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Learning by Observing and Pitching In to Family and Community Endeavors: An Orientation
Abstract
This article formulates a way of organizing learning opportunities in which children are broadly integrated in the activities of their families and communities and learn by attentively contributing to the endeavors around them, in a multifaceted process termed "Learning by Observing and Pitching In."This form of informal learning appears to be especially prevalent in many Indigenous-heritage communities of the USA, Mexico, and Central America, although it is important in all communities and in some schools. It contrasts with an approach that involves adults attempting to control children's attention, motivation, and learning in Assembly-Line Instruction, which is a widespread way of organizing Western schooling. This article contrasts these two approaches and considers how families varying in experience with these two approaches (and related practices) across generations may engage in them during everyday and instructional adult-child interactions. (C) 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel
... Learning by Observing and Pitching-In (LOPI) is a framework based on long-term ethnographic and experimental empirical studies of learning and development in Indigenous and Indigenous-heritage community contexts (Rogoff, 2011(Rogoff, , 2014. LOPI has been defined as a form of family and community-based learning that occurs primarily by "observing and pitching in", with children's initiative and access to abundant community activities alongside more experienced and supportive peers and adults (Rogoff et al., 2003). ...
... LOPI has been defined as a form of family and community-based learning that occurs primarily by "observing and pitching in", with children's initiative and access to abundant community activities alongside more experienced and supportive peers and adults (Rogoff et al., 2003). LOPI is observed to be especially prevalent in Indigenous families and communities with limited exposure to formal schooling (Paradise & Rogoff, 2009;Rogoff, 2014). ...
... This study enhances our understanding of LOPI because it supports several phases of the prism already identified from pervious collaborative work (See Rogoff 2011Rogoff , 2014Rogoff , 2016. ...
... Indigenous and Indigenous-heritage communities of the Americas have also experienced European-and African-heritage cultural ways, often for centuries. (See Rogoff, Alcalá et al., 2014. Also see Medaets, 2016, for research indicating that while some of the features of LOPI are common, others are not characteristic of childrearing in an Amazonian region with a mixture of Portuguese, African and Amerindian backgrounds.) ...
... These mothers purposely include even the youngest children, so that toddlers see that their contributions are valued and begin to learn what to do -and the mothers avoid obliging children to help at home, to support the children in learning collaborative initiative (Cervera-Montejano, 2022, this issue; Coppens et al., 2020;Coppens & Rogoff, 2021;Rogoff, Alcalá et al., 2014). This apparently matters more than efficiently getting the work done, as the children's efforts often need others' guidance and correction. ...
... El hecho de que LOPI se haya observado en muchas comunidades indígenas americanas tampoco significa que ocurra en todas las comunidades indígenas americanas, o en todo momento en cualquiera de ellas. Las comunidades indígenas y de ascendencia indígena de las Américas también han experimentado prácticas de origen europeo y africano, a través de los siglos (véase Rogoff, Alcalá et al., 2014. Véase también Medaets, 2016, para una investigación que indica que, si bien algunos aspectos de LOPI son comunes, otros no son característicos de la crianza de los niños en una región del Amazonas donde existe una mezcla de ascendencia portuguesa, africana y amerindia). ...
This article focuses on communities’ contributions to a way of learning that seems to be common in many Indigenous communities of the Americas and among people with heritage in such communities: Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours (LOPI). We briefly contrast this with community contributions in Assembly-Line Instruction, a way of learning that is common in Western schooling, to highlight the distinct contributions of community in these two ways of learning. We theoretically situate the two ways of learning, considering communities and individuals as mutually constituting aspects of the process of life, not as separate entities. Then we discuss the contributions of community to the reasons that people participate, how they interact, and the underlying theory of learning and purpose of learning in LOPI. We briefly address the role of community in how people communicate with each other and evaluate learning. To conclude, we consider the prevalence of LOPI both within Indigenous-heritage communities of the Americas and elsewhere, and our hopes for the contribution of describing this way of learning.
... In many nations, children are excluded from a large proportion of the endeavours of their families and communities (Morelli et al., 2003), limiting their opportunities to Learn by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours (LOPI; Rogoff, 2014). This paper explores how online gaming communities are structured in ways that can re-mediate (Griffin & Cole, 1984;Gutiérrez et al., 2009) hierarchical relationships that segregate children's participation from community life. ...
... Moreover, as Richard developed expertise by observing and pitching in, he was able to transgress video game system boundaries through the exploitation of a particular kind of system error, glitches, in the games he played. We found that in the online gaming community learning was 'collaborative, with flexible roles [in which] people coordinate fluidly as an ensemble, blending diverse ideas, agendas, and pace' (LOPI facet 3; Rogoff, 2014). Online gaming communities, then, can position children as active observers of new media practices, in which they learn by observing media produced by more expert others, and as producers of media in which they pitch in to community endeavours through their gameplay and media production on other websites. ...
... Unlike learning ecologies that are designed around assembly-line instruction which segregate children from everyday endeavours (Rogoff, 2014), in online gaming communities, children can be valuable members apprenticed into new video game practices with multi-aged peers. Richard's direct communication with other gamers and his engagement with gamer-produced video tutorials allowed him to learn about the form and function of new practices, including the discourses of the respective video games he played. ...
In this article, we examine how a Latinx eight-year-old child’s participation in an online gaming community supported his involvement in a way of learning termed Learning by Observing and Pitching In (LOPI). Specifically, we focus on how the way that the online gaming community was organized allowed the child to be incorporated to contribute to a range of the online gaming community’s activities. In the two examples, we reveal how the child leveraged digital tools to coordinate fluidly and complete shared endeavours with others in his gaming environments. Moreover, through in-depth analyses of the child’s video gaming activity, we argue that children learn by observing gamer-produced media and pitch in to online gaming communities through their gameplay. As such, the article has implications for how children participate through LOPI in virtual communities through their everyday media practices. We end with a discussion on how contexts organized around play, such as online gaming communities, can be fruitful sites of learning in which children develop digital literacies by observing and pitching in.
... The approach to language revitalization that I will describe is based on intentional immersion in Indigenous languages, embedded within already established traditional cultural practices that occur in everyday informal activities. In many Indigenous and Indigenous-heritage communities in the Americas, these practices and activities often involve Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours (LOPI), a form of informal learning described by Barbara Rogoff and colleagues Coppens et al., 2014;Correa-Chávez et al., 2015;López et al., 2012;Paradise et al., 2014;Paradise & Rogoff, 2009;Rogoff, 2014;Rogoff et al., 2015Rogoff et al., , 2014Rogoff et al., , 2003Urrieta, 2015). LOPI is a way of organizing learning opportunities in which children are broadly integrated in the activities of their families and communities and learn by attentively contributing to the endeavors around them, in a multifaceted process. ...
... As seen in the LOPI prism, LOPI-based Indigenous language learning is embedded in social arrangements that are collaborative, flexible ensembles, allowing for the organic emergence of communication (Rogoff, 2014;Rogoff et al., 2022). Social organization is arranged so that language learning occurs according to the unfolding of authentic communication, on a need-to-express-or-comprehend basis that is integral to accomplishing the larger goal of completing the endeavour (Rogoff et al., 2016). ...
... In the LOPI-based approach, Indigenous language learning is by means of wide, keen attention to communication that is inextricably tied to anticipating and contributing to collaborative activity (Rogoff, 2014). Verbal production and reception, itself embedded within contexts that include non-verbal communication as well, occurs through responsible commitment to family-and community-wide expectations for observing and pitching in. ...
This article promotes a grounded approach to Indigenous language revitalization that honours Indigenous peoples’ desire to restore Indigenous language use in their daily lives. The approach offers a way of revitalizing Indigenous languages by reintegrating them into Indigenous social life and an Indigenous way of learning, thus also sustaining and revitalizing Indigenous cultures. Drawing upon studies of informal learning in Indigenous-heritage communities in the Americas, as well as studies of family and community language revitalization programmes, the approach promotes Indigenous language communicative competence through participation in everyday-life activities. It capitalizes on the prevalent practice in Indigenous communities of Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours (LOPI), which serves as social and cultural scaffolding onto which communication in Indigenous languages can be intentionally reattached. In this way, the family- and community-centred approach that is promoted complements daycare- and school-based Indigenous language revitalization initiatives.
... The first time I watched children Learning by Observing and Pitching In (LOPI, Rogoff, 2014) to specialized work was during the k'ax ('tying' in Yucatec Maya), building of individual palcos ('boxes') that make up the tablado ('bullring') for the bullfights, one of the most important activities of village fiestas in honour of the patron saint. The tablado is built with wooden poles and sticks of different sizes, widths and tree species tied with rope, hence the use of 'tie' to name the building process and technique. ...
... Children's process of learning among cultural communities of non-Western heritage differs from the school-based model. Similar to the Yucatec Maya, other indigenous children and indigenous-heritage children from the Americas, and likely children from other communities around the world, learn as they participate side by side with adults (Correa-Chávez et al., 2015;Rogoff, 2014). This alternative paradigm called Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours (LOPI) values children as legitimate participants who are able to learn by attending and contributing to everyday and specialized activities. ...
... This alternative paradigm called Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours (LOPI) values children as legitimate participants who are able to learn by attending and contributing to everyday and specialized activities. The paradigm comprises seven interrelated facets that describe learning as a shared process that involves novice children who are eager and willing to contribute to the task at hand under the guidance and support of expert adults who acknowledge and respect children's autonomy and motivation to learn, or agency for short (Rogoff, 2014). ...
