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| > Module 3 > The Community | |
IDENTIFYING AND SURVEYING COMMUNITY PROBLEMSProceduresProblem Identification If this phase is not taken very seriously, then all the subsequent phases will be affected. It is a good idea for each child to be given a sheet like the one shown here to emphasize its importance. Figure 16: Research Plan by an eight-year-old (Westminster West School,Vermont, USA)  If you wish to have children focus on environmental projects this first phase must involve helping the children escape from the stereotypes of what they think "environmental " projects are. If you do not, children will begin with loud expressions of concern for the issues that have been presented to them in so many ways by mass media such as preserving tropical rainforests or the need for recycling. While these argue important issues, it is important that every community became competent in identifying its own priorities. Liberate them from preconceptions by stressing the need for community involvement in problem identification. It is useful for children to have previously worked on Unit 5: Problem Identification in Children's Everyday Lives for they will have learned to think broadly about this process. In the problem identification stage of the project it is valuable for every child to interview a grandparent or elderly neighbor about their memories of the local environment as children. This can quickly and effectively establish awareness of how their environment is changing. In some cultures teachers will find it easy and very effective to invite elderly residents of the community to further collaborate with children in community research and planning, building upon their personal knowledge. This strategy has been central to the work of the national program of working children in Ecuador. In this program in was found that different elderly persons are able to offer different kinds of knowledge of the environment. For example, women ceramicists were able to speak of the rich symbolism about the environment carried on their pots. A Proposed Sequence
The students first need to decide whose perspectives should be considered. Have them brainstorm ideas in their groups. Encourage them to think of those people, like themselves, whose perspectives are often not considered in community development efforts. You can follow up by suggesting groups that they might not have thought of such as the elderly, the poor and the disabled. The children also need to consider whether they should locate any professionals with special knowledge of community development or environmental issues in their area.
Children's interviews can provide such valuable information on what the community collectively thinks its problems are that their research can sometimes stop there. All that is left to do is for them to design an effective means to deliver this message to others: to community residents, to planners, politicians and decision-makers.
If the data was collected on maps it will be possible to quickly create a collective map showing all of the problem locations identified in the community. It would be valuable to map other issues in order to be able to see patterns such as the locations of dangerous traffic or the sites that are considered polluted by people. Not all environmental problems are specific to a particular location; air pollution for example. These problems need to be expressed as lists on a chart. Again, if the children are not highly literate a visual chart can be used, using picture symbols to represent different categories of concern. This large chart can then be filled out by all of the children in a group setting. The children can take turns to enter marks to show whether or not they found this to be a problem in their interviews. From this chart it is easy to make a simple bar chart to show which are the most frequently mentioned problems. This might have such categories as "housing problems" or "water pollution". From the analysis above the children will have a number of suggestions for problems they would like to work on. Remind the children of the fundamental task in hand, namely, to identify issues that are important in affecting the quality of their lives and the lives of others in their community, including other living things. If you wish to make this a long-term program, group children to each take one problem. This has the advantage of enabling a team of four to six children to work in depth on an important issue. Alternatively, the whole class can take on one problem and the division of labor can be on different aspects of the problem. A Statement of the Problem It is very important for each research group to write out very specifically and clearly a statement of their problem. This is an important act, for it forces everyone to be clear about collecting data on the problem. This should always be done in the form of a question and should always clearly indicate whom the question refers to, that is, which groups of people or animals or plants, etc. the issue affects. One example might be, "Where do the homeless people in our town sleep at night and can anything be done to help them with their sleeping situation?" It is unlikely that the children will be able to write a good research question the first time. This is an excellent opportunity for you and all the children involved to help the group clearly define what it is they are interested in. This, more than anything, will affect the clarity of the subsequent research effort. Whether to Choose a Theme or Study Site? Children can choose to work on either a problem theme or a specific study site. For pre-adolescent children there is great value in their having a specific study site to investigate. This can greatly reduce the complexity for children who are still learning to deal with complex intellectual challenges. Investigating the life of a particular pond or stream, for example, would be a much more appropriate task for most pre-adolescent children than to generally investigate problems of water quality in their whole community. Acquiring Information from a Variety of Sources Children need to learn the importance of thinking broadly about different sources of information related to their problem, including their own experiences and observations. They can each keep a logbook of their own observations. They can also collectively maintain a log of articles and graphic material from newspapers and magazines related to their chosen theme. Of course, Internet sites could also prove valuable to this activity. Identifying Sources of Information Have a class discussion on what sources of information there might be for each of the issues to be investigated. This is a discussion that is probably