A few years ago an NPR correspondant -- Michaeleen Doucleff -- reported on our and others' research on cultural aspects of the development of collaboration.   She got inspired by what she heard and wanted to try it out with her 4-year-old, even though their cultural experience is more like the middle-class European American families in our video.  A few days ago, Michaeleen published a New York Times article about the results of her home-experiment. 

She was experiencing the frustration that many parents have reported during "sheltering in place," and got exhausted to tears with feeling that she had to constantly entertain her 4-year-old, trying to fill the day with enrichment activities.  She had become her child's 'event manager,' and neither she nor Rosy were happy with the arrangement. Then Michaeleen remembered what she had reported about cultural communities where children routinely have the opportunity to participate in mature activities of the family, watching them and helping out!

So she reorganized her approach with her daughter -- no longer the child's event manager, she began to invite Rosy to join her in helping peel potatoes, vacuum, staple papers -- and quietly write when it is time to write.  (Rosy decided to write a graphic novel about leading characters from Frozen.)  The transition took some adjustment, but slowly, Rosy got with the program.  Now they write together about 4 hours a day and Rosy even reminds her mom to get back to writing if Michaeleen's screen does not show writing. 

I happened to get an email today from Michaeleen, who said, "For us, the experiment has been quite transformative. Rosy has quickly learned to self-entertain and as she says 'I don't need instructions.'  We cannot go back to the old way even after preschool starts again.  She really loves being more autonomous and I really love it too!"  Michaeleen concluded that these research ideas have changed her life, but she says it took a while for the ideas to sink in.

Hi Barbara

Great to see this work. A wonderful way to foster family cohesion and empower children. We too are looking at how students learn remotely while studying science. I am glad to see that researchers are actively exploring ways to help students and their families adapt to the new normal.

Take care,

Marcia

Our team has 4 related 3-minute videos in prior NSF Video Showcases.  They help fill out the cultural picture of children's collaboration, initiative, helpfulness, alertness to what is going on around them.  Here are links:

2019: Impressive ways that Mexican-heritage children collaborated in a planning task and programming a computer game.

2018: The spontaneous helpfulness and initiative shown by Mexican-heritage children, especially from families with Indigenous background.

2017: The sophisticated collaboration of many Mexican-heritage and Indigenous children of the Americas.

2016: Attentional strengths for learning among Indigenous and Mexican-heritage children - being alert to surrounding events.

We are very happy to see that the conversation is developing in both English and Spanish.  The posts in both languages are super thoughtful, and we hope that many of our visitors can get the gist in either language.  All of our team are bilingual, and we hope to facilitate a bilingual conversation below.  We are going to try to bring some of the interesting ideas that are in one language into the other language so that everyone can follow the threads.  Hopefully.  In previous years, the discussion of our videos has been as interesting as the videos themselves, and wouldn't it be cool if we can do that bilingually?

Vivo en una comunidad p'urhépecha desde hace más de 30 años y observo a diario la colaboración de pequeños y grandes en diversas actividades con un objetivo común. La colaboración es un medio de aprendizaje desde los más pequeños hasta los más grandes, porque nunca se deja de aprender. Pero la ventaja de la colaboración no siente solamente la persona que aprende, sino también las y los demás que integran a alguien más en su grupo y lo hacen crecer de esta manera en cantidad y diversidad.

La contingencia actual por el COVID19 crea innumerables oportunidades de colaboración para niñas y niños obligados a quedarse en casa con toda la familia, sobre todo si sus madres y padres tienen que cumplir con "home office". 

Ulrike -- Gracias por este punto súper importante acerca del COVID-19 y las oportunidades para la colaboración familiar que se pueden crear. Desafíos sí hay. Sin embargo muchos niñas y niños, por primera vez, ahora tienen oportunidades para observar el trabajo de sus padres, etapa importante para aprender a colaborar.

Una parte de este recurso (disponible aquí en English y Español) fue escrito con este sentido, basado en investigaciones como estas y las suyas.

Uli,

El comentario que haces me parece muy importante. Cuando hay situaciones tan difíciles como la que el mundo entero está viviendo es cuando podemos ver la importancia de la colaboración. Finalmente es gracias a la colaboración entre las personas que se han ido sosteniendo y desarrollando las comunidades y sociedades.

Nunca había caído en la cuenta de la gran diferencia que hay entre la cultura anglosajona y la nuestra... Me gusto y le di 👍🏻

Que punto tan importante sobre la situación actual, Ulrike. Creo que la separación que usualmente se ve entre las actividades de niños y adultos (en comunidades de clase media) queda menos clara por la situación que estamos viviendo.

Monique, gracias por el comentario. 

Uli's post about the importance of adult-child collaboration in a P'urhépecha community in Mexico has generated a thread asking how this can be used in todays' coronavirus crisis, with families isolated at home together.  Andrew points out that now middle-class children have the opportunity to observe their parents' work -- an important part of learning.

I wonder if readers of this discussion have observations of efforts to create collaborative parent-child endeavors in families where this is not already routine?  The crisis is pushing many families to experiment with different arrangements.  What are the challenges and what seems to help foster collaboration at home that includes children in mature household activities?

Hi Gabina, thanks for these questions! The European American mothers sometimes told us they excluded their toddlers from everyday opportunities to help, sometimes in favor of other "educational" activities. We made this video to show that opportunities to help and collaborate are themselves deeply educational.

The methodologies have varied in the studies that Barbara mentions below. The studies of this video used interviews to examine mothers' views and values about helping, which shape parenting strategies and how children's learning is organized at home.

