anthropology is elemental

J. LYNN FUNKHOUSERUniversity of Alabama

JULIANN FRIELUniversity of Alabama

MELINDA CARRUniversity of Alabama

KELLY LIKOSUniversity of Alabama

CHRISTOPHER D. LYNNUniversity of Alabama

A n t h r o p o l o g y i s e l e m e n t a l :

A n t h r o p o l o g i c a l p e r s p e c t i v e t h r o u g h m u l t i l e v e l t e a c h i n g

Modern academia is a concomi-tant venture involving research,teaching, and service. This arti-cle outlines a reimagined service-learning project that provides re-search and teaching experienceto undergraduate and graduateanthropology students. We teachgraduate students to teach under-graduates to teach anthropologyto elementary school children. Weoutline benefits of teaching anthro-pology to children who are con-siderably younger than the tra-ditional undergraduate student—benefits to the children and to theundergraduate and graduate in-structors. We examine student out-comes at the primary and uni-versity level and demonstrate howteaching can help university stu-dents more deeply integrate re-search experiences. While not with-out impediments, we propose thisapproach as an educational part-nership model that can be adaptedto suit any elementary school.Teaching anthropological researchin elementary schools exposes amore diverse demographic of stu-dents to concepts including evolu-tion, race as a cultural construct,and the impact of culture on hu-mans. [applied anthropology, pri-mary education, service learning]

I n t r o d u c t i o n

Modern academia is a concomitant venture in-volving research, teaching, and service. Thehallmarks of this new era in higher educationare an emphasis on the necessity of effectiveteaching and of service as an engaged commu-

nity member. This article outlines a “reimagined service-learningproject” (Copeland et al. 2016) that provides research, teaching,and service experiences to undergraduate and graduate anthropol-ogy students. “Anthropology Is Elemental” is a course we offerin the University of Alabama Department of Anthropology toundergraduate students that trains them to teach four-field an-thropology over a whole semester in local elementary schools. Thecourse is directed by an anthropology faculty member, taught byan anthropology doctoral student, and exposes elementary schoolstudents in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to the anthropological perspec-tive via an activity-based, four-subfield curriculum. This outreacheffort has two primary foci. The first is to offer anthropologycurricula at local partner schools, as there are many benefits ofintroducing anthropological concepts in early education. Four-field anthropology is grounded in the sciences and humanitiesand, thus, is able to convey “cross-cutting concepts” as definedby Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States 2013).More importantly, providing anthropology education at the pri-mary school level exposes a more diverse demographic of studentsto concepts including evolution, race as a cultural construct, andthe impact of culture on humans. The second focus is to traingraduate and undergraduate anthropology majors in pertinentpedagogical practices and literature through student-centered in-struction and team-teaching methods.

ANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Vol. 40, No. 2, pp.246–257, ISSN 0094-0496, onlineISSN 1548-1425. C© 2016 by the American Anthropological Association. Allrights reserved.DOI: 10.1111/napa.12105

A n t h r o p o l o g i c a l p e r s p e c t i v e v i a m u l t i l e v e l t e a c h i n g � Annals of Anthropological Practice

Anthropology education as a form of com-munity outreach uses ideals and methods fromapplied, practicing, and public anthropology(Lamphere 2004). Collaboration with communitypartners results in experiential learning for all partiesand helps facilitate long-term bonds between partic-ipants. These community-based endeavors also as-sist in situating 21st-century American anthropologyonto an increasingly diversified national landscape.Today, our emerging scholars are taught the utilityof applying their valuable skill set to areas of publicpolicy, research and health, and primary and sec-ondary education, to name but a few (Lamphere2004; Scheper-Hughes 2009).

