From: Chad, Von Ins
Email: vonins@cats.ucsc.edu
Course: Psychology 100K: Thought and Language
College: University of California, Santa Cruz
Instructor: Eugene Matusov
ClassWeb: http://www.ematusov.com/psych100K
ChildrenObservations: Yes
Date: 03 Apr 1997
Time: 22:33:00
Remote Name: ss1mac-19.ucsc.edu
In this study several children were interviewed at a local after school Latino youth program in downtown Santa Cruz to gather information about their learning experiences there. The after school program mainly focused on collaborative learning processes on computers and other games with undergraduates from the University of California, Santa Cruz.Three different areas were looked at in an interview process: how do these children view their learning experience in comparison to their daily structured school experience, do they have any issues or problems with the program that the program can meet, and what do the children generally like or dislike about this program. This interview was designed to give the creators some insight to the program and make any improvements if needed. Generally the children enjoyed their afterschool experience but had some criticisms such as more computer software. The children had very positive things to say about their learning experience at the Latino youth program.
The necessity for the opinions and the comments of the children themselves about their learning environment can help researchers develop new ideas and help educators find clues as to the needs and wants that students may have. It is important to recognize the value and the impact that cooperative environments provide to children's learning.
For example, in a local Latino youth organization (LYO) in downtown Santa Cruz there is an after school program which with the assistance of undergraduate students from the University of California, Santa Cruz that gives elementary and junior high school age students the opportunity to work on computers games, the internet, and the World Wide Web; also the children there are also given the choice to play board games, do art projects, and do their homework. In this environment the undergraduates provide assistance with anything the children may need help with and also companionship for the children.
One of the main focuses of the the program is to promote a collaborative, and unstructured learning environment. This unique environment sets the stage for an alternative approaches to the learning process. In order to set up a more proficient program, it is necessary to gain some understanding of the needs that the children think are or are not being met. Erickson (1986) suggests using an interpretive approach based on field work when trying to figure out what is happening in a particular place. The kinds of questions that Erikson’s interpretive approach asks are the following:
| What are the conditions of meaning that students and teachers create together, as some students appear to learn and others don't?... |
| How is it that is can make sense to students to learn in one situation and not in another? |
| How are these meaning systems created and sustained in daily interaction? (p.127) |
Using Erickson's influence of an interpretive approach, it would make sense that assessing the informal environment of the LYO from the children's perspective would prove to be most valuable. This way the program can self evaluate itself by being given some information about the wants or needs the LYO children think that possibly aren't being met or are working great and should be focused on.
This paper focused on exploring how children talk about their experience in general at this LYO. How do the children perceive their learning experience at he LYO? How do they view their learning experience at the LYO in comparison to their typical structured learning environment at school? What do they generally like or dislike about the program? Are there any problems that are unresolved? Are ther any needs that the children may have that can be met at the LYO?
I feel that this line of questioning is valuable because first of all, there is the opportunity of learning a lot of information about computers and how that differs from school and what they learn at school. Do they learn more about the computer at school or at the LYO or at home? What is so special about these environments that they would produce the curiosity and interest in the children to want to learn about the computers?
These types of questions can serve to possibly give greater insight to the processes of learning, also identify some possible areas which undergraduates may want to focus on day to day, and may also be important for other community based programs such as this LYO that serve the community to have self-evaluations to better understand the needs of its community. The development of cooperative learning environments has been the topic of interest for educators, learning institutions, and governmental policy makers for a number of decades. In the effort to find alternative learning environments for students, researchers and educators hope to develop techniques to heighten students interest in school subjects.
In order to examine techniques that will increase students eagerness to learn one must look at the process of learning that is involved rather than the actual "product". By focusing on the process of learning itself then educators and researchers can identify environments, social settings, and contexts in which to present and maximize the efficacy of learning for students. Aronson (1994) defines the process of learning:
"Whenever people interact, two things exist simultaneously. One of these things is the content and the other is the process. By content, I simply mean the substance of their encounter; by process, I mean the dynamics of the encounter. In a classroom, for example, the content could be arithmetic, geography, social studies, or music; the process is the manner in which these lessons are taught. It goes without saying that the content is of great importance. However, the importance of the process is frequently underestimated. But it is through the process that pupils learn a great deal about the world they live in. Indeed, I would even go so far as to say that, in some respects, the process is a more important source of learning than the content itself."(pg. 345)
Thus by designing a program in which the focus of the program is the process of learning instead of the content, some interesting issues can arise.