This is amazing research. I have been following the thread above and it looks like your group has documented different patterns among different socioeconomic groups of Mexican families. Does this pattern hold for different socioeconomic groups of European Americans, as well? And are there any patterns among rural vs. urban families?

Thanks, Laura! That's correct, in research with 6-10 year old children from Guadalajara we've found differences in collaborative helping at home between an indigenous-heritage and middle-class community -- both urban. More consequential seemed to be the extent of families' experience with high levels of formal schooling over several generations. The more families had, the less their children collaborated at home. This might explain why middle-class European American families and middle-class Mexican families seem to be similar in regard to children's experience and skill in collaboration. We haven't studied possible differences across culturally distinct European American groups, but it would be interesting.

Many of us think about experience with formal schooling as a culturally consequential feature of family and community histories, one that we understand to relate dynamically to things like rural/urban living, adults' professions, income, family size and presence of grandparents and relatives, and so on. We often describe interconnection and coherence across these features in terms of "constellations" or ways of life.

Single constellations don't always wholly characterize single children, families, or communities. Something exciting is that many immigrant or minoritized children and families in the US develop skills across more than one way of life, "code switching" when appropriate. We'd like to see more STEM learning organized to allow multiple "codes" to flourish and work synergistically, and to allow children to learn and take part in more than one. 

What a great thread!  An important direction for future research is to investigate how people navigate across contexts that have different, even conflicting, practices.  (See the work of Kris Gutiérrez and Carol Lee, who write about such navigation.)  Kris and I wrote about children developing repertoires of practice that support navigating across distinct cultural settings, in Educational Researcher, 2003.

A focus on constellations of cultural practices, in middle-class culture and in other cultural communities, is an alternative to trying to take apart 'variables' such as ethnicity, social class, religion, language, etc etc.  We make this argument around data from 3 communities of Guadalajara Mexico that embody distinct constellations of cultural practices, 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.

To answer your question, Laura, I am sure there are important cultural differences among different European American communities with distinct constellations of cultural practices.  For example, I would be curious to see how Appalachian European American families with limited schooling experience and middle-class European American families differ and/or share cultural practices -- it seems likely that they would differ in many ways.  We have not looked in this direction, as our focus is on understanding the strengths for learning among Indigenous and Mexican-heritage families.

Hi Hong Liu, interesting comment. I think there's hope! Evidence suggests that the developmental "window" for learning to help and collaborate doesn't fully close, even though it's likely beneficial to start early. Learning that is guided by a "bigger purpose" (key for collaborative learning) can be transformative for older children and teenagers too. The key is children's integration in family and community endeavors.

Ha ha, Hong Liu.  Maybe now that they are grown up they will have other reasons to learn to take care of where they live!  :-)

Hi Gloriana,

Thank you for your comment and a great question. One of the things I've learned from our participants is to trust your children a bit more and to trust their initiative to take on new tasks. And like Andrew Coppens mentioned in the comment above, integrating them from an early age is also fundamental. However, in our samples, young children are always supervised or an adult is nearby. By the age of 12 is when children are expected to do things on their own, to have the skills and the precautious to do the work in a competent way. This is particularly true for Yucatec Maya families.

To add to what Lucía said, Gloriana, we think that one of the main motivations for children's involvement is to be doing something together.  I think there are probably cultural differences in what is considered to be doing something 'on their own'.  I'm curious if you have reflections on that.

Great question, Gloriana! Gloriana pregunta algo importante. ¿En qué momento en la interacción se “permite” que los niños hagan algo por su cuenta sin supervisión directa?

Lucía explica que lo que se ha visto en las investigaciones es que muchos confían mas en la iniciativa que prestan sus hijos debido a la integración de su participación desde temprana edad. Ya para cierta edad, se espera que los niños hagan las cosas a su manera y que tengan la habilidad y precaución para hacer el trabajo con capacidad. Barbara explica que una de las motivaciones principales para la participación de los niños es la idea de hacer algo juntos. También puede haber diferencias culturales en lo que se considera estar haciendo algo ‘por su cuenta’.

¿Tienen algunas reflexiones sobre esto?

Hi Kate -- Thanks in advance for sharing on FB! We're continuing to examine the sophisticated way that Mexican-heritage families collaborate with young children, and the ideas about learning, helping, and even about childhood that support what they do. It is a very complex pattern that is not well understood in psychology. Here's a recent study that Lucía Alcalá, Anna Corwin, and I published a couple of months ago on this topic. Several others are underway!

Hi Kate,  Thanks!   Thanks for passing along the video to your FB page! 

You asked about our plans for the results -- Well, in addition to publishing results in scholarly journals, we hope that making the findings more visible will help people see the strengths for learning that are widespread in Indigenous and Mexican-heritage communities.    Our underlying motivation is to contribute to the learning and wellbeing of children, families, and communities -- at home and in the institutions where their learning is supposed to occur.  Museums, after-school programs, media, in addition to schools. 

This involves us all trying to learn more than one way of arranging for learning -- Understanding the learning opportunities that are common in many Indigenous and Mexican-heritage families is a resource for those families and can also be an inspiration for families from other backgrounds.

Muchas gracias por tu comentario Diana. Si, creo que para las familias sería muy bueno reconocer la importancia de las iniciativas de los niños y niñas para colaborar o fomentar que lo hagan, tiene muchas repercusiones importantes tanto socio-emocionales como cognitivas.