In developing our program, we implicitly followa philosophy developed by Brazilian educator PauloFreire (1970) and outlined by van Willigen (2002)as a “cultural action” approach. The cultural actionapproach aligns with the critical ethos of the anthro-pology of education model. Freire was concernedwith the dehumanization of Brazilian peasants thatwas taking place through an education system thatdid not match real-world needs and issues. Freiresuggests that education approaches tend to be ori-ented either toward “banking” or “problem posing.”Most institutional models use the banking approach,in which schools deposit knowledge into a studentthrough teacher narration. The banking approach,suggests Freire, is a means by which the dominantclass indoctrinates a subordinate class. The problem-posing approach, on the other hand, involves crit-ical interaction and reflection between teacher andstudents, with each side learning from the other(van Willigen 2002). A pedagogy that involved di-alogue between students and teachers has potentialto humanize everyone involved as an “authentic”experience. Authenticity, in this way, means the ed-ucation addresses the social roles and statuses ofthe parties involved and is created through interac-tion, rather than a top-down approach (see Brondoet al. 2016 for a similar model). Students and teach-ers are, at all levels, “equal participants in the pro-cess, not simply objects of the process” (van Willigen2002:94).

We designed the Anthropology Is Elementalproject to be a combination of practice and the-ory and integrate the banking and problem-posingapproaches. Topics are chosen by the undergradu-ate student instructors and have included lessonsand activities on archaeology garbology, museuminterpretation, symbolic communication, body artand modification, rites of passage, cultural diffusion,

language, landscape, foodways, primate ecology,paleoanthropology, Mendelian genetics, race andethnicity, osteology, and forensics. We provide ourstudents a baseline of disciplinary knowledge, but,in the classrooms where we train undergraduate andmaster’s students to teach primary students, the ed-ucation is almost exclusively problem posing in na-ture. There are no extant models in anthropologythat employ this method of multilevel teaching, so,throughout the five-year history of our project, pro-graming has developed as an interaction among un-dergraduate and graduate students and professorsthrough experience in elementary school classrooms.

P r o b l e m p o s i n g i n e l e m e n t a r y

a n t h r o p o l o g y : D e v e l o p i n g

p e d a g o g y f r o m s c r a t c h

The Anthropology Is Elemental project began with achallenge. Some years ago, one of us (C.D.L.) agreedto partner with another professional anthropologistto teach a one-off educational outreach program co-ordinated by the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA)of a local elementary school in partnership with vari-ous University of Alabama faculty. Each partner wasasked to teach a 12-week course that would meetfor 45 minutes a week with the same group of stu-dents. With little awareness of how to teach four-field anthropology at the elementary level, C.D.L.sent an e-mail requesting student volunteers. Sevenreplied, including the first author (J.L.F.), and eachwas asked to “come up with a hands-on activity toteach kids something about how we conduct an-thropology with minimal lecturing.”

We were given two months to prep and, in thattime, created “modules” with which to team-teachthe course. One of the strengths of this initial phasewas that the student volunteers had very diverseinterests within anthropology, including biologicalanthropology, biomedical anthropology, archaeol-ogy, bioarchaeology, and museum studies. We wereable to parlay that array of expertise into the activ-ities we developed for a four-field curriculum. Theinitial module/activity roster (Table 1) was an as-sortment of what we thought the students wouldenjoy, were interested in teaching, and could deviseactivities for.

Our elementary anthropology course was so suc-cessful we have been asked to return each year and,after the second year, to offer a course each semester.Since its inception, our program grew from this first

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Annals of Anthropological Practice � Vo l u m e 4 0 N u m b e r 2 N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6

TA B L E 1 . Initial Schedule of Activities for a 12-Week PTA Partnership Course in Anthropology

Week Theme Activity

1 Archaeology of trash Assemble home, school, office, restaurant kits2 Museum interpretation of trash Build dioramas/interpret material culture exhibit3 Symbology of hieroglyphs Mayan symbol system; invent your own for your

group4 Symbology of tattoos and body

adornmentTypes of body adornment, temporary tattoos for

your group5 Clan rites of passage Initiate your group as a “clan”—songs, activities,

markings, codes, language—baboons, chimps,penguins, ducks

6 Cultural diffusion/telephone Your clan invented a new way of doingsomething—communicate it

7 Nonhuman primate food andcommunication

Other primates have solutions to similar problemssuch as food

8 Primate walking and bipedalism Clan races—run like baboon, chimp, penguin, duck9 Race and Mendelian genetics Why we compare ourselves to other animals and

