Academic Bullying At UVM

It happened again last week.  It became clear to me once again that academic bullying is alive and well at UVM.  "Well, faculty have an authority that may be perceived as bullying when used with passion and a certain kind of intent" you might say.  "That's the way certain faculty are.  They believe themselves to be unquestioned authorities in their field.  Their role is to deliver their expert knowledge to their students and their students' role is to take it in and learn it!"

I understand this.  Believe me.  I wasn't a department chair for five years for nothing.  But there's a line that can be transgressed that separates normal, non-punitive authoritarian behavior from punitive, accusatory, and demeaning authoritarian behavior.  We all know faculty who are puffed up on themselves, full of self referential commentary, who might also be quite good as teachers.  They might even have a tad bit of self-awareness, occasionally poking fun at their puffoonary.  I'm not talking about these people, the normal academic authoritarians.

I'm talking about the faculty members who inspire fear, masters and mistresses of the put down, purveyors of the "how dare you question my methods" view of the student/teacher relationship.  Faculty members who go beyond normal levels of faculty authoritarianism to another place - the place of academic bully.  Faculty members whose classes are filled with students who've learned the survival game of never question anything, agree totally with whatever's being put forth, sit silent and nod in feigned agreement, or come to class overprepared for a random call to answer.  (I know, that latter point is maybe what some teacher's want, but taken in the context of all the rest of the academic bully's behavior, it is way out of line as a teaching strategy.)

A major problem with the academic bully is the victims often have no reasonable recourse.  Department Chairs are usually powerless to do much more than offer a rebuke.  Save sexual misconduct, faculty seem to have, unfortunately, unlimited license in terms of appropriate professorial behavior in their classrooms and offices, even in the internet email to students.  Students are generally in a powerless position.  If a department has a policy for perceived professorial misconduct, usually the first step is for the student to go back to the abuser and try to have a discussion about the incident - usually alone.  Not many students elect to take that option.  Some choose to go to a Dean, but Deans often pass the matter back to Department Chairs.

Academic bullying is a dirty secret of universities.  Universities would prefer their multiple publics to believe that every class is peopled by faculty and students who care about each other and their curriculum and who are excited about the daily pursuit of knowledge.  But students know differently.  Secrets such as these fester and boil and rot the reputations of institutions from the inside out.  They turn students away from participating in the great good that can be had in provocative academic environments.  The dirty secret needs to come into the light of day.

Cases of academic abuse need to be defined, and dealt with from a position of authority and power.  Students need a place of recourse other than the office of the perpetrator.  Definitions of abuse need to be clear.  Conditions of assistance and conditions of sanction need to be clearly stated and understood by all members of the academic community. 

For a start, I'd offer the following definition of academic bullying,  adapted from the harassment policy of a local school district.


Academic Bullying and Harassment means an incident or incidents of verbal, written, visual, or physical conduct...that have the purpose or effect of demeaning a student and objectively and substantially undermining and detracting from or interfering with a student’s educational performance or access to school resources or creating an objectively intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment.

Short of rational process, I might also suggest a series of articles on the subject by the local campus newspaper.  If not able to be addressed head on, perhaps a series of vignettes would serve the purpose of putting the university community on notice that such behavior diminishes our ability to live out Our Common Ground statement and will not be tolerated at the University of Vermont.

Animoto and UDL

Had great fun using animoto for the first time and lookie here: a quickie video about UDL that communicates in image, text, imagery, and sound. All done within 5 minutes.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The Moral Arc Points Towards...UDL?

Forty-five years ago yesterday, I stood before the Alabama state capital building with a diverse (a word not in our lexicon of ethnic adjectives then) crowd of people on a rainy afternoon and listened to the Reverend Martin Luther King, a very tired Martin Luther King, deliver these words: "the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice." 25000 people cheered and then slowly made their way back to the airport to board the two-prop DC-3s that would take them back to where they had come from. Today, those planes seem ancient!

I had flown to Montgomery with an interfaith group of ministers and parishioners from Syracuse, New York where I was learning to be an urban teacher. It had been a tumultuous week in the South and I was far enough distant in age from my parents to finally take the risk and do something big to act out my evolving social consciousness, an action I knew they would not condone. I only joined the last day of the march. But my presence was welcomed by those that had walked the 54 risky miles from Selma. My presence was not welcomed by some others of those along the way into the city who decorated the route with an occasional Confederate Flag and called us names and shouted at us to go home where we belonged. We were well protected by national guardsman on the edges of the march and seasoned parade marshalls who helped us close ranks to gain some distance from angry onlookers. I expected to hear what I heard then. I knew I was safe as long as I stayed with the crowd.