En cuanto a tu cuestionamiento, en algunos aspectos si hemos encontrado que los niños y niñas de familias mexicanas cuyos padres tienen más de 12 grados escolares y por varias generaciones han vivido en zonas urbanas son más similares en sus formas de interacción y participación, observación y atención a los niños y niñas de familias europeo-americanas de nivel socioeconómico medio, o se muestran en el medio entre las familias de herencia indígena y las europeo-americanas. 

Tenemos resultados de esto en diversos estudios. Por ejemplo en:

Mejía-Arauz, R., Rogoff, B., & Paradise, R. (2005). Cultural variation in children’s observation during a demonstration. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 29 (4), 282-291.

Mejía-Arauz, R. Correa-Chávez, M. Keyser Ohrt, U. & Aceves-Azuara, I. (2015). Collaborative work or individual chores: The role of family social organization in children´s learning to collaborate and develop initiative. In Benson, J. (Series editor), M. Correa-Chávez, R. Mejía-Arauz, & Rogoff, B., (Volume editors) Advances in Child Development and Behavior. Children learn by observing and contributing to family and community endeavors: A cultural paradigm. Vol. 49, pp. 25-51. London: Elsevier.

Mejía-Arauz, R. (2015). Contraste en el desarrollo sociocognitivo de niños de contextos urbanos y rurales o indígenas de México. En R. Mejía-Arauz (Coord.), El desarrollo Psicocultural de niños mexicanos, pp. 13-43. Guadalajara, México: ITESO. ISBN 978-607-9361-80-8.

Diana asked whether Mexican-heritage families that have more schooling and urban experience seem more like middle-class European American families.  This is a very important question that can help the field understand cultural change and continuity, and examine whether some cultural practices are more resilient and others fall away in a generation or two.

Our team has done a number of studies on this question.  In general, mothers and children from highly schooled Mexican, Mexican-heritage in the US, and Guatemalan Mayan communities show a pattern that is intermediate between the patterns we find with mothers and children from Indigenous-heritage and those from highly schooled European American families.  In some studies, they are more like the highly schooled European American families, but in several studies (of mothers' attentiveness and children's considerateness), they are just like the Indigenous-heritage families.

References to these and other studies can be found at www.learningbyobservingandpitchingin.com

This is such an interesting research and conversation! I wonder if you have considered looking at the concept and practice of collaboration within the context of "COMMUNITY" and "BELONGING." Another aspect that I have not seen (although the conversation is pretty long already and I must confess I have not read all the comments), relates to GENDER DIFFERENCES. I was born and raised in Mexico City, and have been living in Denver, Colorado, for over 30 years. You are right, we learn to collaborate, but in great part it is because of the sense of community and belonging, collaboration is a form of belonging. My mother always would tell us, "¡acomídete! no esperes a que te pidan ayuda!" (something like, help/offer help/contribute, don't wait to be asked for help), and that is so reflective of our culture. At the same time, boys and girls are expected to participate/collaborate in different tasks that are more "gender-related." For example, girls will help more with household chores, while boys would help more with "fixing" things. Since very young we are given the opportunity to help, as you can see in the video, as a reflection of belonging to the family community.
As you know, a great strength among Latinos is the sense of community vs. a more individualistic approach. I wonder if you have also analyzed the impact of ACCULTURATION in these practices. That probably will help a lot to explain some of the differences with other groups, such as the European American already mentioned, as well as class differences (i.e., middle class mentioned already). And just as if we need something else, the number of children in the family also plays a role, as well as parents' protectiveness towards their children.

You bring up excellent points, Mariana! We haven't looked specifically at the context of "community" and "belonging" but in our studies, when families talk about collaborating and helping, they mention that it's part of being a member of the family or belonging to a particular group/household. We've often tied this idea of contributing because it's expected to the value of being acomedida/o like you mentioned. That comment very much resonates with what I grew up hearing as well and what many participants in our studies have also described. Our group's video two year ago touches specifically on this aspect (2018 video: https://stemforall2018.videohall.com/presentations/1318)

In term of gender differences, we haven't really examined how the type of work differs by gender but we've found that both boys and girls are expected to contribute just as much. 

Mariana, thanks for your observations!  You mentioned that the number of children in the family and the parents' protectiveness towards their children might make a difference in cultural changes in collaborative practices in Mexico.  I wonder if you have speculations about that, or perhaps someone else does.

Hola -- Mariana menciona que el número de hijos y la actitud de los padres de proteger a sus hijos puede influir en los cambios culturales en las prácticas colaborativas en México.  ¿Alguién tiene ideas acerca de esto?

Thanks a lot for your comment Paulina.

As the video shows, it seems that children all over the world like to collaborate, I would say especially when there is real involvement of others, both peers, and adults in the activities, and even more if the activities are not an obligation but children are allowed to chose whether to participate. When they see that all the collaborators are having a good time, then they also want to participate.

In a study with my colleagues Mary Correa-Chavez, Uli Keyser and Itzel Aceves Azuara, we pointed out that real collaboration is not individual help, but it should be a "co-llaboration, that is, people doing things together to accomplish a shared purpose. So to do this in the context of the school, that idea of not sharing the work or not talking to others might not help. And I think that it would be very good if the teacher or adults are also participants in the activities in which they want the children to contribute and collaborate.

I you are interested on the reference here it is:

Mejía-Arauz, R. Correa-Chávez, M. Keyser Ohrt, U. & Aceves-Azuara, I. (2015). Collaborative work or individual chores: The role of family social organization in children´s learning to collaborate and develop initiative. In Benson, J. (Series editor), M. Correa-Chávez, R. Mejía-Arauz, & Rogoff, B., (Volume editors) Advances in Child Development and Behavior. Children learn by observing and contributing to family and community endeavors: A cultural paradigm. Vol. 49, pp. 25-51. London: Elsevier.

