Barbara Rogoff

Cultural Ways of Learning: Individual Traits or Repertoires of Practice

This article addresses a challenge faced by those who study cultural variation in approaches to learning: how to characterize regularities of individuals’ approaches according to their cultural background. We argue against the common approach of assuming that regularities are static, and that general traits of individuals are attributable categorically to ethnic group membership. We suggest that a cultural-historical approach can be used to help move beyond this assumption by focusing researchers’ and practitioners’ attention on variations in individuals’ and groups’ histories of engagement in cultural practices because the variations reside not as traits of individuals or collections of individuals, but as proclivities of people with certain histories of engagement with specific cultural activities. Thus, individuals’ and groups’ experience in activities—not their traits—becomes the focus. Also, we note that cultural-historical work needs to devote more attention to researching regularities in the variations among cultural communities in order to bring these ideas to fruition.

Developing understanding of the idea of communities of learners

The idea of a community of learners is based on the premise that learning occurs as people participate in shared endeavors with others, with all playing active but often asymmetrical roles in sociocultural activity. This contrasts with models of learning that are based on one‐sided notions of learning— either that it occurs through transmission of knowledge from experts or acquisition of knowledge by novices, with the learner or the others (respectively) in a passive role. In this paper, I develop the distinction between the community of learners and one‐sided approaches from the perspective of a theory of learning as participation, and use two lines of research to illustrate the transitions in perspective necessary to understand the idea of communities of learners. One line of research examines differing models of teaching and learning employed by caregivers and toddlers from Guatemalan Mayan and middle‐class European‐American families; the other line of research involves a study of how middle‐class pare...

The strategies and efficacy of child versus adult teachers.

ELLIS, SHARI, and ROGOFF, BARBARA. The Strategies and Efficacy of Child versus Adult Teachers. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1982, 53, 730-735. Informal reports of observations of teaching interactions in classrooms suggest that children instruct each other primarily through demonstration and modeling of tasks, while adult teachers show a greater reliance on verbal instruction. Although child and adult teachers appear to utilize very different teaching strategies, a number of authors believe that children may serve as effective teachers, perhaps even more effective than adults. In the present investigation, using 2 laboratory classification tasks resembling home and school activities, the differences between child and adult teaching strategies mirrored those suggested to occur in classroom settings. 9-year-old teachers used more nonverbal than verbal instruction, and referred more frequently to specific items than to higherorder grouping of items. Adult teachers used more verbal than nonverbal instruction, provided more group relationship information than information specific to items, and also elicited (or allowed) greater participation from the learners. Learners taught by adult teachers performed better on a posttest of learning and generalization than did those taught by child teachers. The lesser effectiveness of the child teachers is likely related to the number of demands, both cognitive and social, placed on the young teachers by the classification tasks used. Also, the childrens strategy of nonverbal instruction may have been less appropriate for communicating the category structure of the materials than it would be for other tasks. The examination of peer teaching of social tasks or of other material more familiar to children may indicate that children can under other circumstances serve as proficient teachers.

Cultural variation in management of attention by children and their caregivers

Cultural variation occurred in time-sharing of attention during videotaped home visits with sixteen 14-20-month-old toddlers and their caregivers from a Guatemalan Mayan community and a middle-class community of U.S. European-descent families. The Mayan caregivers and their toddlers were more likely to attend simultaneously to spontaneously occurring competing events than were the U.S. caregivers and their toddlers, who were more likely to alternate their attention between competing events and, in the case of the caregivers. to focus attention on one event at a time. This cultural contrast in prevalence of simultaneous or nonsimultaneous attention occurred in both a 10-min segment of child-focused activities and a 10-min segment of adult-focused activities, replicating and extending the findings of B. Rogoff, J. Mistry, A. Goncu, and C. Mosier (1993), which implicated cultural processes in attention.

