Becoming a Cooperative Parent in a Parent Co-operative

Abstract

Over the years that I spent as a co-oper for my three children in this parent co-operative school, I gradually came to understand the philosophy and become part of the structure of this learning community. It took a long time for me to grasp the underlying principles—the “common thread” that weaves through the practices of this community. An understanding of the principles gives participants a basis for knowing what to do, but at the same time, it seems that participating is essential for finding the principles. When I was a new co-oper, my career as a developmental psychologist was largely unrelated to my activities in the classroom. My choice to send my first child to the OC, over a decade ago, was based on the suggestion of a colleague in the psychology department at the University of Utah, who said, “Just think of all the research you can do in the OC!” and talked me into coming to visit his daughter’s classroom. At the time, although I liked what I saw for my daughter, I could see no way that I could make use of the OC as a research site—it didn’t connect with the way I was studying children’s learning. Over time, though, what I learned from the challenges of seeking this program’s principles of learning, in order to participate in it, has transformed my research and scholarly work. It opened my eyes to this way of thinking about learning, which I believe can contribute to advances in developmental and educational research and theory. The program philosophy is apparent in my 1990 book, Apprenticeship in Thinking, though at the time I wrote it I did not recognize the depth of its influence in my work. A key question that perplexed me as I struggled to understand how to participate in a community of learners, as a parent new to the OC, was how adults and children can collaborate in learning. This is a puzzle to many parents as they enter the program; it is also a classic issue in the fields of developmental psychology and education.