Yucatec Maya theory of learning may be thought of as Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours. Children learn everyday and specialized tasks by observing and pitching in. This mode of learning is embedded in children’s developmental niche in which parental ethnotheories play the central role. I present results from a study of children’s process of learning to become vernacular architects as they participate in building the boxes that make up the bullring for the village fiesta. Ninety-two expert adults were interviewed and direct observations were made during the building process. Results show that children accompany their fathers from an early age and observe and pitch in until they become experts. In order to learn, children need to have the will to like the task. Having the will depends on their destiny. Only those who have the will become responsible experts. Fathers encourage their children to accompany them to help their will to emerge. The developmental niche is organized to incorporate children into the building process to learn by observing and contributing.
... We then connect with scholarship on Indigenous ways of learning and an approach to learning that appears to be prevalent in a number of Indigenous communities of the Americas -Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours (LOPI; Paradise & Rogoff, 2009;Rogoff, 2014). In the LOPI model, collaboration is central, both in the ways that community organisation includes people of all ages and in the ways that people work together in fluid collaboration with flexible roles. ...
... Our emphasis on the similarities across scales is central to a theoretical model that aims to describe a way of learning that appears to be prevalent in a number of Indigenous communities of the Americas. The model, Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours (Rogoff, 2014;Rogoff & Mejía-Arauz, forthcoming), is built on observations in Indigenous communities of the Americas -our own observations and the literature on Indigenous Knowledge Systems (Battiste, 2002;Cajete, 1994;Thomas, 1958;. The model integrates quite different timescales inherent in Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours (LOPI). ...
... The cultural model that appears to be more common in Highly schooled European American communities is spreading with globalisation to Indigenous communities, including the Mayan community in which this study was conducted, accompanying a decrease in family size and the worldwide requirement for children to attend school . And LOPI is used everywhere to some extent -such as when children learn their first language while observing its use and gradually entering conversations (Rogoff, 2014). ...
Using a holistic, process approach, this article brings attention to cultural differences in the prevalence of fluid synchrony in collaboration, at a microanalytic scale of analysis that is embodied in the processes of everyday life. We build on findings that in a number of Indigenous American communities, fluid and harmonious collaboration is prioritized both in community organization at a scale of years and centuries, and in everyday family interactions and researcher-organized tasks at a scale of days, hours, or minutes. We examined whether this sophisticated fluid collaboration could be seen even at a scale of fractions of seconds. At a microscale of 200-millisecond segments, Guatemalan Mayan triads of mothers and children frequently engaged mutually, in fluid synchrony together, when exploring novel objects. They did so more commonly than did European American mother-child triads, who usually engaged solo or in dyads, with one person left out, or resisted each other. This microanalysis of mutuality in family interactions reveals the role of culture in the foundations of thinking and working together in both Mayan and European American communities, and the fruitfulness of considering developmental processes holistically.
... Many first-generation college students, particularly those from collectivist cultures, desire to stay connected to their families (Benigno, 2012;Covarrubias et al., 2019;Jackson et al., 2016;Jehangir, 2010;Jehangir et al., 2015;Sy & Romero, 2008;Telzer & Fulgini, 2009). The aforementioned familial responsibilities are a way for many students from these cultures to engage with their families and remain close to them (Rogoff, 2014). Nonetheless, many firstgeneration Hispanic college students feel an ambivalence when starting college because their families do not have a full grasp of their educational journey and fail to provide the support that continuing-generation students receive (Azmitia et al., 2018). ...
... Many first-generation college students have significant familial obligations while attending school (Covarrubias et al., 2019;Covarrubias & Fryberg, 2015;Jehangir, 2010;Stephens et al., 2012). Teens and young adult children from families of Hispanic ethnicity are often expected to provide care for younger siblings or older adults living in the home (Morgan Consoli & Llamas, 2013;Rogoff, 2014;Valdés, 1996). These obligations have remained consistent for first-generation Hispanic students over several decades of research (London, 1989;Rendón, 1994). ...
Students of Hispanic descent make up the single largest subset of first-generation students enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States. These students have been the most affected by the economic and health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. They also have less support for their educational pursuits and more outside responsibilities than their continuing- generation counterparts. Best practices for creating an effective online learning environment are explored. Suggestions for helping students create social connections with instructors and fellow students are examined.
... The new prism that represents LOPI, and which we present in this special issue, is the culmination of several decades' worth of work performed by this consortium. The last version of the LOPI model was published more than seven years ago (Rogoff, 2014), and that version itself had several previous versions (e.g., Rogoff, 1995Rogoff, , 2014Rogoff et al., , 2003 as well as other publications about LOPI Paradise & Rogoff, 2009;Rogoff et al., 2017Rogoff et al., , 2014. ...
... El nuevo prisma que representa LOPI, y que estamos presentando en este número especial, es la culminación de varias décadas de trabajo llevado a cabo por este consorcio. La versión anterior del modelo LOPI fue publicada hace más de siete años (Rogoff, 2014), y aquella versión tuvo varias versiones anteriores (e.g., Rogoff, 1995Rogoff, , 2014Rogoff et al., 2015Rogoff et al., , 2003 y otras publicaciones sobre LOPI Paradise & Rogoff, 2009;Rogoff et al., 2017Rogoff et al., , 2014. ...
This article presents conceptual and empirical advances relating to Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours (LOPI). The opening article offers a new version of the LOPI model and a focused analysis of the key role of community. The other nine articles provide evidence of the social organization of LOPI, based on an axiology of relationality, respect, reciprocity and pitching in, in many Indigenous communities of the Americas. They discuss Indigenous theory and axiologies, as well as ethical attunements in LOPI; the importance of observation, respect, autonomy and laughter for learning; and the opportunities that LOPI brings to the revitalization of Indigenous languages, in learning at school and in online gaming communities. This issue shows how the LOPI paradigm is based in relationality and respect in communion among people, other beings and the land that we inhabit.
... Our sociocultural theoretical perspective (Vygotsky 1978;Rogoff 1990Rogoff , 2014Lave and Wenger 1991) motivated our interest in social context and interactions (Vygotsky 1978;Rogoff 1990Rogoff , 2014Lave and Wenger 1991;Gould et al. 2018a). Sociocultural learning theory emphasizes that learning is a social process and that our interactions with one another, embedded within our sociocultural context, continually influence our thoughts, actions, and perceptions of ourselves as well as of the world around us (Vygotsky 1978). ...
... Our sociocultural theoretical perspective (Vygotsky 1978;Rogoff 1990Rogoff , 2014Lave and Wenger 1991) motivated our interest in social context and interactions (Vygotsky 1978;Rogoff 1990Rogoff , 2014Lave and Wenger 1991;Gould et al. 2018a). Sociocultural learning theory emphasizes that learning is a social process and that our interactions with one another, embedded within our sociocultural context, continually influence our thoughts, actions, and perceptions of ourselves as well as of the world around us (Vygotsky 1978). ...
Collaborative research approaches can promote social learning by curating a structure that facilitates inclusive dialogue and reflection. Within an epistemological frame that upholds notions of emergence rather than extraction, such modes can foster collective reflection in ways that contribute to reversing traditional notions of expertise. In this paper, we describe ‘Community Listening Sessions’, an approach drawing on focus group, learning circle, and participatory research literature. We developed Community Listening Sessions to study the interactional contexts of environmental learning–an inherently social, collective process. In our initial application, through 14 listening sessions hosted across the San Francisco Bay Area (California, USA), we engaged more than 100 community members in discussing how they learn about and take action related to the environment in their daily lives. We make recommendations for future use of Community Listening Sessions for collecting qualitative data in a participatory, equitable way in what can be challenging, high-social-cost discussions, yet those that are critical for addressing issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, socio-environmental justice, and others that are essential to the future of our species and planet. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
... Perhaps even more pernicious are the assumptions about the "right way" to be a parent (Alcalá et al., 2018;Arauz et al., 2019;Cho et al., 2021;Gaskins, 2008;McWayne, Foster, et al., 2018;Rogoff, 2003Rogoff, , 2014 (Arauz et al., 2019;Rogoff, 2014;Rogoff et al., 2003). Ansari et al., 2020). ...
... Perhaps even more pernicious are the assumptions about the "right way" to be a parent (Alcalá et al., 2018;Arauz et al., 2019;Cho et al., 2021;Gaskins, 2008;McWayne, Foster, et al., 2018;Rogoff, 2003Rogoff, , 2014 (Arauz et al., 2019;Rogoff, 2014;Rogoff et al., 2003). Ansari et al., 2020). ...
For decades, scholars across a variety of fields have been calling for a re-examination of the ways we address inequities in STEM education.
Over the last year, we have been able to take a few hours each week to step back from our current work, reflect on our assumptions, learn from others, and explore new ways that our research could both uncover and help dismantle inequities and racism in the STEM education system. This eBook, and the series of blog posts on which it is based, is the result of these conversations and this reflective process. Our goal is to explore the themes and ideas that emerged from the year and how these might fundamentally change the way we think about STEM, work with families and children, and conduct research. We also hope this resource will serve as a catalyst for ongoing discussions within and beyond the STEM education research community. In the following chapters, we reflect on a variety of topics, including approaches to collaborating with families, asset-based perspectives on STEM education, and equity- based strategies for engaging families with engineering. While our reflections focus on engineering education and our work with families, we believe the themes that emerged for us over the last year have implications across STEM domains and learning contexts.
