Placing Immigrant and Minority Family and Community Members at the School’s Centre: the role of community participation

Methodology

This article reports on results from INCLUD-ED (2006–2011), part of the 6^th Framework Programme of the European Union. The project is pursuing its goal through six sub-projects. One consists of a group of six case studies on communities involved in learning projects that integrate social and educational interventions to help to reduce inequalities and marginalisation and foster social inclusion and empowerment. The case studies are on schools in Finland, Lithuania, Malta, Spain and the UK. All six were selected according to three criteria: their students are succeeding academically in comparison to schools with similar characteristics; they are serving students and families from low SES and minority groups; and they are helping to overcome inequality through strong community participation.

Each year, the case studies had a particular focus, based on the results of the larger project. One was a new classification of types of family and community involvement in schools: informative, consultative, decisive, evaluative, and educative. INCLUD-ED (2009) identified the last three as having a greater impact on student achievement. This informed subsequent research questions about the six case study schools. In the second round of case studies (2007–2008), the team explored how the decisive, evaluative, and educative types of family and community involvement were taking place in the schools. Additionally, a specific question asked about strategies that led to such influential parental and community involvement: ‘Which dialogic and democratic strategies are schools employing that facilitate the involvement in the school of family and community members belonging to vulnerable groups?’ One of those vulnerable groups was immigrants and cultural minorities. The team then explored the links between those strategies and improvements in school factors that influence learning and academic achievement. This article focuses on this issue.

The team approached the question through the critical communicative methodology (Gómez, Puigvert & Flecha, 2011). In each school, data were collected through 13 open-ended interviews (5 with representatives of the local administration, 5 with representatives of other community organisations, and 3 with teachers from the school); 13 communicative daily life stories (6 with family members and 7 with students); 1 communicative focus group with professionals working in educational centres; and 5 observations in various places including classrooms, teachers’ meetings, and the playground. The ‘communicative’ character of this method emphasises egalitarian dialogue between researchers and participants. In the study reported here, continuous dialogue took place between scientific knowledge provided by researchers and knowledge from life experiences of the teachers, family and community members, students, and other professionals involved in the schools. It sought to understand the strategies of family and community involvement and how they benefit the school and the students. The protocols included questions about how the school involved family and community members, perceptions regarding family and community involvement in the school, and its importance for student achievement and school improvement. The analysis focused on which strategies helped the school to achieve strong community involvement of immigrants and cultural minorities that enhanced student learning and achievement and other related educational aspects, and on the practices to enact these strategies and their related benefits for student learning and the school.

COMMENT

We have chosen this issue because we think that the participation of the families in the education can change the world. Also we consider that the new system INCLUD-ED is important to analyze.

This article shows the results from INCLUD-ED. The project has six sub-projects. The case studies are in schools in Finland, Lithuania, Malta, Spain and the UK. All this schools were selecting according to three criterions.

The main goal of INCLUD-ED is encourage the social cohesion and avoid the social exclusion. This is necessary to improve the social and educational policies.

On the other hand, it's required the contribution of all the community to reduce school failure. Also we must accept the participation of immigrant families.
This can change the world because students are more motivated and interested. In addition, the bond with the families increases.

Evidences show that students achieve better academic results. The students are more motivated because the parents are interested in the education.

In contrast, that shows the importance of the dialog. It's essential a good relation between the families and the school. It's unfair treat the students according to their origin, race, intelligence, etc.

Therefore, if we involve more in the education and promote the dialogue, we will get a better education for the future.

LAURA GREGORI AND MARIA SALCEDO

Maria Montessori

This article has been adapted from the original, which was published in The Call of Education, Vol. 11, no. IV, December, 1925. 

Anticipating some of the questions which will certainly be put to me, I shall give some recommendations regarding mistakes which I have observed during my visits to Montessori schools. These mistakes, apparently slight and of a psychological rather than a technical nature, are small matters; but they are those that impede the full and harmonious development that every teacher would like to achieve in her class and precisely because they appear to be insignificant, they are the most difficult to discover and eliminate.

Environment

The teacher must not content herself with merely providing her school with an attractive environment; she must continuously think about this environment, because a large part of the result depends on it. The teacher, therefore, must:

a) keep the didactic developmental material in perfect order. If this is not the case, the children will not take an interest in it and if they do not, the material becomes useless, as the entire Montessori method is based on the spontaneous activity of the child which is aroused precisely by the interest the child takes in the material.

b) make sure that every object used by the children has a place of its own that is easily accessible to them. Thus, the black and coloured pencils, the paper, the pen, the ink, etc., must be placed in such a way that the children can take them in an orderly fashion without the help of the teacher. The order in which the objects are kept teaches order to the children.