what are the true differences among people10 Tree of life Put all this on a timeline that we can put up in the

hall—cut out photos and put in order11 Forensic anthropology Solve a crime using what you know about culture,

biology, and evolution12 CSI Present results of forensics activity

component, elementary school outreach, to a secondthat includes a cross-listed service-learning anthro-pology course on outreach and elementary educa-tion, to a specialized course at the middle schoollevel.1 Over the years since, numerous affiliated in-structors have since refined the program to includean even greater diversity of expertise, including oneformer elementary teacher turned anthropology ma-jor. Despite a number of changes, however, student-centered teaching has remained at the core ofour program.

While student-centered teaching is in many waysan old idea in modern garb, it has come to in-form many of the long-term choices made withour outreach program and associated universitycourse. In student-centered teaching, knowledge isco-constructed by the teacher and students ratherthan transmitted directly from the teacher (Garrett2008). Broadly referred to as “progressive education”(Dewey 1938), student-centered teaching is an in-structional method credited to Locke and Rousseau(Jeynes 2007). In the late-17th century, John Lockeintroduced the idea of children as a kind of pupilwith specific educational needs, most notable of

which is environmental stimulus (Rousseau 1979).Progressive education, unlike traditional teacher-centered learning, emphasizes hands-on learningand development of curricula that promote studentengagement though directed interactions with theirlocal environment (Dewey 1938). One of the mostsignificant components of progressivist education isthat it demands devoted attention of an educator tovery few students.

Unfortunately, for practical reasons, Americaneducators are often forced to adopt teacher-centeredinstructional styles and corresponding managementpractices. Traditional teacher-centered classroommanagement strategies effectively allow for controlof large groups of children, mass dissemination ofmaterial, and reinforced obedience to authority andself-control (Jeynes 2007). At the university level,instructor-centered teaching is manifest in tradi-tional lecture-based models of classroom interaction.Our problem, then, was how to approach commu-nity outreach education using a progressivist strat-egy that encourages critical thinking using studentinstructors socialized in traditional teacher-centricframeworks.

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R e i m a g i n e d s e r v i c e l e a r n i n g :

T h e u n i v e r s i t y c o u r s e

After several semesters of offering anthropology out-reach courses through ad hoc groups of student in-structors, we developed a formal service-learningcourse within the University of Alabama Anthro-pology Department curriculum as an elective foradvanced students. The development of the uni-versity class was similar to that of the elementaryschool program. We started by avoiding lecturing.Despite all of our socialization to the contrary, it didnot seem logical to preach progressivism in elemen-tary education and not adhere to those practices atthe university level. The Anthropology Is Elemen-tal project challenges undergraduate and graduatestudents to take what they learn in traditional class-rooms and reimagine that material as fun activitiesthat will excite elementary students. Students in theuniversity course develop the activities after they be-gin working with the elementary students so thesense of what will be “fun” is relative to the childrenwith whom they are working.

Service learning, in accordance with the Centerfor Ethics & Social Responsibility, which adminis-ters training in service learning at the Universityof Alabama, “is a credit-bearing, educational ex-perience that combines organized service activitieswith academic study and thoughtful reflection to en-hance learning of course content and foster a senseof civic responsibility” (http://cesr.ua.edu/about-us/what-is-service-learning/). We used Heffernan’s(2001) four basic principles of service-learning cur-ricula to develop our course, as follow:

(1) Engagement—does the service componentmeet a public good? How do you know this?Has the community been consulted? How?How have campus-community boundariesbeen negotiated and how will they becrossed?

(2) Reflection—is there a mechanism that en-courages students to link their service expe-rience to course content and to reflect uponwhy the service is important?

(3) Reciprocity—is reciprocity evident in theservice component? How? “Reciprocity sug-gests that every individual, organization,and entity involved in the service-learningfunctions as both a teacher and a learner.Participants are perceived as colleagues, not

as servers and clients” (Jacoby and Associates1996:36).