... Many young people described an increased closeness with their parents, engaging in more activities together. Other studies (Coppens et al., 2014;Rogoff, 2014) have also described similar children's and youth's participation in their families and communities, across cultures and countries. Rogoff (2014) refers to this as "learning by observing and pitching in", and themes in the current study suggest that many Canadian children and youth may have gained new developmental experiences through greater time and skills-based learning at home. ...
... Other studies (Coppens et al., 2014;Rogoff, 2014) have also described similar children's and youth's participation in their families and communities, across cultures and countries. Rogoff (2014) refers to this as "learning by observing and pitching in", and themes in the current study suggest that many Canadian children and youth may have gained new developmental experiences through greater time and skills-based learning at home. ...
The Office of Research-Innocenti is UNICEF's dedicated research centre. It undertakes research on emerging or current issues in order to inform the strategic direction, policies and programmes of UNICEF and its partners, shape global debates on child rights and development, and inform the global research and policy agenda for all children, particularly for the most vulnerable. UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti publications are contributions to a global debate on children and may not necessarily reflect UNICEF policies or approaches. The Office of Research-Innocenti receives financial support from the Government of Italy, while funding for specific projects is also provided by other governments, international institutions and private sources, including UNICEF National Committees.
... Neither psychological nor anthropological studies have considered that learning is organized by different cultural paradigms that are instantiated in the organization of children's developmental niche (Super & Harkness, 1986). One cultural paradigm that describes the type of learning identified among Indigenous communities from the Global South is Learning by Observing and Pitching In (LOPI, Rogoff, 2014, Rogoff et al., 2015. ...
... Building on the LOPI paradigm (Coppens et al., 2018;Rogoff, 2014;Rogoff et al., 2015) and the developmental niche framework, we examine the case of Yucatec Maya mothers' ethnotheories of learning to help at home as they are the primary caregivers and responsible for organizing daily household activities. These theoretical perspectives provide a nuance approach to understand cultural conceptions of learning and helping as instantiated in maternal (Alcalá et al., 2021). ...
In most cultures, but particularly among Indigenous communities of the Americas, children help extensively with household work. However, less is known about the role of maternal ethnotheories as cultural organizers of the family environment and children's helping. We explored Maya maternal ethnotheories about children's learning to help in two villages. Mothers reported that children learn by observing and pitching in because they have the will and interest and want to help. Mothers help children by orchestrating the setting, supporting their initiative, but learning must be initiated by children. Results support the view of a Yucatec Maya theory of learning and highlight the relevance of studying maternal ethnotheories. As cultural models, ethnotheories guide the organization of the developmental niche, affording children's learning by observing and pitching in and supporting the emergence of their will and interest. Their study may contribute to further acknowledging and supporting cultural diversity.
... Children make sense through active participation in the practices of specific communities and the contexts in which they find themselves. A community's funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) involve localized practices, rituals and 'ways of doing things around here' learned through participation (Rogoff, 2014). For example, some children take part in social and economic activities such as street selling, shopping and storytelling that draw on community-based forms of mathematics, literacy and thinking skills (e.g. de Abreu, 1995). ...
... Accordingly, one important future goal is to make high-quality early childhood education available for all children across socio-economic and cultural backgrounds (Kagan, 2018). Preschool education ideally includes embedded forms of learning, for example, learning through nature, play and participating in cultural activities which can be effective ways to get children acquainted with ideas that can bridge into formal learning (Rogoff, 2014). The next section focuses on domainspecific cognitive prerequisite skills. ...
The goal of this chapter is to assess research that can inform understandings of places and spaces of learning.The chapter assesses
evidence across three types of learning spaces: built spaces, digital spaces, and natural spaces. It looks at the role of these different kinds of spaces for learning, attainment, interpersonal relationships, skills development, wellbeing and behaviours ‒ across four pillars of learning to know, to be, to do and to live together. The chapter also explores how learning spaces can be actively shaped, felt and understood through practices and policies that occur within and around them.
... Children make sense through active participation in the practices of specific communities and the contexts in which they find themselves. A community's funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) involve localized practices, rituals and 'ways of doing things around here' learned through participation (Rogoff, 2014). For example, some children take part in social and economic activities such as street selling, shopping and storytelling that draw on community-based forms of mathematics, literacy and thinking skills (e.g. de Abreu, 1995). ...
... Accordingly, one important future goal is to make high-quality early childhood education available for all children across socio-economic and cultural backgrounds (Kagan, 2018). Preschool education ideally includes embedded forms of learning, for example, learning through nature, play and participating in cultural activities which can be effective ways to get children acquainted with ideas that can bridge into formal learning (Rogoff, 2014). The next section focuses on domainspecific cognitive prerequisite skills. ...
This chapter assesses ways to identify and support children with learning disabilities.
Learning disabilities affect many students and are seldom attributable to a single cause. They arise through complex interactions between biological and environmental factors within individual developmental trajectories. Early identification of children at risk for learning disabilities as well as adequate identification of children with learning
disabilities are important for ensuring that children have access to the supports they need
in order to reach their full potential. Here, we discuss identifying children’s learning needs and providing educational support. Although many school systems recognize the need to provide inclusive education to support all learners, more work is needed to raise awareness and enable adequate evidence-based early identification of children with learning disabilities and support their learning trajectories and instructional needs
inside and outside of the classroom. It is also fundamental to acknowledge the importance of research on diverse populations that could inform identification and support in various countries and socio-cultural contexts.
... That is, it seems likely that proximal processes and relationships in classrooms will create different motivational messages, provisions, and affordances depending on the rest of the mesosystems individual students inhabit. For example, standard conventions of individual work on isolated tasks may be more dissonant for students who are used to learning by observing and pitching in (Rogoff, 2014), or interpersonal relationships based on assumptions of individualism and competition may be jarring to students whose out-of-school lives revolve around cooperation and communal values (e.g., Gray et al., this issue). In a similar vein, students' peer worlds likely provide different rewards and extract different costs for enthusiastic participation in academic work at school (Graham, this issue). ...
Although motivational theories agree that environmental factors (like interpersonal relationships and pedagogical practices) are crucial in shaping students’ motivational development, few comprehensive conceptualizations of motivational contexts have been proposed. Instead, individual theories tend to focus on the contextual antecedents of the specific self-processes each prioritizes (e.g., self-efficacy, achievement goals). This has produced a cloud of disparate contextual factors that practitioners and interventionists, trying to apply work from the field as a whole, can find fragmented and confusing. Drawing on bioecological, phenomenological, ecocultural, and situative models, we outline an overarching framework that views motivational contexts as complex dynamic multilevel social ecologies. We explore three ways such a framework can help create a more comprehensive and comprehensible picture of the contextual antecedents identified by current theories of motivation. First, we examine the complexity inherent in microsystems, like the classroom, and propose three strategies for identifying motivationally relevant features. Second, we focus on students’ multiple worlds or mesosystems and outline different ways they can be organized and operate to shape motivation. Third, we consider macrosystems and highlight how societal forces, organized in interlocking systems of risk and resources, create stratified and unequal niches that differentially support the motivation of students from diverse backgrounds. Consistent with other researchers, we argue that such overarching frameworks are both integrative and generative. They not only offer places for the range of factors already identified by motivational theories, but also suggest avenues for discovering additional factors and examining how they work together to shape student motivation and its development.
... Partant d'une perspective socioculturelle (Rogoff, 2014), qui suggère qu'apprendre, c'est participer de manière de plus en plus compétente dans une communauté donnée, Penuel (2021) souligne que tout apprentissage est un phénomène culturel. Interrogeant quelle(s) culture(s) est (sont) centrale(s) dans les classes multiculturelles d'aujourd'hui, il met en évidence l'enjeu d'équité qui est sous-tendu et nous invite à élargir notre vision des élèves et de leurs capacités de développement ainsi qu'à développer un système éducatif qui reflète une vision panoramique. ...
Ce texte s’intéresse principalement aux enjeux d’équité liés aux usages éducatifs du numérique. On distingue d’abord inégalités, iniquités et fractures numériques en prenant comme point d’entrée les différences d’alignement se manifestant entre les systèmes scolaires des pays développés et les usages dont la recherche a montré qu’ils pouvaient jouer un rôle émancipateur. Les pratiques intensifiant l’expérience de participation des élèves sont illustrées par deux cas québécois – l’initiative « École en réseau » (EER) et le projet « L’évaluation collaborative réussie des apprentissages par le numérique (L’ECRAN). Les enjeux et les tensions repérés confirment la nécessité de développer l’agentivité des acteurs et de développer des forums d’échange pluridisciplinaires et pluriculturels, afin de former des collectifs hybrides durables.
... Paying attention to what children could hear is especially challenging, but might also be highly relevant. Indeed, it has been observed that children seek information and pay attention to what is discussed in their surroundings (Astuti, 2011;DeSpelder & Strickland, 2013;Irizarry, 1992;Rogoff, 2014). Additionally, we can imagine comparing formal teaching, as seen in the previous section, with adult explanation. ...
Death has been one of the great concerns of human beings since the dawn of humanity. For a long time, this theme has been studied in humans, particularly through the rituals following the death of an individual. Indeed, it was accepted that our species was the only one to adopt behaviours when faced with the death of a fellow human being. However, numerous recent studies have shown numerous mortuary activities and bodily interactions in different animal species. Moreover, these observations raise the question of the origins of the understanding of death during evolution.
In order to understand this evolution, I conducted a quasi-systematic review of the literature to highlight how cognitive and developmental psychology had studied the emergence of the understanding of death in children. The aim of this approach was to highlight the underlying cognitive processes as well as the variables influencing development. The interest of this approach is that some of these elements could provide research directions for cross-species comparisons.