The teacher, therefore, should occupy herself with the environment rather than with the child and allow the former to teach the latter. For example, if for each broom there is a support preventing it from touching the floor and being damaged, the child will learn right away to put it like that; if there is a special hook for every used dishcloth, so that the wet ones are hung in the proper place, the child will become interested in this order and learn it.

Exercises of Practical Life

There should be exercises of practical life for all the children progressing according to age from simple to difficult to complex. Every teacher must study to decide which exercises of practical life are interesting and possible in her environment and make a list of them; because whereas the other material is already determined, the exercises of practical life are not. These vary according to the environment but always remain a very important part of the work for they substitute the formal gymnastics of the other educational methods. So they must be interesting and sufficiently challenging.

The exercises of practical life should be done when they are necessary, regardless of the time, and not according to a fixed schedule. For example, the children should wash their hands when they are dirty, sweep the floor when there is something to sweep, etc. Many will object that, if allowed, the children will do nothing but exercises of practical life and drawing. This is not true and if it does happen, it is only because the teacher has not been able to present her material in an interesting way or because the exercises she has given to the children are either too easy or too difficult. The teacher should not correct this by forbidding the exercises or by allowing them only during a certain time of the day, but she must allow the children to complete those tasks that they are attracted to also during the whole day, if they wish to do so; she must merely make the other work so interesting that the children do not want to dedicate themselves exclusively to one thing. Still, the teacher should not panic if the children throw themselves wholeheartedly into a certain task: that is what we call an explosion and this continuous dedication to a specific exercise, if concentrated and thus spontaneous, always leads to excellent results. The teacher should know very well how to present the exercise of practical life to the children: remembering that she must teach it with absolute clarity in every detail, but then leave the child free to master it; she should not correct the child even if he does it wrong. What is important is that he does it by himself, without a word, without the help, without a look from the teacher.

She must give her lesson, plant the seed and then disappear; observing and waiting, but not touching.

Intervention of the teacher

Many teachers interfere in order to restrain, advise or praise the children when they should not, and instead refrain from intervening when it is necessary. The teacher should never intervene in an action when the impulse prompting it is good, neither with her approval nor with her help nor with a lesson or correction. She can destroy the good impulse of the children by intervening; or at least her intervention will cause the real "ego" of the child to withdraw within himself as a snail into its shell. I shall give some examples to illustrate this fact:

a) A child runs to meet a person and embraces him affectionately but awkwardly. If the teacher chooses that instant to correct the child and teach him how to greet someone, he will feel hurt or at least embarrassed and, until he has forgotten this nasty experience, he will not want to greet someone anymore and may never be able to do so with ease. If the teacher realises instead that she has not taught the child how to do it well, she will prepare an amusing and lively lesson on the various ways of greeting people and a few days later teach this lesson to the child. He will not feel offended, learning with pleasure how to greet a person politely without losing his affectionate enthusiasm.

b) A child tries to wash a small table: not knowing how to do it, he does it wrong. The teacher uses this opportunity to teach him how to do it right. The child loses interest; looking about, he scrubs the table top once or twice and then leaves it. If the teacher had waited, the child himself might have discovered how to scrub the table and he would have improved his action. In any case, the teacher should have chosen another moment to give him a lesson: waiting for an opportunity when she would not run the risk of destroying a good impulse.

c) A child has recently begun school: he is small and very shy. So far he has remained motionless, looking about, not interested in anything. Today, he gets up and very slowly, almost trying to hide himself, goes to fetch his first piece of material. The teacher sees it, full of joy she walks up to him and encourages him with a few words. The child feels caught, mortified and almost just as frightened of the approval as he would have felt of a reprimand. He blushes, returns fretfully to his table, puts the material down and stays there without using it. Perhaps the child will not do anything for a month and remain seated, looking about, even more unhappy and shy than before.

d) A violent and rude child behaves gently towards another child. If the teacher, having noticed this, shows him her approval and encourages him to continue in this way, the child will feel almost ashamed of his first sign of kindness (which to him may seem weakness) and will do anything to repress and hide it, becoming more rude than before. If the teacher instead pretends not to have noticed, the child will feel a real pleasure in performing these small unnoticed kindnesses and will develop this quality with the exercise.

