Cambodian Children's Construction of Science and Mathematics in Out-of-School Situations

Sylvia D. Reyes

ABSTRACT

Information on indigenous patterns of children's early development in scientific and mathematical knowledge can bring positive contributions to increasing their learning efficiency and make the transition from home to school much easier. Prior to learning in school Cambodian children have already developed much of the knowledge and understanding that will influence most of their academic learning. Through an ethnographic method of inquiry the study explores how Cambodian children develop their scientific and mathematical knowledge in naturalistic situations at home and in the community.

The sample comprises three pairs of one girl and one boy, with ages ranging from 5 to 8 years drawn from the 3 predominant socio-economic groupings in the country: a rural farming/fishing community, an urban migrant (ex-countryside dwellers) poor community, and an urban middle class community.

The study raises many questions including: In what ways can this self-generated understanding bring any positive changes to school curriculum? This progress report will discuss some results from the study and offer possible strategies of dealing with high incidence of school wastage in the country. Currently there is very little research available which sheds light on these issues and the research in progress will provide some data on this important area.

INTRODUCTION

The study seeks to address the problem of school wastage in Cambodia by uncovering information about early development and learning patterns of children which may give hints as to what reasons cause them to repeat, leave, or simply lose interest in coming to school.

Development and learning pattern exhibited by children themselves in daily life situations of the home and community can bring some understanding about the way children deal with formal learning situations in school. The study documents these patterns or ways Cambodian children construct and understanding of their true-to-life experiences outside the school. It aims to generate what maybe a rich resource to guide the design of suitable materials and strategies for teaching-learning in science and mathematics. More

significantly, it aims to influence the local educational policymakers and planners in reengineering the educational design to favor an equitable provision of at least basic education of high quality to the poor majority, about 85%, of the country's population.

Four main questions provide an initial framework for the design of the study:

* What pre-existing knowledge in science and mathematics do Cambodian children

bring to school ? How do they construct this knowledge ?

* What are some of the factors affecting the way they construct this knowledge in

home and community situations ?

* Is there a match between the way Cambodian children construct their informal

knowledge and the way they are taught in school ?

* How is this pre-existing knowledge compared with the knowledge contained in the

formal teaching-learning situations they encounter in school ?

CONTEXT OF THE STUDY

The study is being undertaken in three selected areas in Cambodia, a country in Southeast Asia with about 11.4 million people Cambodia has gone through more than two decades of wars and political upheavals which have disadvantaged the country in a lot of areas, particularly decline in human resources. There has been massive loss of human lives since the seventies, earlier due to civil wars and later the genocidal political power that swept the country from 1975 through 1979. Today, despite the persistent turmoils of political instability, the country is striving hard to survive, with an annual growth rate of 2.44%. The massive death of children and adults in the seventies and now a rapid population growth have resulted to a population pyramid of which the young segment, aged 14 and below, forms the bigger base of about 45% (MoEYS/CDC, 1994). The quality of the future, not just survival of the people, therefore, rests on the development of Cambodian children.

But whether or not Cambodian children will be able to face the future indeed poses a big question because "... many of these children are disabled, and even more, malnourished; their rates of morbidity and mortality are high; illiteracy and under-education are commonplace; and many still suffer from the trauma of their parents' long and terrible nightmare. In addition the present generation of children and youth are facing new and less

familiar set of problems, including HIV transmission, child trafficking and drug abuse." (Unicef, 1995) The prospects of economic progress is also endangered by the presence of scattered landmines in many areas of the country which threaten to incapacitate the population who are predominantly subsistence farmers.

These challenges are not exclusive to parents and child caregivers alone. Children themselves have to face these challenges. Because of poverty, the Cambodian family offers very little opportunity for them to develop their full potential. The debilitating effects of poverty would place most Cambodian children in a category of 'children-at-risk' or 'children-in-especially difficult circumstances' by international standards. Compared to many of their Asian counterparts, children in Cambodia have to share a much greater burden of raising the family. Cambodia's adult population is largely female, 53.7%. This means many households are female headed, which also means more domestic responsibilities attributed to male member, such as farming, will have to be born by the mother and , of course, shared by the children. This fact is even compounded by one uncomfortable issue in Asian culture where children's contribution of labor to family and society could hardly be defined in terms of what age or type of work is appropriate for the child.

These facts show that children in Cambodia need special assistance in order to gain access at least to basic education of good quality. It is crucial that they develop the necessary skills to live a productive and self-sufficient life. Also, culturally, children are not given enough voice or rights to express themselves. They are, most often, used or exploited to provide the adults alternative means of production. They have no freedom of choice and many do not receive the just treatment they deserve for a wholesome development: physically, emotionally or intellectually. Education at the level most families can afford is of prime importance. Children themselves must be equipped with skills they need to surmount the many tasks ahead of them.

