http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?pid=prospect&title=Prospect
If you use this url, click on Prospect’s Methodology in the menu to the left.

To go directly to the book, click on:
http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?pid=prospect&title=Prospect Archive of Children's Work&view=prospectMethod#a

PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION of Prospect’s Descriptive Processes

Prospect’s Descriptive Processes has been consistently in demand since the book first became available in 2002. For this reason, it seemed imperative to continue to make it widely available even though the Prospect Archives and Center for Education and Research has closed, and the Prospect Archives have been moved to Bailey/Howe Library, Special Collections at the University of Vermont. We are, therefore, delighted to bring you this revised edition now available online for download at no cost. It is important for readers to know this edition includes new content as well as changes designed to provide consistency across processes.

Please be sure to follow Fair Use copyright practices. It is important to give complete credit whenever you use these processes.

We strongly recommend that if you are new to Prospect's disciplined Descriptive Processes, and to the phenomenological premises from which they emerged, that you read From Another Angle: Children’s Strengths and School Standards, edited by Margaret Himley with Patricia F. Carini (Teachers College Press, 2000) and Jenny's Story: Taking the Long View of the Child , Carini P.F., Himley, M., Christine, C., Espinosa, C., and Fournier, J. (Teachers College Press, 2010) before using the processes outlined below. We also highly recommend Starting Strong: A Different Look at Children, Schools, and Standards by Patricia F. Carini (Teachers College Press, 2001). This collection of talks provides the wider context of ideas and values foundational to the processes and relates both to current educational, social, and political issues.

Further resources for reading about the Prospect Archives and Center may be found at Resources link at the UVM website:

http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?pid=prospect&title=Prospect Archive of Children's Work&view=prospectResources#a

We are confident this revised edition of Prospect's Descriptive Processes will continue to provide a valuable alternative to other, more judgmental ways of looking at children's growth and learning as well as ways of documenting curriculum, teaching practice, and schools.

Information about the Prospect Archive, including the files of nine children from the Reference Edition are available on line through the Center for Digital Initiatives, Bailey/Howe Library
website: http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?pid=prospect&title=Prospect

http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?pid=prospect&title=Prospect>http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?pid=prospect&title=Prospect

Because it is a newly live collection it is one of the featured collections on the Center for Digital Archives' Web site. This means that the portal to our site currently appears on the CDI home page:

http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/index.xql

Many thanks to everyone who was involved in making this happen, including the members of the Archives Committee of the Prospect Center; Bruce Turnquist, who acted as liaison between Prospect and Special Collections; and Chris Burns, Robin Katz, and Erica Donnis at the Bailey/Howe Library Special Collections and Center for Digital Initiatives, University of Vermont. Thanks, too, to Heidi Watts for initiating our connection with UVM, which led to finding a home for Prospect's Archives and the creation of the digital site.

We invite you to explore the Web site, to make comments, and certainly, to use it. If you know of people who might be interested in checking out or using the site, please spread the word.

We are excited to see the site up in the public domain. It has been a long-term goal of the Archives Committee to increase access to Prospect's Archives, and Chris Burns of Special Collections feels that the Archive of Children's Work will be a heavily used collection. That is music to our ears!

Ellen Schwartz

Slide rentals will be available through the University of Vermont (UVM), starting in mid-January. Information about how to rent slides will be sent to the listserv and posted on this website once the procedures are finalized by UVM.

You will be able to download Prospect’s Descriptive Processes (the Green Book) in PDF when our website at the University of Vermont Bailey/Howe Library Special Collections website is live. Watch for an announcement of the new website.

Here’s what one reviewer, Sarah Hudelson of Arizona State University, said about the book: “This detailed portrait of Jenny as person and as learner affirms the assertion that careful observation of one child influences our thinking about all children and the schooling they deserve. Jenny’s Story challenges us to continue the struggle to return children to the center of our teaching.”

Another reviewer, Shirley Brice-Heath of Brown University said, “A splendid book, a long view of children as advocates for justice, empathy and fairness in the world and a testament to the insightful powers of teachers who listen, observe, and wonder at children’s ways of teaching.”

A description of the content of the book, taken from the back cover:

“By carefully documenting how space was made for Jenny-a child who didn’t fit the school mold-this book offers a renewed sense of human possibility and an attainable vision of what schools can be. The authors demonstrate that it is only by attending to each and every child that schooling can begin to achieve its most noble aim: equality. Readers are introduced to Prospect’s educational philosophy and descriptive processes, with details about what the processes are and what they offer teachers, parents, and children. Jenny’s story is told through these processes-ways of looking at children and their work that make it possible to know each child as a person, a thinker, and a learner. While Jenny’s journey through elementary school is the heart of the book, this is also the story of a big urban school serving many immigrant families. Jenny’s Story offers readers a compelling look at:

• How teachers, staff, and the principal successfully worked with a richly
diverse community.
• What it means to ground teaching in knowledge of the particular,
careful observation, and collective inquiry.
• How to challenge school policies and mandates that work against children’s
well-being and dignity.”

Please recommend this book to colleagues: teachers, administrators, and friends; to those you meet or have met at conferences, meetings, and study groups.

Sincerely,

Ann Caren
President
Prospect Board of Trustees

We invite you to write your remembrance of Alice and to post it in comments to this entry. We will collect these and give them to Alice's family.