This approach allowed the identification of 16 variables, among which cognitive development, age, or the acquisition of a naive theory of biology are significantly correlated with the development of the understanding of death. However, other elements such as emotions, formal education, or explanations given by parents or peers have been relatively little explored in relation to cognition. Despite this lack, these variables represent interesting areas to pursue for future research in this area. Emotions, in particular, could be the necessary piece to a better understanding of animal behaviour in a comparative cognition approach.
... Within the framework of this relationshipism, an alternative paradigm to Cartesian psychology -relational-ecological psychology -is opening up, in which a coalition of different perspectives and theoretical initiatives coexist, among them Developmental Ecological Psychology ; Developmental Systems Theory (Oyama et al., 2001), Dynamic Systems Approaches (e.g., Lewis, 2010;Thelen & Smith, 2006), Sociocultural and Ecobehavioral Perspectives (e.g. Cole, 1996;Gauvain et al., 2011;Heft, 2001;Nelson, 1996;Rogoff, 2014;Valsiner, 1998), Approaches on Embodied Intersubjectivity (e.g., Di Paolo & De Jaegher, 2016;Gallagher, 2005) (see , for a detailed description). ...
The Cartesian-Split-Mechanistic framework has worked as the standard Epistemic Paradigm within developmental science. However, two pervasive limitations have been pointed out: (a) the predominant focus on the individual child split from their context/culture, and (b) the over-representation of only one cultural group: Anglo-speaking children of middle-class European–American descendants. This chapter formulates a bidirectionally epistemological–methodological strategy to address these gaps: under the umbrella of the relational paradigm on the one hand and from population evidence—indigenous evidence—which often happen to exhibit epistemological orientations aligned with the foundations of relational thinking, on the other. To accomplish this, first we present cognitive and language development patterns from the Wichi, an indigenous group living in the Chaco region in South America. Second, and based on this evidence, we describe the ecological–relational paradigm, which brings relationshipism front and center. By focusing on developmental evidence coming from non-dominant populations, such as the indigenous Wichi, we expect to contribute to enlarging the agenda of the ecological–relational paradigm as a comprehensive conceptual framework in developmental science.KeywordsRelational–ecological paradigmConceptsLanguageDevelopmentWichi population
... Keen observation through sharing attention among complex ongoing events was more apparent in Guatemala and in India than in the two middle-class communities, in which children are more segregated from adult activities. Rogoff (2014) later coined the concept of LOPI (learning by observing and pitching in) which is described as a "cultural paradigm" (Correa-Chávez et al., 2015) typical of child rearing in native communities throughout the Americas. LOPI is obviously not restricted to this continent. ...
This paper reports my own perceptions of the history of research on culture and cognitive development, in the approximate period 1960 to 2000. I review in particular my own efforts to test Piaget’s theory cross-culturally, but also include other lines of research such as research inspired by Vygotsky and research on child rearing/socialization potentially linked to cognitive development. I briefly mention a research program in Bali, Indonesia, India, and Nepal on the geocentric spatial frame of reference that allowed us to disentangle a variety of eco-cultural and linguistic variables that determine the preference for this geocentric cognitive style. I also recall the “integrated framework” that I proposed in 2003 to combine the models proposed by several authors and which serves to integrate all the findings. The main conclusion is that cognitive processes are universal but that there are cultural differences in cognitive styles and pathways of development. I also discuss why the field has lost momentum, whether it is because all the questions have been answered or because new topics and research methods have evolved.
... In considering ways of scaling up programs, it can be productive for program developers to consider forms of resources present in communities in addition to community financial resources and employed human resources. For example, studies in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and elsewhere of specific cultural communities show traditions of multi-party socialization; that is, older siblings, peers, extended households, and community members are normally involved in the socialization of young children (Morelli, Rogoff, & Angelillo, 2003;Rogoff, 2014). Accordingly, in some contexts, the focus of parenting programs can extend to the entire household and clusters of households and communities. ...
SYNOPSIS
This article focuses on the demand side of parenting programs, in addition to the traditionally studied supply side and argues that a path to scale of parenting programs must align and equally acknowledge supply and demand side domains and characteristics, whereas historically they are addressed in silos. Evidence suggests that a core set of factors such as policy and contextual affordances and personal characteristics, skills, and motivations influence entry and engagement. For effective scaling, the article argues for the synergy between systems coherence, workforce, governance, and social-political mobilization of parents.Objective.Design.Results.Conclusions.
... Within the framework of this relationshipism, an alternative paradigm to Cartesian psychology -relational-ecological psychology -is opening up, in which a coalition of different perspectives and theoretical initiatives coexist, among them Developmental Ecological Psychology ; Developmental Systems Theory (Oyama et al., 2001), Dynamic Systems Approaches (e.g., Lewis, 2010;Thelen & Smith, 2006), Sociocultural and Ecobehavioral Perspectives (e.g. Cole, 1996;Gauvain et al., 2011;Heft, 2001;Nelson, 1996;Rogoff, 2014;Valsiner, 1998), Approaches on Embodied Intersubjectivity (e.g., Di Paolo & De Jaegher, 2016;Gallagher, 2005) (see , for a detailed description). ...
The Cartesian-Split-Mechanistic framework has worked as the standard Epistemic Paradigm within developmental science. However, two pervasive limitations have been pointed out: a) the predominant focus on the individual child splited from their context/culture, and b) the over-representation of only one cultural group: Anglo-speaking children of middle-class European-American descendants. This chapter formulates a bidirectionally epistemological-methodological strategy to address these gaps: under the umbrella of the relational paradigm on the one hand and from population evidence-indigenous evidence-which often happen to exhibit epistemological orientations aligned with the foundations of relational thinking, on the other. To accomplish this, first we present cognitive and language development patterns from the Wichi, an indigenous group living in the Chaco region in South America. Secondly, and based on this evidence, we describe the ecological-relational paradigm, which bring relationshipism front and center. By focusing on developmental evidence coming from non-dominant populations, such as the indigenous Wichi, we expect to contribute to enlarge the agenda of the ecological-relational paradigm as a comprehensive conceptual framework in developmental science. We would like to especially thank our colleagues and native speakers from Wichi Lawet community (Formosa, Argentina), Aurelia Pérez, Élida María Pérez, María Segundo, Modesto Palma and Luisa Pérez, for their valuable commitment to the project. We are also grateful to children, and their families for their willingness and for sharing their native language and cultural knowledge.
... Students should also have a sense of the collective purpose of their learning as they build their knowledge and deepen their engagement with content over time (Reiser et al., 2017). Previous work has shown that interdependent activity and collaboration appear with regularity in everyday activity, and designed learning settings may benefit from using similar activity structures or valuing activity in which the end purpose benefits the group (Rogoff, 2014;Severance, 2021). ...
Background
Multilingual learners have been overlooked and understudied in computer science education research. As the CS for All movement grows, it is essential to design integrated, justice-oriented curricula that help young multilingual learners begin to develop computational thinking skills and discourses.
Purpose
We present a conceptual framework and accompanying design principles for justice-centered computational thinking activities that are language-rich, with the aim of supporting learners’ agency and building their capacity over time to use computing for good in their communities.
Setting
Our work takes place in a research–practice partnership centered in an elementary school in California with a significant multilingual Latinx population.
Research Design
We have engaged in two cycles of design-based research with preservice and in-service teachers at an elementary school. Through analysis of one case study during the second and most recent cycle, we examined the potential of teachers using our design principles for supporting multilingual learners’ language development through engagement in computational thinking.
Conclusions
Our findings suggest that multilingual learners will engage in productive discourse when computational thinking lessons are designed to (1) be meaningfully contextualized, (2) position students as agentic learners, and (3) promote coherence over time. However, more research is needed to understand how teachers use these principles over time, and what additional supports are needed to ensure coordination between stakeholders to develop and effectively implement coherent learning progressions.
... Otra variable que podría contribuir a la satisfacción de las necesidades descritas (y, por tanto, influir en el CE) es la conformación de comunidades de aprendizaje, consistentes en relaciones grupales dinámicas y complementarias entre los distintos miembros de una clase, donde prima el funcionamiento grupal por sobre el individual y cada estudiante sirve como un recurso para los demás, con roles variables de acuerdo a su comprensión y manejo de la actividad en cuestión (Rogoff, 2014;Rogoff et al., 2018). Estos compromisos de colaboración grupal serían más comunes en comunidades con herencia indígena (Mejía-Arauz et al., 2007). ...
Diversos estudios internacionales muestran dificultades en el aprendizaje de la matemática en estudiantes indígenas. Dichas dificultades también se han observado en el contexto de la educación intercultural mapuche chilena. Lo anterior podría relacionarse con una falta de compromiso escolar. En esta investigación se busca describir el compromiso escolar en estudiantes mapuche. Se realizó un estudio cualitativo, basado en la fenomenología y etnografía, que incluyó entrevistas y observaciones de clases de dos asignaturas: Beyentun (cosmovisión y espiritualidad mapuche) y Matemáticas. Participaron 10 estudiantes de un liceo ubicado en la región del Biobío (Chile), quienes cursaban primer ciclo de enseñanza secundaria. Los datos se analizaron mediante la técnica de análisis de contenido. Los resultados muestran altos niveles de compromiso. Sin embargo, existen diferencias dentro de las asignaturas: los estudiantes presentan mayores niveles de compromiso emocional en beyentun y mayores niveles de compromiso cognitivo en clases de matemáticas. Asimismo, los resultados muestran una alta promoción de la necesidad de pertenencia y autonomía en las clases de beyentun, mientras que en las de matemática se observa una promoción del desarrollo de la necesidad de competencia. Se discuten estos hallazgos en relación con el compromiso escolar y la educación intercultural.