Education through formal schooling: a failure or survival ?

The school, by any human cultural tradition, is entrusted with the task of educating children to become full-grown adults. It assumes this role in addition to what the home or family and the wider community collectively contribute to children's development and education. But then the school, as the case in Cambodia, has also been blamed for its many weaknesses and shortcomings. This is documented by the high repetition and attrition rates at the primary level. The Ministry of Education in 1997 reports a repetition of 25% and a drop out rate of 19.9% of children from Grade 5 to Grade 6. This high wastage prolongs the period for one Cambodian child to complete primary education, if ever she/he would be able to complete at all. Thus, the normal 6 years of primary education for one Cambodian child is extended to about seven to ten years.

Greater priority should, therefore, be given to improving primary education. Statistics show that children aged 5-14 years of age, the age range which normally includes primary children and those in the foundational pre-primary years, constitute 24% of the population. Also, with

more than 84% of the people being agriculture-based rural dwellers, primary education is usually the only formal education most Cambodians can afford (UNESCO, 1991).

Science and mathematics: tools for empowering young minds

Mathematics and science have always been taken as vehicles for developing critical or analytical thinking which are, presumably, tools for problem solving and understanding the many complexities people encounter in daily life. Learning in science and mathematics are often regarded by educators as a process for developing the learner's capacity to employ representational thought which facilitate handling of myriads of information as one makes sense about the world (Hernandez & Fonacier, 1981). Young children's thinking needs to develop and be proficient in using these tools if they are to cope with the many issues confronting both their present and future in an ever changing world.

People usually see the value of structured formal schooling in enhancing children's innate capacity to think, advancing from a concrete to a more representational level, enabling them to generate more meaningful and efficient interpretation of their experiences. This view assumes that representational thought happens mostly in formal school learning. It seems to overlook the fact that it may also occur in less formal experiences such as the home where no structured assistance for such development is given to the child. The study wants to find out if this is really the case. Would there be any hint that prior home-based, out-of-school experiences have already set foundation, even up to the level of symbolic thinking, preparing for further development of child's thinking ?

Home-based prior learning experiences and alternative learning strategies

A number of research studies has documented that people, using strategies and skills acquired from prior learning experiences, can process the learning of new material better and with more ease. Also strategies and skills for problem solving people acquired from prior learning experiences were found to be products of their own devise in order to cope with the demands of real life.

These contentions address two existing flaws in many educational programs for young children today, especially in many poor countries: (1) children find no relevance in the content of the prescribed program for learning, and (2) children find themselves alienated and unable to cope with the learning conditions set by the programs. These two conditions could deprive the learner of the chance to develop his/her earlier problem-solving capacities acquired from previous home/community based experiences. If formalized, structured program of school learning fails to meet the situation of the learner, would contextualized, informally-acquired form of home learning be the right alternative ?

Many educational researchers and psychologists have explored the role of prior learning to providing an alternative strategy for successful further learning by an individual. Some have documented its positive, while others its negative, effects to succeeding new learning. For example, relating specifically to science and mathematics, prior learning has been described as 'inaccurate concepts' or 'misconceptions arising from faulty reasoning', as cited by Hernadez and Fonacier (1981); or 'mistakes', 'errors', 'misunderstandings', 'misinterpretation' of facts (Baras, 1984), or 'limited or inappropriate propositional hierarchies' coined by Helm and Novak as cited by Blosser (1987). There are still many other terms coined, again as cited by Blosser (1987), such as 'preconceptions', 'naive conceptions', 'naive theories', 'alternative theories', and 'alternative frameworks'.

Driver and Easley (in Blosser 1987) interpret that the way people have regarded prior learning as either in a positive or negative light, reflects the kind of belief they held about the nature of knowledge. For those who see prior learning as 'mistakes', 'errors', 'misunderstandings', 'faulty reasoning', knowledge is held as an objective, absolute form of reality which exists with or without the learner. For others who see prior learning experiences as 'alternative theories' or 'alternative frameworks', a more autonomous view of the learner is held, that is, he/she is able to construct his/her own alternative explanations about his/her experiences, and that knowledge is not absolute. This view puts informal learning experiences in a more legitimate position of being an alternative explanation of what may be true or correct.

Prior learning and different views on how children learn

Prior learning presupposes a cycle of processes in which learning occurs. Following the prior learning component is the new learning which may be the immediate or current learning situation confronting the child, or future learning experiences in which prior learning will be indispensably significant. Understanding how this cycle occurs can explain why prior learning exerts a strong influence on succeeding new learning. How the processes in the cycle occur has been a long-time subject of discussion among educational and developmental theorists.