Paulina, I have long admired how the Swiss have multiple official languages, so you might be in an excellent place to experiment with what Rebeca suggested.

Once, a group of us were giving a symposium in Brazil and the audience of about 200 people were speakers of about 12 or 15 different languages.  It was a poster symposium, and we asked the audience to help each other out -- soon we had the room filled with people explaining the posters to each other in their different languages.  For example, if the poster was in English, there might be someone bilingual in English and French, explaining the poster in French to a Russian speaker who understood French.

I think it helps for the collaborating groups to have something real to refer to -- in this case, the posters, but it could be anything that shows or represents what the group is trying to accomplish.

Muchas gracias Susana, muy buen comentario.

En México veo cómo los maestros limitan bastante la interacción entre los niños en el salón de clases, a veces para ayudarse entre ellos, pero no se les deja porque "no se debe copiar" o "se debe trabajar en silencio". Me parece que eso va creando un ambiente que no fomenta la colaboración. En cambio en escuelas que trabajan maestros indígenas o de herencia indígena y que no siguen al pie de la letra el estilo de enseñanza occidental, hay mucha mayor participación y colaboración de los niños y niñas (ver por ejemplo el trabajo de Ruth Paradise y de Mariette de Haan).

Lo que llamamos en inglés culturally responsive practices!

A pesar de esa práctica que no promueve la colaboración en la escuela, los niños saben que en casa se colabora, aprenden a navegar en diferentes ambientes.

Hola Mariana! Coincido contigo. Creo que los niños pueden diferenciar basado en el contexto (casa o escuela) cuando se debe de colaborar o se espera que ellos colaboren. Mas que aprender a navegar las diferencias, creo que podemos partir de las fortalezas sobre colaboración que los niños traen al salon de clases, para generar lo que mencionas, culturally responsive practices o community-based pedagogy, como lo reflejan en su video. 

Does the computer-supported software help the participants develop shared objects or similations that they can work on together?

Teresita, Thank you for raising the point that middle-class families in Mexico are often somewhat torn between the importance of children learning to collaborate in everyday work and the pressures of middle-class life such as tired parents working outside the home and preferring to just do household work themselves to save time. 

I want to address your comment that it seems enriching for Indigenous Mexican children to learn to collaborate in everyday work, to feel part of their families and form their identity -- but that at the same time you think that sometimes they need to play more and dedicate themselves to being children.

My comment is that the concept of what it is to be a child is shaped culturally.  In communities where children are segregated from a large proportion of the mature activities, childhood is often seen as a time of both not being competent to make contributions and having freedom to play.  In contrast, in some Indigenous communities of the Americas, children are included and valued as contributors from a very young age.  (And of course they play too.)  What I'm trying to say is that the idea of childhood as a time of play, separate from the 'adult' world, is a cultural construction.  The idea of a child world separate from an 'adult' world -- or children helping with 'adult' work -- is very different than seeing children as already contributing people in the community, from the earliest ages.

We think that this contrast matters for how children learn at home from the earliest years -- learning either that they are supposed to be separate and can't be a part of the family work, or that they along with everyone else can provide important contributions as they collaborate in the shared endeavors of the family.

And if collaboration is a value of the family, children also collaborate while playing.

This is an interesting idea, Mariana. Thanks! I don't disagree, just curious. I'd love to hear more about this idea of children collaborating through play. 

Y esta idea de que la infancia es un momento de preparación para la vida adulta, y sobre todo una preparación unicamente académica es una idea que ha venido con el incremento de la escolarización en México y otros paises con poblaciones de herencia indígena como Guatemala.

La falsa promesa de la meritocracia y el incremento nivel educativo como medida de progreso, de la mano con la participación en un mundo neolibreal, gloabalizado cade vez más individualizado puede que sea un factor que diluya esta maravillosa fortaleza cultural de colaboración. Será que al hacernos conscientes de esta herencia cultural nos haga valorarla y fomentarla en proximas generaciones? O será que mejor nos vayamos despiediendo de ella :( Increible video! 

Qué impactante comentario Itzel, muchas gracias. Tiene muchísimas implicaciones en muchos sentidos. El punto del papel de la escuela en el desarrollo infantil me parece importantísimo, ya lo señalan también Ron Gallimore y Roland Tharp en varias de sus publicaciones. Como se implica en tu comentario, es muy importante retomar y fortalecer la interacción colaborativa en los diversos escenarios en que participan y se desarrollan los niños y niñas.

Totalmente de acuerdo Gabriela, y no solo visibilizarlas y reconocerlas sino aprender de ellas, es un recurso tremendamente enriquecedor para la vida, la interacción social, el desarrollo de las personas y las comunidades.

Gracias por tu comentario, Gabriela! Aunado a lo que dice Rebeca, creo que es importante que las escuelas y la sociedad reconozca las fortalezas de las comunidades indígenas para poder alejarnos de la narrativa de deficits sobre estas comunidades y podamos apreciar la riqueza de estas culturas, sus practicas y conocimientos. 

Que maravilloso comentario Claudia. Si, parece que se ha confundido la participación de los niños y niñas en la actividad diaria de los adultos y en actividades que finalmente implican el aprender a saber hacer, con ideas de que al no colaborar en casa o en los diversos hogares en que viven se les protege del "trabajo infantil", cuando esas actividades pueden convertirse en escenarios de convivencia que son tan necesarios para la familia o en hogares institucionalizados.

