I've seen it ALL OVER THE PLACE in Native American communities.  From birth, children are taught non-verbally to communicate and work with each other.  It is confirmed in the many, usually ceremonial, dances that they've learned over the years.  PLUS, there is absolutely NO retribution for asking over-and-over-again, "How did you say to do that ???"

Hi KT, Makes sense!  Do you have an example that you could describe, to help us visualize this?  Either the ways that the ceremonial dances show this, or how the children are taught nonverbally to communicate and work with each other?

Thank you for sharing this interesting and brief video for viewing!  The research is very subtle and so the

pictures (video) is especially helpful for both definition of fluid synchrony and teaching teachers how to

cultivate these behaviors.

Hi Diana!  Yes, the videos help immensely with showing what is meant.  Also, I notice that people remember my videos years after they see them.  I'm not so sure they remember what I write or say so long!

Thank you for your interest, Sharon. I can see how these findings might be integrated into your "Indigenous Mapping" project or other work with indigenous communities. But I'm curious to learn more about your ideas on how you might apply these findings to your work. 

Hi Sharon!  Yes, we'd love to know how you can use these findings in your work.

Thanks!  Yes.  It looks that way.  In the first study, we looked at children from US Mexican heritage whose families had extensive schooling backgrounds.  Their extent of fluid synchrony fell in between that of the US Mexican Indigenous-heritage pairs (whose families had only basic schooling) and the middle-class European American pairs.  This is reported in PNAS, 2018.

 Hi Joni!  NSF funded an interdisciplinary, international research consortium of about 40 researchers who investigate learning and the arrangements for learning in Indigenous-heritage communities of the Americas.  This is Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavors (LOPI).  The studies we present here stemmed from the NSF funding, and we continue the research with small pockets of money.  In the meantime, new investigators continue to join the consortium.

Joni, you also asked about whether there are school settings/tasks that favor competition over collaboration.  Yes, there's a pretty extensive literature showing that many of the formats used in schools promote competition and not collaboration.  Among them would be grading on a curve and tight age-grading in classrooms. 

However, some schools foster collaboration in their organization.   I've written about principles of learning collaboratively in a book co-authored with teachers, a principal, parents, and students in an innovative public K-6 (now K-8) school in Salt Lake City, where children collaborate with each other and adults and children also collaborate -- Learning Together: Adults and Children in a School Community (Oxford, 2001). 

You also asked whether some school settings/ tasks disadvantage Mexican-heritage children who may be skilled in collaboration.  Omar Ruvalcaba points out that the ways that the activities are set up, even in collaborative activities, may not allow for the strengths of the Mexican-heritage children.  For example, when the task is set up with turn-taking or other separate roles dividing up the shared decision-making, this does not allow for the really fine-tuned fluid synchrony that we found was common among the Mexican-heritage children in the second study reported in our video (Ruvalcaba, Rogoff, & López Fraire, in preparation). 

Omar, can you elaborate?

Sure, Barbara. I believe it is essential to consider the affordance of the task as well and the context. 

Often, collaboration in school contexts is framed around the assumption that all collaboration uses turns. Also, researchers and teachers often emphasize equal opportunities to participate. Even researchers looking to understand collaboration create situations that emphasize a turn-taking approach (timers, emphasis on equal turns). As in several studies with different cultural communities, we did not find this was the only approach used by Mexican-heritage children. In addition to the highlighted work, a publication in collaboration with Linda Werner and Jill Denner (Ruvalcaba, Werner, Denner, 2010) demonstrated variance in pairs of middle school age girls who were Mexican-heritage, European-American, and mixed cultural background (one was Mexican-heritage and the other European-American). In the mixed pair, it was interesting to note that the nonverbal bids for attention/collaboration went unnoted by the European-America partner. The Mexican-heritage girl initiated some attempts nonverbally then transitioned to verbal means after several nonverbal attempts. 

I'm intrigued by how different experiences with different types of schooling may influence Mexican-heritage children's collaborative approaches. Given that the schools with a large percentage of Mexican-heritage children tend to be low income and emphasize classroom management in the USA, I wonder how this early experience might relate to the initiative to collaborate later in life. 

Hi Patrick, I'm curious about your observations as a milddle school teacher working with Mexican-heritage students.  Did you see anything related to our observations of sophisticated forms of collaboration?