The current study finds its significance within the context of the following theoretical perspectives on the way children learn involving prior learning as one particular stage in the process:

1. Social learning perspective. Today most educators recognize the significance of cognitive functioning in the learning process when human beings handle the environmental forces which behaviorism claims shape human development and learning. From a social learning theoretical perspective people do react to environmental stimuli but make use of their active cognitive functioning in processing meaning in them. Their cognitive functioning 'define, interpret, compare, contrast, give meaning to, and integrate stimulus events' as they construct meaning in these events (Albert Bandura in Zimbardo 1980).

Social learning further explains that learning occurs as observational, symbolic and self-regulated. Many of our behaviors are acquired through observation of models engaging in behaviors which the learner assesses for their validity and acceptability. Language and other symbolic systems enable the person to process, store, and retrieve experiences from these earlier observation which later can serve as guides for future decision making affecting behavioral development or change. The 'cognitive power of symbolizing' of the learner makes the difference. Information stored in the learner's language or symbolic system provide relevant theoretical explanation to the contention that previously learned behavior determine the learning of new ones.

2. Contextualist perspective. Following from the social learning theorist view that learning occurs within situations acted upon by the learner is the so-called contextualist theory, with Vygotsky having the most influential approach. Like the social learning theory it explains that children develop within a social context involving cognitive functioning as they employ symbolic systems in solving everyday problems of real life. Contextualist theory, however, claims further that cultural beliefs, knowledge, values, artifacts and physical setting determine the context, the timing, the methods, and the type of new experiences children encounter. Technical and psychological tools, particularly language, provided by the culture mediate the intellectual functioning of the child (Vygotsky, 1962).

A significant feature of Vygotsky's contribution to the theory is the so-called 'zone of proximal development' in the learning process of children. The theory describes that children undergo a transition from their actual to potential level of development within a process that is facilitated through collaboration or mediation by more competent adults or peers. Learning within this perspective does not happen in isolation. At some stage it is mediated or facilitated by another person, which may an older person or a peer of similar age.

3. Neuro-cognitive research perspective. Cognitive psychology has been in search of explanation of the way children learn and they have adopted a theory based on the function of how the brain processes information. Cognitive theorists have compared human learning capabilities to the way an information system works. Because of the brain, they claim, all people are equipped with the same information processing system, though some may use it better than others (Gagne et al, 1993).

In many studies concerning how the process works, researchers again have established and documented the critical role earlier or prior learning capabilities play in determining succeeding learning. Also a number of studies on brain function underscores the value of early experiences. They explain that the human brain's capacity to learn is determined most by the quality of experience a person gets at an early stage, about the age before entry to primary school. Early experiences are so powerful. The way the brain has been shaped by these experiences at an early age determines most of the future capabilities the person can have for learning in the future. From this position, again it may be construed that early experiences of children, particularly at pre-primary stage, are very strong determinants of their learning capacities at a later stage of life.

Studies on localization of brain functions have found many evidences suggesting that people learn in different ways which are shaped by earlier development and experience. Thus many educators now propose that teachers find appropriate strategies based on which type of functions students have developed more ((Arlin, Sperry & Bogen in Frank 1984).

4. Socio-cultural, anthropological perspective. Children have an inborn capacity to construct new knowledge of the world around them7. This inborn capacity, research has established, is influenced by certain experiences. Child-rearing and parenting style provide a lot of basis and nurturing for children at an early age, exerting tremendous influence to their capacity for learning in school. For example, comparison of the informal and formal mathematical performance of U.S. and Korean children showed that Korean children performed less than their U.S. counterparts for reasons such as the limited mathematical exposure Korean children get at home (Song and Ginsberg, 1987). Korean parents believe that education starts when the child enters school so they do not bother giving their children early stimulation activities during the pre-school years. Also Korean society's attitude towards being concerned with money at an early age is negative so that even counting money at an early age is not expected.

However, at a later age of 7 and 8 Korean children compensated their mathematical achievement in schools at a higher performance than US children. This was attributed to environmental-cultural factors of parental demands, assistance and high values parents put on the successful achievement of their children in school.

Other studies conducted in Asian countries such as Thailand, India, and the Philippines found similar findings concerning the effect of family and home upbringing to the value and attitudinal development of children (Suvannathat, 1979; Sakar, 1979, 1978; Guthrie and Jacobs, 1966).

5. Historical and political perspective. Advocates of equity and social justice suggest providing equal educational opportunities for under-represented people. They believe that locally established informal learning activities by the local culture can provide content and strategies for formal learning in school. The claim is that 'foreign imports' of education from the West such as curriculum and teaching-learning methodologies have not really helped people in third world countries.

In his essay, 'The Problem of Knowledge', Elkana (in Novak, 1987) asserts that 'every culture has its own science. Science and technology exported and imposed by one culture to another jeopardize the unique values of the latter's conceptions of reality, leading to a failure to understand the culture's indigenous problems'. In this perspective the country's colonial history, for instance, perpetuates not only the persistence of an outdated and irrelevant type of curriculum but also dependency on imported learning materials. This causes the country to neglect to seek the rich resources for learning its own people naturally have.