The untraditional non-competitive learning environment can be validated through research that demonstrates that competitive environments such as the traditional classroom situations may lead students to perceive that their peers are their rivals and even their enemies--to be beaten for the attention of the teacher. In one description of a competitive classroom environment that Aronson et al. (1994) observed,
"The teacher stands in front of the class, asks a question, and waits for the children to indicate that they know the answer. Most frequently, six to ten youngsters strain in their seats and wave to attract the teacher's attention. They seem eager to be called on. Several other students sit quietly with their eyes averted, as if trying to make themselves invisible. When the teacher calls on one of the students, there are looks of disappointment, dismay, and unhappiness on the faces of those students who were eagerly raising their hands but were not called on. If the student who is called on comes up with the right answer, the teacher smiles and nods approvingly, and goes on to the next question. This is a great reward for the child that happens to be called upon."(pg. 296)
Aronson goes on to critique this style of education because the teacher becomes the only one with the right answers--namely the answers inside the teacher's head. Thus the children in the classroom find themselves trying to figure out what is going on in the teachers mind, thus not promoting the development of any thoughts or conclusion on their own. The children are duely rewarded by the praise and attention of a very important person in their life--their teacher. Their peers are seen as competitors and help from peers is viewed as cheating. The students that do not know the correct answer or don't even compete with the other children are often looked upon as losers and stupid by their peers. These "bad" students may retaliate with teasing and label the more successful children as the teachers pet. The successful students may become resentful towards the unsuccessful students and consider them dumb and uninteresting (Aronson, pg. 346).
In one study done by Jemmott and Gonzlez (1989) demonstrated that merely being assigned to a low status, minority position on a temporary basis can suffer deficits in achievement on tasks requiring skill and concentration.
"Fourth grader were placed in groups of four, and each child was assigned either a high- status or low-status position. The high-status got to wear a big, fancy button emblazoned with the word BOSS and lots of flashy stars, while the low-status children wore small, unimpressive buttons with the word Helper written in tiny print. The composition of each four person group was then arranged so that the child was either in a minority or a majority position relative to others in the group. That is, in the minority-status conditions, the child was either a "Boss" in a group with three "Helpers," or was a "Helper" in a group of three "Bosses."...After engaging in a brief group activity, the children were given a series of ten anagrams, or scrambled-word problems, to solve on their own....Jemmott and Gonzalez found that children given the high-status "Boss" label outperformed children labeled as "helpers."...The simple fact of being singled out and labeled as an "inferior" was, in and of itself, sufficiently damaging to impair the child's performance" (in Aronson, 1994).
This study has profound implications that even being labeled in a temporary scientific situation can have serious effects on children's performance and self esteem. Once status have been achieved or assigned, then students will be forced to work with implication that he or she is "good", "mediocre", or "bad" student. This research also demonstrates the product of these "Boss" or "Helper" labels are very linear to the processes of stereotyping people by sex, race, or ethnicity.
The learning environment at the LYO, whose aim it is to promote learning through any means that are available through the organization, give children the freedom to roam freely from activity to activity. This type of informal environment sets the stage for interaction with undergraduates in a range of settings of the child's choice. The typical activity of choice is working with computers. In an article by Hoyles and Forman (1995), raise some important issues about collaborative learning,
"The need to take a more analytic view of the knowledge domain and not treat it as a given in research on collaborative learning is also taken up by Healy, Pozzi, and Hoyles. They find an interaction between the type of knowledge (i.e. conceptual vs. procedural) being learned and the social interactional conditions most favorable to that learning. For example, the students in their sample who approached conceptual tasks on the computer with an interactional style that involved balanced and negotiated coconstruction learned more than students employing other styles."
This is great support for an interactional or cooperative learning process on the computer. The undergraduates are greatly encouraged to use cooperative/collaborative learning techniques. An excerpt of a field note done by an undergraduate explains a day at the LYO and very typical cooperative approaches that many of the undergraduates displayed throughout the course of their class. Jenny McClosky describes an encounter with a child at the LYO for the first time.