I did not expect to hear what I heard yesterday as the United States House of Representatives passed the most important piece of health care legislation since medicare was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson on July 30, 1965. Racial and homophobic slurs were thrown at John Lewis, Andre Carson, Barney Frank, James Clyburn and other Democrats who decided to walk through Tea Party protesters at the Capital building rather than enter through another entrance.

How far have we come? And how far have we to go? Why, as King said, when the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, do such actions inspire such hateful reactions? Surely the passage of this health care bill is another act of civil justice for thousands of citizens of this country. And yet we have the specter of hundreds of adults emulating the very behavior we legislate against in our schools. Bullying. Overt bullying, modeled and taught and sanctioned seemingly by one of our two political parties, with no one from the minions standing up and saying, "stop."

This is a very scary time in the brief history of our democracy. Frogs die rather than escape when water in which they swim is slowly heated degree by degree to the boiling point. The political climate in this country is becoming more and more toxic for democracy, degree by degree, slur by slur. The legislative branch of our federal government is broken. I feel like a frog in a country where the air around me is becoming increasingly poisoned and pieces of my world are dying.

It makes me wonder how many of those Tea Party shouters, or even their elected representatives, had good teachers and successful school experiences? I wonder how many were ever with teachers who thought much about their learning? I wonder what their schools were like? I wonder where they learned that it was okay to behave like that. That it's okay to send faxes of trees with noosed ropes hanging from their branches to the majority whip of the United States House of Representatives and other minority members of congress.

Universal Design for Learning, for all its good points, does not directly address issues of classroom climate. Much is inferred from the application of UDL principles, but UDL is contentless when it comes to relationship building as a pre-condition to learning. UDL, for all its good points, does not directly ask that faculty teach students how to recognize and deal with difference - differences in opinion, differences in gender, differences in ethnicity, differences in intellectual preparation, differences in prior knowledge. I wonder if it should? Is UDL merely a set of strategies to enhance the metabolism of learning in educational settings? Or is it also a set of strategies that embraces openly and explicitly that the teaching/learning dynamic that UDL promotes is also a moral framework that asserts that the right of every student's learning to be respected. I would like to suggest that UDL is a moral framework that accedes to every learner the right to be recognized and heard and challenged and yes, pushed in a learning environment that nourishes and extends their humanity, never ever diminishing it before their peers or anyone else.

UDL is but one link in this particular universe, the moral universe of the classroom. A second and equally necessary link is the diversity that exists within the classroom itself, the diversity of natural human differences that invite the presence of UDL strategies. There are other links, I'm sure. But let me end here by asserting that our work is moral work and the outcome of this work is just - as in "justice" - learning. It is my hope that as a result of the work we are doing, the children of our students will never learn to bully from watching their Moms and Dads bullying people with whom they have a disagreement. It is my hope that those Moms and Dads would have learned when they were in college that they were smart enough, that their voices would be heard, and that they were important contributors to a learning community in which everyone was better off for the presence of each one. Maybe we can make Representation, Expression, and Engagement operational principles for just learning. I know it's a stretch, but maybe???

CR

Third Party ?

Another request for money to battle the lobbyists got me going on this idea. The more I think about it, the better I like it. So I sent it along to Barak. What's posted here is a bit longer than what got sent.

Dear Barak,

We donate when we can. My wife and I have donated more to you than to any president ever before. My donation, this time around, is an idea.

I've been thinking a lot recently about the corruption in Congress. The dollars that pour into the treasuries of congressmen and senators in exchange for votes that go a certain way. Not that it's all that clear cut, I understand. I also wonder the degree to which you have had to compromise your own values with regards to this as well. We heard a little bit about it during the campaign in terms of certain donations to the campaign.

I come from a state that respects the idea of values. Vermont. We're tiny compared to other states, perhaps we can afford to use the value of a Vermont product as one way we sell ourselves commercially just because of the scale of our operation. But I'm also thinking that millions of people voted for you because of what you represented value-wise to the American people, Democrats and cross-over Independents alike. None of what I'm saying here is new.

What may be new, however, is where this confluence of ideas takes me. You are now caught in a very ugly game of politics that you have to play in order to get things done. I imagine it has to stick in your craw, every moment of every day you face the results of special interests stealing the virtue of real debate, the grounds upon which our democratic process rises or falls. This has to give you pause given the heat you've taken from members of your own party over so many principled stands you've taken on the major issues of your administration - the economic bail outs, Guantanamo, single-payer health care, the health care government option, the car companies, and on and on.