Locally established forms of learning and thinking can be the best tools for any given people to extend their knowledge of a wider world while meeting their own needs. Vygotsky saw these tools most significantly in the language, culture and other symbolic systems that people share together in a particular society.

The dependency on imported learning content and processes, after all, could pose three appalling threats: neglect of finding out the rich background of the local culture for supporting the natural patterns of nurturing the child; neglect of exposing any deficit in the existing local forms and methods of supporting child development; and failure to correct the deficit; and regression, if not suppression, of the child's potential for development due to the counter-productiveness of subscribing to a culturally inappropriate educational program.

In the above studies reviewed it is suggestive that prior learning is determined greatly by the kind of nurturing environment provided by the family to the child. There is the vital role of home-based experiences children get which will later determine what and how they will deal with future experiences such as learning in school.

What these perspectives suggest for the problem the study addresses

Summing up what earlier studies suggest, prior learning provides an enormous amount of potentials in supporting an efficient learning cycle of children. The function of prior learning in the cycle, if properly understood, can provide one missing link through which the issue of educational quality maybe addressed. Locally established patterns of early child learning offers four possibilities for supporting the education of Cambodian children: their optimal development, their increased capacity and capability for learning in any situation, relevant preparation for them for real-life problem solving demands, and survival and development of their culture within a global context of equal opportunity and participation.

One of the reasons why the school in Cambodia has failed is probably due to its neglect of these issues. Teaching or learning that is devoid of its socio-cultural relevance, and even more, of the psychological affinity which the young learner necessarily should find in it, will remain just like a hollow vacuum, deterring instead of bringing out the potentials of the child's natural development process.

DESIGN OF THE STUDY

The whole study has been originally designed to include data coming from three geographical locations, representing the predominant socio-economic grouping of Cambodia: (1) a rural farming-fishing community, (2) an urban middle class community, and (3) an urban migrant poor community. (Urban migrants are usually families who gave up farming in the countrysides and came to Phnom Penh, capital city, doing odd jobs and living in the poorest conditions.)

The preliminary plan is to include three pairs of one girl and one boy drawn from each of the 3 socio-economic groupings. One pair consists of pre-school age children who have not been to school, another pair of children in the first grade, and a third pair of children in the second grade of primary school. The choice of samples taken from the first two grades of primary school is driven by the fact that the greatest educational wastage has been reported in these grade levels.

There are two sets of data being collected: (1) children's construction of knowledge from everyday situations, and (2) the knowledge content and processes involved when teachers teach science and mathematics in the classroom. The first set of data is being gathered from the major activities children in each community usually engage themselves with which are categorized as: household chores, (2) earning a living, e.g. selling in the market, farming, fishing, etc., and (3) play and recreation (which include religious and other types of festivals or celebrations). The second set of data is being gathered from the corresponding number of teacher informants from primary schools in the three communities. The focus is on science and mathematics teaching in the first and second grades of primary school.

Method of the Pilot Study

Initially, I did casual observations of children of about the targeted ages, engaged in different activities in the different parts of the community. From these I recorded a collection of the most typical activities the children engaged themselves in from day to day. This was to provide a structured framework on which I based the observation of most typical activities as would be exhibited by the three selected child-informants. The listing of the most typical activities became a handy point of reference which guided me to do a more directed and systematic observations of children as I found there was such an uncountable number of activities they do.

During the preliminary observations, I selected the informants among the children who I found engaged in doing the most typical activities. Two of them were girls, one 8-year old second grader, and another 5-year old who was not attending school yet. The third one was a boy, 7 year-old first grader. Each activity found being typically performed by children was

recorded through informal observations of the selected informants. I recorded their descriptions through written notes and video tape, and wrote whatever insights or reflections that came out in a handy journal. The child-informants were asked to provide their own description of the activities with the help of the other children in the neighborhood who volunteered to add some of the details. The videotaped activities were shown to the child-informants for cross-check of the description and interpretation which I recorded. Analysis of each activity for its science and mathematics content, processes and other implications for teaching and learning was based on both of the children's and my own reflection on the meaning ascribed to the experiences.

During the course of child observations in the selected community, I also took the opportunity to visit and observe two of selected teachers teaching Grade 1 Mathematics and Grade 2 Science classes. Casually, after each period of observation, I tried to get the teachers explain the way they see how they teach science and mathematics, talk about the problems they had with the teaching, the students, the curriculum, textbooks and materials. It was always emphasized in the discussions that the purpose of the study was to see how earlier home or community based learning experiences of children may relate to their learning in school. From these observations of the teacher teaching I was able to gather a considerable amount of data to help me reflect on the kind of issues concerning teaching-learning in science and mathematics in the school selected. The teacher observation data were compared with the children's data and analyzed for the way they were related at all to children's informal scienzing/mathematizing activities outside the school.