... Existe una gran cantidad de información sobre el aprendizaje como modelo para otras profesiones, tales como medicina y educación (Heineke, 2018;Rogoff, 2014;Rassie, 2017). Por ejemplo, la Universidad de Cambridge colaboró con escuelas para crear un "modelo 80:20, el cual significa que los maestros pasan cuatro días en la escuela y el quinto desarrollándose profesionalmente" (Yeigh & Lynch, 2017, p. 127). ...
Este libro presenta el trabajo llevado a cabo por estudiantes de la Escuela de Posgrado en Educación de la Universidad de Harvard, quienes examinaron cómo mejorar los sistemas educativos en diversas jurisdicciones en el mundo considerando como marco analítico el reciente informe de la unesco Reimaginar juntos nuestros futuros.
Un nuevo contrato social para la educación (Comisión Internacional sobre los Futuros de la Educación 2021).
Entre septiembre y diciembre de 2021, equipos de estudiantes del curso “Análisis en Política de Educación e Investigación en Perspectiva Comparativa” se asociaron con autoridades educativas, distritos escolares y otros sistemas a gran escala, a nivel nacional, estatal y municipal en Colombia (Bogotá), Ecuador, Israel, Kenia, México (Guanajuato, Jalisco y Nuevo León), Mongolia, Nepal, Palestina, Sierra Leona, Sudáfrica, Estados Unidos (Central Falls) y Uruguay para identificar los retos que enfrenta la educación en esos sistemas y los esfuerzos que se realizan para afrontarlos, así como para sugerir vías de mejoramiento con base en ideas presentadas en el informe de la UNESCO.
... ECEC programmes which affirm children's heritage languages and cultures have been shown to help smooth the transition children make from their homes to ECEC contexts because the linguistic environment is an extension of their familial experiences (Glasgow, 2019;Tagoilelagi, 2017). As children's personal and social identities evolve, they also gain a stronger sense of self in relation to others which contributes to their self-esteem and overall wellbeing (Cooper, 2014;Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003;Rogoff, 2014;Vygotsky, 1978). Furthermore, while the valorisation of heritage languages and cultures benefits all children in multicultural contexts by promoting intercultural knowledge and respect, heritage language programmes are especially valuable for Indigenous children, whose communities face historical and ongoing threats to the legitimacy and importance of their languages and ways of living (del Carpio, 2020;McIvor & Anisman, 2018;Tangaere, 2006). ...
Evidence shows that when young children's diverse language heritages are valued and supported, there are benefits for their linguistic and conceptual development, their sense of identity and their learning. However, there are few early learning settings in Australia which nurture young children's bilingual repertoires. And, while it is well established that early childhood is a critical period for first and second language acquisition, there is a lack of empirical research available on children's bilingual development in institutional early childhood education and care. Against this backdrop, our article reports on a study of a bilingual Samoan community kindergarten (a'oga amata) in southeast Queensland. In this paper, we focus on how the a'oga amata supported the maintenance of the children's heritage language and culture. We explore language use in the a'oga amata, the cultural values underpinning the educators' practices, and the positive responses of the children and parents in the study. We also examine the constraints on the community leaders and educators' efforts to create an authentic bilingual experience in this English-dominant environment. Finally, we revisit the notion of safe spaces for young bilingual learners (Conteh & Brock, 2011) and rearticulate the need for clear language policies that support heritage language education.
... Since developing students represent moving targets, social contexts can remain attuned to their needs only by changing and developing themselves. Whether in theories of developmentally-appropriate practice (e.g., Copple & Bredekamp, 2009), universal needs (Ryan & Deci, 2017), or participation in sociocultural activities (e.g., Rogoff, 2008Rogoff, , 2014, the central question facing researchers is how such needs and practices shift or change as students and their contexts develop. These processes are complicated enough when considering the role of a single social partner, but they take on added complexity when theorizing about collective effects, especially if social partners differ in their own developmental pathways (i.e., normative developments of adult vs. peer partners), as well as the extent to which the development of the target person (i.e., the student) is even part of the social partner's agenda (Kindermann & Skinner, 1992;Wachs, 2000). ...
In this article, we aimed to contribute to a fuller understanding of the complex social ecologies that shape students’ academic development by focusing on richer and more precise conceptuali- zations of mesosystem effects. First, building on bioecological models, we argued for the importance of collective influences, defined as influences from multiple microsystems that act in concert to shape students’ academic functioning and development. We identified three ways collective effects can operate: (1) coactively, (2) contingently, and (3) sequentially. Second, we demonstrated the utility of this framework by using it to organize a narrative review of 32 studies of the effects of parents, teachers, and peers on students’ academic engagement. The framework was used to classify studies, integrate findings, identify trends, and suggest directions for future study. Third, we explored next steps in the conceptualization and study of complex social ecologies, by incorporating perspectives that are more developmental, cultural, sociohistorical, and inclusive.
Although learning conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic were quite difficult, Yucatec Maya students from elementary to university levels did not stop learning, although they did not necessarily follow conventional school ways. Instead, Yucatec Maya families resumed their traditional Indigenous ways of learning. There is no question that during the pandemic these students faced challenges such as a lack of access to technology and equipment for distance education and a lack of motivation, both of which explain the poor performance at school. Nevertheless, this chapter presents evidence of a hidden factor of success, the cultural ways of learning. If these ways are applied properly, they have the potential to contribute significantly to successfully face the challenge of returning to full face-to-face schooling.
In this chapter a coastal community in Norway, transformed from being a small-scale fishing community to booming fish farmer industry during the last decades, is explored through the lens of childhood and knowledge production. Based on the analyses of memories of childhood among current grandparents, I introduce the concept literacies of the sea, to show how children learnt particular ways of being, living, and knowing. Literacies of the sea reflect an embodied sense of place, pointing to the significance of nature, materiality, and interaction with the sea. Essential skills and knowledge are derived through growing into intergenerational communities of work. In the transition of the community, intergenerational collaboration and mutual interdependence have been largely replaced by individual enterprises linked to new dependences on a global market with the aim of maximizing profit. I argue that knowledge about the landscape of childhood and “literacies of the sea” represent a valuable source of knowledge to ensure social and cultural sustainability, both as a rich cultural heritage, but also as a basis to critically discuss and renew contemporary education and the place of children and young people in society.KeywordsLiteracies of the seaWorkIntergenerational communitiesSocial and cultural sustainability
This study investigated the concept, role and potential of intergenerational learning (IGL) as a pedagogical strategy in five Irish early childhood education (ECE) services, through exploring the perspectives on IGL of educators (5), children (70) and their parents (43). Informed by socio-cultural theories of learning and aligned to key principles of IGL, a qualitative methodological approach was adopted. Data was gathered using semi-structured interviews with educators, ‘draw and talk’ strategies with children and informal written feedback with parents. Key findings demonstrated that children’s happiness, socio-emotional competences and executive functions, all key elements of successful learning and living, were strongly supported through IGL, reinforcing its potential as a relational pedagogy (Papatheodorou, T., and J. Moyles. 2009. Learning Together in the Early Years: Exploring Relational Pedagogy. London: Routledge.). Additionally, IGL created rich opportunities for children’s participation and contribution as citizens in communities, underscoring the potential of IGL as a strong and transformative pedagogical strategy (Sánchez, M., J. Sáez, P. Díaz, and M. Campillo. 2018. “Intergenerational Education in Spanish Primary Schools: Making the Policy Case.” Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 16 (1-2): 166–183.) for Irish ECE services.
The relationship between Indigenous learning systems and sustainability pedagogies has not been sufficiently elaborated despite the recognition of Indigenous peoples as stewards of the world's biological, cultural and linguistic diversity. Indigenous pedagogies are intergenerational, relational, and land‐based. This special section addresses intergenerational efforts to regenerate local biocultural knowledge in settings that extend beyond the classroom and proposes that educators support these processes by cultivating relational learning through new sensory, perceptive, and affective capacities throughout life.
Background
Current efforts to promote reasoning, problem solving, and discussion are often framed as advancing equity, but scholarship suggests individual students’ opportunities to learn can vary considerably in classrooms that attempt to take up these approaches to teaching mathematics. Noticing students’ mathematical strengths and positioning their contributions as competent is among aspects of instruction associated with more equitable learning outcomes for students from marginalized groups, but research has yet to comprehensively examine the range and nuance of this aspect of teachers’ practice in classrooms that feature broad distributions of participation.
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to examine teachers’ instructional practice with respect to assigning competence in two mathematics classrooms that demonstrated high levels of student participation. We investigated the kinds of situations in which teachers positioned students as competent, and the ways assigning competence opened opportunities to participate.
Setting
Data were collected at a public elementary school in a culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse neighborhood in southern California.
Participants
Participants included two teachers and 45 students from two third-grade classrooms. Teachers had participated in ongoing professional development focused on leveraging children’s mathematical thinking in instruction.
Research Design
We drew from qualitative methods for analyzing video to investigate classroom interactions from 12 mathematics lessons. Data sources included video recordings, transcripts, and student work. We used Studiocode software to parse each lesson into phases and episodes. Drawing from previous studies, we identified a subset of episodes in which teachers explicitly positioned a student’s contribution as competent. An iterative process of coding and discussion was used to analyze patterns with respect to student participation, teacher support, and the unfolding of rights and obligations related to participating in mathematical activity.