"Yesterday was the first time I had worked with a child as young as Juan at the LYO. It as fun to observe how he approached the games. In the beginning, Juan chose to play with the ion King game. He informed me that he had played it before (although he hadn't seen the movie). Juan explained what all the pictures meant and that if you clicked on one of the them you would go to that place. One of the games he chose was to match two bugs that look the same. . . . (later) Juan came over to watch and asked if he too could make a picture. . . . With a little direction from me on where to click, he did at least as well as I did!"
At the LYO, children are given the opportunity to choose what activities they want to do and come and go as they please from one activity to another. The environment at the LYO is a unique one because at times there are just as many undergraduates as there are children, this gives the children a special one to one learning environment that is not typical of the public schools. This led to believe that the children would have different discernments and opinions as compared to their formal school experiences. When I interviewed the children about their experiences at the LYO I expected that bilingual children would have different needs and perceptions about the program than the monolingual English speaking children because most of the computer games at the LYO are English only, also most of the undergraduates were not fluent Spanish speakers which caused some communication barriers. I also thought that the children might be able to give some practical views about the program because it is ultimately a program that is supposed to serve their needs, so I wanted to know if their suggestions could help any possible overlooked problems.
Methods
In a Latino Youth Organization in downtown Santa Cruz, there exists an after school program which the University of California, Santa Cruz sponsers by providing computers, undergraduates, and other supplies to work with the children from the local area. The usual age of the children range from early elementary school years to junior high school age groups and was predominately attended by children of Latino descent. The sample of children on a whole came from about forty public elementary school children who were generally Spanish speakers from the local area.
There are two rooms that undergraduates can occupy at the LYO site. One room, Tela Araña Mágica, has computers that line the walls with one or many chairs in front of them. This allows for the children there to work alone or with partners if they wish. The other room is used for activities such as art, board games, homework, or whatever else the children want to do. There are tables and chairs in there that can be moved around to fit the activity at hand. Generally speaking, most of the children would work and play in the computer room (Tela Araña Mágica) but were not required to stay in that room if they did not want to.
Procedure
I came up with an open ended interview that was designed to look at three different aspects of the subjective experiences of the children that attended the UCSC program at the LYO. The first thing I wanted to measure for was how the children perceived their learning experience at the LYO in comparison to their learning experience at school; the second question was to look at some general likes and dislikes the children had with the program, the third concern I had was to find any needs that the children might have that the LYO might be able to meet. The first line of questions is designed to look at a typical learning experience that all the children were required to do (school) and compare that experience to what the children thought they were learning at the LYO. The second line of questioning was so that the children could address their general opinion to the creators of the program at UCSC. The answers the children give could provide useful information to create a program that better attends to the needs of the children. A third line of questioning which is complementary and overlaps the second looks at if there may be any specific needs that the children may have that the program could meet or make it a goal to meet. I came up with several different versions of the interview, I had a graduate student of UCSC critique the nature of my questions and offer suggestions to improve the study.
I administered the interview process to six children at the LYO site and recorded all of their responses on audio tape. The interviews were to be anonymous and semi-unstructured because they were meant to answer some basic questions within a dialogue format. Three of the children were male and three were female; also three had the ability to communicate in Spanish and English (at different ability levels) and three were English only speakers. One of the children I needed help from a bilingual graduate student to interpret the questions and answers because I have only limited Spanish speaking abilities.
Results
Data Collection
In this section I will provide a summary of the main findings from the audio recorded interviews. Most of the material recorded on tapes was transcribable except when the children were too far from the tape recorder or when there was alot of background noise. I used the game room instead of the computer room because it is usually much quieter, however there were people coming and going throughout the interview. In one interview I had to rely on the help of a bilingual graduate student to translate in Spanish to the child what I was trying to ask the child and the grad student to translate back to English the answers. This same graduate student critiqued my interview questions so I think he was very reliable in translating the concepts and questions of what I was trying to ask. There were some frivolous comments made throughout some of the interviews to other people that entered the room but overall the interview process was successful.
Research Questions
I underlined all material that pertained to the specific answering of the questions in the interview and I looked for some basic similarities in answers across the interview and also for some unique answers that may raise other issues as well. I split the questions in the interview into three parts: the first thing I wanted to know were some general likes and dislikes about the program itself, the second was to see if there were any general issues that may have that may lead into further research about some issues that the children concerned about, my third point which I wanted to address is to find out whether the children distinguished any differences in the processes of learning that were taking place at the LYO and at their school. I thought that these categories of questions were pertinent to the undergraduates and the creators of the Tela Araña Mágica because many issues had come up throughout the gathering of field notes and classroom discussion.
