Introduction
How many times have we seen children excited about a forth-coming field trip? When asked what they expected to do, their responses sounded like they simply planned to have fun. When asked what they expected to learn and to produce to demonstrate achievement, the children seem startled.

Why the startled looks?

The field trip in schooling is suspect. It is both expensive and infrequent. Because it is expensive in time and money, it is infrequent. Transportation must be arranged. Forms filed with school authorities. Permission slips, and often fees, gathered from parents. The field trip, as so often used, is of questionable educational value. For students and for teachers, field trips are a break in the school routine. Too often, field trips are seen as a reward, almost as entertainment. The teacher and students are not too certain about just what was learned that could not have been learned in the confines of the school community.

The field trip is also deceptive. It looks like active learning with children on the move. But it is passive fare with docents pointing and talking, the students listening. In museums, students perform scavenger hunts, filling out work sheets. They stand in front of glass cases looking dolefully at various specimens, while guides speak. They sit on the carpet before "great art" while an expert tells them her meaning, ignoring theirs. The students are note takers while experts deliver mini-lectures. Little opportunity exists for student input or reactions. Such field trips, while infrequent, still need to be extinguished from educators' repertoires.

FIELD TEACHING AND FIELD STUDY:
THE DISTINCTIONS
One alternative to the field trip is Field Teaching - wherein students first study in their classrooms, then go into the field with their teachers to observe the phenomenon under study and to record information, and then return to the classroom with the observed reality for interpretation and explanation. Because of this preparation and the carefully follow-up, field teaching is certainly a notch up from the "Look, See" of most field trips. While in the field, the teachers point out the concrete manifestations of what was studied in the classroom -- a volcano's cone, the feeling for place in one painting, the Dutch colonial features in town layout and housing, or the absence of rural fences to define land use and ownership patterns in East Java. The virtue of field teaching is its grounding of knowledge in reality; the abstract is given concrete manifestation.

This model of field teaching may have its technological equivalent in virtual reality programs. With the right CD-ROM, students may tour, ask questions, and study in the National Folk Museum in Seoul. They may tour, ask questions, and study Washington, D.C., on a CD-ROM produced by the Geological Survey. A number of firms are producing more elaborate virtual reality material, and we are but on the cusp of the possibilities. Meanwhile, teachers have to use programs, which are based upon the model of field teaching, and not the look-see style of field trips.

Another alternative, Field Study (often called fieldwork or field research) is a more educative experience with all the virtues of field teaching. Like field teaching, field study involves observation, description, and explanation. Students identify a problem as the result of class work or from direct observation; a hypothesis is formulated as a result of study, discussion, and reflection; a research plan is developed; students go into the field to collect relevant data; and the data is analyzed with the acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis (Laws 1989, p. 135).

Laws (1989) also makes the point that fieldwork is needed at each and every opportunity, as "frequently as possible," but fieldwork need not be "exhausting, expensive, and time consuming" (p.135). He goes on to suggest that field- work can involve making a sketch map during a ten-minute walk along local streets, measuring storm water run off from the school campus, or doing comparative traffic counts in front of the school. Mr. Laws is a geographic educator. An anthropology teacher regularly takes her students, in pairs, to interview and observe new students in the "English as a Second Language" classes, as well as reversal of roles between the students' classes where the students of anthropology are then participant-observers. A civics teacher regularly has her students conduct student opinion polls in the school lunchroom on the issues being studied in the civics class.

FIELD TEACHING and FIELD STUDY:
THE PURPOSES
*Field teaching is an attempt to ground the abstract in the concrete. Field teaching provides relevant experience for students to grasp new knowledge as real. "This is not just the textbook, it is us!"

The students' textbook says that a "community" consists of people who live in a common area and who share common concerns. Is a school a community? Is a neighborhood a community? Could Field Teaching breathe life into this definition? How? Civics students, who have studied criminal law, go to the courtroom, the jail, the police station, and the correctional institution to experience these institutions and to have their teacher and other authorities make observations and to work with students on their observation. Sociology students spend three mornings observing at the County health clinic or at local hospital's emergency rooms. Students of cultural diversity follow-up their studies with field teaching at local churches and a mosque. Government students attend a meeting of the city council, observing political theater and collecting observations for later discussion.

