradition to have teachers conduct lessons in schools they were visiting and working with in the Global Thinking Project. Many Russian teachers taught in schools in Metro-Atanta, the Walker County School District and schools in the Savannah region of the state.
Teaching in each other’s schools was one of the most important aspects of our exchanges. By doing this we were willing to be vulnerable not only with our adult colleagues, but it opened our collaboration to students, as well. This personalized our work.
It also built trust. Trust that lead to a collaborative venture of designing and implementing inquiry-based environmental lessons and projects.
The GTP fostered an inquiry approach to learning by involving students in problems in their own communities, and extended inquiry to include dialog using email, bulletin boards, and videoconferences—thanks to Dr. Wayne Robinson. In each project, students were asked to wonder and to ask questions that were relevant to environmental issues and problems in their own communities. The GTP focused on helping students to become capable citizen scientists, or in the words Dr. Galina Manke, biology teacher at School 710 and researcher at the Russian Academy of Education:
The ideals of humanistic psychology and education were put into practice by involving teachers and students in the development of the curriculum. The context of the GTP was dialogue among teachers, students and researchers. Although the project began with the exchanges of teachers, administrators, and researchers, by 1992, student exchanges had begun, and during 1995 – 1998, more than 300 students and more than 75 teachers were involved in exchanges between U.S. and Russian schools.
Fostering inquiry among students and teachers in different countries lead to a problem. How could we engage kids in distant classrooms with each other? Today, there is an easy answer: The Internet.
But in 1990? What’s a group of teachers to do?
Using the Internet to Foster Collaboration
Phil Gang and I went to the local Apple Computer office (in Atlanta for us), and were accompanied by five Russian colleagues who were with a larger delegation of Russian educators, and explain to Apple executives that we had developed this “global” project, but we didn’t have computers in the any of the schools in Russia. We asked if they could help. They gave us six Macintosh SE 20 computers and printers! But we also needed modems. We made a phone call to the Hayes Micromodem Company in Norcross, GA, and told them the same story. They gave us six very high-speed modems (2400 baud). We were all set with the technology we needed to connect all the schools.
When the GTP began, we only had e-mail and bulletin boards to communicate with each other. Over the next ten years we incorporated new technologies to include video conferencing, an interactive website, and software to enable students to post and retrieve data.
Over time, the GTP project, with no funding, expanded to other countries including Australia, Czech Republic, Argentina, Spain, Singapore, Japan, Canada, and others.
Online Projects Begin at Home
Three inquiry-based projects that are included here to give you an idea about the nature and instructional design of the GTP curriculum projects. You are welcome to make use of the projects in any way you wish. When you visit any one of the websites for these projects, you will find all the activities, as well as online forms to give you an idea how these activities work.
- Project Green Classroom invites students to assess the environment of your classroom by examining and monitoring a variety of indoor parameters.
- In Project Ozone, your students monitor ground-level ozone at your school, their home, or other designated sites. They observe and make measurements of related variables such as temperature, humidity, and wind speed.
- In Project River Watch, you and your students investigate the quality of the water in a local river, stream or body of water.
But what makes these projects interesting is that you can post your data on fillable webpages linked to the projects so that your data can be shared with others around the world. You can also click on a link in each project to reach all the data, and download the data into Microsoft Excel, or other similar programs for data analysis.
Inquiry in the Service of Social Action
The three projects included here are examples of using an inquiry approach to teaching in service of involving students in action taking on science-related social issues. We worked with students and teachers for nearly two decades engaging them in global thinking with face-to-face collaboration and online communication using a primitive Internet.
Today there are some projects that use the same philosophy in which the Internet is used to foster inquiry and action-taking on the part of K-12 students. Here are two projects that I highly recommend.
The Flat Classroom Project was developed by teachers Vicki Davis, and Julie Lindsay. The Flat Classroom supports and encourages global collaboration. Davis and Lindsay are cutting edge educators who use Internet-based technologies to inspire global collaboration among teachers and students. Check it out.
iEarn is one of the most accomplished Internet systems promoting social action projects by bringing together schools around the world to work together on a wide range of teacher inspired projects which value communication among teachers and students. I think its worth visiting the iearn website.
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