The Setting

The site of the pilot study is a small village in a commune situated in a district in the outskirt of about 15 kilometers north of Cambodia's capital city. The village has its people numbering to about two thousand whose main occupation is subsistence farming all throughout the year and fresh water fishing during the rainy season. To supplement their income a few families engage in some small family-run enterprises such as pottery, palm sugar-making, sugar palm juice and wine selling, and some small-scale buy-and-sell activities done in nearby capital city markets.

In the village the children engage in different activities predominantly shaped by the outworkings of three main institutions: their family, the school, and the Buddhist temple (wat). The three institutions seem to picture a three-layered life-sustaining enclosure enveloping the child which provides the main lifeline for his/her nurture to growth and development. The family occupies the innermost layer which resembles an inner core from which the child derives the earliest form of nurture. Next is the school, the second layer, in which the child first encounters a more formalized figure in the person of as teacher mediating a more formalized structure for acquiring a universalized form of knowledge mainly recorded in printed textbooks. The third, outermost layer is the Buddhist temple (wat), which consists a much wider sphere of the 'other' figures the child encounters in the community. Like the school the village wat mediates some kind of a formalized yet localized

form of knowledge mediated mainly through oral tradition by another group of 'learned' adults in the community: the monks and the 'achar'. Temple based knowledge seems to outlive longer most of the formalized knowledge the school imparts.

The temple-based knowledge exerts a much stronger influence in directing the lives of the villagers. The people engage in activities which normally revolve in a cycle of yearly events attuned to the natural rhythmic pattern of the rainy and dry seasons. This cycle of activities revolves around Buddhist traditional practices such as the annual festivities hailing the coming of the New Year 'angel' . The New Year earmarks the start of a cycle of year round events, such as preparing for planting rice and sending off the monks to retreat for the rainy season, consulting the heavenly 'gods' during the Royal Ploughing ceremony for the kind of harvest and fortune people will have for the coming months, commemorating the dead ancestors who are believed to bestow blessings and favors to the living, welcoming the monks back from their retreat when the rain has stopped, and by the end part of the year, celebrating the bounty of the year's harvest in two big festivals of paying respect to the moon and the jubilant merrymaking boat races in honor of the water 'gods'. In summary, the temple serves as the authoritative facilitator for the many festivities, religious ceremonies and observance of the many rites of passage the people pass through from birth through death.

Also, interestingly, the temple houses one big water pond in its backyard which serves the whole commune for most of its people's household water needs. In addition to the year-round religious activities that are hosted by the temple, the pond functions as a socialization center for many of the children in the community who mostly, by tradition especially during the dry season, are entrusted by their families the responsibility of drawing water and carry it home from the pond for daily household use.

The school as the formal learning mediator for children in the community

Next door to the temple is a small primary school, Butterfly Primary Schoolstaffed by sixteen government personnel comprising 8 teachers, 1 librarian/substitute teacher, 1 headmaster, 1 assistant headmaster, and 3 administrative office workers. The school, with about 300 students, is the only one available in the village. There is a junior high school situated in another commune several kilometers away where some of the primary school graduates proceed for lower secondary education.

Like the rest of all schools in the country, Butterfly Primary School follows a program of study based on the curriculum set up by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. The national curriculum includes the four basic areas of Language, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies as the core subjects for a six-grade primary cycle. Every teacher in each grade level teaches all the subject areas, each for a 45-minute period. For each subject area the Ministry has developed textbooks, most of which now have accompanying teacher's

guide. The textbooks are for use by all schools in the country. They serve as the main source from where the teachers develop their lesson for teaching. Due to very limited government funds allocated for education, additional reference materials for teachers are almost non-existent.

Butterfly Primary School, like many of schools in other rural areas of Cambodia, has a high repetition rate, especially at the earlier grades 1-3, a yearly average of about 30-45% rate. As the grade level rises, many of the children drop out, leaving only about 20% surviving and finishing the final sixth year of primary school (MoEYS, 1994). Many children, especially from fifth or sixth grades leave school early to do paid work at the farm or in the city, hoping to earn a few riels to add up to their families' daily subsistence.

FINDINGS OF THE PILOT STUDY

Classification of activities children in the village commonly do

I was able to record four sets of activities from the initial observations I made. The types of activities confirmed the ones that I previously indicated in the research plan: (1) work as daily routine of home chores, (2) work as earning a living, (3) play (includes games, construction of toys), and (4) festivals, mostly religious, mainly organized by adults but offer lots of room for children to take an additional time to play and, for some, earn some money by selling holiday goodies.