During the course of the class issues such as there wasn't enough Spanish language computer games at the LYO. There was also an issue of whether there should be more Spanish speaking and or Latino students working with the children to communicate better with the children and to serve as role models. This was important because most of the undergraduates that worked at the LYO in the Tela Araña Mágica program were Caucasian and most of them were not very fluent in Spanish. Along with these issues I also personally made observations that some of the kids at the LYO had mastered most of the more difficult games for their age group and wanted to play other games. In general these issues led me me to inquire into what the children thought were problems with the program. The questions I came up with to answer the issue of determining what aspects of the program that the children liked or disliked I asked them general questions such as "what parts of the LYO program do you like the most and why?" The children responded that they liked the program and usually mentioned that they liked working and learning about the computers. I also asked the children what they didn't like about the program and none of the children named any thing about the program that they didn't like. I also wanted to get a perspective on what the children's parents thought of the program and all the parents expressed positive feelings towards the kids about the program, also most children mentioned that the parents thought the program was educational.
In order to answer my second general concern of any issues that the children might have about the program I asked them a series of questions pertaining to how they choose what they did when they came to the LYO, If there was anything they could change about the program what would it be, and what were the games they liked and disliked the most (I didn't specify computer or board games but they all answered in reference to computer games). The first question of how they choose what activity they did when they came to the program was generally based on the availability of the computers, CD ROMs, and the internet.
The children's response to the question of "if you could change anything about the program what would it be" got a variety of answers. The total responses that I collected for this answers is as follows: two children wanted more computers, one child said more CD ROM's, three children said more games, two children said a TV to watch cartoons or whatever they wanted, and one child said nothing at all and one child's response was incomprehensible. I also received a variety of responses to my questions of what games did they liked and disliked. Since their had been some discussion throughout the class about which games boys and girls preferred and whether or not there were language barriers in the computer games, I choose to organize the answers according to sex and to lingual status.
Out of my sample I had two females who spoke English only, and one female whose first language is Spanish with limited English speaking skills ( I needed a translator). I also interviewed two males whose first language I believe is Spanish but who were also very fluent in English, and I interviewed one male whose first and only language is English. See Chart #1 for visual illustrative graph of how I split the answers. The differences between the boys and girls seemed more apparent than any between lingual status. The "unisex" games that the girls mentioned as their favorite included Lion King, School Bus, Carmen San Diego, and Tresure Island. The games that the females picked that are stereotypically classified as "girl" games included Barbie and Dollhouse. The Unisex games the boys picked as their favorite included Carmen San Diego, Midnight Rescuer, Minesweeper, and the internet. The games that the males picked that might be classified as stereotypically "boys" games (or more violent games) were Doom and Galaga. Also one boy and one girl said that they generally liked all of the games except the one's for the younger children because they were too easy.
For my third and final section of the interview where I asked children the differences between learning at school and learning at the LYO. The answers from all of the children were very different, but in general there were three themes that they spoke about. The first one had to do about learning on computers, for example one child answered my question of "how are the things you learn at school different from the things you learn at the LYO?" She answered,"different because at school they teach us math and here they don't, they teach us how to use the CD ROM." Another theme that came up was that the children said that at the LYO they thought they had more freedom to learn or play what they wanted. One child responded to my question,"different" then I answered,"are they different alot?"-child's response-"alot, well, usually we use the computers to find what they want us to find on the computers." The third general theme that I saw through the interview was that some of the kids compared the LYO and school in terms of how boring each one is or isn't. One response to my question was,"Big Time! Schools boring. -my response- Well, do you get to work on computers at school? -child's response- Yeah, but the games are real dumb games like Mountain Maniacs. -my response-Is that because they're real educational?-child's response-Not real educational just real babyish-. These findings suggest the effectiveness of the program at the LYO sponsored by U.C. Santa Cruz and some general implications of informal learning environments in general.
Discussion
When looking at the implications of the interview from the three different sections of the process there can be some conclusions made about the findings. Although there are some intial weaknesses of the project to take into consideration before one can generalize about the findings. First, I think that the entire population of the LYO should have been interviewed to be able be generalized to address all of the children’s needs. Also, the interview was difficult to understand at certain points because other people were in the same room which created background noise that made it difficult to decifer what some of the children's responses were. Although the interview had open ended questions, the children sometimes gave very short answers which required me to reformat the question. This may have primed the children to answer differently than what I had intended the original question to be. Their answers were informative and provided interesting data none the less.
