Action Research
Chiu Action Research Projects
Project 1: Preserving Our Past
Project 1: Preserving Our Past
The Context - Caves of Peru
The context of this first cycle is the rich history of Peru spanning thousands of years. We have thousands of archaeological sites, most of them are neglected. There are people that looted the sites searching for gold objects, or taking some objects for selling destroying any evidence of our past history. The province in which the school is located has around 745 archaeological sites but only four of them are guarded. One of these sites is called Quillarumi which is a cave where there are cave paintings and that has been severely damaged by people. Some people complained that authorities didn't do anything to care for our heritage, and they use to respond that they didn't have a budget for taking action. Meanwhile, the art of the past was being destroyed by the graffiti of today.
Research Question
If we present the students with a challenging problem situation which concerns all of them,
will they be willing to engage in fixing the situation?
Observe
The first action was to take the students for hiking to the Quillarumi caves and show them the paintings and ask them to study the cave drawings and the surroundings. We use the situation of the archaeological site as a pretext to challenge the students by asking them questions such as: To whom does this cultural heritage belong? Are you proud of how it looks? Would you bring foreign visitors to show the cave in these conditions?
Student Reflections
The students reflected on the value of the cave paintings but they also acknowledged that they were damaged from the graffiti and actions made by some people who sliced part of the rocks containing the paintings. They also noticed that there was a lot of litter around. The first idea was to go to the people who are in charge of cultural heritage and convince them to solve the problem, but they knew they would do nothing, so they had to decide what to do.
Plan
The students, inspired by the quote from U. S. President John Kennedy " Ask not what your country can do for you-- ask what you can do for your country” , took on the task of preserving their history. They decided to go there and do some cleaning. They found that they were not allowed to go and work on the walls unless they received some instruction of what would and would not be effective methods for preserving the art and the cave walls. That meant they would need to receive some training in conservation.
The school organized this training and students volunteers received this training. While this activity was voluntary and participating did not directly affect their school grades, it did provide extensive experience in the sciences, art, and handicraft. Students who participated learned chemistry, geology, art, scale, archaeology, history and government. The project was to be extensive and difficult. Students developed values some of them tied specifically to citizenship. For example, using the motto: “Your fatherland was built by volunteers, not by mercenaries” students came to understand that doing voluntary work with no money or grade credits was contributing to the “social good” of all. They also developed character traits such as grit, determination, and fitness, as learning conservation skills is painstaking and hiking to the caves was strenuous.
Student Action
The student took action to restore the site. They reflected on their progress which was visible and finally they reported their outcomes in this video presentation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgl0qH2jQMU
Analysis of the project
Only secondary students were allowed to participate, as the hiking to the caves is strenuous. Around 60% of the students took part in the project and they spend around 40 hours attending some seminars and conferences given by experts, and also learning and practicing the techniques for cleaning rocks. The preparation took around two months and they meet on sessions between one and three hours. The day of the climbing around 40% of the secondary students participated.
Reflection:
I was not surprised that a number of students would like to climb towards the archeological site. After all, they are young and quite fond of an adventure. I guess that more of them would have like to take part but their parents didn't allow them to come as they are too protective of their children. What surprised me was that they were interested also in the preparation for the task, some activities were enjoyable, but others required careful attention to challenging presentations given by the professional people. I think it was very important that a group of teachers was also inspired, they realized that the conservation of the archaeological site could be their contribution to something called “cultural heritage” and if this is “your” heritage you should take care of it.
Even more, if the kids do it with their own pocket money and time, they have the right to tell the authorities, “you are paid for doing that, and don’t tell me you can not do it because we have done.” That brings to me a reinforcement of the school motto which is to “Learn to learn,” and also the school’s mission of providing a place where everybody learns, students, teachers and, of course, myself. It also brings into discussion some questions that are important for the school and education overall, some of them are:
- Learning from the context We study Egypt, Rome, World ancient civilization, etc but in our own backyard, we have more than 700 historical sites. Only a handful of them are taken care of and almost none of them are studied.
- Teaching values--Responsibility. The question is: “who is responsible for what?’ Usually, people complain about the elected authorities. In citizenship classes, the students are told that specific officials have the duty of securing, protecting or developing our resources. There is less emphasis on the fact that we are the people who elect them and that personal responsibility for everything that happens in our place. When I apply this view to education I think that schools have received the duty to educate the children but at the same time families and the state have forgotten that they also have some responsibility on doing that and that at least in our country they are not fulfilling it. Responsibility is a value for our school and that adds also the question of teaching a value, personally, I still think values should not be taught, they should be practiced!
- Teaching values – Empathy & solidarity. There are some kids who are very good at sports, so they don't have any problem climbing the hill, but there are others that are not fit for such an enterprise, the kids have learned not to laugh about the laggards, but to help them and also to take responsibility of the younger and weaker ones.
