The main principles of educational reforms being implemented in the countries under study in this volume support a school culture that stresses interactiveness, both in the school and between the school and the surrounding community. In the future, schools in the United States, India, Russia, and China will naturally change and develop in diverse directions. This book aims to provide schools, their teachers, and other stakeholders with qualitative and contextual information on the foundations and practical applications of community-based learning. The purpose of this volume is to study the philosophical views, educational aims, values, and practices of schools in these four countries.
The experiences of working educators and other participants as implementers of the new curriculum that stresses community-based learning should also be utilized in the preservice and in-service training of educators and others, such as administrative and social personnel. One important area of training is to develop forms of education offering the people involved an opportunity to construct internal models of action. They can connect different theories of learning and instruction to these models of action, to utilize later in their work. During the continuous formation of these models, experiences gained in practical work play an essential role along with critical deliberation on these experiences. The goal is to learn strategies that change school practices by means of transformative and experiential learning. Alice Y. Kolb and David A. Kolb (2017) wrote that “the journey to become an experiential educator can be challenging, surprising, frustrating, and, ultimately, rewarding. … We become educators by learning from our experience and it is this hard-won wisdom that is the foundation for our work” (pp. xix, xxi).
Overview
Community-based learning is seen here as constructed through the manifestations of the direct interaction between school education and reality outside the school. The concept thus designates the relationship between the pedagogy inside and outside the school. The most central function of this process is to articulate, internalize, and change the essence of reality, during which time intentional activity directs itself toward certain physical, mental, and cultural subcomponents of reality. In the early industrial United States, nature study and school gardening were particularly oriented toward the physical elements of reality. The learning context was a constituent of reality that consisted of physical objects and states as well as nature and the material outputs of human intellect. The Naturalistic Dimension was the primary socialization environment. School camping prioritized the constituent of reality that was made up of human mental states, the subcomponents of which were subjective experiences. Experiences originate in the personal context of learning based on each individual’s emotional, affective, and cognitive structure.
In neo-traditional India, craft-related education and social service marked the sociocultural context of learning. The intention of activities had as its object the constituent of reality that included the physical products of human cultural activity. Characteristic of craft-related education was its special concentration on the Productive Dimension of the socialization environment.
In the early Soviet Union, under the Narkompros, socially productive work was particularly oriented toward the physical elements of reality. The learning context was a constituent of reality that consisted of physical objects and states as well as nature and the material outputs of human intellect. In the early People’s Republic of China, productive work was similarly oriented toward the physical elements of reality. The learning context consisted of nature and the physical elements and physical outputs of reality. Each individual had experiences that originated in the personal context of learning based on an affective, emotional, and cognitive structure. In the early Soviet Union, the Sociocultural Dimension was the primary socialization environment, while the early People’s Republic of China prioritized the Productive and Martial Dimensions of the socialization environment.
Community-based learning in these four countries being studied has traditionally focused on the cultural subcomponents constituting reality. In the United States, the Republic of India, the Russian Federation, and the People’s Republic of China, emphasis was also placed on the sociocultural context of learning, even though the Scientific-Technical Dimension was primarily stressed within socialization environments. The central pedagogical approaches to community-based learning favored not only the Scientific-Technical Dimension but other dimensions of the socialization environment. In the United States, outdoor education prioritized the Sociocultural Dimension, while environmental education highlighted the Ecological Dimension. In India, work-experience education emphasized the Sociocultural Dimension, whereas socially useful productive work focused on the Sociocultural and the Productive Dimensions. In the Russian Federation, nature protection accentuated the Ecological Dimension, while conservation projects prioritized the Sociocultural Dimension. In the People’ Republic of China, characteristic of agricultural protection was its special concentration on the Practical-Agricultural Dimension of the socialization environment.
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our thanks to all who, in one way or another, contributed to the realization of this book. We are grateful to the Emil Aaltonen Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, and the Alfred Kordelin Foundation for their financial support. The writing process for this volume was carried out in the RICEI Project at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. We would like to take this opportunity to extend our sincerest thanks in particular to the following colleagues from the University of Jyväskylä for their support and encouragement in this project: Päivi Seppä, Director of Finance and Service; Hanna Sahinen, Financial Planning Coordinator; and Tuija Koponen, Head of the International Office.
We express our warmest thanks to the following colleagues for their invaluable support and advice over the years: Professor Emeritus Robert R. Arnove from Indiana University; Professor Emerita Shakuntla Nagpal from the National Council of Educational Research and Training in New Delhi; Professor Dhruv Raina from Jawaharlal Nehru University; Dr. Gennady Bordovsky, Vice-Chancellor from the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia; Professor Congman Rao from Northeast Normal University; and Professor Weiping Shi from East China Normal University. We are thankful to the reviewers who kindly commented on this volume and provided constructive feedback. We are indebted to Lea Galanter for her invaluable contributions in performing the language and copy editing of the entire text. We express our sincerest appreciation to Arjan van Dijk, Publishing Director, Evelien van der Veer, Acquisitions Editor, Alessandra Giliberto, Associate Editor, and Jolanda Karada, Production Editor, for making publication of this book possible.
Reference
Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2017). The experiential educator: Principles and practices of experiential learning. Kaunakakai, HI: EBLS Press.