*Field study is an attempt to lend an empirical, descriptive grounding in the reality that is to be learned and used in the curriculum. "This is not just for the test on Friday; we can really use this stuff to understand what is going on around us, and within us, right now!"

Geography students studying borders and boundaries plan a neighborhood walk to collect data on the kinds of boundary markers that exist in their community. They take notes, make drawings, take photographs, and develop a typology to categorize the kinds of borders and boundaries by their function. Very interested, they do a similar field study in two additional neighborhoods. Student conclusions focus upon the positive correlation between socio-economic status and the cost of front fences. In Malang, East Java, front fences are a way to show off. The rich and the up-and-coming flaunt their wealth through conspicuous consumption.

*Field study engages student in the personal collection of real data in their communities, individually or in small groups that are then analyzed in the classroom to develop new knowledge or to test knowledge. "We are using real, systematic reasoning skills testing our perceptions and assumptions."

As a part of the study of ephemeral groups in sociology, senior high school students prepared to conduct field study of the crowd at a local parade, the crowd at a parade in a nearby city. A history class enlisted the help of a retired archeologist to make an exploratory dig at the site of an old homestead, now recycled by nature. From local courthouse records, they know the home was built in 1874 and abandoned about 1929. To prepare, groups are studying basic archeology in the afternoons. They hope to make a contribution to local history and to better understand national history during the era. A geography class in another nation has selected two three-block segments of residential streets to study looking for data on continuity and change during the fifty-year period since independence. The students are building their data collection forms, with sketch maps and organizing categories.

THE PROCESS OF LEARNING BY FIELD STUDY

The Planning Stage for Teachers
When thinking about adding a fieldwork component to any class, the teacher must reflect upon answers to many questions. The first set is always "Why are we going? What's the point? What are the goals, than can not be achieved by study in our classroom?" Once the educational goals of field study are established, then a second set of questions arises about assessment: How will I know when my students have achieved the desired results? What do I need to do to find out whether my students have achieved the desired results? What will count as evidence of learning?

The teacher, then, needs to be very careful in setting the goals for fieldwork (What will students learn?) and at the same time determine what to look for to determine what students have learned. Understanding is not merely a test result. Learning may be demonstrated by products (e.g., fieldwork reports) and by oral or written performances where students explain it, predict it, apply it, adapt it, demonstrate it, verify, defend, justify, or critique it, connect it to other ideas, and make qualified and precise judgments.

The teacher's concern for students' learning can be expressed during the process of the fieldwork, as well as during its later stages. The teacher may pose probing questions, checking students' comprehension and seeking deeper refection on what they are doing:

What are the consequences of this?

How should that judgment be qualified?
What may have motivated that behavior?
Correct from whose point of view?
So What? What is the significance of that?
What should we make of this?
What might have caused that to occur?

1) Introduction. The teacher announces a forthcoming mysterious field experience. Students are given note taking materials and told only to observe and to think about what is "important." Nothing else is said.
2) Student go on a thirty-minute bus trip around their town along representative transects.
3) Students return to the classroom for a teacher led question and answer session:
--What did you see? Hear? Feel? Smell? (Student responses are written on the chalkboard.)
--Which of these items belong together? (Students group items by identifying what they see as common characteristics.)
--What might we call each group? (Students suggest labels, which become concept names.)
--The groups identified become a series of land use/functional zones. Student groups formed each to investigate one zone. Group discussions of sub-categories within each zone and how information will be recorded after observations.
--Fieldwork: Students ride on the bus and then walk in specific functional zones as assigned.
--Classroom: Student teams record information on town maps, and compare results. Then they search for patterns in their mapped data, comparing with demographic and topographic maps.
--How are the land uses in town grouped? What patterns can we see? Why do you think this has occurred? (Students respond by explaining, noting relationships and patterns. )
--Generalizations are developed about functional zones in towns and then applied to other towns and cities of the students' personal experience. This could involve further group work with the testing of generalizations with data from maps of other towns and cities.