Hi Katie,  No, it's not just in explicitly set-up tasks -- I was just replying above to questions about classroom situations.  Observations in informal settings have described similarly fluid synchrony in collaboration.  (Such as in the work of Ruth Paradise and Mariette de Haan.)  It is a sophisticated, 'organic', improvisational form of collaboration that I would guess would be more common outside of explicit 'tasks.'

In our video, the second study (programming a computer game character) was not family groups -- the children were classmates.  It's a good question what would happen when people are strangers to each other, though, like strangers interacting at an exhibit.  Anyone have any observations to answer that question?

Hi Rabiah, These are great questions. In the planning task, we looked at gender differences and the only difference we found was with brother-sister dyads spending more time ignoring each other across both groups but it was not the main focus of the analysis. However, in the Euro-American group, there were a few pairs where both boys and girls spent more time excluding their sibling. 

Hi Rabiah, Regarding the questions about SES -- We do not regard SES as a separate 'variable' from culture.  In any cultural community, there are many related features -- which include extent of Western schooling, engagement in community practices, religion, language(s) used, and so on.  We refer to these as cultural constellations in trying to distinguish this more holistic approach from an approach that equates culture with ethnicity and distinguishes it from SES, religion, language, etc.   We write about this approach in:

Rogoff, B., Najafi, B., & Mejía-Arauz, R. (2014). Constellations of cultural practices across generations: Indigenous American heritage and Learning by Observing and Pitching In. Human Development, 57, 82-95.

More specifically to your question about SES -- We do look closely at family involvement in Western schooling (which of course correlates with many other aspects of cultural constellations).  In several studies (including the first one shown in our video, on planning imaginary grocery store trips), US Mexican-heritage children from families with extensive Western schooling (and related practices) showed a mixed pattern.  Their ways of working together were in between the very sophisticated fluid collaboration common among the US Mexican-heritage children from families with likely involvement in Indigenous practices (and only basic schooling) and the divided decision-making common among the middle-class European American children (from families with extensive schooling and related practices).

Thank you both for the delayed reply and the reference to your 2014 paper. I was previously unfamiliar with the concept of cultural constellations and appreciate this framing as something we might draw from in our own work with after school middle grade students. It's really interesting to hear that the Mexican-heritage children with extensive Western-exposure families showed a mixed pattern. Curious if the collaboration styles present with something like code switching, such that one style is dialed up or down based on the current environment?

Yes, code-switching is a great way to look at it. 

In one study, we investigated children's spontaneous helping in two situations -- helping with household work and helping an instructor in a science activity (López Fraire, Rogoff, & Alcalá, in prep).  The US Mexican-heritage children from families with greater connection to Indigenous practices (and only basic schooling) showed more initiative in helping in both situations than the middle-class European American children. Showing 'code switching,' the US Mexican-heritage children whose families had extensive Western schooling helped out with initiative at home, but in the science activity, they did not spontaneously help the instructor much.  So it looks like they have learned to help at home but not in an instructional situation.

You can look at our 2018 video which shows the helping situation and clips from that study.

Hi Rabiah, I think you bring an interesting question. I also wonder how children decide which is the appropriate context to collaborate or not. What research suggests is that it depends on previous experiences, but I wonder if there are cases in which children decide to use collaborative approaches even if context like schools do not encourage it. In my experience, I think that sometimes groups still use collaborative strategies, even if the environment does not welcome such interactions.

Hi Jennifer, This is a great question. I know of a couple of studies with triads where Mexican-heritage children show fluid ways of collaboration than European-American triads. For example, a study by Rebeca Mejía-Arauz and colleagues shows striking cultural differences in an origami task. In non-controlled tasks, based on ethnographic observations, I've noticed that indigenous children, such as Maya children in Yucatan Mexico, very often spend time in groups. This includes playing or in work-related activities, but they are rarely spending time alone. I've seen them collaborate fluidly with children and adults. However, it would be interesting to design a controlled-study with larger groups. Do you think that the interactions might change with a group of 4 or 5 members? 

I'd be curious to know how the dynamic changes with larger groups. From strictly a participation and engagement perspective, we've seen that 3 participants tends to be a sweet spot. There is enough diversity in perspective to fuel the conversation and participants tend to feel accountable to one another. With somewhat larger small groups (4 or 5), while the diversity of perspective increases, it's easier for folks to "check out" of the conversation or for two independent discussions to form. I'd be curious how this might play out across cultures that naturally support a more cohesive and complementary collaborative style. 