Have you or Plouffe or Stewart (not John!) or any one else in the administration even thought about what might happen if you, our sitting president, decided to start a third party movement by yourself based on the values you brought into the campaign? That idea hit me last week and won't let go.

It's probably too early in your administration to do this for sure, but as we get to the next election, God willing we get there, it might put a very interesting twist into the political process. I'm certain you could raise ample money via the internet thus freeing yourself from the monied lobbies; I'm fairly certain you'd get the young back into the fold; it would be an uphill battle for sure but I also think you'd attract good people from both sides of the isle who like you are troubled by the selling out of the legislative branch of our federal government.

I think the system of checks and balances is broken, I think congress is dysfunctional, and I'm thinking a strong third party movement might be the answer to bring the necessary heat to the political process presently construed to effect significant change. I can't think of anyone with more power or credibility to lead it than yourself. You'd need long coat-tails for sure but every paradigm shift has to start somewhere. I thought your election might be the shift we needed but the Republican stonewall built with millions of dollars from individuals and corporations who stood to profit from the status quo took care of that.

Just something to think about. I think the idea might gain some traction. Not exactly hair-brained, admittedly, but "out there" for sure.

Hope you get this and read it. Or even that someone gets it and reads it.
And decides to pass it on.

CR

Image from http://openesf.net/projects/esf-activists-news-network/blog/2008/02/

Leiber and Stoller (or) the Jerry and Mike Show

I wanted so much for this book to be more than it is. I thought it might be some kind of social commentary on the extraordinary events of their time. I thought it might be a doorway to the interior passageways of two collaborating minds that spawned such a stunning oeuvre. I thought it might be as much about everyone else, as it was about Elvis and Peggy. Hound Dog was a much quicker read than I wanted it to be. And yet, because it was so clearly not any of the above, I was almost relieved to finish.

When I was seven or eight years old, when I'd come home from the Saturday afternoon movies, Mom would ask, "How was the movie?" and I would start to give her a blow by blow description of what happened from start to finish. That's what this book is like. It's like a stone skipping across the chosen sequence of events selected a worthy of mention in this (here comes that word again) extraordinary collaboration. Every page left me wanting more.

The best parts for me:

the family contexts Jerry and Mike emerged from and their occasional connecting of their life story to the circumstances of their orgins;

the details of and insight into moments spent with Presley, the Coasters, and Peggy Lee, details that made these icons more human, more real for the additional understanding brought to their lives by events recounted;

their final efforts to figure it all out, name it, see themselves as R&B authors and R&R midwives, two white guys who composed black and negotiated multiple worlds (male, female, parent, lover, child, adult, Black, white, Jew, rich, poor, avant-guarde, low down and boogie woogie, creator and now, commentor) from multiple toeholds of social positioning.

It's a much more complicated history than they presented here. But maybe Hound Dog had to be written, to enable the deeper historical analysis to come later. Sooner than later, hopefully.

Having said this, Hound Dog was also a book I couldn't put down. I'm embarrassed to say it was just this year I discovered Leiber and Stoller were white! And I do go back a bit with them, not to the beginning, but I do remember the first time I heard Hound Dog, the Elvis version. I was driving back from a thunderstorm interrupted fishing trip on Oneida Lake with my Dad. It came on over the radio in our large-toothed DeSoto and I remember, even at the time I was amazed he didn't turn it off. But he didn't and I certainly have to give him that. It was only this year that I called up Big Momma Thorton's version from iTunes and listened transfixed to the original version. The difference between the two defines what is meant by the word 'profound'.

I remember being enraptured by Peggy Lee's Is That All There Is. I can hear her now as I write these words.

I still cherish my Coasters' Greatest Hits Album. As a teenager, I laughed and emulated Charlie Brown, I nodded my head and sang a long while I took out my papers and trash, I wondered what it meant to be a hog for anyone, much less "you, baby".

I grew into my young adult years with these guys. They helped me do the growing. I got that there was inequality in the world. The small black and white evening news images from Montgomery and Greenville and Selma took care of that. But absent television, somehow, my white boy high school semi-rural college town upstate New York listening positionality made me feel a tiny little bit that just listening was doing something about that inequality. Jerry and Mike were inviting me across the color line in a way I couldn't yet grasp, just like they couldn't quite grasp their own stunning contribution to the struggle so early on. Hell, all they wanted to do was make their kind of music and yes, all I wanted to do was listen, listen, listen. I somehow sensed that they were opening a new world to me that I had no access to in my day to day life, save my listening to the early works of Ray Charles in my early hs years, quitely, in my bedroom closet, on my little turquoise 45rpm record player my Mom had given me. It was only later on, as I looked back and saw where I was walking in relationship to all my fellow and sister travelers did I comprehend and appreciate the opportunity these songs afforded me. They made me happy. They invited me to sing along and dance. They beckoned me across the divides that still divide America.