Findings
Analyses revealed different kinds of situations in which students participated in mathematically substantive ways (in terms of providing detailed explanations of their ideas or engaging with the details of a peer’s idea) and teachers positioned their contributions as competent. These situations included highlighting, clarifying, and amplifying contributions; supporting the specificity of student contributions; recognizing emergent ideas; and validating unprompted attention to mathematical details. Assignments of competence emerged in ways that were integrated into teachers’ ongoing efforts to surface and make explicit the details of their mathematical ideas, while also broadening the kinds of contributions students could make to joint mathematical work.
Conclusions
Helping students to know what it could look and sound like to participate in the moment while recognizing a wide range of contributions as competent created openings for students who in many classrooms might be excluded or relegated to the periphery of conversations. Making competence explicit was a contingent, relational practice that required teachers to find specific ways of leveraging student strengths to support their participation. Recommendations for advancing mathematics teaching must attend to the nuances with which particular practices unfold to open or constrain individual students’ opportunities to learn.
Understanding how learning environments productively mobilize children’s ideas as resources for participation in joint activity is an ongoing focus of research on classroom instruction. We investigated whole-class mathematics conversations in which multiple students participated in ways previous research suggests are consequential for learning. We found that in such conversations, students rarely presented the entirety of their solutions before other students engaged. Rather, incomplete explanations and written representations that emerged over time created entry points for other students to contribute in mathematically substantive ways. These aspects of student participation operated in combination with teachers’ in-the-moment responses to create opportunities for, and publicly recognize, different kinds of contributions as resources for collective work. Our findings suggest that, rather than challenges to communication that must be overcome, students’ vague, unfinished, and ambiguous ideas present productive contributions that can be leveraged to support collective mathematical work.
This chapter presents an approach to the study of learning which analyzes small groups – such as a dyad, a group, a classroom – or large groups – for example, a community or a social movement. This approach is based on a situativity or sociocultural theory of cognition and learning, where learning is “situated” within complex social and material contexts known as activity systems. Sociocultural theories are related to cultural-historical activity theory, situated learning theory, distributed cognition theory, and cultural psychology. These theories suggest that a full account of learning must extend beyond individualist psychology to analyze and explain social practices, technological artifacts, interactional patterns, and the different roles occupied by the participants.
Contemporary depictions of learning in early years research and practice are mostly located within formal educational institutions. Educational experiences that take place for young children in the family home, and across generations, are much less visible, despite persistent claims concerning the importance of the wider family in early experience. During covid -19 pandemic lockdown, however, learning at home with family members became much more visible as private and public settings coalesced. In the present study 2-4-year-old Filipino children’s intergenerational experiences at home during lockdown were shared through visual data, as a source of valued learning—highlighting the pedagogical role of family. The authors’ interest in this article is to explore what kinds of learning were made visible—by whom, for whom. Special emphasis is given to intergenerational engagements between young children and older adults, as represented by the families themselves. Heywood and Sandywell’s concept of ‘visibilization’ is operationalized as a visual route to these sites of production—the images themselves, their intended audience, and their circulation. Videos produced by families portray intergenerational arenas for learning. The mediating role of the sandwich generations in these intergenerational encounters are made visible in the private and public sphere of social media.
Based on a participant observation, this article reports children actions and activities that may identified as ways of cultural resistance in the school. Three elementary rural schools participated in this study. The research team visited each school taking field notes during school routines. The analysis consisted of textual and conceptual codification of the three contexts in which the mapuche children deployed their patterns of cultural interaction. The results demonstrated that despite the traditional school system, mapuche children display their own patterns of cultural interaction to promote collaboration, collective organization and supporting and care for others. This work invites us to questioning the ways in which the learning strategies of the western school, are suitable to the mapuche indigenous children. In order to be effective in education, we must integrate the cultural framework of family learning. Thus, may be necessary, to deconstruct hegemonic teaching practices that stimulate individualism instead cooperation.
Foundations of Academic Knowledge: This chapter assesses the acquisition of academic knowledge and skills in domains including literacy, numeracy, sciences, arts and physical education. It examines how learning trajectories arise from complex interactions between individual brain development and sociocultural environments. Teaching literacy and numeracy to all students is a goal of most school systems. While there are some fundamental skills children should grasp to succeed in these domains, the best way to support each student's learning varies depending on their individual development, language, culture and prior knowledge. Here we explore considerations for instruction and assessment in different academic domains. To accommodate the ourishing of all children, exibility must be built into education systems, which need to acknowledge the diverse ways in which children can progress through learning trajectories and demonstrate their knowledge.
The foundations of an applied family social systems theory for explaining the multiple determinants of child well-being, learning, and development, parenting beliefs, behavior and practices, and family well-being are described. The theory is derived from tenets of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory and other social, family, and contextualized theories. The applied theory was used to develop an activity setting model of young children’s everyday learning opportunities and a family systems intervention practices model for ensuring parents and other caregivers have the time and psychological energy to provide young children with development-instigating and development-enhancing learning opportunities in the contexts of everyday family and community life. Results from three different lines of research are described which provide support for the applied systems model and the two associated intervention models. Results showed that different child characteristics, setting characteristics, parenting behavior and practices, family and social systems variables, and practitioner measures were empirically related to variations in child, parent, and family outcomes. There were also discernable pathways of influence between family systems intervention model practices, parenting practices, and child outcomes mediated by parent self-efficacy beliefs and parent well-being. The contributions of the theory, models, and research findings to child studies are described.
This study focuses on examining the importance of affectivity and humour as part of Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours (LOPI). Specifically, it highlights the role of laughter in the form of a spontaneous expression of a certain type of humour. This laughter is the central element for coexistence during socialization focused on attention and body management, occurring while learners and experts in a Tzotzil village in Chiapas, Mexico, are jointly engaged in various activities.
In Nahuatl-speaking villages located in the north of the state of Puebla, family and community educational practices adhere to the Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours model (LOPI). Attentive observation is encouraged as children’s principal method of learning. Co-presence is favoured by the adult educators as a means to facilitate repeated observations, to demonstrate examples of the behaviours desired during work and to reinforce the spirit of observation by offering advice and moral support during leisure or socialization time. These practices are supported by a coherent Nahua theory of human development — particularly with regard to the psychological — of knowledge and know-how, which systematizes understanding of parental experiences shared by the community members and provides guidance for educational actions.
This study brings to light cultural differences that fit with two distinct models of collaboration and learning: shared thinking versus individual negotiation. The study identifies a previously unstudied sophisticated form of collaboration frequently used by 25 pairs of Mexican-heritage 8- to 11-year-old children and rarely used by 25 pairs of European American children. Pairs from both backgrounds spent nearly a third of the time during a computer programming activity building on each other's ideas through making and responding to proposals. However in addition, Mexican American pairs spent another third of the time coordinating in fluid synchrony, anticipating each other's contributions without proposals. This accounts for their averaging twice as much collaboration overall than the European American children, who spent more time resisting their partner's contributions, negotiating whose idea to use, and bossing their partner.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems and their underlying ethical qualities guide social interaction and the process by which Indigenous children learn what it means to be a person within family and community life. Using the Learning by Observing and Pitching In (LOPI) framework as a starting point, this paper explores a case study of a death in the Cowichan Tribes community to illuminate four ethical qualities (relationality, reciprocity, responsibility, respect) associated with (1) the social organization of the community guided by a sense of community consciousness and (2) Indigenous concepts of time and space. Using the social organization of the community and Indigenous concepts of time and space as broad themes, we aim to illustrate how culturally determined ethical qualities guide every social interaction and thus inform human development and learning, broadly. By including ethics that guide social relationships in the LOPI framework, educators and researchers may gain a deeper understanding of how children learn in communities and how their participation in community activities informs their sense of self.
This article seeks to connect ethnographic findings from a study on parenting, childcare and early childhood in Chile’s Mapuche communities with facets of the LOPI model. From Facet 1, we observe that children are included in social situations from an early stage, which empowers them to learn how to interact through such instances as greeting others, commensality and hospitality, displaying will as well as motivation. From Facet 2, we highlight the children’s enthusiasm for participating and collaborating in the adults’ activities, imitating their work and ways of socializing. And lastly, from Facet 5, we identify the way in which their capacity for keen attention and anticipation unfolds, which has been identified elsewhere as ‘pitching in’. Our analysis considers the inherent inseparability of the model’s facets, as well as different emphases on a reality for learning that has tension between belonging and personal autonomy as key elements, understood from their socialization capacity.
This Element addresses the factors that influence children's accuracy in reporting on events and draws implications for children's ability to serve as reliable eyewitnesses. This Element focusses on short- and long-term memory for event details, memory for stressful events, memory for the temporal order of events, memory for the spatial location of events, the ways poorly worded questions or intervening events interfere with memory, and individual differences in language development, understanding right from wrong and emotions, and cognitive processes. In addition, this Element considers how potential jurors perceive children as eyewitnesses and how the findings of the research on children's event memory inform best practices for interviewing children.
This article examines the value of respect, as demonstrated towards non-human living beings by a group of Mapuche girls in Southern Chile, while attending a rural school. This work is an ethnographic study based upon systematic observations of daily life within an educational space. An example is presented in which the practices of care and social interactions in a spontaneous activity during recess, which involves protecting an insect, are described. The findings demonstrate that the cultural value of respect underpins the activities performed by the girls. The presence of synchronous, collective organization, flexibly assembled and coordinated through non-verbal forms of communication was observed. The findings are discussed taking into account the LOPI model and the Mapuche educational model, reinforcing the ongoing repertoire of cultural practices learned inside of the family and community space.