I recorded the occurrence of the activities in terms of what time of the year children normally do them. The activities fitted into a regular yearly calendar of the two seasons in the country: rainy and dry. I found that children performed most of the activities with other people: either with an adult (parent or caregiver such as family relations: aunts, uncles, grandparents, older neighbors), or with friends or siblings of a younger or older age. I also recorded some activities which children did alone.

The initial observations recorded that, except for half of the play activities which were gender-specific, there were very few differences between the type of activities engaged in by boys and girls within the age range chosen by the study. Most of the activities were unisexual, that is both boys and girls were observed doing them. Even the usually female-typecast ones, such as cooking, minding younger siblings and playing hopscotch or jumping rope, were observed being performed by boys. Age was hardly seen as selective of the activities among the observed children within the age group selected. Oftentimes, older and younger siblings do things together, or the younger, being with the older, watching and copying the actions of the latter.

Play is fun, but work can be fun and fulfilling too

Although the four types of activities were established as separate sets of engagement, I observed that some children saw the value in certain types of them as overlapping. In many of the observations, I noted that work or play did not really matter if it amused the child and challenged his/her curiosity. For example, drawing water from the well or pond was done both as a duty to help the family and a play for fun and amusement by the child. Wild edible food gathering, such as crab hunting, was also one example. Children went out as duty to collect food for dinner but expressed much of their enjoyment in doing it. They thought the activity was a lot of fun and challenge to their imagination in trying to find the right holes in the mud where crabs would be abundantly found. To the children, crab hunting sounded like it was just another hide-and-seek game which involved crabs instead of human playmates.

Also many of the children expressed a sense of pride for being able to help the family as this is highly valued in Cambodian society. Girls, particularly, are assigned their worth and value in the family and society as a whole, based on the quality of housework they could perform. In Cambodian society mothers are applauded when they take care of the children well while being able to keep the house neat and orderly, with proper food and clothings for everyone in the family. Men are valued for being good provider and protector of the members from possible harm or danger. With the effects of the many years of wars, this role now is also assumed by many women, particularly single mothers who were left to themselves caring for the children after the husband died or disappeared during the war.

Most Common Household Chores the Children Do

Household

chore

Sex

Rainy Season

Dry Season

With parent/

caregiver

With peers/

siblings

Alone

1. Minding younger siblings

M/F

X

X

X

X

X

2, Gathering firewood

3. Drawing/fetching water

4. Cooking/preparing food/dishwashing

5. Washing clothes

6. Cleaning house/ sweeping yard

7. Caring for home grown plants and

animals

M/F

M/F

M/F

M/F

M/F

M/F

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

Everyday science and mathematics: exploring the concrete, the hypothetical and the supernatural

I noted that mathematics and science in most of the activities came in the form of both physical and intellectual manipulations by children of a great variety of sensory-motor experiences using all of their senses. Experiences came through manipulations of the basic natural elements such as water, wind and fire, and the living and non-living parts of the natural world they live in. Children do a lot of observing, noting and describing details with what they see around them. For example, as they went picking edible plants, they distinguished skillfully the smell of one variety of a mint spice leaf used for one type of soup

from the other varieties. Boys going out for the crickets would discriminate very quickly the fighting variety of the 'iron cricket' from the edible 'coconut cricket'.

The children were exposed everyday to both the quantitative and qualitative change processes in the environment. The quantity of produce they harvested in the farm and helped mother sell in the market provided most opportunities for employing their counting and basic mathematical operations which they learned to a large extent from the day-to-day transactions they do with the older people in different situations. They did much counting

comparing, measuring, designing, constructing and explaining when engaged in many of the activities such as herding the cows, feeding the chickens, picking fruits and vegetables, catching fish and other animals for food, constructing a toy truck or festival lantern, and explaining to a younger sibling the reason why crabs share holes in the mud with frogs. It is worthwhile noting, too, how much estimating the children did as they carried out many of their measuring and comparing using locally standardized units of measure: body parts and indigenous materials for measuring or counting.

I have also noted some higher form of thinking already in operation in some of the children's activities. For example, the younger 5-year older of the two-sister informants accounted that she was able to prove that, 'if you see lots of frogs around the rice paddies then you will find many crabs around the area'. The if-then relationship was very pronounced in the girl's cognitive functioning as she thought of proving this hypothesis the first time her older sister told her so. The girl tested the statement by looking into every hole where she could find a frog. In several trials she saw a frog first and later a crab inside one hole. She, then, knew her sister's statement was true. Later on she explained that the frog was not able to bore its hole in the mud and therefore should ask the crab, which is able to do it, to share its 'house' with the frog.

A similar hypothesis testing venture was done by the boy-informant with his friends as they look for 'iron crickets' around the neighborhood. They were earlier told by his friends that if it is dark and wet, then more crickets are found in the area. That is why they went out hunting for crickets at night along the moist areas underneath the rocks and fallen branches or trunks of trees. They explained this was so because crickets have plenty of food to find in the wet areas, and that they normally go out in big numbers at night looking for mates.