This application of field study is mean to produce concepts and generalizations or principles about urban activity zones. Law (1989) follows a five step process: 1) Describe observations systematically; 2) analyze their observations; 3) separate and classify difference types of data; 4) evaluate the relative importance of the phenomena observed in light of the objectives of the fieldwork; and 5) explain the phenomena observed and try to develop general principles which can be applied elsewhere. For example, movement is a basic geographic concept. In teams, students could use observation and interviews to study the movement patterns of rombong men, as they market ready-to-eat food from their stalls on wheels. How do they decide where to go and the routes to follow? Do they change routes? When? Why?

An Alternative Process for Teachers' Consideration
Laws (1979) suggests an alternative process for group or independent fieldwork by students. It is focused upon problems where the result of the process is not generalizations or principles, but conclusions and recommendations. The process is:

1) Topic Selection (The teacher provides a list of sample community problems);
2) Definition of a Specific Problem (The student in clear, concise terms states the problem she/he will investigate in question form--How can we clear sidewalks from commercial intrusion so residents and shoppers may walk?);
3) Data Collection and Recording (The student records personal observations and available data from other sources in a responsible fashion to facilitate the later analysis.);
4) Data Analysis(The student maps or graphs or in some other way organizes his or her data, appropriate to the main question of the study); and
5) Statement of Conclusions and Recommendations (The student presents a paper to the teacher and others on his or her conclusions and recommend-ations, perhaps to a community group or a panel of experts).

Post-Fieldwork Reflections for Teachers
Immediately after the fieldwork, the teacher needs to review what happened and how the experience might be improved in the future. Good notes and recommendations attached to the lesson plan are neatly available for next year's class.

PITFALLS TO AVOID
Potential Pitfall #1: Mature teachers in all societies realize the sensitive nature of socially realistic study in schools. Teachers self-censor on the study of religion and philosophical values, including current political ideologies. Other teachers censor, or at least avoid, any study of social class, social conflict, the implications of social stratification, and ethnic strife. Fortunately or unfortunately, there are closed areas in all societies - closed areas for classroom study and inquiry that are regarded as too sensitive.

Potential Pitfall #2: Teachers need to first be aware of school policies on field teaching and field study. And then, they need to arrange fieldwork with student safety concerns paramount.

Potential Pitfall #3: Proposed fieldwork needs to be reviewed carefully so that no student will be embarrassed. Local field studies of housing decline, lawn ornaments, public health, and quality of life indicators may be very sensitive. One persons' field site is another person's neighborhood. Having said that, consciousness raising in the style of Paulo Friere (1995) may be in order. Domination, aggression and violence are an intrinsic part of human social life. Few features of life are exempt from oppression by virtue of race, gender, class, age, size, religious commitments, physical and intellectual handicaps, national origin, and political affiliation. Field study in some disciplines might appropriately raise questions about these phenomena. This recommendation may stand in direct conflict with the observations in Potential Pitfall #1 above!

CREATIVE INSPIRERS BY TEACHERS, FOR TEACHERS
This closing section offers teachers a potpourri of ideas collected from other teachers over the years. These ideas are included here to inform teachers as to what is possible and to use the work of others to help inspire the creativity of other teachers. There is, of course, no limit to the use of field study in social science education.

**A fifth grade teacher took his students to measure historic beds in antique shops and used-furniture stores. Then, after making hypotheses, they went to thirty homes, 60 years old or older, to measure the heights of the doors. Americans are changing.

** A fourth grade class observed driver behavior on the busy roadway in front of their school. One group recorded observations on the use of right and left hand turn signals. Another group observed for full stops on red prior to making a right-hand turn. This fieldwork was for their study of pro-social behavior.

**Teams of senior secondary school students conducted a survey on Saturday between 9AM and 1PM at local grocery stores. They surveyed willing shoppers leaving stores about bag choices and recycling. They had prepared six questions for a quick response time, also recording the gender, age category, and type of bag used (paper or plastic).

**A junior secondary class went to the historic Jehu Cemetery in their town. First they learn to carefully clean the stones, then how to do paper rubbings with crayons. They laid out a grid system and sampled one stone memorial per square for a rubbing. Students returned to the classroom with the rubbings to perform their historical analysis.

