Pacific Oaks and Carolyn Denham’s Vision: An Assessment by Louise Derman-Sparks, Faculty Emeritus, Pacific Oaks College
Where is Pacific Oaks in relation to the vision for Pacific Oaks articulated by Carolyn Denham, PO
President? When I consider what students and faculty have accomplished during my many years at PO, I conclude that, in fact, we are implementing two of the three parts of her vision. It is perplexing that the academic pedagogy and faculty underlying these accomplishments are the parts of Pacific Oaks that Dr. Denham states she wants to change ( June 27, 07 memo).
Before turning to a discussion of each of the three parts of Dr. Denham’s vision, I summarize my professional experience, which is the vantage point from which I reflect on PO’s contributions to early childhood education.
My professional experience:
Early childhood teacher and director: 9 years; Pacific Oaks Human Development faculty: 1974-2006; Publications: Five books authored / co-authored, including Anti Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children; What If All the Children Are White? Anti-Bias/Multicultural Education with Young Children and Families, Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism: A Developmental Approach, and numerous articles; Grants: A. L. Mailman Family Foundation Inc., Bernard van Leer Foundation , California Community Fund, Joseph Drown Foundation , W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Open Society Institute, Pritzker Cousins Foundation. National Governing & Advisory Boards: (e.g., National Association for the Education of Young Children Governing Board; Boys/Girls Clubs of American National Diversity Advisory Group; European Diversity Early Childhood Educators and Trainers Network; Awards: (e.g.,) Lifetime Achievement Award, National Association for Family Child Care, 2007; Myers Outstanding Book Award, Gustavo’s Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry & Human Rights in North America, Boston College, 2007.)
Conference Keynote Presentations:
- National Association for the Education of Young Children Affiliates in most states of the country
- Other Early Childhood Professional Organizations (e.g., Head Start, National Association of Family Child Care, National Association of Multicultural Education, National Coalition Campus Child Care , National Coalition of Education Activists, National Ecumenical Child Care Network, Smithsonian Early Enrichments Center, Washington, D.C., Southern Association for Children Under Six)
- PO: Evangeline Burgess Lecture
- International Early Childhood Organizations:, Greece; Ireland; Australia; Germany; Belgium; South Africa; United Kingdom;
- Hundreds of workshops in conferences, colleges, communities all parts of the USA.
I believe that my professional experience qualifies me to assess where PO is in relation to President Denham’s vision for it.
Vision and Realization
President Denham’s’ vision has three parts. I consider each part separately in the following discussion.
Part One: The College will be the leading West Coast institution preparing professionals to teach and to work with children and families
By Dr. Denham’s own admission (2006 Annual Report), “Pacific Oaks College is known as the best place in the country to go for graduate programs preparing leaders in fields related to children and families. Pacific Oaks awards more than half of the master’s degrees for early childhood education in California (90% of those awarded by private colleges and universities in California). Many of these graduates become faculty members at community colleges, training the next generation of early childhood educators. In short, we educate the leaders in early childhood education in California. Similarly, Pacific Oaks, with its Latina/Latino Family Studies program and its African American Family Studies program, is the national leader in developing family therapy programs that foster a deep understanding of cultural, racial, or ethnic groups, which we believe is essential to effective family therapy.”
PO alumni are making impressive contributions to the many arenas of early childhood education. They bring the PO mission to life in their work with children, families, teachers, and college students.
- Alumni are authors, (e.g., Julie Bisson, Margie Carter, Sharon Cronin, Deb Curtis, Fran Davidson, Stephanie Feeney, Janet Gonzales-Mena, John Nimmo, Annette Unten, and Stacey York).
- Alumni are Community College/4-year college ECE department heads and faculty
- Alumni are in key leadership positions in educational programs and agencies throughout California and in other states.
- Alumni serve in leadership of national and state ECE processional organizations,
- Countless alumni outstandingly serve children and families of all economic, racial and cultural backgrounds throughout California, around the country, and internationally.
Our impact has far exceeded our size as a college. Alumni proudly carry their Pacific Oaks degrees and are welcomed throughout the early childhood education field. The education they experience at PO underlies our alumni accomplishments and contributions. The excellence of the college academic program was recognized in the Spring 06 WASC visit. As President Denham noted in her June 2006 Annual Report “a recent accreditation report gave us [the college] rave reviews! “
Queries:
- If Pacific Oaks College is achieving President's Denham’s first vision goal, why does she claim that it is necessary to completely change the academic program? ( June 27,02 all staff memo)
- Why does she deny PO faculty, who are the source of the outstanding professional training, the traditional rights of college faculty throughout the country, thus interfering with academic freedom?
- Do President Denham and the members of the Board of Trustees know about the contributions alumni are making?
Part two: The Children’s School will be nationally acclaimed as a model for early childhood education.
Although the Children’s School is a good place for many children, it no longer serves as a national model for early childhood education. In the past, the Children's School, working with college faculty, did, indeed, make major national contributions. Its work on developmental, emergent curriculum, peace education and anti-bias education, disseminated through publications by College faculty, are nationally and internationally known and acclaimed. However, the last national model to emerge from the work of the Children's School was in 1989, when the National Association for the Education of Young Children published the Anti-bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children.
At this time, in my judgment, anti-bias education is no longer being practiced at the Children’s School, except with a few exceptions. Others schools have become leaders in this work. Moreover, while conflict resolution education is well practiced in all of the Children's School classes, it is also well practiced in numerous early childhood programs around the country. Moreover, it is the work coming from college faculty that is known, as thousands of conversations with early childhood teachers and leaders throughout the country have made clear. The Children's School is rarely mentioned as a place that people look to for leadership in early childhood education.