Some implications of the interview can be looked through the three different sections and how they relate to each other. First, all of the children and their parents liked the LYO program. Which therefore can be concluded that the program gives a comfortable environment for the children in which they like to work and play in. The second part of the interview clearly demonstrates that even thought they liked the environment of the LYO they still may have some needs that can be met if budget and time limitations allow such as: more CD ROM games and more computers.
The question "which are your favorite games" gives some interesting insights between gender differences in game preferentiation. Although both boys and girls chose favorite games that were gender neutral, none of the children choose cross-gendered games as their favorite. There is one possible exception to this because one boy said that he liked all of the games except the "baby" games. He did not consciously exclude games that were not gender specific. I do not know how conclusive this evidence is because I have personally seen both boys and girls playing stereotypically cross-gendered games. Through this study, cross-gendered games could not be seen as the children’s favorite games.
Also, the responses to the question of differences between their school environment and the LYO environment can give some insight to some positive learning characteristics in learning environments in general. First of all, the most apparent of the LYO characteristics that the children identify as important is the fact that they say that the learning environment is fun. For example, one child answered this question,"I learn here but it's not boring". The fun learning environment can have a variety of characteristics. In an article by Farrell, Peguero, Lindsey, & White (1988) where they interviewed high school students about their learning environments they concluded that their data,"suggest that the students distinguish "interesting" from "boring" classes on the basis of the process rather than the content of teaching." I concluded that all of the children liked the LYO learning environment and found it interesting for a number of reasons which can be supported by other parts of the interview and through field notes taken by the undergraduates.
Some of the children during the interview answered my question of the differences of their school experience and their LYO experience by suggesting that at the LYO they were given more of a choice of how and what they learned. Whether or not this increases the amount of knowledge they learn isn't conclusive but may add to the enjoyment of learning the children get out of the LYO. Also, another characteristic that the children point out is that the learning environment is specific to computers rather than to math or any other subject. Although working with the computers the children may learn different strategies to play a game, or more geography, or better writing skills, they are becoming more familiar with the computer and learning how to use it while using it for other purposes.
Throughout the class undergraduates were encouraged to use collaborative learning strategies in which the undergraduates could learn from the children as well as the children learning from the undergraduates. This may have contributed to the success of the program. Farrell, Peguero, Linsey, & White (1988) also concluded that,"personal characteristics of teachers, although they could not be specifically enumerated on by the students, and teachers acting in a nonjudgemental manner were identified as factors contributing to interesting classes. There seemed to be a link between pressure and boredom, as though boredom were a way to internally drop out of school." These learning statagies can be of service to many teachers wishing to look for new ways to approach teaching as a process of learning.
Although conclusions like these have been voiced for a long time, they still need to be supported by research and supported through teachers, parents, principles, and legislators alike. There are still gaps into this inquiry, I think that there still should be a focus on the perspectives of bilingual students and females alike. This future research should be addressed in light of new teaching methods and issues that face billingual students and women in school.
Table 1 Children's Favorite Games
Lingual Status Gender Female Male ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Males: Lion King; Carmen SanDiego; School Bus; Internet; Spanish; All games except "baby" games; Doom ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Females: Carmen SanDiego; Midnight rescuer; English; Barbie, Doll House; Galaga; Carmen SanDiego; Minesweeper; Treasure Mountain; Dollhouse
References
Aronson, E. (1994). The Social Animal. W.H. Freeman and Comapany.
Erickson, F. (1986). Qualitative methods in research teaching. In M. Whiterock (ED.), Handbook of research in teaching (3rd edition, pp.119 -161). New York: Macmillian.
Farrell, E., Peguero, G., Lindsey, R. & White, R. (1988). Giving voice to high school students: Pressure and Boredom, ya know what I'm sayin'? American Research Journal, 25, 489-502. .
Hoyles, C., Forman, E. A. (1995). Introduction. Cognition and Instruction. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Jemmot, J.B., & Gonzalez, E. (1989). Quoted In. Aronson, E. (1994). The Social Animal. W.H. Freeman and Comapany.