This would be fascinating to follow up on, Jennifer!  When you  said "we've seen that 3 participants tends to be a sweet spot," what cultural background did the participants come from?

Hi Itzel, I think that as children spend more time in school and communities start to segregate children from mature activities, there might be a change as we have seen with immigrant and indigenous communities with high levels of formal schooling. We could encourage children to engage in collaborative practices in the classroom setting by changing the traditional school classroom. But I'm curious to learn more about your ideas on how we could promote collaborative interactions. 

Hi Noah, What great questions!  You asked how our research group learned to 'see' Fluid Synchrony.  For me, it has been a process of decades to learn to see this -- extending at least as far back as our 1993 SRCD Monograph, in which we first analyzed the data ethnographically, by writing extensive descriptions of what was going on between mothers and their small children.  This process got us to see aspects of the interactions that are closely related to Fluid Collaboration.  By then, I had spent several years working in the Guatemalan Mayan community where I have learned so much.  Subsequent to that, I learned an enormous amount from students and colleagues for whom Fluid Synchrony is a common way of engaging -- especially those from Guatemalan Mayan, Mexican, and other Indigenous communities of the Americas -- including my copresenters of this video, Lucia Alcalá and Omar Ruvalcaba.  For them, it may have been easy to see Fluid Synchrony all along -- but it was a long process across several decades, for us to be able to articulate what Fluid Synchrony involves.  And to be able to code it with reliability.  By now we have a number of publications on Fluid Synchrony, and each one helps us see it and describe it better. The references can be found on the LOPI Website.

I hope that some of my colleagues will also address your question, from their own perspectives.

So you wondered if we've seen cultural differences in being able to see Fluid Synchrony.  I think so, based on what I said in my prior response as well as my experience training research assistants to code videodata.  For some RAs, it was just common sense to see this.  I'm thinking especially of a Navajo RA who was so good at seeing and also describing such interactions, but there have been many other Indigenous-heritage RAs for whom Fluid Synchrony was not news.  On the other hand, there have been a number of coders who struggled -- and they tended to come from backgrounds that focus heavily on written words; they had a challenge even to see nonverbal aspects of interaction.

We have some evidence of cultural differences among children in seeing Fluid Synchrony.  Amy Dexter (Roberts) and I asked Mexican-heritage US children and European American children to comment on clips from our video data -- 2 clips from triads of Mexican heritage children and 2 clips from triads of European American children.  The clips epitomized the contrasts that we described in this NSF video.  The European American children often said that the children in the Mexican clips were not collaborating because they were not talking much.  [The children in those clips were collaborating more, but indeed were not talking much.]  In contrast, the Mexican-heritage US children commented that the children in the Mexican clips were collaborating more [which they were], because they were talking more [not in words, though, but in nonverbal forms of communication - "talking with hands and eyes"].  So these data support the idea that cultural practices shape what we see when we watch Fluid Collaboration. 

Roberts, A.L.D., & Rogoff, B. (2012). Children’s reflections on two cultural ways of working together: “Talking with hands and eyes” or requiring words. International Journal of Educational Psychology, 1, 73-99.

Hi Noah, This is such a great question! Growing up in a small village, I was always participating in some type of work and most of the time working in groups. For me it was easy to 'get it' but because it was something very common for me, it was difficult to articulate this to other people. The diversity in our research group was crucial for having multiple conversations on how to articulate the idea of 'fluid synchrony' or 'fluid ensemble' and to find ways to code the interactions that many times included nonverbal communication reliably. 

Lucía and Barbara - this is such a brilliant example of the culturally situated nature of observation in scientific research (i.e., that people only observe phenomena that culture/gendered experience/etc. prepares them to see). Reminds me of your colleague Donna Haraway's classic work on situated knowledges - I don't think I've ever seen a clearer example in educational research. It may or may not be of interest to you, but I think there is a cool STS-related paper to be written here about the cultural resources that particular researchers bring to bear on this work (and on learning research more generally). If you've written this already, and I missed it, please share the reference. And thanks again!

This is a great idea!  I think you should write it!