Comparto contigo también el comentario de que a los estudiantes universitarios se les dificulta el trabajo en equipo o trabajo colaborativo. Pareciera que sus experiencias escolares de tantos años (por lo menos 12 años escolares) no les indujo al trabajo colaborativo. Algo a remediar en los sistemas educativos.

Thank you for your comment, Kimberly. I agree with you; young children are naturally curious and eager to help and to be part of the group. But based on our research and other ethnographic work, we see that in many Indigenous communities children are commonly included in family activities allowing children constant opportunities to observe and help. Their environment (social and physical) or developmental niche, is organized in a way that supports their autonomy and their involvement in work. 

Hi Al, thanks for these questions!

In this study, toddlers in both communities "joined in" with work parents were doing around the house. In the Mexican-heritage community, some toddlers were already helping voluntarily on a regular basis, without rewards/prizes or even needing to be asked. Several of us have worked together on prior studies that show large cultural differences at older ages between these two and other similar communities, within voluntary helping predominant among Mexican-heritage families.  

"Sharing goals" (core to Mexican-heritage children's collaboration) can be done side-by-side or physically apart, and children who have early experience with side-by-side collaboration seem to develop skills in collaborating together without being together. In a prior study, many Mexican-heritage college students told Lucía Alcalá and I that although they were studying away from home they understood their academics as a family collaboration, which supported and motivated them to do well.

Gracias, Barnardo, por este comentario valioso. Me parece importante lo que sugiere acerca de la empatía y si podría tener base o origen en este tipo de colaboración. Dos valores culturales (por lo menos) parecen guiar estas formas de participación colaborativa: respeto y la importancia de acomedirse. Para mi son muy vinculados con la acción e disposiciones empáticas.

Muchas gracias por tu comentario Bernardo, como señala Andrew en las familias mexicanas de nivel socioeconómico medio y medio alto bajo las condiciones de vida urbana se observa algo de pérdida de estas formas tradicionales de interacción, valdría la pena revalorarlas, para reorientar hacia estilos de vida además de más saludables también de mayor impacto más allá de la familia en los diferentes escenarios sociales en que participan los miembros de las familias. 

Esto también lo investigamos en el proyecto que conoces de Organización de vida cotidiana familiar (Mejía-Arauz y colaboradores, 2016-2019) que en muchos de los temas que abarca se fundamenta en el paradigma LOPI (Learning by Observing and Pitching in In Family and Community Endeavors) que ha desarrollado la Dra. Rogoff.

¡Rebeca, este tema es importantísimo y me has sembrado la semilla de curiosidad desde que te conocí! ¿Qué pasa si hay una concientización sobre las prácticas tradicionales? Así como hay revitalización del lenguaje, ¿Se puede hacer algo así con colaboración, atención, o cualquier otra faceta de LOPI? El tema que trabajamos con Barbara en la tesis es sobre transformaciones generacionales en interacción familiar, específicamente en colaboración y como te imaginaras, esperamos ver menos colaboración en las nuevas generaciones. Y en mi espíritu iteseano de transformar, me dan muchísimas ganas de saber qué pasa si re-aprendemos ese conocimiento (aunque sabemos que el tema de la intervención es bien delicado).

Sobre el proyecto “Organización familiar de vida cotidiana en el contexto urbano y su impacto en el desarrollo en la infancia media”, ¿Tienen algunos resultados publicados? ¡Me gustaría mucho saber sobre este! 

Si quieren conocer más del paradigma de LOPI (Learning by Observing and Pitching In in family and community endeavors), pueden ver

Rogoff, B. (2014).  Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavors: An orientation. Human Development, 57, 69-81.

Itzel, en muchas de las entrevistas que hemos hecho para estudios en el paradigma LOPI (muchas que tú me ayudaste a codificar y sistematizar) y otras más recientes, seguimos encontrando que al preguntar a las madres y padres de familia de algunas condiciones culturales si los niños o niñas colaboran en casa nos dicen que no, pero en ese momento caen en la cuenta de que en su propia infancia ellas o ellos colaboraban en casa y se preguntan por qué ahora ellos/as no les piden a sus hijos que lo hagan. Reconocen lo significativo que fue limpiar los zapatos para toda la familia y otras labores en las que colaboraban y lo bien que se sentían cuando la mamá o el papá (o algún otro pariente) les apreciaban esa ayuda, y como eso, muchos otros ejemplos... Luego dicen "creo que tengo que retomar eso con mis hijos". Eso es revalorar y reconstruir estas tradiciones, como bien  dices, revitalizarlas o recuperar intergeneracionalmente las tradiciones. Yo creo que si vale la pena tratar de incidir en ello. El paradigma LOPI da el fundamento para este reconocimiento de formas de aprendizaje muy valiosas, que pueden aplicarse tanto en la vida cotidiana no escolar como la escolar, con profundas repercusiones a nivel social y cultural.

Que interesante trabajo, Hugo.  Creo que unas obras que te interesarían son el libro de Inge Bolín, "Growing Up in a Culture of Respect," y los artículos de Marjorie Murray.  Ambos son en la región andina.  Además, hay un bonito artículo teorético de S.H. White y Alex Siegel (1984, creo), que es parecido a lo que describes arriba -- sobre la expansión del círculo del niño, como crece.  !Suerte!

Thank you for responding. That makes complete sense and something to keep in mind as I'm collaborating with our little one. On a personal note, I had the opportunity to meet you when I was a psychology major at Pomona - I was in Val's sponsor group our first year. It's hard to believe that was almost 20 years ago!