Query: Since the College is achieving her vision, and the Children School is not yet so doing, why does President Denham say that she wants to change what the College does, but not the Children School?
Part Three: Pacific Oaks will be a leader in the national conversation on children and families, a place people turn for wise advice.
I do not know what benchmarks President Denham’s uses as evidence that her vision is being realized. However, here are some specific achievements that I believe demonstrate that Pacific Oaks College faculty are an important part of the national conversation.
- Betty Jones’s publications about teaching adults are read world-wide.
- Three hundred thousand (300,000) copies of Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children have sold. The book has been translated into several languages.
- Other faculty are also authoring published books, such as Susan Bernheimer and Greg Tanaka.
- College faculty regularly present well-attend workshops at national and state conferences
- The books authored by alumni are widely read: some serve as textbooks in community college and college classes throughout the country.
- College faculty are often called on as consultants to programs and to critique peer articles
- I have been interviewed by numerous newspapers and magazines about young children’s development of prejudice
Query: Does President Denham or the members of the Board of Trustees know about the ways PO faculty and alumni are in fact participating in the national conversation about young children, or being called on for “wise” advice?
Pedagogy and Community
Finally, it is important to say something about the pedagogy that undergirds the achievements of our students and about the environment that supports faculty’s work both within and without Pacific Oaks.
The kinds of professionals our alumni represent reflect the pedagogy they experienced at Pacific Oaks. We neither prepare people to be simply “tellers”or “bankers” of knowledge, nor to be technicians who only know how to do what curriculum annuals tell them to do. In addition to professional knowledge and skills, PO pedagogy prepares professionals who, as the Mission Statement says, “…are dedicated to principles of social justice, respect for diversity, and the valuing of the uniqueness of each person”. Moreover, “Pacific Oaks promote educational practices within the institution, profession and public schools that encourage learners to find their own voices, to take stands in the face of opposition, and to exercise competence in collaboration with others”.
Pedagogical principles, in a nutshell, include:
Constructivist pedagogy: Based on Piaget’s work, learners construct their knowledge in interaction with the world and in accordance with their developmental stage and experiences. Learning is active. Learners bring what they know to the real or virtual classroom . They assimilate (add) new knowledge to current constructs, and accommodate (change/transform) what they already know. The underlying goal, as Piaget explained, is to foster people who are capable of creating new knowledge, rather than just repeating old knowledge.
Critical pedagogy (liberatory pedagogy): Based on the work of Paolo Freire, the purpose of education is the “practice of freedom”. It fosters people who know how to ‘”critically read the world” in order to make it better. Critical pedagogy creates the opportunities for empowerment, as learners critically examine what they know and experience and constructs new understandings in interaction with what they read and discuss. It requires a mutual teacher/learner-learner/teacher relationship, rather than an all-knowing teacher who deposits knowledge into students; what Feire calls “banking education”.
Social Interaction and Scaffolding: Based on the work of Vygotsky, pedagogical methods provide regular opportunities for students to interact with their peers and with faculty in a learning environment that is supportive yet challenging. . Moreover, new learning must be the right next step for each student. This requires a wide range of learning experiences that work for diverse learning styles and ways of communicating. The teacher facilitates the next piece of the scaffold upon which each student builds new knowledge.
Connected Knowing: Based on the work of Belenky, Clinch, Goldberger, and Tarule, connected knowing is about people building their knowledge together, with each person’s experience becoming a brick in the construction. This approach requires developing one’s own voice while also developing openness, respect and careful listening to others. A way of learning and knowing grounded in women’s experience, “connected knowing" stands in contrast to the more traditional academic “separate knowing”, which pits learners competitively against each other, and rewards the students who bank the most individual knowledge.
Caring: Based on the work of Nell Nodding, this approach considers every learner as a whole person. Accordingly, the heart and the sprit (or soul) must be cultivated as well as the head. This requires a pedagogy that values each student’s growth journey, and evaluates learning in the context of each person’s journey. This stands in contrast to academic methods that focus only on the head and judge people’s progress on the learning curve of the group.
Culturally relevant and authentic knowledge: A body of research and experience demonstrate that people learn most usefully when the educational environment takes into account the cultural learning styles of its students. Furthermore, this approach calls on teachers and students to critically examine all educational content for misinformation or narrow thinking infected by racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and heterosexism. Pacific Oaks has become known for its equitable education that practices, as our Mission says, principles of social justice and respect for diversity.
These pedagogical principles interact with and build on each other. Moreover, as Betty Jones makes clear, they also are the framework for good early childhood education practice. Pacific Oaks’ students experience what faculty wants them to do with children, families and adults learners.
Community values & practices that support faculty creativity and writing include:
- Small classes
- Academic freedom for content and methods, including opportunities to try out and develop new ideas.
- A wide range of diversity in faculty and students racial/ethnic/cultural, class backgrounds and experiences
- Faculty connected knowing, and caring relationships ( including team teaching)
- Practical and affective support for critical thinking, claiming one’s own voice and for the creation of new knowledge.
- Fair, stated evaluation and retention processes
- Open communication, respect and trust from the President, Administrators and Board of Trustees
Carolyn Denham’s vision for PO is already being realized, based on our pedagogical principles and the community environment that existed until this academic year. If PO’s education practice shifts to pedagogical principles that conflict with the ones currently operating then we will not produce the same results.
Queries:
- Does President Denham know, respect these pedagogical and faculty community principles? If not, what are her disagreements based on?
- Does she understand what these principles mean and require in practice?
- What specific pedagogical and organizational principles does she believe in and want to see at Pacific Oaks? Why?
Has President Denham educated the Board of Trustees, most of whom are not in the field of education, about the pedagogical principles that have resulted in the achievements of Pacific Oaks alumni and faculty?