The teacher must intervene and reprimand the children whenever they do something rude or careless that has no good impulse and does not lead to perfection; for instance, when they:

• pass in front of a person without asking permission;

• drag their chairs instead of carrying them;

• slam the doors;

• throw paper on the floor instead of in the wastepaper basket;

• do not clear the table when they have finished their work.

The teacher should never let one of these actions go unnoticed. She must immediately say to the child, but in a way that only he can hear, "When you pass in front of a person, you should ask permission" or, "The chairs are carried in this way." These things are taught in collective lessons to small groups, particularly to the young children.

The teacher should intervene before, not after, the disorder has occurred. She should, therefore, reprimand those acts that are useless, even if they are not disordered, because these acts are the ones that lead to disorder. For example, two children are joking together. If the teacher does not intervene and turn their attention towards something interesting and intelligent, after a few minutes other children will join in, creating a great disorder. Or, instead of washing his hands, a child is playing with the water. If the teacher does not intervene, the child will start to splash water to the other children, who in turn will imitate him in this play, creating havoc in the classroom.

I have observed these things, one here, one there, on different occasions and with different people. These suggestions have always brought a great improvement in the classroom. With great wonder some teachers have told me that they would never have imagined that a thing so small could have had an effect so great. But as a matter of fact the small details change a mediocre piece of work into a masterpiece.

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Hello, we are Celia and Rebeca and today is our turn to put a new entry. We have been all day long thinking about what we could talk to today and we finally decided to talk about this article that talks about Maria Montessori and her philosophy of education that bears her name.
Maria Tecla Artemesia Montessori was born in Italy on August 31 of 1870 and she passed away on May 6 of 1870. She was an Italian educator also known as a good writer and a brilliant pedagogic professional. Her educational method is based on children's independence, their freedom, their respect and their natural, psychological, physical and social development. We think that her educational method is the best way posible to educate children.

This are the most important essential elements from Maria Montessori's education that we think are the better one's:

- Mixed age and sex classrooms. 

- Children choice what activities they want to do. 

- Students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction. 

- Space on classrooms so children can move themselves with freedom. 

- A trained Montessori teacher. 

- Communication. 

- Exploration. 

- Manipulation (of the environment) 

- Order 

- Orientation 

- Repetition 

Maria Montessori

 

See you on next entry! Good-bye.

Celia and Rebeca.

Changing Paradigms in Education

Young Children's Emotional Development and School Readiness C. Cybele Raver

The current emphasis on children's academic preparedness continues to overshadow the importance of children's social and emotional development for school readiness (Raver & Zigler, 1997). Research, owever, indicates that young children's emotional adjustment matters—children who are emotionally well adjusted have a significantly greater chance of early school success, while children who experience serious emotional difficulty face grave risks of early school difficulty. This Digest presents a brief overview of longitudinal 

research linking children's emotional development to school readiness and early school success and then discusses interventions designed for children entering school. 

Longitudinal Research 

Over the past 20 years, research has demonstrated that children’s emotional and social skills are linked to their early academic standing (Wentzel & Asher, 1995). Children who have difficulty paying attention, following directions, getting along with others, and controlling negative emotions of anger and distress do less well in school (Arnold et al., 1999; McClelland et al., 2000). For many children, academic achievement in their first few years of schooling appears to be built on a firm foundation of children's emotional and social skills (Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1997; O'Neil et al., 1997).

Specifically, emerging research on early schooling suggests that the relationships that children build with peers and teachers are based on children’s ability to regulate emotions in prosocial versus antisocial ways and that those relationships then serve as a “source of provisions” that either help or hurt children’s chances of doing well academically (Ladd et al., 1999, p. 1375). Psychologists find that children who act in antisocial ways are less likely to be accepted by classmates and teachers (Kupersmidt & Coie, 1990; Shores & Wehby, 1999). They participate less frequently in classroom activities and do more poorly in school than their more emotionally positive, prosocial counterparts, even after one controls for the effects of children’s preexisting cognitive skills and family backgrounds (Ladd et al., 1999). One caveat is that children’s early academic skills and emotional adjustment may be bidirectionally related, so that young children who struggle with early reading and learning difficulties may grow increasingly frustrated and more disruptive (Arnold et al., 1999; Hinshaw, 1992). Although our understanding of the causal and reciprocal influences of children’s cognitive, language, and emotional competencies on later academic achievement would greatly benefit from additional research, the bulk of longitudinal evidence of the importance of social and emotional adjustment for children’s success in early academic contexts is convincing and clear.

