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by Amy Magin WongEmpowering students with an education to succeed as catalysts and leaders in their professions is central to Lesley's mission. By continuously exploring and learning, Lesley faculty challenge students, by example, to develop their potential to fulfill this mission. Lesley supports faculty research and learning endeavors through the granting of sabbaticals, and by providing Faculty Development Grants and Opportunity Fund Grants.
The five faculty members profiled here share a profound dedication to their chosen fields. They each believe that this increasingly complex world, challenging in ways unfathomable even a decade ago, offers countless possibilities and demands for new ideas. But most importantly they believe in the power of individuals -- their students -- to bring about meaningful change.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR SUSAN GURRY and
PROFESSOR ANNE LARKIN teach in the School of
Education, and for decades have focused their research on educating autistic
children. Autism is a
developmental disability characterized by slow development
or lack of physical, social and learning skills, as well as difficulty
understanding and communicating with language."The tragedy of autism is that we rarely get to know the person inside the body," says Professor Anne Larkin. "My attitude, as an educator and a mother of an autistic child, is that you do anything that will help these people reach their potential."
Upon learning of the development of a new method of communication for non-verbal people with autism, called facilitated communication, Gurry and Larkin didn't hesitate to investigate. In this technique, a facilitator provides physical support for the hand, wrist or finger of the autistic "speaker" to spell out words on a keyboard device. Although highly controversial, supporters have enthusiastically hailed facilitated communication's successes. Detractors doubt the legitimacy of the method, believing the facilitator overly influences the autistic person's "speech."
Intrigued by the controversy, Gurry and Larkin began an intensive six-month study in 1992 to examine the implications of facilitated communication for three young adult men and the staff of their group home. Lesley supported their initial research through a Faculty Development Grant. The project received further support from the Nancy Lurie Marks Charitable Foundation.
All the staff's facilitated conversations with the autistic men were recorded in notebooks and video taped. Gurry and Larkin met monthly with the staff to review the sessions and provide support, additional training and feedback. The study's results convinced both Gurry and Larkin that facilitated communication was a method that can work, and deserves further research. Each of their autistic participants, to varying degrees, could communicate more effectively through the facilitated typing than they had previously through writing or speaking.
"Because these people aren't verbal, we didn't realize that they knew words."
Moreover, the study proved to be valuable in learning more about autism overall. In particular, Gurry and Larkin think that facilitated communication may prove to be helpful in developing literacy skills. "Because these people aren't verbal, we didn't realize that they knew words," explains Gurry "We've learned that they have much more language capability, such as reading and spelling skills, than we had tapped previously. Now our goal is to make each person as communicative as possible."
Another benefit of the study is that the residential staff are now much more informed about how aware these young men are and how much they actually know. And, because the project gave Gurry and Larkin new insight into autism, they were able to provide better strategies for the staff. For example, the staff would often repeat a question such as "Did you brush your teeth?" over and over, getting no response, and leading to frustration by both parties. After learning that many autistic people are responsive to visual cues, the staff has created a pictorial chart of necessary activities which the residents check off upon completion. The staff's lives are easier, and their clients are happier.
While enthused about these gains, Gurry and Larkin remain focused on their goal of breaking through the walls of autism. "Our kids are puzzles, but there are ways of solving them," says Larkin, "and we're never going to give up. We're going to find the answers."
Our modern world is drawing people of diverse cultures, languages, colors and beliefs closer together, and in ways inconceivable even a few decades ago. As we move toward the 21st century, how are we to prepare our selves to share and participate in this complex global environment?
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR LARRY PARKS DALOZ
believes strongly in the concept of
responsible citizenship as a basic requirement in this new age of
interconnectedness. In his recently published book,
Common Fire, such behavior is
illustrated through the stories of people who have committed their lives to
working for the common good. Daloz
co-wrote the book with his wife Sharon Daloz
Parks and colleagues Cheryl and James Keen. Lesley is presently supporting
Daloz's work by granting him leave time from teaching in the Intensive Residency
Option Program in the Adult Baccalaureate College.Beginning in the mid-1980s, Daloz and his co-authors studied more than 100 people across the country. These are ordinary people -- teachers, physicians, youth counselors, administrators and engineers who have reached across differences and learned to work with complex and diverse situations, rather than against them. As Daloz met and studied these people, patterns of shared characteristics began to emerge. According to Daloz, one central characteristic surfaced. During their formative years, all had associated positively with people who were significantly unlike themselves. "These experiences -- meeting, encountering and engaging people who are different -- created a common bond. By taking a world of 'we' and 'they' and drawing a larger circle around it, they created a larger 'we,'" he explains.
The researchers also learned that these people look beyond their own particular welfare and recognize that they are a part of a larger system, a world where everyone is interdependent.