(4) Public dissemination—is service work pre-sented to the public or made an opportunityfor the community to enter into a public di-alogue? . . . How? To whose advantage?

Engagement

As outlined, Anthropology Is Elemental began be-cause of a request from a local elementary schoolPTA to offer an anthropology course as part of theirpartnership with the University of Alabama. Theyhave asked us to teach it every semester since. Subse-quently, other local school PTAs began similar part-nerships and, because of the consistent popularity ofour anthropology course and rapport with students,teachers, and administrators in the initial elemen-tary school, asked us to replicate our course in theirschools.

Reciprocity

As outlined in Figure 1, the entire program is un-der the administration of a faculty member directorwho selects a doctoral student as program managerand primary instructor. The PhD student is chargedwith the direct oversight of both components ofthe outreach project. The first component includes(1) coordinating with the elementary schools eachsemester, (2) drafting themes for the elementary-level courses and what the courses will entail, and (3)securing enough staff to facilitate appropriately pro-gram goals and objectives throughout the semester.

We teach at two schools in the fall and springwith different thematic foci each semester, so co-ordination is essential. For instance, we recentlydeveloped modules for teaching “The Anthropol-ogy of Southeast Asia.” This approach is integralto our problem-posing approach because we try tocapitalize on the research experience of our student-teachers, enabling them to compose lessons fromfirsthand experience (Figure 2). The students teachmaterial from modules that were developed throughpast interactions and create new ones, but the inte-gration of themes requires weekly discussion to de-termine how to modify lessons to reflect the teachingobjectives.

In preparation for the new semester, the facultydirector and primary instructor work together toestablish the course curriculum and syllabus. Thisallows the new primary instructor to gain experi-ence in course construction and the articulation of

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F I G U R E 1 . Synergistic collaboration of the Anthropology is Elemental model andassociated benefits.

F I G U R E 2 . A student instructor who had spent part of her childhood in SoutheastAsia led her elementary class in traditional Balinese dancing. Elementary students werethen challenged to combine Balinese dance moves with something more “culturallyrelative,” resulting in variations on “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” with Balinese twirls.(Source: http://anthropology.ua.edu/blogs/tmseanthro/2016/05/01/food-and-semester-review-tmse/.)

learning objectives and a teaching philosophythrough direct mentorship. Finally, the Anthropol-ogy Is Elemental service-learning course is depen-dent on the abilities of the advanced undergraduatesand master’s students who participate for the qual-ity of education we can offer elementary students.

Therefore, as program manager, the doctoral stu-dent carefully recruits undergraduate and master’sstudents who will take the course to ensure the out-reach component is an asset to the community.

The university course begins in a roundtableseminar with readings and discussion on pedagogical

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Service

Learning

F I G U R E 3 . Traditional attempts tobalance learning and service.

ServiceService

Learning

Learning

F I G U R E 4 . Reimaginedservice-learning model.

methods, including student-centered teaching andmanagement of lesson plans. The seminar formatplaces students literally and figuratively closer tothe instructor. Although this increases potential forpositive interactions between students and instruc-tors, instructors may struggle to establish authority,as they are still graduate students and relatively newand uncomfortable with this new role and authority.Lecture hall settings entail physical barriers thatactually help new instructors establish hierarchicaldistinctions between faculty and students (Horning1979). The process of learning how to teach withauthority in higher education is a complicated onebecause effective teaching, like any skill, is a com-bination of inherent ability, training, and practice.Our approach emphasizes giving new form to whatundergraduates and master’s students already knowmore than teaching them anything new. As illus-trated in Figure 3, one of the fundamental critiquesof service learning is the inability to find a balancebetween the service to the community and the learn-ing for the college students (Copeland et al. 2016).Our model is less concerned with building a levelplatform, which would be fundamentally unsuitablefor a dynamic process, than with designing objec-tives that continually complement and reinforce oneanother (Figure 4). Through a model of reimaginedservice learning, we combine attributes of applied

and practicing anthropology and create a commu-nity service project through experiential learning.

