KEEP-Rough Rock Project

To see if the success of the KEEP program in Hawaii could be attributed to general "good instructional practices" or to cultural compatibility, KEEP staff collaborated with a third grade Navajo teacher and her aide to teach the KEEP reading program in the Rough Rock School on the Navajo Reservation (Vogt, Jordan, and Tharp, 1993). They concluded that cultural compatibility was a credible explanation for KEEP's success because they found that at Rough Rock changes to the KEEP program were necessary in the areas of instructional practice, classroom organization, and motivation management.

Although directing questions to the whole group rather than individual students was a successful carryover from KEEP to Rough Rock, the team found that Navajo students (and the teacher) preferred to discuss stories as a whole rather than to break them into sections for analysis and discussion. When the team used the KEEP center system at Rough Rock individual students often worked on tasks without helping one another. The team came to understand that the traditional separation of children by gender influenced this pattern. When Navajo students were put in small same-sex groups they cooperated. The "warm but tough" KEEP approach to motivation did not work at the Rough Rock school. Misbehavior was better managed by ignoring misbehavior, giving a short lecture to the whole group, and speaking of standards of honorable behavior.

See the KEEP Program success story for a discussion the origins of KEEP in Hawaii.

Relevant CIP Cultural Question

3.3.1 Interactional Styles