:-)

very important*

Hi Robert, I agree with you. I think that dancing at community events and participating in the overall organization of community-wide celebrations could be important and effective ways to broaden STEM and other curricula. However, this would require teachers to engage in a 'paradigm shift' to see the potential implications of these practices. But I'm wondering how you would use dancing in groups as a way to support STEM curriculum and would love to hear your ideas on this topic. 

Interesting point, Robert!  The playground may be a model for informal STEM learning.  You may have noticed that the 3 little girls examining and taking care of a bug, on our opening and closing videos, were on their school playground.  They are Mapuche children in Chile, participants in a research study of Paula Alonqueo Boudon.  We're so grateful to Paula and the 3 little girls for letting us feature the girls' playground experimentation.

You pointed out that the cultural practice of inclusive participation in dancing at weddings has a powerful affordance for fluid synchrony and ensemble that could be deployed in STEM and other curriculum domains.  Yes and yes.  This would be a great context for shared decision-making in fluid synchrony.  (Think of tango, where fluid synchrony is the epitome.  I've read that learning tango is one of the best ways to head off memory loss -- both because of the complex thinking involved in the dance form and because of the thinking involved in social coordination.)

Do you have suggestions of how cultural practices that involve fluid synchrony could be used for STEM and other curricular innovations?

Hi Pei-Ling, Thanks for engaging!  You asked how fluid synchrony might contribute to learning--  Well, to start with, it involves thinking together and taking into account another person's perspective.  Many researchers and theorists (Piaget and Vygotsky included) have pointed to thinking together as a powerful source of learning and of making shifts in understanding. 

You might be wondering whether fluid synchrony offers something beyond the kind of collaboration that involves starting with proposals.  We don't have data to answer that, but I see it as an efficient form of collaboration.  When partners are able to work in fluid synchrony, making proposals may be an interruption, or might be a strategy to handle glitches. 

I'm just guessing here -- I would be really curious to know what others think about this question!

Hi Pei-Ling! 

I think industrialized societies have focused more on issues of efficiency, accuracy, and profitable solutions to issues. That is why sometimes we could ask, so how does collaboration help finishing tasks?  Nevertheless,  I think that fluid synchrony comes from a different perspective, that fits with Indigenous communities of the Americas worldview. This vision prioritizes inclusion and collaborative engagements since mutuality, reciprocity, synchrony, and harmony and highly valued. 

Wow!  It would be really interesting to observe their process.  Did the teacher let the children determine how they would work together, or did he provide some form of structure to the Child-to-Child sessions?

Thanks for the description of his approach!

Hi Cristina, We have some research on very early fluid synchrony, in family groups with mothers, toddlers, and 3-5-year-old siblings.  You can view this in our 3-minute video about cultural aspects of family engagement as an ensemble.

Hi Cristina, Do you think that ECE settings inhibit the development of fluid synchrony? Do you have any examples? 

We should look and see. I am really curious now about this; but also because I have been working with my colleague Liang Li in China. The orientations of the self to the group also create interesting interactions practices. They are not fluid synchrony, but something else. We are trying to figure it out; this research in the video is so inspiring. It gives new directions for our thinking too.

Hi Lucia, I ask about inhibition because I am looking at ways to move parent and teacher education beyond the simple dyadic model of language development,  given that many early language environments consist of frequent multiparty conversations, both in families and formal ECE settings. So I am curious if early language environments may be promoting or inhibiting children's capacity to collaborate as an ensemble. 

That's a great question. I think that when young children are very skilled in participating in multiparty conversations - showing fluid synchrony and attending to more than one event at a time. However, when they are in the classroom setting, they may have a hard time with the hierarchical dyadic model that does not take into account their home practices.  

This is in response to Marilyn's comment that she and Liang Li are examining interaction practices in China.  This will be very interesting as you figure it out.  Do you or Liang Li have a first guess as to a way to describe it?  Can you tell us?

Wow, Olga!  That's so inspiring!  I would love to know about your friend's observations of how "they can continue working in this way."  What are they finding gets in the way of working in this way?  And have they found some ways to work in this way anyway?

Olga, Congratulations on the important work you are doing with your students in the Mixe community! I'm also interested in learning more about your research on resisting the educational model by 'competencias' - which is often in conflict with the ways learning is organized in the communities. Do you have any findings from your student's thesis? 