After the outreach program has started in thelocal school and student instructors have gottentheir feet wet, as it were, readings are assignedfrom the textbook Anthropology Explored (Selig et al.2013). Anthropology Explored is a collection of es-says by noted anthropologists from the Smithsoniannewsletter AnthroNotes about teaching anthropol-ogy. These readings reinforce concepts covered inthe introductory courses required for all anthro-pology majors at the University of Alabama. Thisreview is important because, although the anthro-pology major at the University of Alabama is four-field in focus and practice, many students natu-rally move toward a chosen subdiscipline of interestand may have less confidence in the others. Eachseminar discussion concludes with practice vocab-ulary lessons, wherein student instructors are askedto provide definitions to common anthropologicalterms without the use of jargon. This exercise getsthem thinking about audience-appropriate languagein the elementary school classroom (bearing in mindthat their students will be 7–10 years old). Thus, astudent with an archaeology focus should be ableto teach the basic principles of evolution or a bi-ological anthropologist explain the importance ofethnography.

Student instructors are provided with templatesof past lectures, lesson plans, and activities that theymay borrow from as they craft their own and areassured that they will not be put in front of anelementary school class until ready. Much of thefirst half of the semester is an elaborate exercise inassurances. During this time, it is important thatthe primary instructor establish rapport with andamong student instructors. Instructors are responsi-ble to students for academic competency, but settingthe course within a larger performance frameworkalso helps highlight the need for communicativecompetency (Bauman 1984). For a team to func-tion appropriately and effectively, there must beclearly outlined objectives and behaviors and in-dividual members willing to work with their peers(Goffman 1959). Without a collaborative ethos, teamdynamics are difficult, and individual student in-structors end up with inordinate burdens. The de-liberate orchestration of “teamwork” also highlightsindividual performances within the larger collectiveeffort. Teammates are forced to rely on one anotherthrough “bonds of reciprocal dependence and recip-rocal familiarity” (Goffman 1959:51). For instance,

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punctuality, preparedness, and active participationare all encouraged, with the tacit implication thatone member’s slacking has deleterious effects on thewhole.

Reflection

Finally, our service-learning university course is cen-tered on two complementary teaching strategies thatprovide substantial opportunity for reciprocally de-veloping and reflecting on the service-learning expe-rience. The first strategy is “team-teaching,” a termgenerally employed to denote the involvement ofmore than one instructor in a class lesson, whichemerged as a practical response to teacher short-ages in the 1950s and as a pedagogical practice inthe 1960s (Wraga 1997). Ideally, teachers work to-gether to develop curricula and manage classroomspace, offering improved instruction and a more ef-fective learning environment (Leavitt 2006). Unfor-tunately, there are also pitfalls. Some educators areill suited to cooperative endeavors (Goldstein 1967),while others report interpersonal conflicts withinteams and between team member faculty and non-team member faculty (Meyer 1968, 1969). Whilethese problems among professional educators areimportant to keep in mind, using this approach as atool for apprenticeship in anthropology has workedwell for our program. The notion that the univer-sity class is comprised of teammates, rather thanclassmates, is reinforced rhetorically in class and inclass-related correspondence.

In the second teaching strategy, team partici-pants develop lesson (or “game”) plans that focuson conceptualizing and preparing for unexpecteddeviations from schedules when working with el-ementary children. These are developed throughsynergistic planning sessions called “lesson study.”Lesson study is a form of long-term professionaldevelopment in which teams of teachers collabora-tively plan their instruction as a way to determinewhat will most benefit the students (Lewis et al.2004). Developing a practical lesson plan is multi-faceted and collaborative (Lee and Takahashi 2011).A teacher creates a lesson plan that prepares for thecontingent sequences that occur in a classroom. Thisplan is then presented to a panel of teachers in thesame department. The members of the panel imag-ine the dynamic circumstances of normal classroomsand pose alternative scenarios in which students maypush the material in different directions during thecourse of a lesson or discussion. The lesson plan anddelivery of the presentation are then immediately

critiqued by the assembled peers. The critique fo-cuses on how the teacher utilized the plan for dealingwith disparate actions, not on whether the teacherexplicitly adhered to the scheduled lesson. Moonsriand Pattanajak (2013) found that lesson plans devel-oped collectively by a target group foster confidenceof teachers, allow for problem-solving techniques,and increase consistency in lessons. Furthermore,student-learning outcomes are better when lessonsare designed based on cumulative knowledge (Lewiset al. 2004; Stigler and Hiebert 1999).