Cultural variation in young children’s access to work or involvement in specialised child-focused activities

Ethnographic literature indicates that in many cultural communities around the world, children have extensive opportunities to learn through observing and participating in their community’s work and other mature activities. We argue that in communities in which children are often segregated from adult work (as in middle-class European American communities), young children instead are often involved in specialised child-focused activities such as lessons, adult–child play (and scholastic play), and conversation with adults on child-related topics. We examine this argument with systematic time-sampled observations of the extent of 2- to 3-year-old children’s access to adult work compared to their involvement in specialised child-focused activities. Observations focused on 12 children in each of four communities: two middle-class European American communities (West Newton, Massachusetts and Sugarhouse, Utah), Efe foragers of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and indigenous Maya of San Pedro, Guatemala. West Newton and Sugarhouse children had less frequent access to work and were involved more often in specialised child-focused activities than Efe and San Pedro children. The results support the idea that the middle-class European American children’s frequent involvement in specialised child-focused activities may relate to their more limited opportunities to learn through observing work activities of their communities. It may be less necessary for the Efe and San Pedro children to be involved in specialised child-focused activities to prepare them for involvement in mature community practices, because they are already a regular part of them.

Children's Guided Participation in Planning Imaginary Errands with Skilled Adult or Peer Partners.

In this study the influence of guided participation in childrens collaboration with adults and peers on childrens learning to plan imaginary errands was investigated. Sixty 9-year-old children collaborated with novice peers, peers trained in errand planning, or untrained adults.

Children's attention to interactions directed to others: Guatemalan mayan and european american patterns.

This study investigated differences in attention and learning among Guatemalan Mayan and European American children, ages 5-11 years, who were present but not addressed while their sibling was shown how to construct a novel toy. Each child waited with a distracter toy for her or his turn to make a different toy. Nonaddressed children from Mayan traditional families (with little maternal involvement in Western schooling; n = 40) showed more sustained attention and learning than their counterparts from Mayan families with extensive involvement in Western schooling (n = 40) or European American children (with extensive family involvement in schooling; n = 40). The nonaddressed Mayan children from highly schooled families in turn attended more than the European American children. These findings are consistent with research showing that traditional indigenous ways of organizing learning emphasize observation of ongoing interactions.

Learning by Observing and Pitching In to Family and Community Endeavors: An Orientation

This article formulates a way of organizing learning opportunities in which children are broadly integrated in the activities of their families and communities and learn by attentively contributing to the endeavors around them, in a multifaceted process termed “Learning by Observing and Pitching In.” This form of informal learning appears to be especially prevalent in many Indigenous-heritage communities of the USA, Mexico, and Central America, although it is important in all communities and in some schools. It contrasts with an approach that involves adults attempting to control childrens attention, motivation, and learning in Assembly-Line Instruction, which is a widespread way of organizing Western schooling. This article contrasts these two approaches and considers how families varying in experience with these two approaches (and related practices) across generations may engage in them during everyday and instructional adult-child interactions.

Mothers' and Toddlers' Coordinated Joint Focus of Attention: Variations With Maternal Dysphoric Symptoms

This investigation compared the attention patterns of 40 toddlers and their mothers with or without dysphoric symptoms in a situation that allowed both common and independent foci of attention. Mother-toddler dyads with a dysphoric mother spent a smaller proportion of the session engaged in attention to an activity in common than did dyads with nondysphoric mothers. In addition, even when primarily attending elsewhere, nondysphoric mothers more extensively time-shared their attention between their child and a competing activity than did dysphoric mothers. Thus, dysphoric mothers appear to attend to an event in common with their children less frequently than do nondysphoric mothers in terms of both their primary focus of attention and their attentiveness to the child when primarily attending to a competing event.

Age of Assignment of Roles and Responsibilities to Children

Ethnographies of 50 cultures from the HRAF files were selected for exten-siveness of information about childhood. Ratings were made to estimate the ages at which each culture assumed responsibility or teachability in children or assigned a more mature social, sexual, or cultural role. The ratings were made in 27 categories. Inter-rater reliability averaged 63 % when calculated in a way that took into account failures to rate and disagreements about age, 84 % when calculated in a way that took into account only disagreements about age. Inspection of the 27 histograms obtained by this procedure suggested that for 16 of the 27 categories there appeared to be a modal cultural assignment of social responsibility in the 5- to 7-year age range. Four of the remaining eleven categories showed a mode at puberty, while the remaining seven seemed to be assigned across a broad age range. The inherent accuracy of the HRAF data demands cautious inference. Analysis of the data revealed that, in some respects at least, diverse human cultures assign new roles and responsibilities to children in the 5- to 7-year age range.