DOCUMENT RESUME ED 302 365 RC 016 890 AUTHOR McDiarmid, G. Williamson; And Others TITLE The Inventive Mind: Portraits of Rural Alaska Teachers. INSTITUTION Alaska Univ., Fairbanks. Center for Cross-Cultural Studies. SPONS AGENCY Alaska Council on Science and Technology, Juneau. PUB DATE Jan 88 NOTE 183p. PUB TYPE Reports - Descriptive (141) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC08 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Alaska Natives; Elementary Secondary Education; Interviews; Perso :ial Narratives; Profiles; *Rural Education; Surveys; *Teacher Characteristics; *Teacher Effectiveness; Teacher Role; Teaching Experience IDENTIFIERS *Alaska; Native Americans ABSTRACT This series of case studies profiles six teachers thought by colleagues, students, and the rural Alaska communities they serve to be good teachers. The case stuaies reported here describe the techniques that make these teachers responsive and perceptive in their interactions with Alaska Native students. The names of the teachers and the villages have been changed to avoid inadvertently embarrassing the teachers or their students. The studies report that effective rural teachers learn about the context of their community and use this knowledge in their teaching. The local context consists of social, economic, political, historical, and linguistic aspects, all of which influence teaching and learning. Other contextual influences are indirect, such as the knowleu.ge, skills, and values that students bring with them to school. An appendix includes these sections:(1) Identifying Effective Teachers; (2) Instruments; (3) Collecting Our Data;(4) Analyzing the Data; (5) Dispositions; (6) Dispositions toward the Context; (7) Limitations of the Portraits. (ALL) Roproeuctions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * from the original document. THE INVENTIVE MIND: PORTRAITS OF RURAL ALASKA TEACHERS G. Williamson MeDiarmid Judith Kleinfeld William Parrett U S DEPANTMENC OF EDUCATION "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS Office of Educational Research and Improvement MAT RIAL H S B EN GRANTED BY EDUCATIONAL. RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) INS do,ument has been reproduced as received from lino person Of organization originating it El Minor changes have beer made to improve reproduction quality POints of view or opinions stated in this ducu meat do not necessarily represent official TO THE: EDUCATI NAL RESOURCES OERI position or pC0ocy INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." Center for Cross-Cultural Studies Institute of Social and Economic Research University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska i 2 UST COPYAVAILABLE G. Williamson McDiarmid isan assistant professor of education at Michigan State University. He completed thisresearch while a faculty member at the University of Alaska. JudithKleinfeld is a professor of education at the University of Alaska. WilliamParrett is an associate professor of education and head of theDepartment of Education at the University of Alaska. Copyright 1988 by the Center for Cross-CulturalStudies, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska. Published by: Center for Cross-Cultural Studies, RuralCollege University of Alaska F airbanks, Alaska 99775 January 1988 Typesetting by Dragon Press, Delta Junction, Alaska Printed in U.S.A. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We want to express our appreciation to themany rural educators in Alaska who contributed ideas to this study. These educators include Lamont Albertson, Lance Blackwood, Rick and Lois Carey, Dawn Christy, Joe Cooper, Paris Finley, Sue Hare, Dorothy Jordan, Bruce and Merely Kleven, Judy Mielke, Edith Nicholas, Elizabeth Simpson,Dorman Wilson, and Jim Zuelow. We greatly value their experience and theirinsight. The errors and limitations of these portraits are entirely our own responsibility. Dick Mansfield of McBer and Company in Boston,Massachusetts, graciously came to Alaska and provided assistanceto us in using interviewing techniques that have been successful internationallyin identifying the characteristics of competentpe , formers in diverse career fields. Sharon Young, now with the Alaska Association of School Boards,did numerous analyses of patterns of achievement test scores and their limitations. Bob Silverman of the Alaska Department ofEducation also assisted us in thinking thrt ugh the appropriateuses of achievement tests. Mary Maxwell West of the Harvard Graduate School ofEducation completed careful and sensitive analyses of the videctapeswhich served as an important data source. Meredith Ottenheimer at the Center for Cross-CuturalStudies prepared this manuscript for publication and patientlyworked her way through many drafts and revisions of drafts. We alsoappreciate the assistance of Pam Toal, Barbara Sundberg, Carol