And if this is a bit too intellectual, the music itself, its rhythms, its beat, its lyrical cadences, its outrageous humor, its dead on depiction of universal themes, had me doing the best boogie I could manage. And I have to say, those movements, even my movements, came from deep within, came out of me, not because others were doing it, but because I wanted to - it was there, waiting to be expressed in whatever strange and funny form it took. I didn't even look at myself in the mirror, I just shook and moved and danced my joy. I should do more of it today!

I have to say, I loved the image of the Coasters rolling around on the floor during their recording sessions. I also appreciate the fact that the wall of sound happened somewhere else with a guy who L&S were only too happy to move on out.

So despite my disappointment with the book, I have a huge amount to thank Messrs. Leiber and Stoller for. Their music and their affiliations lifted me out of my own settled context and tantalized me with another view of my world, one that was immediately entertaining, but with a little closer listening, troubling and challenging, and ultimately life affirming in so many ways.

Micro Collaboration: Project Mexico

DRAFT
This mural is actually three panels executed by three sixth grade students depicting major events from different periods of time during the long history of Mexico. The History of Mexico. Part of some requirement that has to be covered in the sixth grade social studies curriculum of this Northern Vermont city. Can't you hear it now? "Okay, kids. Now that we've finished studying the rainwater cycle, for the next three weeks we'll studying Mexico. The history of Mexico. The entire history of Mexico."

Sometimes the ebb and flow of school content doesn't seem to make much coherent sense. Don't get me wrong. I mean it's a good thing these students still have social studies, given the frenetic focus on literacy and mathematics learning forced upon the schools by high stakes, narrowly articulated, statewide assessment systems. But with curriculum coming at them in a seemingly helter-skelter fashion how are they to make sense of it all? How to fit it together so the children see connections across the content. And how to jump into Mexican history in a way that engages their considerable but often latent interests.

This article explains one way the jump occurred, a jump that was a bit unusual, highly motivating, and eminently successful in terms of content acquisition. This article explains how one University professor and one public school teacher, both respected members of their own dominions, brought their students together to engage in the study of Mexican history. I'm terming this teaming a Micro Collaboration. It was high energy, low key, of short duration, and flew under the radar of required and complicating systemic agreements. In short, it was a plan executed by the two individuals that served both their teaching needs and resulted in both groups of students - university eighteen year olds and public school eleven year olds - learning a ton while engaging the other in real academic study, 6th grade style.

more to come

Synopsis of Expectations States Theory

I wrote this text for Senior Seminar to provide my senior students the theoretical background for Complex Instruction. They received bits and pieces of these connections across several points in their program -- I attempt to condense and present a theoretical bottom line for them.

A Primer To Expectation States Theory
Senior Seminar
C. Rathbone 3/10/08

In normal, everyday, regular life, we judge the world around us by they way we’ve been taught to judge the world around us. Every one of us has a normative reference group in our head. This is a group whose behavior and actions in all kinds of situations define for us what is normal and acceptable. This normative reference group also has particular characteristics of appearance and behavior. The fact that this imaginary yet powerful group defines the world as “right” to us means we give it and their judgments particular power and authority and influence. Another word for “power, authority, and influence” is “status.” Status is an attribute we perceive in others that determines how we behave in relationship to those “others.” If we imbue a person with high status, then we place an expectation on them that they will perform in a certain way.

The sociologists who thought up Expectations States Theory (EST) have investigated how power and authority and status play out in laboratory experiments. Often these experiments involved naïve participants placed in situations where their behavior was observed as they interacted with research assistants who assumed different postures to “test” the naïve participants’ reactions. One of the many findings of EST is that we behave differently depending upon how we perceive the people around us; and, the people around us behave in certain ways depending upon how they are treated by those around them. EST reveals a two-way street of expectation and response. The famous studies by Rosenthal were part of this genre of sociological inquiry. Rosenthal randomly assigned students of varying achievement levels to various classrooms. He informed the teachers that certain groups of students were high achievers when in fact achievement was a randomly distributed variable within those groupings. When end of the year achievement tests were administered, the low achievement students did remarkably better. This “Pygmalion Effect” has been replicated many times and is a good example of the power of perceived status and expectation.