Gracias, Jessica -- ¡Cuanto gusto reconectar contigo!  Contesté con la distincción entre trabajar juntos con la familia y tener tareas individuales.  Pensamos que lo que atrae los niños es más unir con los demás en actividades compartidas, que hacer las tareas en sí.  I'll be interested to know how things go if you try something new in collaborating with your little one!  Congratulations on what you've been doing since we met a few decades ago!  (sheesh!)

Hi Danielle. Thanks for watching our video! I teach in an education department at University of New Hampshire and think about this question a lot. Here's a short accessible paper that makes some points about the general relevance of cultural research to teacher education.

Specifically, this research suggests beneficial learning, STEM or other areas, when students' activity combines both initiative in coordination with others and contributions to a "bigger purpose." Both are rare in many schools, but possible at all levels.

My university students make podcasts on topics they choose, but coordinate with a whole-class theme or "season." This is a real communication genre outside of schools, and the audience is not me the instructor. Their podcast episodes are aimed at finding seldom heard voices. Here's last season. The principles of something like this are relevant to students of any age.

Thank you for sharing this! What a great read with so many important principles for teacher education. I also love the authenticity of your student project and commend your work raising the awareness of our future educators.

Francene, I just viewed and commented on the fantastic video by you and your other team members. What important and inspiring work. Thanks for leading the way there!

Some of us find subtle but important inconsistencies between how "student-centered" learning is often understood and organized in schools and the kind of family and community learning that our research highlights as supporting young children's collaborative dispositions and skills. In many indigenous American communities collaborative learning is neither child- nor adult-centered, which is to say that activities are not commonly designed for children but rather children are included in activities to which everyone contributes and shares value and commitment. 

This is a big challenge in many schools, but it can inspire important innovations and reforms. Barbara Rogoff has written a great book about her and others' efforts to do so in a school in Utah, Learning Together.

A second comment, your post was so interesting! One of the things I work hard to do is help pre-service teachers to recognize strengths for learning in their students of non-dominant backgrounds, when those strengths can look like deficits from dominant cultural perspectives. For example, the kind of observational patterns that support collaboration are often open, inclusive, and attentive to multiple ongoing events. For teachers unfamiliar with the cultural patterns we study, this observational sophistication can appear (to teachers) to be mere distraction creating possible disciplinary problems for students whose skills in this way of attending are misunderstood.

Gracias por tu comentario, Monica! Coincido contigo, creo que la tecnología puede crear brechas generacionales en la forma que se ayuda y colabora en la familia. Por otra parte me gustaría saber mas sobre como se pueden integrar a los niños con discapacidades de formal colaborativa para facilitar su aprendizaje. 

Gracias por todo esto, Mónica! Una frase de su comentario me interesa mucho: "la colaboración como signo de pertenencia a la comunidad." Para mí es interesante que la colaboración puede función tanto de esta manera como un medio de integrarse para los niños. O sea, es signo de ya haberse integrado y medio de profundizarlo.

Hi Preeti, Thanks for your observations!  It's difficult to answer the question of whether older siblings were more likely to collaborate than younger siblings.  When we observe siblings collaborating, they are both contributing to the collaboration.  And we haven't investigated whether older siblings would be more collaborative with a peer or with an adult than younger siblings would be with their peer or an adult. 

With regard to gender -- we aren't focusing on what type of work children are doing, but whether they are pitching in voluntarily.  We have not found reliable differences between girls and boys in voluntary helping or collaborativeness at home or in research tasks.  However, our sample sizes are small, so I would hesitate to make a strong conclusion about gender.

Hi Marley, I've seen your animation and these findings before -- so interesting!  Thanks for bringing this into the conversation.  Your finding may relate to our research (with Dayton and Aceves-Azuara) that finds more collaboration among Mayan mothers and small children than among European American middle-class mothers and children, even at a scale of 200-millisecond segments.

Hi Nickolay, this is an interesting question about ideas that are often used interchangably. Probably different people define these things differently. I think of coordination as merely actions required to do something socially. So, teachers and students have to coordinate their actions in a classroom, conversation partners have to coordinate what they say to each other. Even adversarial or competitive activity partners have to coordinate. Cooperation is similar, but more based in helpful support. However, none of this is necessarily collaborative. To me, collaboration includes cooperation but is fundamentally about sharing goals. 

In many of the indigenous-heritage Mexican communities we've worked with, deep cultural values about reciprocity, shared responsibility, and respect buttress collaborative efforts and further distinguish them from coordination or cooperation. For example, both children and adults are encouraged to be acomedido which involves paying attention to the needs and purposes of others and pitching in to help without needing to be asked.

Hi Martin! Thanks for these questions. Regarding the second, I wouldn't say that middle-class European American children have a helping "deficit" -- they are quite capable of helping with the right kinds of experiences and opportunities. Whether children of this background play collaboratively -- which to me means sharing goals, making contributions to the activity, and sharing responsibility for it -- is a great question. What kinds of play activities do you have in mind?

Hi Martin, I want to follow up on your great question -- how does collaboration in scientific communities differ between places like Latin America, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Anglo countries?  I don't know the answer but I think maybe some participants in this discussion might.  Especially participants who may have worked in two or more countries.  So, everyone, do you have some speculations or observations?  It would be fascinating to know.

Una pregunta muy interesante, que viene de Martin, es si hay diferencias en la colaboración dentro de la comunidad científica en diferentes paises, como de América Latina, Asia, Africa, Europa y los países Anglos?  Si tienes observaciones favor de compartirlas.  !Gracias!

