Conference explores the K-12 challenge

  • by Lisa Lapin

The response was clear. There's more to be done to support K-12 education, and the campus should step up to do it.

"Much is at stake here, for the state of California and for the university," said Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Grey. "We cannot hope to be the premiere public university in the world if the foundational educational institutions from which our students come are failing."

Last spring, the chancellor and provost proposed "New College" to organize an expanded campus effort centered on K-12 education and early human development, educational technologies, and the social environment in which education occurs. In Grey's words, the new college is intended to "do something significant that will make a difference."

He and the chancellor got a green light-and some suggestions on how best to proceed-from the nearly 140 faculty, student, staff, alumni and regional K-12 representatives participating in the Sept. 21-23 chancellor's fall conference.

Keynote speaker Ted Mitchell, president of Occidental College and former dean of UCLA's School of Education and Information Studies, advocated "cautious exuberance" in responding to K-12's many challenges.

"I worry most about changing the implied contract between the university and the state from a set of terms-research, teaching and service-at which we succeed brilliantly to a set of terms-fixing the schools-we are ill-equipped to meet."

Universities' greatest strength, he said, lies in their ability to take the "long view backwards, as the conservatory and interpreters of ideas, and forward, as the creators of new knowledge whose application, if seen at all, appears only at that far horizon." This culture of critique and of creativity suggests how universities might best interact with K-12, he said.

But, to be effective, the university must address four problems, Mitchell said:

  • Privilege. A longstanding power imbalance between K-12 and university people "privileges one type of knowledge, theory-based university research knowledge, over another-school-based craft knowledge." Knowledge jointly created should be prized, he said.
  • Alignment. "In education, the lack of alignment between basic research questions and applied outcomes prevents much of our very best work from influencing practice, except by accident."
  • Fragmentation. Mitchell noted universities' "proclivity to divide the intellectual world into thinner and thinner sub-specialties. … Any effort to make universities useful to schools must defeat the urge to specialize."
  • Communication. The language of research, he said, is "diametrically opposed to that of the public. In our search for precision, we too often obscure. This prevents our best, most relevant, most interdisciplinary work from having an effect on educational practice."
  • "new" college of education, Mitchell said, would be more permeable in who it defines as members and less rigid in its definition of high-prestige knowledge; reward collaborative work and "multiple bites at the same project"; expand the notion of "result" to mean "more than a book on the shelf and a journal on the rack"; and encourage more field research and less "following the trail of theoretical argument."

    Helping the Legislature

    California Assemblywoman Kerry Mazzoni, chair of the Assembly's education committee and a UC Davis alumna, asked the campus to help the Legislature develop research-based K-12 programs and challenged it to establish a charter school where best practices, based on research, could be implemented.

    Lisa Villarreal, director of the California Center for Community-School Partnerships and Healthy Start Field Office, said that policymakers don't consistently seek or heed information. "How do we position ourselves as a resource?"

    Mazzoni responded that 120 legislators, the governor, the state board and the superintendent of public education "all want a piece of legislation that changes the shape of education in California." One of the best ways to approach them is through legislative staff, she said.

    Beth Ober, chair of human and community development and a member of the New College Planning Committee, urged broad campus involvement in K-12. "Regardless what kind of (organizational) structure is set up, we have to have some kind of center or ORU (Organized Research Unit) to make sure we involve people not in the college who are interested in K-12."

    Alumna and Woodland School Board member Meg Stallard suggested placing the ORU in an off-campus school setting.

    Jon Wagner, Division of Education professor and New College Planning Committee member, advised that the promotion and review process recognize that "research on pedagogy in your discipline should be treated the same as research in your discipline."

    A "psychic reconfiguration" that would place a higher value on K-12 teaching and encourage more students to consider teaching careers is needed within the university community, said Thomas Rost, associate dean of the Division of Biological Sciences and also a New College Planning Committee member. "We need to change the way we think about the value of K-12 teachers in society."

    Benefits for both sides

    Strengthened ties to K-12 would offer benefits to the university as well as to schools, said Joan Sallee, president of the Davis Joint Unified School District School Board. "University faculty know the discipline so well but frequently teach the way they were taught. In K-12, there's a need for greater depth in subject matter; but in pedagogy, teachers can teach faculty members."

    Griselda Castro, coordinator of student affairs in Chicana/o studies, advised including the ethnic studies programs in K-12 discussions. "They provide research on the social context for the populations you're trying to serve."

    Political science undergraduate Erica Alfaro asked conference participants not to overlook students in new K-12 efforts. "Most of us just got out of K-12 two to three years ago. We have knowledge that's not being tapped."

    Several attendees expressed disappointment that so few K-12 teachers and administrators were able to participate in the conference. Ober indicated the planning committee would consult more deliberately with K-12 representatives before it wraps up its report at the end of fall quarter.

    Patricia Gandara, professor in the Division of Education, said she was "overjoyed" at conference-goers' enthusiasm for new K-12 initiatives.

    "There are lots of interesting ideas out there, but the fact of the matter is everyone here has a full-time job," she said. "Most of the responsibility will come back to the new college or division. I hope you will support the faculty who ultimately have to, and desire to, see these projects through."

    • Media Resources

    Lisa Lapin, Executive administration, (530) 752-9842, lalapin@ucdavis.edu

    Primary Category

    University

    Tags

    General Interest