- Explicit and tacit knowledge. Schools have specialized in teaching the explicit knowledge with disregard from the tacit parts and also the attitudinal part. The attitudinal part has more to do with values, so a way of learning is through imitation and example.
Cycle 1: Restoration
Cycle 1: Restoration
Observation
A second tour to the caves was made by the teachers and students involved in this project. They wanted to further study the cave paintings. They were disappointed when they saw the condition of the cave and its surroundings. They observed that people had already painted new graffiti and the surrounding area was again covered with litter. This time the students were prepared to do some work with the cave painting, they started to take pictures of the paintings and make drawings on a scale 1 to 1 of the pictures. They also recorded ambient conditions like temperature and humidity. After the work they did, they cleaned up the litter and returned to the city.
Students Reflection
The main conclusion of the students could be stated as “ What good is it to clean up the garbage, remove the graffiti, and inform the authorities when nothing is done to protect and maintain the site?.” In talks with an archaeologist from the Ministry of Culture, they came to the idea that some kind of protective barrier needs to be built without damaging the archaeological ensemble.
Plan
It was planned to make a design of a fence which would encircle the archaeological ensemble without harming the value of the archaeological site. For that task, they would need permission to build the fence and they would need to work with an archaeologist from the Ministry of Culture to help decide where the fencing should be placed not to cause any danger to the site. The students and the teacher meet like 5 times to speak about the suggestion for the protection and also about the way how they would carry out.
Action
At a planned date the students, teachers and the archaeologist climbed the way to Quillarumi and the students took the measure, made a topographic map of the site. With the help of the teachers, a fence project was developed which included calculating costs, designing timeline, and obtaining the approval of the Ministry that a barrier was technically feasible without damage to the archaeological site.
Students made a presentation requesting permission from the Ministry to permit them to acquire organizational funding to finance the project and to allow them to work in this protected area. The German Embassy in Peru promised to fund it but only if the students got official permission from the Ministry to allow working in the archeological site.
Cycle Reflection
The action took place almost a year after the first one, but it also involved students , teachers and some technical people from the Ministry. In this case, there were some new students, but the experienced ones received the task of training the new ones. Among the students who took part in the activity there was a kind of pride of having taken part, and they were telling the new ones that if they don't climb to the archaeological site they were not true students of the school. This can be seen as the beginning of forming a tradition of a kind of institutionalized activity that will be done each year. The students were asking for the activity and I thought that it was because of the fun they had together, but there was also the sense of taking action for a good cause. The students wanted to be valued.
Teaching values – For many students the climbing is not as easy as for others, for them it was a lesson on grit, just endure , because up to this point, no student from the school has failed to reach the site. Nobody wanted to be the first one. On the other side, they were cheered by the students when the arrived, and I usually asked them how they felt when they reached their goal. They can get a lesson for life, that is the feeling of reaching a goal justifies the effort.
Cycle 2 Perservation
Cycle 2 Perservation
When projects are made by governments, they usually take long, so from the idea to a proposal it may take years, and also from the proposal to completion, so normally that is real life, so why shouldn't real life be introduced also in this project? Time spans in real life are not the same as in the schools and also I think it is good to learn from setbacks and this experience should also be given to the students, also to show the students than in life grit is a value they have to have in order to be successful.
Observation
Months were passed and the permission never came. All kind of excuses were by the people in charge of the Ministry. The possibility of getting financing through the German Embassy was lost
Reflection
The students start to learn how the system works in our country and that in order to make things that make good to the society, it is necessary to have grit and resilient and try many times to get something. They also learn that in order to make evil you don't need permission, but to do good the road is full of obstacles.
Plan
There was planned to make another tour of cleaning the archaeological sites and take new students who never made the hiking tour, but it was combined with an Iearn Project which measured the earth circumference of the Earth using the Eratosthenes method.
Action
The action can be seen in the following video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZJ1_tWbla4&feature=youtu.be
Cycle Reflection
When projects are made by governments, they usually take long, so from the idea to a proposal it may take years, and also from the proposal to completion, so normally that is real life, so why shouldn't real life be introduced also in this project? Time spans in real life are not the same as in the schools and also I think it is good to learn from setbacks and this experience should also be given to the students, also to show the students than in life grit is a value they have to have in order to be successful.
Epilogue
After the three cycles, I still want to know more about what the students are learning from this experience. I know that they enjoyed it, as they did not have to be there. But what connections did they make to the history and their role and responsibility as citizens? A year later a class with some students who had taken part in the Quillarumi caves project and some who had not, went on a field trip to visit a community. On their way, they visit some all pre-inca walls. As soon as the bus stopped, the students who had not been a part of the project ran toward the walls, climb over them and began took selfies. The students who had Quillarumi experience instructed the other students to step down off the walls and took this action without any intervention from a teacher. They had learned to respect, preserve, and value their heritage. While we might not have a school test for this, they demonstrated what it means to be a responsible citizen of Peru.
Cycle 3 Measuring the Earth
Cycle 3 Measuring the Earth