Thank you Elizabeth!  It is interesting to see that something very familiar to you can also be eye opening when you see a contrast with it!  I think that is one of the important contributions of cultural research -- it can make people away of practices in places far away, and also help people be aware of their own community's practices that they might take for granted.  We are hoping that the contrasting statements of mothers in our study helps people from all backgrounds 'open their eyes' to the importance of everyday ways of arranging children's opportunities to learn!

Thank you, Maria! I'd be so interested to hear about some of your observations in the Yucatan! Do any examples come to mind that you might share with the group here?

Hi Alex! One of our goals in making this video is certainly to help balance the overrepresentation of middle-class European-heritage cultural patterns in the research that informs what counts as and what is beneficial for STEM learning. Thanks for raising the connection.

One of the limitations of the "WEIRD" lens is that a lot of "non-WEIRD" communities and patterns for learning and collaborating can get lumped together. We've shown one "non-WEIRD" pattern among Mexican-heritage families, but there are likely to be many more. Lots to learn.

I agree, there is lots to learn and I feel parenting will always be this way. Although that is purely from the parental lens which is something we personally try to be aware of with varying levels of success. As a parent who was raised middle class euro American influenced by middle eastern and Mediterranean cultures I have tried hard to inform myself on parenting and the uses of different styles of communication.

What I find so interesting about the work and research of this project is the connection to learning STEM and the ways in which collaborative strategies lead to success.

Where/when have you seen the more collaborative strategies start to fray in indigenous settings?

just want to disclose that I am aware that is a generalized comment and I am by no means a researcher in this field. Asking from a beginner’s place and mindset.

Hi Alex, Thanks for raising these points!  You asked where/when we have seen the more collaborative strategies start to fray in Indigenous settings.

With Itzel Aceves-Azuara, I am following up on the collaboration we found in Mayan families in Guatemala -- we are visiting the same families, 30 years later, to see whether practices that were common 30 years ago have persisted, transformed -- or what.

Some of the readers here also work in Indigenous communities -- do you have observations that would help answer Alex's question?

Hola tod@s,  Tenemos una pregunta muy interesante -- Alex pregunta si la interacción colaborativa se ha disminuida en algunas situaciones Indígenas.  Por favor, si tienen observaciones que tienen que ver con esa pregunta, ayúdenos a entender lo que has visto.  ¡Gracias!

That is simply amazing to be following up on these concepts decades later.

This reminds me of a finely tuned and culturally sensitive version of a long term ecological research study or LTER with indigenous families acting as an ecosystem. That of course is not your approach and a desensitized one at that but there is an interesting connection.

Please forgive the oversimplification there and loose comparison made, just another media person playing in the science world!

Yes, it's amazing to be able to follow up the next generation of the same families 30 years later.  The idea of a long term ecological research study is apt.  The ecology is much bigger than this one Mayan town, and includes me and my family, as well as the missionaries, medical systems, media, and world events, from 30 years ago to now. 

Thank you for this comment, Linda! We'd love to hear about your experiences with this pattern for organizing learning with your mother and family, and also how this experience was a continuing resource for you later on. Thanks for raising the possibility of long-lasting benefits of early experience with collaboration in the family.

Hola Joyce! Coincido con Barbara. Creo que es importante ver como las habilidades de colaborar pueden ir mas allá de las actividades y trabajo de la familia, y como puede apoyar nuevas habilidades, sobre todo en el desarrollo socioemocional. 

Hi, Profesora Roggoff and Lucia

This happened in the research workshop with children between 3 and 9 years old who took part in it. 

The  research was aimed to understand the emotions with this political meaning and the relation with Media. So we use some pictures about world events and parts of episodes of differents childhood programs of media to establishing the conversation and interaction with preschool and  primary children and researcher. When appeared emotions like  compassion the children told us about some familiar experiences in the dialogues with children  more toddlers. These last didn't know about this emotion, the children older explained to them through the examples and their own experiences with the emotion until the toddlers got the significance understanding. So the understanding about emotions were helped with collaborate learning.

Thanks to you.

I'm following your discussions

Una parte del estudio se encuentra publicado en el capítulo 7 de este libro, disponible en español

Gracias, Lourdes!

Gracias, Lourdes! Me interesa conocer mas sobre las ideas de como poder incorporar estas practicas a otras familias y como poder innovarlo en tiempos de COVID-19. Esta situación definitivamente nos hace replantear practicas colaborativas que beneficien al grupo. 

Gracias, Nora!  

Hi Sandra! Thank you very much for sharing these comments from your experiences with public schools. I couldn't agree more. Your observations underscore our purposes for both creating this video and pursuing this program of research. 

I wonder: Did you ever have a teacher or encounter an educational setting that was a "fit" with your vast experience with collaborative learning, even giving you the opportunity to expand these skills? 

Hi Andrew, 

To answer your question it hasn't been until this past year that I have encountered a setting that was a "fit" with my experiences.This was in a space of creating digital testimonios in a group setting with other first-generation Chicanx women.This space acknowledged our backgrounds, roots, and culture and respected the voices and testimonios shared in that space in the collaborative efforts to create digital testimonios. Together we were able to speak our stories/experiences. For many of us, it was the first time we had ever been asked to share and reflect on our lived experiences being first-generation Chicanx women in a PWI.

It has only been until recent that I have been able to experience such a profound collaborative learning experience that drew from our lived experiences and centered and acknowledged us as being knowledge holders. Which is why it is so amazing to see that Indigenous children and children of color are now being recognized as being knowledge holders and that their cultural background/experiences are being acknowledged in the classroom for collaborative learning instead of being pushed out of silenced. 