Choy and Dorothy Edy in transcribing lengthy interviews. We wish to express our appreciation to the Alaska Councilon Science and Technology for providing funding for this researchproject. Iii FOREWOrlD These portraits were written to provide richly detailed descriptions of rural Alaska teachers for people thinking about becoming village teachers. We have tried to capture the individual personalities of these teachers as well as how they learn about their context and how theyuse this knowledge in teaching. We hope these portraits will be especially valuable to students in teacher education programs. Each of the teachers portrayed was selected by three expert groups rural teachers, rural administrators, and community members as an "effective" teacher in a specific community. Some readers may disagree with the judgments of these groups. We hope that such disagreements stimulate useful discussion and debate about what it means to bean "effective" teacher in different communities. The teachers portrayed here come from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. In addition to Caucasian teachers, one of the teachers is Black and another is Alaska Native. We regret that the portrait ofan Oriental teacher, available in draft form, was not completed in time for publication. We did not begin this project with any intention of preparing portraits of rural teachers from different ethnic groups. On the contrary,we sought only to prepare portraits of teachers judged to be effective by their teaching colleagues, by administrators, and by community members. We do consider it of interest and importance that oar three expert groups perceived teachers from diverse backgrounds to be "effective" rural teachers. In order to preserve confidentiality, the names of these teachers have been changed along with any information that may identify the communities in which they taught. Judith Kleinfeld Project Director Effective Rural Teachers Research Project v "Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves. An iiitermediary inventive mind must make the application, by using its originality." William James Talks to Teachers vii i TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 AUSTIN 9 KATHERINE 37 EVAN 67 N ORA 93 MATT 119 HANNAH 139 APPENDIX 169 REFERENCES 179 Note: "Austin," "Katherine," "Evan," and "Nora" were written by G. Williamson McDiarmid. Judith Kleinfeld wrote "Matt" and William Parrett wrote "Hannah." ix INTRODUCTION Purpose How do rural teachers learn about their context and how do they use this knowledge in teaching? To find out, we studied twenty-one rural teachers. In this book we describe in detail the backgrounds, teaching hilosophies, and activities of six of these teachers whom village parents, supervisors, and teaching colleagues viewed as especially effective. We appreciate the fact that "effective" is an elusive term, depending for its definition on the criteria of the evaluator. Our intent here is not to defend the selection of these particular teachers as effective. Ratherwe attempt to show how these teachers develop an understanding of their context and use this contextual understanding in figuring out how to teach village students. (For further information on the selection processas well as a description of our data collection efforts, see the Appendix.) In every environment, the local context social, economic, political, historical, linguistic, and so on influences teaching and learning. Some of these contextual influences are direct as, for example, in th.: formal actions of the town council, the informal activities of individual parents, and the language children speak. Other contextual influencerare indirect as, for instance, in the knowledge, skills, and values students bring with them to school. In some environments, the local context as embodied in students, has particular salience to teaching. Philip Jackson (1986)argues that the amount of knowledge teachers need about students' backgrounds depends primarily on two factors: the subject matter being taught and the extent to which the teacher can presume a shared Identity. In rural Alaska, most teachers are non-Natives from either urban Alaska or outside the state. Teachers can, thus, presume little shared identity with their students who are typically Natives born and reared in villages. Consequently, if they are to acquire the knowledge of the local context critical to teaching so that children learn, teachers must set out, actively and consciously, to do so. Given the complexity of the local context, the question is: To what events and phenomena in the local context should teachers attend? While 1 the answer to this question will vary from one setting to another, we found that the teachers we studied did attend to similar things. A concomitant question is: Where and how do rural teachers find out what they need to know about