During the lesson-study component of the uni-versity course, the student instructor is critiquedusing a standardized evaluation form handed outto each classmate. Critiques are a combination ofstatements with an attached numerical value, rang-ing from 1 to 4, and questions designed to elicitwritten feedback. The numerical values are aver-aged and e-mailed to the student presenter, alongwith a list of provided comments, immediately afterthe class period to be taken into consideration whenfinalizing the lesson (Table 2). The primary instruc-tor also takes notes during the elementary schoollesson, emphasizing positive choices, actions, andattributes unique to the respective student instruc-tor. Critiques of the lesson are addressed to the classat large during the subsequent period using teamrhetoric and inclusive pronouns (e.g., we, the team,should consider x, y, and z for the next lesson).

When the student instructors present possiblelogistical issues associated with their lesson plans(What should I do about x, y, and z in this instance?),it is imperative that the primary instructor be trans-parent in how her or his decision was made (Let us gowith this plan—for this reason.). University studentsare generally socialized in a top-down pedagogy thathas the primary instructor acting as the designatedarbitrator of executive decisions. Unfortunately, thisapproach can conflict with helping students learn tothink critically. In our Anthropology Is Elementalcourse, to build confidence and support situationalproblem solving, the primary instructor only readilyoffers a solution in the first half of the semester. Lo-gistical inquiries are met with a standard answer of“I’m going to defer to your discretion on this, butknow that if you decide you need help I’m here”in the second half of the semester. Understandingwhy certain decisions were made over others helpsstudents gauge how best to approach and resolveproblems in this unique context.

Finally, we assess student instructor performancefor grades in the university course through the use

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TA B L E 2 . An Example of Evaluation Summations

Mean Numerical Scores for Questions:(Scale: 1 = Needs significant improvement; 2 = Needs improvement; 3 = Good; 4 = Excellent)1. Effectiveness of PowerPoint: 3.22. Tone, speed, volume of instructor: 3

3. Clearly articulated lesson objectives: 3

4. Thoughtful, well explained, activity: 3.3Summation of comments:

Add more pictures!ROCK IT! YOU’VE GOT THIS!Map of Old World and New WorldSlide with phylogenetic tree (maybe right after “What is a primate slide”) that shows our relationship

(can also use it as an initial segue to discuss why study primatology! They are close relatives/weshare a common ancestor)

PowerPoint looks fantasticAsk more questions throughout the lectureOn Social Structure slide—spend not sendApes have no tails (which, fun fact, means Curious George is an ape and not a monkey)

of notebooks submitted to the primary instructortwice over the course of the semester. Notebookscontain reflections on class lectures and requiredreadings. Reviewing notebook submission allows theprimary instructor to assess the progress of graduateand undergraduate students in the course withouttesting and allows students to voice their opinionsin a confidential manner.

Dissemination

To encourage others to share the fruits of our ex-periences, we provide open access to lesson plans,activities, and experiences via a site on the BamaAnthro Blog Network (http://anthropology.ua.edu/blogs/tmseanthro/). We think dissemination ofthis project is important for a variety of reasons. Theanthropological perspective is holistic, integratingcultural relativism and an appreciation for humandiversity. Multilevel collaboration among teachersand students from the level of university professordown to elementary school affords an opportunityfor authentic, humanizing education, to use Freire’sterms. At the beginning, we thought anthropologywas not commonly taught at the elementary leveloutside of archaeology because it is too complexor abstract for young minds or for us to simplifysufficiently to teach. We were wrong, and our ex-periences have transformed our attitudes regardingthe power of our discipline. We think our previ-

ous misconception might be common among ourfellow anthropologists in general and that, by shar-ing our model, other professionals and students canadapt and modify it to fit their own communityschools.