Thanks very much for this, Sandra. You're reminding me of conversations with and things I learned from Aida Hurtado and Gabriela Arredondo while in Santa Cruz. It is really interesting to imagine ways that the kind of collaborations you're highlighting can extend in different kinds of relational projects later in life, building from early experiences. Thanks again.

I love your point, Sandra. Yes, it's about trying to move beyond a deficit-view approach and really embrace and incorporate this "cultural wealth" and these "pedagogies of the home" and "funds of knowledge". 

Throughout this robust discussion you can find information on and citations of published studies from this and our related work, even more helpful to you if you read Spanish.

Here is a list of some publications on the topic by this research group https://learningbyobservingandpitchingin.sites.ucsc.edu/overview/#3

Well, that's a fantastic resource. Bookmarked already!  Thanks

So John -- Thanks for your message (and also for your video).

I'd like to know a little more about what you found odd about the video's summary of the findings.  Can you tell us what seemed odd?  Maybe we can clarify here, or tell you about a specific publication?

Karletta, I'm curious -- how are you handling the challenge of ensuring your children's Diné development, to be independent and to contribute, given the changing circumstances for them?  This could be informative to others with similar challenges.

(And... I hope things are ok there with you and your family and relations, given how much the coronavirus has been impacting Diné people.)

When I am with my extended family, my son is able to contribute through making food, cleaning up, cooking, feeding the dogs, feeding the sheep or picking up trash on the homestead. When we are in the city, we re-enforce independence by expecting him to help himself and clean up after himself and to help with family chores. He went Montesorri up to Kindergarten and he learned to help care for animals, plants and to do work. I teach him my language and culture and he goes to a Diné immersion school. I can relate to one of the moms saying you just want to do everything but I try to allow him to help. Thank you for your prayers for the Navajo Nation. We really need them. 

Congratulations on your son!  Be well, all y'all....

Hi Susan! I agree with Rebeca's point on the impact of western education on how mothers and families organize activities at home to provide children with opportunities to collaborate. I grew up in a small rural town in Mexico, where everyone was always helping at home but also helping neighbors and extended family member that lived nearby. However, I see that with my children in the US, they don't have the same level of collaboration, and I often organize their activities based on their age and school-related responsibilities. My husband often tells me that I talk to them like a teacher, ordering them what to do, instead of seeing them as part of the family, and collaborators. 

Lastly, I want to mention that although we see these differences based on maternal schooling, in some of my recent work with Maya mothers in Yucatan, these differences are not as significant. Mothers with college degrees are reporting that their children help at home and mostly on their own initiative. This particular community has a robust Maya identity, the population speaks the Maya language as well as Spanish, and their cultural practices are as vibrant similar to other Maya communities. 

Your question and the new findings will help us consider the influence of other variables as we continue working with - and learning from - these indigenous and indigenous-heritage communities. 

Susan McKeehan hace un cuestionamiento interesante en cuanto a la posibilidad de que los niños de ciertas comunidades tengan más oportunidades de colaborar cuando los abuelos y otros parientes viven con ellos, en comparación con las familias de herencia Europea. Le comento que es posible que eso tenga qué ver no tanto con el que vivan juntos o en proximidad, sino con las ideas parentales acerca de que los niños no deben colaborar o "trabajar" sino que se deben enfocar en los aprendizajes escolares y en jugar, como se les ha enseñado y lo muestran algunos padres de herencia indígena/mexicana con estudios para ser maestros o estudios de diversas profesiones aun siendo  (Mejía-Arauz, Keyser, and Correa-Chavez 2013).

¿Algunas experiencias, ideas o comentarios respecto de este cuestionamiento?

Hi John,  Thanks for taking the time to clarify!  We too prefer a focus on cultural practices.  In fact, we consider economic aspects such as how people make a living or their access to resources to be part of constellations of cultural practices, not a separate 'variable' from many other features of community life, such as region, nation, religion, climate, history, common institutions, family size, infant mortality rates and on and on.

What we are reporting in the video is differences in certain practices that are more common in some communities than others.  But specific practices are not exclusive to those communities, and they are not uniform within communities.  This variability within communities can be seen in Developing Destinies -- my co-author the midwife Chona Pérez never went to school and spoke only the Mayan language but her grandson who also co-authored the book is a sociologist who speaks 3 or 4 languages.

Likewise, the community of your upbringing is not defined solely by your ancestors' place of origin.  That community undoubtedly involves a constellation of cultural practices, and from what you wrote I can guess that it was a farming community, in a time and place when cars had parts that were not computerized, and so on. What about the next generation or the one after that in your place of upbringing?  Probably not all the same practices, I would guess.

So your qualms about our conclusions helped surface an important difference in assumptions about culture.  Thank you.  In sum, our group doesn't separate culture into variables like ethnicity or social class.  We focus on constellations of cultural practices as they are maintained, transformed, or discontinued across generations. 

This is a central theme of Developing Destinies: A Mayan Midwife and Town.  It is also the focus of 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.

A number of participants in this discussion have also been elaborating on the challenges and practices of families with Indigenous American experience as well as experience in Western schooling and related middle-class cultural practices.  Hope you have a chance to read through them.

Thanks, John! In general it is quite interesting to me to find threads of similarities and variations across communities, as I think these are "levers" for hybridization and cultural transformation.

Thanks for your comment, Annika. Yes, it's very easy to take own cultural patterns and norms for granted. 

Great points, Mitchell! I think the importance of collaboration as a necessary skill is often overlooked in many arenas. Given the our current situation, many have been able to practice those skills.