My observations showed that everyday children could see countless numbers of change processes in nature such as growth and reproduction among living things, death or degeneration of plants, animals and people due to aging or diseases, unpredictable weather or climactic changes throughout the year such as the change in wind direction and water flow in the river on a certain time of the year, the changing pattern of rainfall every rainy season and the disappearance of many freshwater animals during the dry hot season. They witnessed how these changes influenced many of their daily life activities, affecting quality of people's life such as children getting sick of dengue fever when the tiger mosquito appears in great numbers at the onset of the rainy season, or floods drowning the rice crop, or a certain plant disease causing all the vegetables plants to wilt or rot. Observing these changes, children got much exposure to the cause-and-effect relationships that rule many natural events and processes in nature.

Most Common Activities the Children Do to Help the Family Earn a Living

Activity to earn a living

Sex

Rainy Season

Dry Season

With parent/

caregiver

With peers/

siblings

Alone

1. Planting rice / other crops,

including harvesting

2. Tending/herding work

animals

3. Selling farm produce /

selling small grocery items

4. Fishing

5. Gathering wild-grown

edibles

6. Selling water

M/F

M/F

M/F

M/F

M/F

M

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

From the observations I have also gathered many examples of children using the supernatural causes to explain the occurrence of certain life events. In some instances the explanation came from what they heard from the adults who by traditional beliefs and opinions attributed the causes to the unseen world of superstition and supernatural forces. Children believed, for example, the power of an unknown force embodied in a puppet, scarecrow-looking figure called 'ting mong' to protect people from disease or death. During the outbreak of rice wine poisoning in many rural areas due to adulterated alcohol mix, the 'ting mong' was a common picture found among the households in the rural areas. When fear and terror struck them, the people constructed the fearsome-looking 'ting mong', placed in front of their house doorsteps believing that it has the power to drive away the spirit of disease, danger or death. The 'ting mong' has been reported used by people living in Western Cambodia to drive away unknown forces or spirits believed to cause epidemics of dengue fever.

Most Common Play Activities the Children in the Commune Do

Play

Sex

Rainy

Season

Dry

Season

With

parent/

caregiver

With

Peers/

siblings

Alone

Leng chus - hitting cards/money bills

Leng tres (Jack's sticks)

Count as many pictures as you can

Criss-cross pattern tallying

Plastic bag parachute

Kite flying

Sugar palm leaf spinning wheel

Toy boat race

Tin can automobile

M

F

M/F

F

M

M

M

M

M

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

Tin can dump truck

Tin can fire truck

Festival lanterns

Blowing soap bubbles

Marbles relay

Running relay with old motorbike tire

Cricket wrestling

Grass cock fighting

Jumping rope

Elastic band jump

Catch-me-if-you-can

Piggy ride/horse ride relay

M

M

M/F

M/F

M

M/F

M

M

M/F

M/F

M/F

M/F

M/F

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

The chicks and the hawk

Leng mak (hopscotch)

Leng angkonh (New Year's popular game)

Play house/store/market/school

Play ghost/giant

M/F

M/F

M/F

M/F

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

Major Annual Festivals the Children Join in Celebrating

Chinese New Year February/March

Khmer New Year March/April

Royal Ploughing Ceremony May

Buddhist Lent

Pchum Ben (Ancestors Day) September

End of Monks Retreat

Bon Kathen September/October

King's Birthday October 29-31

Water Festival (Boat Races) November

The monotony of school mediated learning: exploring the obvious

The form of children's activities I observed inside the classroom while teachers teach was far away from the pictures I have seen of them in the informal settings at home and in the community. Rigidity, perhaps, is a better word to describe how children behaved and responded during the teaching episodes I observed. The kind of spontaneity and freedom I

observed in children in the out-of-school activities amazingly was transformed into a state of a passive and controlled behavior inside the classroom. This maybe attributed to a Cambodian custom which expects people to be more 'formal' and less assertive to show a respectful attitude towards a figure in authority such as a teacher. There was a couple of instances when students pointed out error in the classmates' seatwork or boardwork involving computational drills. But none of such questions as a follow on the teacher's questions or explanations were seen.

Teacher explaining to the children was the most common method I saw during the lessons. There were occasions when manipulative activities were used, such as in a first grade Maths class, when children were given chopsticks to be used for an addition lesson. But again, teacher explaining and demonstrating the operation preceded the children's turn to do the operation by themselves. A similar thing was observed in the Grade 2 Science lesson on classification of animals. The teacher showed pictures of the different 'baby' animals with their 'mother' while asking the children in what form each animal was when it was born (egg or a young copy of the parent). The pictures were reproduced exactly from the drawings contained in the textbook lesson. The same procedure was done with the following lesson on the different types of animal shelter.