best conducted with the help of a graphic chart in order for children to identify classes of people and sources of information to be considered. For example the children of the Colombian "New School" described in Unit One, determined that in order to plan the reforestation of the hill in their village they needed to interview a variety of different people. This included the elderly residents of the village who would be most likely to remember the types of trees that were there, the forester for the region who could also help at this task, and the local nurserymen who are more likely to know which trees would grow under which microclimatic conditions for their particular area. Remind the children that there is more than one perspective on any issue. They need to consciously work hard to hunt out the different ideas and values people in their community have towards their chosen issue. They will rely upon you for identifying any environmental and other specialist consultants. Interviewing Although children can be easily intimidated in interviews they are preferable to the questionnaire surveys (Go to Interviews). The quality of information is richer. Also, through collecting the data children become aware of their capacity as children to seriously investigate the problem. Furthermore, adults begin to change their minds about the values of children doing research and their capacities to do so. There is a great danger with surveys designed by children that they will simply be ignored by the adult world. This is less likely to happen with interviews. Charting the Data Children need to get into the practice of summarizing data after each data collection trip. They should make a written summary of what they have learned from each of their interviews or each of their observation visits. In this way they will begin to understand concretely what their task is as they proceed. Simple bar charts are an excellent graphical means for large numbers of children to see the quantitative aspects of their data take form. Some of their questions will have been closed choice questions. These are easy for the children to make charts from because the categories have already been established. For the open-ended questions, the children will need to look through their written summaries of interviews and suggest categories that could be used to analyze the data. This is an activity that is best done in small group sessions. These categories can then be used to make charts or maps. Interpreting and Making patterns from the dataGiven the complex nature of all environmental problems, children are going to need your help in finding ways to express the relationship of the many relevant variables. Again the best collective way to do this is with large wall graphics. All of the maps and charts that have been created should be pinned to the wall. Children can then look together at the data to suggest what the important variables are related to their problem. The teacher should facilitate this discussion using cards pinned or stuck to the wall. The various important variables that begin to emerge can each be written on a small card. These can be written on (and pictures drawn) by the children and pinned to the wall in such a way that they can be seen by everyone and can be moved around on the wall. Gradually a complex composite picture is created of many factors relevant to the problem. You can help give form to this display by suggesting alternative ways of arranging the card (variables) and by drawing lines between them. Prioritizing the influence of the variables may involve voting by the children or looking back again to the data to see what the different interviewees said about the relative importance of different factors. Planning Interventions Children can now suggest which of these variables they think can be acted upon to create an improvement in the situation. Create a list of alternative solutions alongside each problem. Beside this list they can write the likely positive and negative social and environmental impacts of each of their different suggestions. The children can then debate which of their different solutions seems to offer the greatest degree of positive social worth with a minimal degree of environmental damage. This stage of the research is so valuable to the larger community's understanding of environmental problems that it would be well if this stage could be graphically expressed or presented to the larger community. Action or Advocacy? It is not necessary for the children to take action themselves to improve the environment. Do not follow the common tendency to help children achieve some change at all costs by hiding from the children your role in that change. This is more likely to foster a cynical attitude to community change than the spirit of critical awareness and citizenship that should be our goal. Having done good research it may be enough for the children to feel competent that they convince others of the importance of what they have discovered. Making a presentation to the local civic leaders or environmental planners, for example, can be an extremely satisfying experience for children. It is of course necessary for adults to seriously listen to them and demonstrate so by asking sincere questions. The achievement of such dialogue is superior to any number of garbage clean-ups or beautification projects by children. Figure 17: Girls preparing an article on quality of housing for an issue of the Silchester Sun, a community newspaper at the Notting Dale Urban Studies Center in London, England.  Review the original goals of the project and retrace, through class discussion, how the project developed and changed. This phase is commonly missing from children's research projects. If the children were not able to produce some action from their project or if their action failed, it is particularly important that they review why this happened. Understanding the barriers to change can be as valuable to learning and as empowering to children as to actually changing something. Case Studies Review the related Case Study on The Child to Child Approach to Research and Action for Community Health. Resources Child to Child Trust (1995). The Child-to-Child Training Manual. London: The Child-to-Child Trust, The Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAL, U.K. Kaplan, Matt. Neighborhoods 2000: An Intergenerational Planning Curriculum. Available from The Children's Environments Research Group, The City University of New York, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016 (http://www.cerg1.org). UNICEF (1996). "Raised Voices", a film describing children learning about and taking action on their rights around the world.
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