Fifteen Eighty Four

My favorite moments as a teacher were when I would pause and surveil my classroom, my eyes flitting from one child to the next, all equally engrossed in serious tasks, the quiet hum of experimentation, problem solving and collaboration filling the air above their small forms. These deeply satisfying observations showed a busy, engaged classroom filled with children who were doing purposeful work. These were the same children who, at other times in the same classroom, had screamed and thrown chairs, pushed and punched their classmates, thrown toys and lunch trays off the shelves and sobbed for what seemed like endless periods with no clear cause. These behaviors happened for many reasons, some I knew, some I could only guess. For some it was because of traumas they’d experienced that morning or the night before, for others it was a cumulative stress level that exploded in the safety of the classroom, while others simply weren’t ready to spend a whole day away from their caregivers.

Most of the families whose children attended the school lived with the oppressive mix of poverty, racism and misogyny that trickled into their daily lives in myriad ways. Those experiences affected how the children responded to the classroom; yet the impact of the classroom itself- it’s physical design and materials along with time for experimentation and play had a significant opposing effect. The most powerful influence of all on their individual and collective behavior during the school day was the social environment. The interpersonal dynamics between adults and children and among children provided opportunities for new ways of being and communicating. By the middle of the school year, each class knew how to run the entire morning routine without any prompting from myself-the teacher. The environmental and social context of the classroom promoted sustained attention, creative exploration and emotional safety. The children’s capacities for creativity, brilliance and empathy that emerged over the course of the school year arose out of the collective dynamics of social interactions- mediated by the carefully planned environment. The children’s most profound discoveries and insights developed during peer interactions; their individual motivations and proclivities extending beyond themselves to contribute to the aspirations of the group and in the process to give rise to something that none could have produced on their own.

This power of collectivity to transcend individual limitations has been revealed to me in multiple contexts since then. Children of all ages as well as adults in the college classroom behave differently in response to differently structured groups and collaborative dynamics.  Given this a “troubled” or “delayed” child can become calm and focused depending on the social setting.

Yet most research within developmental psychology depicts children living in poverty as perpetually “at risk”. Their skills and deficits are treated as static, without attention to the impact of the physical or social context on their functioning. Even more disturbing is the hyper-focus on identifying problem behaviors rather than seeking to reveal hidden strengths. Part of the failure to insightfully investigate development among children like the ones in my classroom is the application of a culturally biased lens to examine their development. As I studied cultural- psychology I realized how blatantly N. American middle- class norms influenced the metrics by which human behavior was assessed within psychology- especially developmental psychology.

Permeating all aspects of psychological and educational research is an exclusive focus on individuals. This individualistic bias is both tied to Western culture and implicit in almost all behavioral science research methods. Imagine trying to understand the social interactions of an actor in front of a green screen without their co-star. Not only is dialogue rendered meaningless but facial expressions and physical responses seem absurd when their social partner is removed. And yet that is how most studies of social development- such as social competence and social skills are studied- especially among more vulnerable populations of children.

The pervasive individualism of developmental psychology is applied ubiquitously by using the individual as the unit of analysis. To critique this approach, I drew on numerous innovative concepts and paradigms such as “collaborative cognition”, “cultural historical activity theory”, “distributed cognition” and “dialogic education” to name a few. When designing my own research methods I thought about the interactions I had observed between my students that led to the most productive outcomes: the foursome who used all of the over 200 blocks in the block area to construct a giant, highly complex structure, the trio who sat together sounding out new words, borrowing strategies and prompting each other or the partners who crafted a complex narrative with multiple characters using puppets and arts materials. I knew that these interactions demonstrated high degrees of competence in all areas of development. What these interactions produced was more than a combination of individual skills but rather a unique result of the the social, emotional and joint attention dynamics that emerged collectively. The purpose of my research was to find a way to measure this collaborative competence and use it to learn from the brilliance of children like the ones I taught. My book, entitled “Developing Together: understanding children through collaborative competence” is the story of how I did it, what I found and what that means for education and psychology.

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Title: Developing Together

ISBN: 9781009446693

Author: Rebecca R. Garte