Elizabeth G. Cohen is almost singularly responsible for moving the study of expectations states from the laboratory to the classroom. Over the course of thirty years, she and her able group of graduate students, almost all of whom had public school teaching experience, gradually, step-by-step carried out a research program that documented how unequal status in classroom small group work creates differential conditions of achievement outcomes based on a student’s status. Lower status students contribute less in cooperative group work because the higher status children in the group think they have nothing to contribute to the group work. Likewise, higher status students contribute more in cooperative group work because they carry a kind of privilege that comes with high status, the privilege of being looked to for leadership in small group activities. As a result, they often run the groups, get lots of opportunity to process the academic tasks, and learn at higher rates all because others think they know more. They may know more, but they may also not know much about a particular area of investigation even though they are looked to by others to “lead on.”

Cohen’s research traces how unequal status plays out in small group work in schools. She created a set of research-based strategies that as a whole are called Complex Instruction (CI). CI includes several status interventions that interrupt business as usual and create conditions of interaction in small groups that cause higher status children to want to include lower status children in the group work conversation. When this occurs, rates of talking and working together for all children in a group increase, engagement in the task increases, and learning improves.

Cohen’s steps are diagrammed below. What follows the steps is a brief summary of Cohen’s interpretation of EST and her interventions that counter its negative effects. Imagine 1-6 connected by arrows; the steps are roughly sequential and of course, overlapping.

1. Status Characteristics “They’re Everywhere!”
We all carry status characteristics with us. Dress, things we place on our clothing, the kinds of shoes we wear, hairstyling, the backpacks we carry, the people we hang with, all these things ( and so many more ) are signs for others to assign status to us. Status is a normal part of life. It makes no difference really until a task that requires a particular outcome appears. Tasks such as these are the stuff of schools.

2. Task Appears
Let’s say your teacher assigns a complicated math problem to the class and gives the class an opportunity to choose two other people to work with to solve the problem. Let’s say the teacher also says something like, “The first group to finish correctly is exempted from doing the rest of the homework for the weekend.” What’s the first thing you do?

3. Activation of Expectations Resulting in Status Order Effects
My hunch is you look around for other people to work with that will help you successfully complete the task. And you may look for people to work with regardless of whether or not they are your close friends. The naming of a task snaps the general status characteristics that abound in human groups into a particular focus, and people who have academic status (and to some degree high peer status) become valued participants. In EST language, the task activates a set of expectations regarding who is thought to be good math problem solvers and who is not. Suddenly, there’s a status order in the class based on the perception of who will do well and who won’t. Status is constructed out of the combined effects of academic and peer status. SS=SA+SP

4. Behavior Results
Unequal Talking and Working Together
Unequal Opportunities To Learn
Structures Inequitable Levels of Content Acquisition

There’s a shuffle while you and your classmates choose partners. You end up in a group with one friend, also a good mathematician. The other person in the group is not all that familiar to you. You know they often need extra help in math. You and your friend basically work out the problem by yourselves and because your friend is good at what he does, your conversation carries the day and you are able to successfully explain your approach to your class.

5. Status Intervention Treatments
• Groupwork
• Rich Tasks
• Multiple Ability Treatment
• Assigning Competence Treatment

The above scenario is business as usual before Cohen. If Elizabeth had been your teacher, she’d have done a few things differently. She would have made sure that there were more than one way to do the task; in this case she might have asked your group, now expanded by one, to model your answer using Cuisenaire Rods. She would also have made very clear at the onset of your group work that it was going to take more than just good number sense to do this problem. She certainly would have said that using manipulatives, building models, and putting number problems into everyday situations were other ways to be smart about this task, that everyone has some abilities and not everyone has all the abilities necessary to do good work of this kind. Finally, she would have noted to the group when one of the quieter members started to fiddle around with the rods that constructing a solution using the rods was key to getting an appropriate answer. If she had done these things, you would have been less sure of yourself and more willing to listen to the input from other members of the group. After all, the teacher was still looking for a group solution, a solution you had all helped each other come to.

6. Behavior Results
More Equal Talking and Working Together
More Equitable Opportunities To Learn
Higher Levels Of Content Acquisition For All

If Elizabeth had been your teacher, and if you had been invested in arriving at a solution along with your buddies, the quality of conversation would have risen in the group. There would have been more directed activity (the cards) at arriving at the solution and then arriving at an appropriate representation of that solution. Someone watching you would have seen much more talk from every member of the group, talk that was focused on the problem and talk that carried content learning. Everyone’s thinking would have deepened. If the teacher had tested you in the way you had learned to represent this problem, everyone would have demonstrated higher rates of achievement.

Expectations States Theory
Berger, Joseph, Bernard P. Cohen, and Morris Zelditch. 1972.
Cohen, E., 1994 (p.34)