**One seventh grade geography class arranged with the State highway department to have a traffic counter installed on the street in front of the school. The students collected the traffic count each morning at 8AM and each afternoon at 3PM on the 180 school days during the year. Each month they analyzed the data, looking for patterns to report to the officials who provided the counter.

**Geography students at one urban junior secondary school were studying the growth of cities. The headmaster allowed them to interview one hundred new students in the school who came from rural environments. The interviewers systematically collected information on students' ideas of the attractiveness of cities and negative images that the migrating students held and those held by their parents.

**Senior secondary school students obtained twenty-five historic postcards of sites in their city about forty years ago. Working with cameras, they tried to recreate the photograph on each postcard, including its perspective, by shooting from the same spot as the postcard photographer. Students used the two sets of images to examine continuity and change in their city.

**Junior secondary school students in economics class studied Saturday morning yard or garage sales in residential areas by chatting informally with parents and friends. At the same time in teams they began plotting the location of such sales from the classified ads in the local newspaper for a two-month period. They searched for patterns and anomalies to explain.

**Fourth grade students, studying local history and geography, walked a mile along the beach highway. One team mapped and recorded data on hotels/motels. Anther team mapped restaurants and recorded data. Another team focused upon retail stores, mapping and recording. Another team focused upon condominiums. And the final team looked at small businesses other than stores, mapping and recording. Back in the classroom each team compiled its data and then shared. They looked for patterns-age of buildings, size, maintenance, parking, and appearance of business well being.

**A high school government teacher taught about public opinion poll sampling. Students practiced defining research populations and drawing samples. Using this training, they drew a sample of a well-defined local population and in teams conducted personal interviews on political issues.

**Working with a science teacher, the geography guru at Senior Secondary School #7 established a weather station outside the classroom. Students record rainfall data daily, make weather observations three times a day, and record temperature data three times a day. When Internet comes to their school, the students plan to exchange weather data with other SMUs in the city.

**Senior high school sociology students worked to build a "social well-being" index based upon observable factors (e.g., absence of street litter, well-maintained housing, recreational facilities, safe drainage, etc.). The students select two neighbors, well outside their school's attendance area, and they do their fieldwork in teams of five.

CONCLUSION
Too many societies erect artificial boundaries between classrooms and communities. Classrooms and curricula maintain this strange separation. School thus becomes "preparation for life," rather than life itself. Children in schools are treated like non-citizens lined up in little rows at an internment camp, rather than as the citizens, which they are. Students in schools are fully persons, not some lesser form of life serving time while waiting permission to participate.

The way to guarantee that education in schools is of real value to students and to society is to engage students in studying real questions, issues, and concerns. If that occurs, fieldwork will be as natural to schooling, as breathing is to living.

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." --James Madison

REFERENCES
Bye, Edgar C. How to Conduct a Field Trip. How To Do It Series, Number 12 Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies, 1967. ERIC ED084169
Everson, J. "Fieldwork in School Geography," pp. 107-114 in Rex Walford, Editor, New Directions in Geography Teaching. London: Longman, 1973.
Fein, John, Rodney Gerber, and Peter Wilson, editors. The Geography Teachers' Guide to the Classroom (Melbourne, AU: Macmillan, 1989). Second edition.
Friere, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum Books, 1995.
Hunter, David E., and Mary Ann B. Foley. Doing Anthropology: A Student-Centered Approach to Cultural Anthropology. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
Jones, P.A. Fieldwork in Geography. London: Longmans, Green, 1968.
Laws, K.J. "Learning Geography through Fieldwork," pp. 134- 145 in John Fein, Rodney Gerber, and Peter Wilson, Editors, The Geography Teachers' Guide to the Classroom. Melbourne, AU: Macmillan, 1989. Second edition.
Laws, K. J. "The Origin of the Street Grid in Atlanta's Urban Core," Southeastern Geographer, Volume 19, no. 2 (1979), 69-79.
Spradley, James P., and David W. McCurdy. The Cultural Experience: Ethnography in Complex Society. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1988.
Spradley, James P. The Ethnographic Interview. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1979.
Spradley, James P. Participant Observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980.

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