Dear Olga, 

Have you observed transformations in the collaborative approaches in the way Indigenous Oaxaca teacher and children interact while teachers are at training? I have noted that sometimes, before "official training" teachers use family and community approaches to interact in the classroom, but the more they know about the curriculum, the least they use Indigenous approaches. What has been your experience? 

We have not done studies mixing children of different cultural backgrounds, but it would be very interesting to see the efforts to work together of teams with both Mexican-heritage and European American middle-class backgrounds. 

Based on what I've seen in small group interactions in my own (college) classrooms, I would guess that a child who was not used to fluid synchrony would not be able to easily get into this way of working together.  The pair could collaborate with proposal building (both backgrounds did this a lot, and equally).  Or, if one child was used to dividing tasks up or even resistance, that might prevail. 

Maybe it's relevant that observers have noted the importance of cariño in the classrooms of Mexican-heritage teachers.  Cariño can be translated as affection, but I don't think that exactly fits.  Maybe more like warmth and familiarity.

In a highly collaborative public school in Utah, the warm, familiar relations between adults (parent volunteers, teacher) and children is an important feature encouraging collaboration in all directions.  In a study comparing math problem-solving of pairs of 3rd and 4th graders from the collaborative school or a neighborhood school (with comparable demographics -- mostly white, middle class), one feature stood out:  The children from the collaborative school tried to include the adult (the tester) in the problem-solving, in a friendly, comfortable way ("So Eugene, what do you think about this way of solving it?").  The children were used to collaborating with each other and with adults.  The children from the neighborhood school did not try to collaborate with the adult.  These findings might support your speculation.

Matusov, E.L., Bell, N., & Rogoff, B. (2002). Schooling as cultural process: Working together and guidance by children from schools differing in collaborative practices. In R.V. Kail & H.W. Reese (Eds.), Advances in Child Development and Behavior (vol. 29). Academic Press.

This part of the conversation touches on the broader issue - do cultural group differences in this domain arise from differences between groups' cultural repertoires or just in their disposition to deploy certain behavioral routines in the context of a given type of task ? Maybe all humans have a capacity for fluidly synchronous cooperation, but some groups are more inclined to deploy it in these somewhat factitious task settings than others ?

Hi Robert, I think these two alternatives should be combined -- I would say that the cultural differences that are shown in our video are evidence of differences in cultural repertoires, which people employ in some circumstances and not others.  Part of development is learning which practice to use in what setting (in addition to getting good at the fluid synchrony itself).  I make this argument in The Cultural Nature of Human Development.

I think that the patterns we are observing are not used generally across all settings, but they are also not just used in these "somewhat factitious" task settings.  I've certainly observed such differences in my everyday social interactions and in observing groups.  And several participants in this discussion have mentioned seeing this pattern in other settings.

Hi Robert, In addition to what Barbara and others have mentioned here, I've also seen this pattern of fluid synchrony in children's play activities but also while collaborating in work activities. During my fieldwork in Yucatan, we were waiting for the students to join our research group to identify areas in their school that they wanted to improve. Children were eager to fix the swing set and the monkey bars. When we returned with the materials, I had the opportunity to work with four boys (ages 8-10). We replaced the ropes on the swing set, nailed missing bars, and painted the swing set structure. We worked for about two hours, although we had no sense of time - no rush - no pre-designed agenda, we were all just working together. At one point, we needed an extra hammer and Johan, from the top of the swing set, said, "I have one at home. I'll bring it" - he claimed back and ran home to get the hammer. Another boy took over Johan's role, and we continued to work. By lunchtime, children were able to use the playground. The work was frustrating at times but it was also enjoyable, we collaborated fluidly to accomplish a shared goal, and we did it with a certain calm/mutual pace, that I can still feel as I think about this experience. We were just one organism working together. I know this description does not reflect the fluidity of our work that day, but it's often difficult to articulate something so fluid and dynamic. 

I just want to add something funny.  The other day I mentioned the idea about the idea of a group of people working together like one organism with six arms.  One of the audience members said, to her neighbor, "That's an insect!"

Seriously, though, I think it's a powerful way to think about people closely coordinating together.  That idea comes from Andy Dayton.  Thanks, Andy!