The Anthropology Is Elemental program hasalso turned out to be special because we reachminorities and lower socioeconomic demographicsunderrepresented in the discipline. Despite previ-ous claims of a demographic shift (Gough 1968),anthropology remains dominated by white malesfrom the middle and upper social classes studying,ironically, peoples of diverse heritages, genders, andclasses (Howells and Lynn 2016; Hutchinson et al.2010; Lynn and Howells 2015). Because anthropol-ogy is largely offered only at the college and uni-versity level, there is a self-selection bias that favorswhiteness, liberalism, and class even among the un-dergraduate students in our courses. The job oppor-tunities for those trained in anthropology are notclear to the average high school student consider-ing options for college. By teaching in elementaryschools, we reach children who are not yet concernedwith economic considerations or careers. Also, theseelementary-age students are not placed in our classesbut choose from a list of partnership courses basedon a short description. These children are compelledby the subject matter and the word of mouth thatanthropology is fun (Figure 5).

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F I G U R E 5 . During a lesson about how anthropology is interpreted for thepublic in museums, students at Arcadia Elementary, Tuscaloosa, Alabama,became museum curators of clothing and accessories throughout history.Costumes were donated by the University of Alabama Theatre Department,and students were chosen to dress up as part of the exhibit. (Source:http://anthropology.ua.edu/blogs/tmseanthro/2015/10/29/museums-at-arcadia/)

The Anthropology Is Elemental website, like theoverall project, is organic and constantly in devel-opment. Nevertheless, from the beginning we haveblogged about our experiences to share our lessonsand interactions with the parents of the children inour courses, as well as with teachers, administrators,and other anthropologists. Undergraduates are en-couraged to write about their lessons and teachingexperiences in an engaging manner to reach as manypeople as possible. The blog site is fully accessible tothe public and includes an overview of lesson plans,how lessons were implemented, and reflections onwhat worked and what did not. This gives readersof the blog who might want to adopt aspects of ourmodel the opportunity to imagine best practices fortheir own use.

This use of social media is a way to get under-graduates writing publicly about anthropology. Inthe Times Higher Education blog, Thomson (2016)recently outlined several advantages of academicblogging by students, including helping them(1) establish writing routines, (2) discover theirwriting “voices,” (3) get to points quickly withouttheoretical preamble, (4) direct writing towardspecific readers, (5) learn to be concise, (6) try

out experimental writing forms, and (6) becomemore confident communicators (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/seven-reasons-why-blogging-can-make-you-better-academic-writer).Furthermore, as anthropologists, we have a respon-sibility to disseminate our findings to others. Themerits of blogging to achieve this goal have beentouted by numerous, well, bloggers. Dunleavy andGilson of the London School of Economics saidthat, for social scientists, “blogging is quite simply,one of the most important things that an academicshould be doing right now” (http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/02/24/five-minutes-patrick-dunleavy-chris-gilson/). Research data dolittle good locked away in the Ivory Tower, wherethey can take years to be published and read by afew educated specialists. Findings should be sharedand discussed with as many as possible, and this isespecially true of models for improving education.

A s s e s s i n g o u r p r o g r a m s u c c e s s

Our program has facilitated outreach and train-ing to more than 200 elementary schoolers, 12

undergraduates, and 13 graduate students. To

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determine how effective our effort has been at theelementary level, we implemented a weekly free-listing exercise to test student knowledge in certaincognitive categories (Borgatti 1999).2 Free listing isa semistructured interviewing technique borrowedfrom cognitive anthropology that allows for emicinsight without traditional testing. During theseexercises, students are provided with a word andtasked with telling their instructors what immedi-ately comes to mind when they hear it. An importantaspect of free listing is prominence of terms in theminds of subjects, such that terms toward the begin-ning of the list are more important to the domain.By determining the salience of terms our elemen-tary school students associated with the elicitationprompts we gave them, we were able to conductrapid assessments of the cultural domain related toour lessons and course (Bernard 2006).