Latinx immigrant parents indicated that the type of pedagogical practices they prefer or value for their children’s education in early childhood classrooms emphasize opportunities for children to help each other, collaborate and contribute, make choices and take responsibility in their learning. In a study using video-cued ethnography, parents indicated that they believe that children need these meaningful experiences to be part of society and convivencia. The parents’ preferred pedagogical practices align with facets of the Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours.
Learning to use, make, and modify tools is key to our species’ success. Researchers have hypothesized that play with objects may have a foundational role in the ontogeny of tool use and, over evolutionary timescales, in cumulative technological innovation. Yet, there are few systematic studies investigating children’s interactions with objects outside the post-industrialized West. Here, we survey the ethnohistorical record to uncover cross-cultural trends regarding hunter-gatherer children’s use of objects during play and instrumental activities. Our dataset, consisting of 434 observations of children’s toys and tools from 54 hunter-gatherer societies, reveals several salient trends: Most objects in our dataset are used in play. Children readily manufacture their own toys, such as dolls and shelters. Most of the objects that children interact with are constructed from multiple materials. Most of the objects in our dataset are full-sized or miniature versions of adult tools, reflecting learning for adult roles. Children also engage with objects related to child culture, primarily during play. Taken together, our findings show that hunter-gatherer children grow up playing, making, and learning with objects.
Indigenous language reclamation efforts are pushing academic ideas of what language is, in order to be accountable to Indigenous epistemologies. Simultaneously, as our Indigenous languages grow, we (academics) are pushed to grow beyond the boundaries of disciplines. Categories of “language” and “land” have been segregated by this colonial structure. In this study, as we bring them together, we seek to describe what the ontology in play looks like. We argue that as reclamation efforts successfully grow more young speakers, we are able to push against colonial constructs of learning when we witness learning in the context of movement, land, and intergenerational interactions. In this article, we closely examine episodes from three walks taken from a broader corpus of walks (14), to describe how one Elder walking with groups of two children constructed knowledge and joint meaning-making in the Ojibwe language while walking on Ojibwe lands. We take seriously the idea that there is an Indigenous epistemology at work in these cultural ecologies, one that sees humans as a part of the natural world, at play on the walks. Here we describe specifically what this looks like in the moment-to-moment interactions, and how we read these constellations of cultural practices as an apprenticeship into sustaining relationships with land.
This study addressed whether and how tinkering experiences in a children's museum can provide informal engineering learning opportunities for Latine families. Forty-two Latine parents and their children (20 girls, 22 boys; Mage = 8.00, SD = 1.59) were observed tinkering to make something that rolls. Immediately after tinkering, researchers elicited the children's reflections on their learning. Parents' formal schooling was positively associated with parents' engineering conversations during tinkering. In the children's post‑tinkering reflections, older children, and children of parents with higher schooling, included more engineering talk in their reports. Finally, parents and children who during tinkering referenced the engineering information reviewed during a pre‑tinkering orientation talked the most about engineering during and after tinkering. These results suggest ways that Latine families engage in tinkering to advance children's learning about engineering, and how museum practices can support early engineering learning in informal educational settings.
Resumo
This article examines how people learn by actively observing and “listening-in” on ongoing activities as they participate in shared endeavors. Keen observationand listening-in are especially valued and used in some cultural communities in which children are part of mature community activities. This intent participation also occurs in some settings (such as early language learning in the family) in communities that routinely segregate children from the full range of adult activities. However, in the past century some industrial societies have relied on a specialized form of instruction that seems to accompany segregation of children from adult settings, in which adults “transmit” information to children. We contrast these two traditions of organizing learning in terms of their participation structure, the roles of more-and less-experienced people, distinctions in motivation and purpose, sources of learning (observation in ongoing activity versus lessons), forms of communication, and the role of assessment.
The Handbook of Social Influences in School Contexts draws from a growing body of research on how and why various aspects of social relationships and contexts contribute to children’s social and academic functioning within school settings. Comprised of the latest studies in developmental and educational psychology, this comprehensive volume is perfect for researchers and students of Educational Psychology. Beginning with the theoretical perspectives that guide research on social influences, this book presents foundational research before moving on to chapters on peer influence and teacher influence. Next, the book addresses ways in which the school context can influence school-related outcomes (including peer and teacher-student relationships) with specific attention to research in motivation and cognition. Within the chapters authors not only present current research but also explore best-practices, drawing in examples from the classroom. With chapters from leading experts in the field, The Handbook of Social Influences in School Contexts provides the first complete resource on this topic.
Ethnographic research indicates that in a number of cultural communities, children's learning is organised around observation of ongoing activities, contrasting with heavy use of explanation in formal schooling. The present research examined the extent to which first- to third-grade children observed an adult's demonstration of how to fold origami figures or observed the folding of two slightly older children who also were trying to make the figures, without requesting further information. In the primary analysis, 10 Mexican heritage US children observed without requesting additional information to a greater extent than 10 European heritage US children. Consistent with the ethnographic literature, these two groups differed in the extent of their family's involvement in schooling; hence, we explored the relationship with maternal schooling in a secondary analysis. An additional 11 children of Mexican heritage whose mothers had extensive experience in formal school (at least a high school education) showed a pattern more like that of the European heritage children, whose mothers likewise had extensive experience in school, compared with the Mexican heritage children whose mothers had only basic schooling (an average of 7.7 grades). The results suggest that a constellation of cultural traditions that organise children's learning experiences—including Western schooling—may play an important role in children's learning through observation and explanation.
New accommodations are needed between school-based learning and learning experiences of everyday life.
Children commonly observe and pitch in to ongoing activities in Indigenous communities of Mexico, according to ethnographic research. The present study examines the generality of this approach to learning by comparing its use among Mexican immigrants of two cultural backgrounds in the United States. Results showed more sustained attention to (and learning from) instruction directed to another person by 22 U.S. Mexican-heritage 6- to 11-year-old children whose families likely have experience with Indigenous practices (and limited involvement in Western schooling), compared with 16 U.S. Mexican-heritage children whose families have extensive involvement in Western schooling (and related practices).
Students in the classroom put to use cultural knowledge they have acquired by being members of a particular socio-cultural group. In part this knowledge is made up of particular social forms of organizing learning that can be identified in the behaviour and attitudes of children engaged in classroom activities. This article deals with the nature of this kind of knowledge and how it influences classroom learning behaviour. The analysis centres on the cultural orientation of Mazahua children in Mexico using observation as a preferred strategy for organizing learning. It shows how by means of this approach, interactional arrangements are developed in order to facilitate the organization of classroom learning. The descriptions and analyses presented are based on data provided by intensive observations and open interviews carried out in a Mexican rural school, focussing on a group of fifth and sixth grade students and teachers� classroom practices En el salón de clase los alumnos manejan un conocimiento cultural que han adquirido por ser miembros de un grupo sociocultural particular. En parte este conocimiento se trata de formas sociales particulares de organizar el aprendizaje que se pueden identificar en los comportamientos y actitudes de los niños frente el quehacer escolar. Este artículo indaga acerca de la naturaleza de este tipo de conocimiento y su alcance dentro del salón de clase. El análisis se centra en la orientación cultural de los niños mazahuas de México hacia la observación como estrategia preferida en la organización del aprendizaje, y muestra cómo a partir de esta orientación se desarrollan arreglos interaccionales para realizar actividades de aprendizaje dentro del salón de clase. Las descripciones y los análisis se basan en los datos provistos por las observaciones intensivas y entrevistas abiertas realizadas en una escuela rural de México. Se enfoca la práctica escolar en un aula a la que asisten alumnos de quinto y sexto grados atendidos por un maestro
This article examines how people learn by actively observing and "listening-in" on ongoing activities as they participate in shared endeavors. Keen observation and listening-in are especially valued and used in some cultural communities in which children are part of mature community activities. This intent participation also occurs in some settings (such as early language learning in the family) in communities that routinely segregate children from the full range of adult activities. However, in the past century some industrial societies have relied on a specialized form of instruction that seems to accompany segregation of children from adult settings, in which adults "transmit" information to children. We contrast these two traditions of organizing learning in terms of their participation structure, the roles of more- and less-experienced people, distinctions in motivation and purpose, sources of learning (observation in ongoing activity versus lessons), forms of communication, and the role of assessment.
This book provides a unique window on the cultural nature of human development. The ideas are illustrated with the life and work of a Mayan woman who was born to be a sacred midwife. The ideas are revealed also in the changes and continuities of children's and families' ways of life in her Guatemalan Mayan town. In following the threads of culture and history in the life cycles of this Mayan midwife and her town, the book illuminates how individuals build on cultural heritage from prior generations and at the same time create new ways of living. The book documents changes and continuities across decades and centuries with extensive photographs as well as first-person accounts and research on birth, childrearing, and learning. This book argues that by examining how people participate in cultural practices, we can better understand the role of culture in our lives.