I think of 'one organism, many limbs' as similar to improvisation by jazz ensembles.  Contribution itself is the essential process.  As a model for embodied collaboration I think this analogy works quite well, since multi-modal movement as well as the prosodic features of speech can be precisely measured and seem to have very important "cognitively hot", culturally specific features.  Attunement, entrainment, intersubjective synchrony and like processes are important embodied cognitive engagements that can be measured and appear to vary by culture.  This idea may be somewhat revolutionary as these skills are often assumed to be human cognitive 'primaries' which are then mediated or modulated by culture.  In development, you get the culture first, last, and always.  

This may be true of insects as well.  Check out the burrowing mole cricket!

Hayashi Y, Yoshimura J, Roff DA, Kumita T, Shimizu A (2018) Four types of vibration behaviors in a mole cricket. PLoS ONE 13(10): e0204628. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0204628

Thanks for your explanation, Andy!  Your points are very central to the processes of coordination among people that we are trying to describe. (Except for the cricket part, which continued my joking comment about insects -- the article on crickets just talks about individual crickets producing communicative acts, not about the coordination among crickets.)

People might be interested in viewing the clips from Dayton, Aceves-Azuara, and Rogoff in the 2017 NSF video showcase, which found a cultural pattern at a microscale (fractions of seconds) that is similar to the two studies of collaboration that Lucia, Omar, and I presented here in this year's video showcase. 

Viewed at a scale of fractions of seconds, family groups of Guatemalan Mayan mothers, toddlers, and 3-5-year-old siblings engaged all three together in exploring novel objects with fine-tuned collaboration for most of the time.  Middle-class European American family groups, in the same situation, seldom engaged in this way; they often either excluded one person of the triad or resisted each other.

And I think it might be interesting to add, research suggests that in many Indigenous communities of the Americas children or adults not only collaborate just to be part of the process but also because their contribution is needed and useful (e.g. Rogoff et al 1993; Paradise and de Haan, 2009). This contrast with some middle-class experiences I have had in which adults and children are put into awkward situations to collaborate with each other, just for the sake of having "quality time"  

Thanks for your comment, Bridget!  Do you have any speculations about why collaboration frameworks are used? Maybe the collaboration frameworks that provide children with roles and timeframes etc help teachers feel like they have some control of the process.  (Even if the controlled framework limits the children's learning of how to collaborate.) Ideas?

Hola Juan-Daniel!  In the first study, we showed boys.  But no matter, we don't find gender differences.  Maybe if we had much larger sample sizes, we'd see gender differences, but in our studies we routinely don't find gender differences (nor interactions with gender).

Juan Daniel -- I'm curious -- do you see this way of working together being common among people in Spain?

I think that among Indigenous-heritage people of North and Central America, this way of interacting is broadly recognizable.  It may fit with a cultural value in this region, known in Mexico as being acomedido/a.  There is not an English translation of this term, but it comes down to being alert to the direction of the group and helping each other without being asked.  We have written about this cultural value in:

López, A., Ruvalcaba, O., & Rogoff, B. (2015). Attentive helping as a cultural practice of Mexican-heritage families. In Y.M. Caldera & E.W. Lindsey (Eds.), Mexican American children and families. (pp. 76-91). NY: Routledge.

Thanks, Marilyn!  Please tell your PhD group that they're invited to join the discussion.  I'm impressed with the interesting ideas that have emerged in the discussion.

Hello Robert,

I really appreciate reading your contributions to this discussion.  Thanks so much for your thoughtful engagement.  A couple of things in response to your above:

--Maybe the salience of the shared goal in your laboratory puzzle tasks was clearer for the Mexican heritage children relative to other motives such as displaying individual competencies ?--

I'm not sure why this would be.  Are you saying that a shared solution to the task was more apparent to the Mexican-heritage children?  If so, I believe this is the actual news of the study -- Mexican heritage children worked out a collaborative strategy more often.  "displaying individual competencies" is less often a 'motive' for these children.  This is the result of the study.

--A pair of siblings or close friends may develop a fluidly collaborative pattern of joint activity as a result of frequent practice and interpersonal trust --

This is certainly true.  Also, in Native American communities like my own, a pair of bitter rivals or outright enemies will often "develop a fluidly collaborative pattern of practice" when we are engaged in tasks together.  Here, upsetting group harmony and bringing competition into joint activities is seen as being less competent.  The fluidity IS the point; fluid, harmonious engagement is the 'superordinate goal', supervening any others, such as building a fence, fixing playground equipment, or teaching STEM to a room full of children.