Common Fire will be accompanied by a video. Both are intended to be used as a guide to nurture a sense of commitment in others. "The goal," explains Daloz, "is to create the conditions to generate more people like those described in the book, thereby more thoughtfully raising a new generation who are able to deal with complexity more effectively, and who are less likely to be afraid of a shared world."
Daloz says that higher education performs a crucial role in making this happen. He praises Lesley's work with the Diversity Initiative as an example of how this can be achieved, bringing people of different ethnicity together, and encouraging real dialogue and understanding between them. "The single most important thing higher education can do," says Daloz, "is to teach people to think systemically, in which we each have an essential part to play."
PROFESSOR MARY MINDESS and the early childhood education field are virtually synonymous at Lesley. For the more than 30 years she has taught at Lesley, her influence has reflected the qualities of fluidity and flexibility she believes teachers must possess to continually evolve as educators.
Mindess' approach to teaching is evident in her recently published book, Eliciting Children's Full Potential, co-written with Sylvia Feinburg, a professor at Tufts University. Supported through a Lesley sabbatical, it is a comprehensive guide for early childhood professionals in designing and evaluating programs.
"The field of early childhood education has changed in theory from a didactic approach, with teachers as the leaders, to a more cognitive approach in which children are recognized as thinkers with the ability to solve problems," Mindess states. "For example, instead of just memorizing arithmatic facts, we have children try to figure them out."
In the book, the authors stress observation as critical to teachers in achieving their full potential to reach children. "Many people will change an idea, but not change an attitude," Mindess says. "By looking at one's own classroom procedures, and analyzing and collaborating with other teachers, teachers can learn a great deal, and continue to grow. They need to ask themselves what they did well and what things need to change."
Mindess sees a much stronger emphasis than ever before on early childhood
teachers. Besides being competent and motivational, she says the teacher with a
passionate interest and curiosity in other areas such as music, art or history
can use this to inspire and stimulate appreciation in young children. This spirit
of enthusiasm can then be translated to other subjects. "Children are then
learning about diverse values and customs," says Mindess. She also believes that
teaching children to be problem-solvers is crucial. "It is an increasingly
complex world for children growing up today," she says. "They are not going to be
able to get along by simply repeating their parents' behavior. They are going to
have to learn new ways to handle situations.""In years past," Mindess says, "parents were basically told, 'I'll tell you about educating your child. You take care of meals and bedtime.'" But that attitude has changed. Parental involvement is viewed as an important component in the child's education. Incorporating multiculturalism in the schools has also been valuable. Mindess believes it has been a major factor in creating respect for what parents with different cultural perspectives want for their children.
NANCY CARLSSON-PAIGE, a professor in the School of Education, first became interested in violence and children's play in the mid l980s.
"I began to hear teachers talk about changes they were seeing in children's play, and that it was becoming much more violent," says professor Nancy Carlsson-Paige.
Working with colleague Diane Levin, a professor at Wheelock College, Carlsson-Paige began investigating the causes of violent play with a goal of helping teachers counter aggressive behavior with peaceful alternatives. Lesley helped Carlsson Paige pursue her research through two sabbaticals. A former Lesley corporator, Zell Draz, seeing the merit of her work, offered further support.
From surveying teachers across the country, Carlsson-Paige and Levin heard about how children were emulating the kicks and punches of favorite TV characters. As shows such as "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," and "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" won legions of devoted young fans, teachers reported children's classroom play becoming increasingly combative.
Carlsson-Paige and Levin discovered what they believe to be a direct contributing
factor to the change in children's play: the deregulation of children's
broadcasting in 1984. Major changes in the nature of children's television
programming resulted and shows were linked to product advertising spurring a
sophisticated cross-marketing of toys, videos and other products."The problem," explains Carlsson-Paige, "is that young children have a hard time distinguishing between real and pretend. Especially with the Power Rangers, which is a live action comic book. Young children admire the characters, who are teenagers doing all these fantastic things, and they want to be like them."
Another consequence of the programming, Carlsson-Paige discovered, was that children's play became much more scripted and imitative of television shows, and less inventive, creative and reflective of children's own experiences. "Children's play, ideally, should look different for every child," she says, "enabling them to make meaning of their experiences."
Carlsson-Paige doesn't blame parents. "These popular shows are marketed in a very calculated way," she says. "Kids beg to watch the shows and buy the toys. The parent gets put in the role of the bad guy."
In the classroom, she advises teachers to intervene in play and direct it to a more creative activity, introducing alternative ideas, props, and themes. "For instance, a teacher can tell children to build a hospital with blocks, give care to the enemy characters they've injured, and talk about what it's like from enemy's point of view," she explains.
Carlsson-Paige and Levin have co-written two/three books on the subject. They speak on the topic at workshops, conferences, and at schools across the country, including Lesley's annual Peaceable Schools Institute. Teachers and parents have reported that the alternative play solutions are successful. "The TV programs are set up to hate an enemy," Carlsson Paige points out. "We humanize that figure."
Amy Wong is the editor of the Lesley News.