In this Monograph, we examine how toddlers and their caregivers from four cultural communities collaborate in shared activities. We focus both on similarities across communities in processes of guided participation--structuring children's participation and bridging between their understanding and that of their caregivers--and on differences in how guided participation occurs. We examine the idea that a key cultural difference entails who is responsible for learning--whether adults take this responsibility by structuring teaching situations or whether children take responsibility for learning through observation and through participating in adult activities with caregivers' support. We speculate that these two patterns relate to cultural variation in the segregation of children from adult activities of their community and in emphasis on formal schooling. The four communities of our study vary along these lines as well as in other ways: a Mayan Indian town in Guatemala, a middle-class urban group in the United States, a tribal village in India, and a middle-class urban neighborhood in Turkey. In each community, we visited the families of 14 toddlers (aged 12-24 months) for an interview that was focused on child-rearing practices, which included observations of caregivers helping the toddlers operate novel objects spontaneously during adult activities. Results are based on systematic analysis of patterns of communication and attention in each family in each community, combining the tools of ethnographic description, graphic analysis, and statistics.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
In this Monograph, we examine how toddlers and their caregivers from four cultural communities collaborate in shared activities. We focus both on similarities across communities in processes of guided participation-structuring children's participation and bridging between their understanding and that of their caregivers-and on differences in how guided participation occurs. We examine the idea that a key cultural difference entails who is responsible for learning-whether adults take this responsibility by structuring teaching situations or whether children take responsibility for learning through observation and through participating in adult activities with caregivers' support. We speculate that these two patterns relate to cultural variation in the segregation of children from adult activities of their community and in emphasis on formal schooling. The four communities of our study vary along these lines as well as in other ways: a Mayan Indian town in Guatemala, a middle-class urban group in the United States, a tribal village in India, and a middle-class urban neighborhood in Turkey. In each community, we visited the families of 14 toddlers (aged 12-24 months) for an interview that was focused on child-rearing practices, which included observations of caregivers helping the toddlers operate novel objects and put on clothes on our request as well as toddlers exploring novel objects spontaneously during adult activities. Results are based on systematic analysis of patterns of communication and attention in each family in each community, combining the tools of ethnographic description, graphic analysis, and statistics. The findings point to the importance of understanding not only how children learn through instruction that is managed by adults but also how they learn through keen observation and participation in adult activities. A major contribution of the study is an analysis of keen observation through sharing attention among complex ongoing events, an approach that was more apparent in the two non-middle-class communities, in which children are minimally segregated from adult activities.
This chapter examines children's collaboration and helping from the perspective that understanding prosocial development requires attention to the cultural practices and values in which children and adults participate. Children's ways of engaging with each other and with adults are based on practices of their families and the current and historical practices of their communities. We examine cultural values related to the helpfulness and propensity to collaborate that are common among Mexican, Latino/a, and Indigenous-heritage U.S. and Canadian children, as compared with European-American middle-class children. Central to this cultural difference are community values and practices regarding the relation of individuals with their communities-values that can be seen in the organization of children's families and communities.
Estudio sobre el desarrollo de los seres humanos, visto como procesos culturales que ocurren a través de la participación del sujeto, junto a otros miembros de su comunidad, en la construcción y reconstrucción de prácticas culturales que han sido heredadas de generaciones anteriores. Temas clásicos del desarrollo humano como la crianza, la interdependencia y la autonomía, las transiciones a lo largo del ciclo vital, el desarrollo cognoscitivo, el aprendizaje, los roles de género o las relaciones sociales son examinados desde una perspectiva cultural, que reúne ideas de la psicología evolutiva, la antropología, la educación y la historia.
We argue for the importance of keeping a focus on the dynamically coordinated functioning of multifaceted cultural practices for investigating cultural aspects of human development. Although some research projects benefit from focusing on specific aspects of cultural functioning, it should be with the recognition that segmentation into 'variables’ is for the sake of analysis rather than assumed necessarily to reflect the reality of the phenomena that we study. The portfolio of research on cultural aspects of human development needs to include analyses that focus more broadly on the historically changing constellation of cultural practices in which individuals participate, even as other studies examine specific aspects as if they were freestanding variables. We illustrate this argument with research suggesting that middle‐class European American adults’ ways of interacting with children can be illuminated by seeing their practices as an aspect of a somewhat coordinated historical, cultural system. Cultural analyses that focus on coordinated, multifaceted practices can help us understand human development in the context of people’s participation in pervasive cultural institutions such as schooling and societal changes such as industrialization. For the research portfolio to develop a comprehensive approach to investigating coordinated patterns in cultural aspects of human development, we need a more open‐minded respect for a variety of approaches to cultural research than is sometimes found within disciplines.
This chapter asks how cognitive development occurs in and is promoted by individuals' collaboration with others. I examine theory and research on processes of collaboration and their implications for cognitive development, as well as on how collaborative processes develop as people participate in the activities of their communities. The chapter begins with consideration of two historically central theoretical approaches to the study of cognition as a collaborative process that emerged in the early decades of the 20th century. The next section examines the conceptual frameworks of two more recent approaches to understanding the collaborative nature of cognition. These are a family of sociocultural approaches that, for about two decades, have been building on the classic theoretical work of the early decades of the century, especially the cultural/historical theory of Vygotsky and Leont'ev. The next section of the chapter discusses the differences in research and methodologies for the observation or evaluation of individuals' development from sociocultural and social influence approaches. The central section of the chapter addresses key concepts and research on cognition as a collaborative process, beginning with a brief overview of the nature and limitations of the available research. The section on experts' support of novices' learning begins with a discussion of how sociocultural approaches to this question differ from closely related work on scaffolding. The concluding section focuses on collaboration in sociocultural activities beyond the didactic and dyadic interactions between children and adults or peers that have provided most of the research to date. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article describes the transformation of research on cognition and culture from cross-cultural comparisons of psychological tasks to theory and research on people's thinking in sociocultural activities. The author's describe this transformation, not merely for those interested in this particular line of research but also because the study of cognition more generally seems to be struggling with some of the same issues that have been faced in the research on culture and cognition. An understanding of the shift in emphasis of research on culture and cognition can provide leadership to some of the issues more broadly facing the study of cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Abstract This article examines cultural practices that support informal learning as children observe and pitch in with everyday activities that are integrated into family and community life. We discuss the social and cultural grounding of this learning tradition, drawing on research carried out in different parts of the world during more than 60 years. Children learn by watching, listening, and attending, often with great concentration, by taking purposeful initiative, and by contributing and collaborating. We try to correct the frequent misconception that this way of learning is essentially a nonverbal process by showing that speech is commonly used, but judiciously, in support of efficient communication rather than for “lessons.” This learning tradition is not in opposition to school learning; children with schooling experience learn this way when they belong and experience community. [informal learning, cultural practices, socialization, observation, family and community learning]
The study builds on ethnographic research noting an emphasis in many Indigenous communities of the Americas on learning through keen observation of and participation in ongoing community activities. Forty-four U.S. Mexican-heritage 5- to 11-year-old children whose families likely have experience with Indigenous ways more frequently attended to and learned from a toy construction activity that was directed to another child, compared to 36 U.S. Mexican-heritage children whose mothers had extensive experience with Western school (and related European American practices). The results support the idea that children whose family history emanates from Indigenous communities of México may be especially oriented to learning by observing ongoing events, and that this method of learning may be less commonly used by children whose families have extensive experience with schooling (and related Western practices).
This study investigated differences in attention and learning among Guatemalan Mayan and European American children, ages 5-11 years, who were present but not addressed while their sibling was shown how to construct a novel toy. Each child waited with a distracter toy for her or his turn to make a different toy. Nonaddressed children from Mayan traditional families (with little maternal involvement in Western schooling; n = 40) showed more sustained attention and learning than their counterparts from Mayan families with extensive involvement in Western schooling (n = 40) or European American children (with extensive family involvement in schooling; n = 40). The nonaddressed Mayan children from highly schooled families in turn attended more than the European American children. These findings are consistent with research showing that traditional indigenous ways of organizing learning emphasize observation of ongoing interactions.
Traditional indigenous social organization in the Americas has been characterized as involving horizontal multiparty engagements, in contrast with schooling, which often relies on hierarchy and division of labor. This study examined whether the social organization of problem solving of Guatemalan Mayan indigenous mothers and children varied with the mothers' extent of experience with school. We observed 47 mothers as they constructed a puzzle with 3 children (ages 6-12 years). Mayan mothers with little schooling (0-2 grades) were involved more in horizontal, multiparty engagements, whereas Mayan mothers with extensive experience with schooling (12 or more grades) were involved more in hierarchical, division-of-labor engagements with the children. The results suggest that Western formal schooling contributes to the reshaping of traditional collaborative social organization among indigenous Mayan people.
This study examined cultural differences in children's simultaneous attention to 2 events versus quick alternation in which attending to 1 event momentarily interrupted attending to another. Thirty-one 6- to 10-year-old U.S. children of Mexican and European American heritage folded paper figures with 2 other first- to third-grade children and an adult. Mexican heritage children whose mothers averaged 7 grades of school more commonly attended to events simultaneously. European heritage and Mexican heritage children whose mothers had more than 12 grades of school more commonly alternated attention. Differences are interpreted in light of traditional indigenous North and Central American emphasis on learning through observation of ongoing events as well as school practices that emphasize learning by attending to one event at a time.
This article examines how 31 triads of 6- to 10-year-old children from 3 cultural backgrounds organized their interactions while folding Origami figures. Triads of children whose families had immigrated to the United States from indigenous heritage regions of México (and whose mothers averaged only 7 grades of schooling) coordinated more often as an ensemble, whereas triads of European heritage U.S. children whose mothers had extensive schooling more often engaged dyadically or individually. When the European heritage children did engage as an ensemble, this often involved chatting rather than nonverbal conversation regarding folding, which was more common among the Mexican heritage children. Mexican heritage U.S. triads whose mothers had extensive schooling showed an intermediate pattern or resembled the European heritage children.
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