Interventions with Children Entering School 

Given the evidence that children’s emotional adjustment plays an important part in predicting their likelihood of school success, the next question is "How do we aid children to develop emotional competence and avoid emotional difficulties so that they come to school ready to learn?" Interventions have been implemented at the family, child care, school, and clinical site levels to address these difficulties as children enter school. (A detailed discussion of interventions designed for children before they start school can be found in Raver [2002].) Based on programmatic intensity, these programs include the following: Low-intensity interventions in the classroom. A wide range of interventions identify children's entry into formal schooling as a prime opportunity to affect children's social, emotional, and academic competence. Some programs have been implemented to change the way that children think about emotional and social situations. Using modeling, role play, and group discussion, teachers can devote relatively small amounts of class time to instruct children on how to identify and label feelings, how to appropriately communicate with others about emotions, and how to resolve disputes with peers (e.g., Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 1999; Quinn et al., 1999). The potential gain is that such programs can be offered to all children in a given classroom for relatively low cost. The potential drawback is that these programs may have only a modest, short-term impact on children's social and emotional behaviors (Quinn et al., 1999). Low- to moderate-intensity interventions in the home—parent training programs. Based on a body of research that views parenting as playing a key role in children's emotional adjustment, a number of interventions have been designed to reduce children's risk for emotional difficulties by helping parents to increase their positive interactions with their children, to set firm limits on children's negative behaviors, and to reduce their use of harsh parenting practices when the adults become angry or upset (see, e.g., McEvoy & Welker, 2000). 

These programs vary in approach, intensity, and the location in which they are implemented (e.g., home visiting programs, telephone support, parenting skills workshops). Generally, these programs have shown moderate success (Kazdin, 1987). One concern is that the link between harsh parenting and children's manifestation of behavior problems has been found to hold true for White families but not African American families in some studies, suggesting that interventions must be placed in culturally grounded frameworks (Deater-Deckard & Dodge, 1997). A second concern is that the effects of these programs may be more transitory than long lasting (Corcoran, 2000). "Multi-pronged" home/school interventions for children at moderate risk. These programs address children's emotional and behavioral difficulties at home and in school. Although more costly to run and targeted at fewer children, these programs are expected to pay off in the long run by reducing the prevalence of costly outcomes such as criminal offenses and dropping-out of school (Kazdin, 1987; McEvoy & Welker, 2000). Results from a number of experimental studies (using randomized designs) suggest remarkable effectiveness of these multipronged programs in reducing children's disruptive behavior. These gains range from modest improvements to strong gains in children's social, emotional, and academic skills (Eddy et al., 2000; Stoolmiller et al., 2000; Webster-Stratton & Taylor, 2001). These programs have also shown effectiveness in reducing the likelihood that children will engage in delinquent behaviors (Stoolmiller et al., 2000) and in being held back a grade or more, than did the less-expensive, lower-intensity, classroom-only interventions described earlier (Vitaro et al., 1999). Some researchers, however, have pointed out that these findings are not sustained over longer periods of time, and that children's high school dropout rates are not significantly affected by the intervention program. High-intensity clinical interventions for high-risk children. A small percentage of young children in poverty struggle with serious emotional and behavioral disturbance. A range of programs are designed to lower the risk of young children's development of serious problems in families struggling with multiple, chronic stressors such as high risk of maltreatment, mental illness, substance abuse, and domestic violence. School-based mental health consultation programs, for example, pair psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists with local school districts in order to identify, assess, and treat young children who are in serious emotional and behavioral trouble. Clinicians from local community mental health organizations observe classrooms, provide teachers with training, and provide child- and family-centered psychotherapy (Cohen & Kaufmann, 2000). As of this writing, no evaluations of school-based consultation programs using randomized trial design could be found; however, the potential for such programs seems promising. 

Conclusion

How can we explain the varying levels of effectiveness that have been demonstrated across different types of interventions? Three cautions are offered to explain variation in programmatic success. First, programmatic success is reliant in great measure on the extent to which programs succeed in enlisting families' participation (Brooks-Gunn et al., 2000). 

Second, it may be unreasonable to expect long-term emotional and behavioral gains on the part of young  children if their families continue to face chronic, structural stressors that erode children's psycho-social health. Third, we must recognize that the economic, employment, and policy contexts of high-risk families have changed substantially from the conditions under which many models of interventions were originally designed and implemented over 20 years ago (e.g., Olds et al., 1998). Even given these cautions, however, research clearly demonstrates the importance of children's emotional adjustment to early school success.