Hand-drawn pictures dominate the scenes in most of the teaching. Even in Mathematics lessons, pictures of objects were usually used. In the Science lesson, it was almost always that the teacher used pictures that were exact reproductions of the illustrations accompanying the text.

I also noted that teachers would hardly form their own questions nor did any alteration, extension, or enrichment of the content that they took from the textbook in preparing their lesson. They took up exactly, even word for word, the questions and the processes for developing the lesson as contained in the textbook. I noted, however, the culturally-appropriate pictures that were used in the textbooks. Most of the content, especially of the Science textbook, relates to the real-life situations or events of the pre-dominantly agricultural Cambodia. It was obvious, however, to find the presentation of many lessons as hardly a chance for enhancing the development of higher level of thinking skills by children. Rote or simple recall was simply the pervasive mode of thinking encouraged in the textbook lessons and reinforced by the teacher's way of teaching.

"Learning starts at birth, but it can die in school."

So goes one Sri Lankan educator's thought about the learning process. The current study in focus will have to establish more extensive interpretation of the children's activities that were recorded both in the naturalistic home/community and school settings. It may be safe, however, to put forward even at this premature stage of the research one concluding observation that children in the Cambodian community observed have a very rich resource around them for their learning and development. As the Sri Lankan educator quoted above, this rich resource may not accomplish its purpose for an optimum development of children

due to the jeopardizing effect of the school-based type of learning they get. The school seems to ignore that children carry with them a rich foundation on which formalized learning could built up. Naturalistic learning in out-of-school situations renders a much deeper and holistic development for children. The psychomotor, cognitive and affective aspects are imbedded strongly in experiences and types of products that are personally and socially relevant for the learners.

When children learn their counting in work or play situations, they find real meaning in it, much of a contrast to the school Mathematics that is usually impersonal, mechanical, and tiresome. In many instances it maybe the monotony of recalling facts and information imposed by the textbook and the teacher, which for most children were nothing but adulterated version of the more challenging real experiences they encounter outside the school. In real-life situations there is much room to test and try one's understanding with people of different ages in a variety of situations. The children's development of concepts is mediated by a rich background of language use and other symbolic systems that function in a much wider and richer scope of activities in the community. The school in Cambodia is so limited in this respect.

It may also be the more value and self-fulfillment the children find in informal learning events they deal with. They get the immediate value and satisfaction for being able to count the number of cows to be herded each day, ensuring that none went astray. Their parents feel pleased about this achievement as well, thinking that their children, at an early age, can be entrusted with such important tasks, which later will have prepared them for independent, responsible adult life.

But for children themselves, more than anything else, is the joy and excitement in exploring an unlimited possibility of what they might find in their environment. The child-like characteristics of curiosity and investigation surely have their place in naturalistic learning activities. This is lacking in the presently existing school-mediated experiences.

A lesson from history

In Cambodia, history has much to say about the way the educational system has developed into what it appears today. The quality of learning materials were just products of a culture that was shaped by a rather uncomely relationship between the local culture and an imposing colonial power of the past. Historical records contain many accounts of a colonial power that ruled the country for about a century, finding its instrument in education in subduing the people's reasoning and capacity to deal with their own problems by themselves. Even the succeeding Marxist-based regimes, which successfully put an end to the foreign colonial rule as well as placed the monarchy in a state of life-and-death struggle for survival, were no different from the colonizers in having suppressed the local people's intellectual development. Years of repressive regimes have developed the schools into nothing more than a machine for regurgitation of facts and information, most of which would

not even be subjected to scrutiny by the learners. The study finds its hardest challenge in seeing schools transformed despite its dark historical past.

A PRELIMINARY CONCLUSION

The results of the pilot investigation will be employed as guidelines to proceed with the more demanding process of the main study for another one or two-year period. The results will need more interpretation and in-depth analysis, particularly in the pedagogical aspects that are implied in the children's activities. As the purpose of this paper is to present what has been currently in the process of research, more anecdotal accounts were used just to brief the readers on how this type of study is being conducted.

During the course of my observation and discussions with the teachers, I have also noted that the main thesis I have seen evolving from the study is the discrepancy between the quality of previous learning experience of children and the kind of learning experience they get inside the classroom. I have been reflecting on a possibility of including a small feature to the study in the form of an action research addressing this discrepancy with the involvement of a few teachers participating in the main study. I am aware of the danger that the thesis of the study may just remain a rhetoric as teachers themselves lack the awareness of the issues. They should be helped in doing even some small steps of changes in their approach to teaching. I have noted in my observations that teachers were once the children in the community themselves. They went through the same experiences. What they might had as children were lost or degenerated either due to unavailable opportunities to develop further at an older age or as they went through the same system of schooling where further development of those childhood experiences were not encouraged. Teachers need to be revived of these childhood experiences so that they would be able to emphatize with the children themselves.

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