We have seen this feature of Indigenous group engagement is studies by Madsen and colleagues, where groups of Indigenous and Indigenous heritage children in Mexico and the United States most often chose to collaborate in ensembles, even when the explicit purpose of the task was to compete and rewards were given for competing.  Instead, Indigenous children, for whom the superordinate goal was very salient, devised elaborate strategies to collaborate in competitive tasks.

.  

What a nice synthesis ! "upsetting group harmony and bringing competition into joint activities is seen as being less competent.  The fluidity IS the point; fluid, harmonious engagement is the 'superordinate goal', supervening any others".

Hence the reluctance of many non-"WEIRD"-society-origin university students in the USA to engage in the kind of confrontational debate that is so highly prized in the Western cultural academy ? 

Also this is consistent with observations in classrooms of Native American students, when a teacher tries to single out a student to answer a question, and even though the student knows the answer, the student does not reply, in order to not stand out over others.  The teacher passes to the next student, and the next and the next, and all know the answer but do not reply.

Robert, in your earlier comment on fluid synchrony, you speculated: "A pair of siblings or close friends may develop a fluidly collaborative pattern of joint activity as a result of frequent practice and interpersonal trust - a bit like the automatisation that Robert Sternberg and others have posited as a process of cognitive growth that enables skilled performers to focus attention on higher-order aspects of a task."

This is a good point.  We have not studied what happens when groups of strangers from each  background interact.  We've studied siblings, parent-child groups, and classmates (who may or may not be friends). 

You may be asking whether the fluid synchrony of collaboration among the Mexican-heritage groups may require them to be familiar with each other.  It would be a very interesting research project to examine that question.  My guess is that Mexican-heritage strangers (especially those that are used to Indigenous Mexican practices) would show more fluid synchrony than European American middle-class strangers. 

An example:  I've been at open-house style parties thrown by Mexican-heritage colleagues, where many of the guests do not know each other in advance, but a smooth coordination happens in the kitchen as guests pitch in to help keep the beverages flowing, the food plates replenished, the trash taken care of, and the kitchen clean.  Two aspects are notable: everyone pitches in, and they coordinate smoothly in a small space.

Anyone have an example or a speculation related to Robert's comment?

Andy, Thank you for your examples and important contributions to our discussion. I agree with you, maintaining group harmony is a key marker of being a competent community member. 

Hi Tina,  Wonderful!  We look forward to collaborating -- with fluid synchrony! 

:-)

You may also be interested in our 3 previous videos in the NSF video showcase:

Our 2018 3-minute video for NSF,  “Learning by Helping,” shows the helpfulness of Mexican-heritage children whose families don’t have much schooling.

Our 2017 3-minute video focuses on the sophisticated collaboration of Mexican-heritage and Indigenous American children.

Our 3-minute video "Learning by Observing" draws attention to strengths for learning among Indigenous and Mexican-heritage children.

Hi Tina, Congratulations on your video! Increasing access to scientific research is such a meaningful way to work towards equity. I'm wondering if your research group, also, to increase Latinx families' access to research findings, you also integrate their views on development or if this is a 'one-way' intervention. I'm also curious to learn how Latinx parents were identified as one of the groups that need child development information the most. 

Great to connect with you. In response to your first question, we often include clips from interviews with parents in our news reports. We think it is important that our videos not only contain advice from academic experts, but that they also frame parents as experts.

To address your second question, I will share a bit of what we learned from literature reviews and focus groups that helped inform the development of our project. Latinx children are the largest racial/ethnic minority group (https://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/04/20/the-nations-latino-population-is-defined-by-its-youth/) and are expected to represent a third of all U.S. children by 2050 (https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables.asp). However, they are disproportionately poor, facing conditions that pose threats to child development (https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/children-in-poverty/). In order to promote a more equitable society and build up the future workforce of our country, it is important to address the barriers that many Latinx families face. Research also finds that that Latinx families place great importance on education (https://www.childtrends.org/publications/americas-hispanic-children-gaining-ground-looking-forward). Our focus groups with low-income Latinx parents mirrored these findings, as participants expressed eagerness to learn the content in the videos and recognized the value in incorporating the lessons from our TV news reports into their lives.