In the elementary student “clan” groups, studentinstructors would be supplied with a sheet of papercontaining four anthropology terms. The front ofthe sheet would always start with “anthropology”and “culture,” while the back of the sheet wouldend with two other relevant terms that related to theprevious lessons (e.g., “archaeology,” “artifact,” “mu-seums”). Instructors would ask the students whatcomes to mind when they hear a particular term. In-structors prompted students with nonspecific cues,such as terms from previous lesson activities, and thestudents listed the first thing that they could thinkof that relates to the term. The term “anthropology”yielded results such as “human culture” and the foursubfields of anthropology. Culture: “different wayspeople do things,” “religion,” and “how people live.”The term artifact: “things that are meaningful,” “putthem in a museum,” and “humans created it.” Ar-chaeology: “digging,” “finding,” and “study of pasthumans.” Preliminary results from free-listing datasuggest that one of the largest impediments to oureducational objectives is preconceived notions. Forexample, at the beginning of our course, many stu-dents associated archaeology with the study of rocks.

Using free listing with elementary school stu-dents has its strengths and weaknesses. Weaknessesinclude the potential for group leader interferenceand inconsistency in the prompts instructors usedto elicit free lists. If instructors are not using sim-ilar nonspecific cues, students’ answers could vary,contaminating the data. Another difficult aspect tofree listing is gathering the attention of a group ofsprawling elementary schoolers. The process framesthe activity as a chore for the students. Overall, how-

ever, free listing is a beneficial exercise for assessingthe retention of the students by determining salienceof material.

C o n c l u s i o n s

The Anthropology is Elemental project exposes ele-mentary school-age students in Tuscaloosa, Alabamato the anthropological perspective via an interac-tive, activity-based, four-subfield curriculum. Theprogram is designed to expand children’s worldview.Therefore, lessons are adapted each year to coupleanthropological aspects of elementary-age studentslived experiences in their home state of Alabamawith international cultures that students likely haveno prior knowledge of, relationships to other pri-mates, and the importance of cultural and biolog-ical diversity in all forms. Students that experiencethe humanistic and scientific study of anthropologyat an early age are uniquely positioned to excel inboth as they continue their education. Ultimately,graduate and undergraduate students learn throughdeveloping and team-teaching activities using theirown knowledge bases. In completing this course, ouranthropology undergraduates and master’s studentsare able to explain the major tenets of anthropologyto anyone, regardless of age or level of education.Furthermore, teaching this course provides our doc-toral students with unprecedented experience, novelskills, and a model they can replicate to increase theirpotential for success in a competitive job market.

The Anthropology Is Elemental program in-creases the presence of anthropological core con-cepts in the community, including the importanceof ethnocentrism, the concept of race as a culturalconstruct, and the benefit of cultural relativism in anincreasingly globalized society. In the near future, wehope to expand Anthropology Is Elemental throughthe creation of modules and video tutorials madeavailable online through open access and in mul-tiple languages. Through community engagementand collaboration with clients, the Anthropology IsElemental program is part of a broader effort tomove beyond rote learning in the classroom andhelp prepare college students to practice and ap-ply anthropology (Copeland et al. 2016; Dengahet al. 2016; Glass-Coffin 2016; Hale 2016; Snodgrass2016; Stein et al. 2016). This program extends an-thropology to the elementary school level and helpsanthropology majors integrate knowledge throughdeveloping hands-on learning activities. ThroughAnthropology Is Elemental’s complete vertical

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integration, elementary students, undergraduates,doctoral students, and professors develop a deeperand more authentic integration of the discipline andperspectives of anthropology.

N o t e s

1. To this point, the middle school course hasbeen developed and taught in a more traditionalmanner solely by graduate students, so it is not dis-cussed further in this article.

2. We have not received approval from an insti-tutional review board to collect data for publication,so we only report on the process and our impressionshere. We do not include demographic data or com-plete assessment results.

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