Thanks, Tina! I think that integrating parents as experts is critical and shows how forward-thinking your project is! Likewise, understanding the structural barriers that Latinx families face will also help us move the conversation beyond the usual individual focus. 

Hi Angus, I'm also interested in learning more about what aspects of our video (fluid synchrony) resonate with the behavior of Maori children. One of the things we notice with Mexican-heritage children and Indigenous children (Maya) is that they have parents and community members grant them a high level of autonomy, respecting their wishes (even when parents do not agree), and by recognizing children's will, children, in turn, will learn to respect others and to collaborate. I know that in some communities obedience is highly desired (which might be the case of children in Zambia, Robert?) but in the Maya communities, the goal is for the child to understand the importance of collaborating and to develop the initiative to do so when needed or appropriate. 

I'm glad you find the video useful!  I'm so grateful to NSF for this contest, which allows us to post video clips of research that helps people SEE phenomena that would be very hard to understand if they just read about them. 

You said that you might want to bring the kids in to teach your university students about collaborative practice.  You wrote it with a smiley face -- but I think it's a great idea.  I find that showing my 3-min NSF videos on strengths for learning among Mexican- and Indigenous-heritage children sparks really interesting discussion, and people can articulate the principles behind these strengths in ways that build on the videos.

I hope you have seen the three prior 3-min videos on strengths for learning that I put on the NSF website in previous contests -- on learning by helping, sophisticated collaboration, and keen observation.

I am curious, in what aspects do you find interactions similar among the Indigenous New Zealand children? Do you see any important differences? 

Hi Sonja, thanks for your comment!  It would be great if you could post an example of an interaction that you've observed or been part of with Indigenous New Zealand children.  The examples really help people visualize the phenomenon! 

james -- Your comment is really important!  I sent it offline to a colleague who is a scientist working on climate change.  She replied,

"Good point!  I agree!    But HOW to have it make a difference?
We need to work on that."

Wow, Therese!  Thanks for your observation!  It speaks to the earlier question about whether people have to be very familiar with each other to collaborate with fluid synchrony.  They don't have to be familiar with each other, or even familiar with the activity they're engaging in.  This is a very important addition to the discussion!

What happens when a crew has a mixture of national backgrounds, like Mexican-heritage and European American, who don’t already know each other?  Do they coordinate just as fluidly?

A crew of say five Hispanic members with varying levels of experience (1 foreman, 3 journeymen, and 1 apprentice) can work all day with virtually no words and be incredibly productive.  You can insert another Hispanic and the production rarely skips a beat.  If you start mixing crew members up with non-Hispanics, the crew simply doesn't get as much work done.  I don't know and I don't have a foreman here right now to ask if it's only because they have to use more words to get the job done or because of a language barrier which makes them have to translate to the English speaker or prejudices or personality conflicts or any other factors.  My personal observations are that it has something to do with inherent trust within the culture.

Taking Richard's and Wendy's comments together, I'm struck by the convergence of observations regarding how adults might foster children's collaboration in fluid synchrony.  They both call attention to trust and respect for the children's process: 

Richard's observations among Lakota lead him to say that when fluid synchrony is happening, "It's as though the students know the teacher respects and trusts their performance to the extent that they feel there is no risk of exposing incompetence."

Relatedly, based on her research in Japanese schools, Wendy states that children are encouraged to 'read' the minds of others (related to Dayton's idea of groups of children collaborating like one organism with many arms).  Wendy connects this with adults rarely intervening in the peer groups prioritized in Japanese early education: "Rather, the role of adults is to "mimamori" the children; that is, watch over them as protective figures and to structure the social context so that children will "spontaneously" learn to work together with others who have varying talents, interests and personalities."

Reflecting further.  I recall that Therese speculated that inherent trust within the culture is an important underlying support for collaboration with fluid synchrony among roofing work crews of Hispanic workers, even when the workers do not know each other and are new to the specific activity.

Earlier, several commentators asked if familiarity is necessary for people to collaborate with fluid synchrony.  Various responses indicate that familiarity with partners does not seem to be necessary.  But it sounds like familiarity with cultural practices -- maybe trust and respect for the group collaborative work -- may play a role.