Thanks for the observation!  One of the things we are learning is that the sophisticated collaboration we find in many Mexican-heritage and Indigenous American families has parallels in larger organizations, such as classrooms, schools, and communities.  The key feature seems to be whether people truly think together or whether they divide (resources, roles) in ways that do not involve thinking together.

Does that fit with your intuitions?

Andy Dayton describes this form of collaboration as seeming like one organism with many limbs. 

And Omar Ruvalcaba and I have found that many Californian Mexican-heritage elementary school classmates, programming in Scratch together, engage in such sophisticated collaboration that the pairs can move ahead with new ideas together without having to discuss them aloud.  This hardly ever happened among middle-class European American pairs, who spent a great deal of their time wrangling about whose idea to follow.

Hi Luisa,

"Unified intention" is such an elegant way to say this!  I think phrase could work for this micro-genetic collaborative behavior as well as capturing some broader cultural community values (such as Gadugi -- everybody work together -- in Cherokee).

 

Andy

Thanks, Judy!

Great questions!  We are trying to model this way of collaboration through video.  In the video we present here, fluid collaboration is beautifully shown by the 3 girls making a model balsawood bee together (at 00:36), as well as in the 10-seconds of the Mayan family.  You can see some other videos and the research studies at https://learningbyobservingandpitchingin.sites.ucsc.edu/

Our research suggests that this way of collaborating is part of a system in which children and youth are included as contributors to valued activities, and their initiative is welcomed. The website mentioned above describes 7 features that together define this approach to organizing learning.

A resource examining how children's and adults' collaboration can be fostered is available in the Oxford University Press book "Learning Together" (2001).  The research suggests that yes, it can be taught, but it may require a more generally collaborative classroom (or family) structure than is common in middle-class communities.

In pair programming at the college level, Omar Ruvalcaba has suggested that the common practice of assigning roles may impede the fluid and skillful collaboration of children from Mexican-heritage backgrounds.  That degree of teacher control may stultify the alert, flexible collaborative initiative that we are seeing in our research with Mexican- and Indigenous-heritage students.

Thanks for providing this impressive example of how central this form of collaboration can be in the success of students at the university level!

We are working on publishing the microanalysis described in this video, as well as several other recent studies.  In the meantime, good resources on this kind of collaboration are available in these publications: 

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.

Mejía Arauz, R., Rogoff, B. Dexter, A., & Najafi, B. (2007). Cultural variation in children's social organization. Child Development, 78, 1001-1014.

Chavajay, P., & Rogoff, B. (2002). Schooling and traditional collaborative social organization of problem solving by Mayan mothers and children. Developmental Psychology, 38, 55-66.

I agree that heavy adult control (such as setting rules and roles in collaboration) may get in the way of young people learning how to collaborate and doing so skillfully.  In fact, Lucía Alcalá and I found that children whose parents control their collaboration in household work were more likely to boss rather than collaborate with their partner in a planning task, in middle childhood.

We are trying to communicate our results through videos like this one and our publications.  More videos and publications are available at https://learningbyobservingandpitchingin.sites.ucsc.edu/

Your comments are very relevant to the two discussions directly above.  You may be interested to weigh in on them.

Important point!  Looking closely at video in both exploratory and confirmatory ways is key  for examining how people accomplish collaboration and communication. 

Thanks for your observation that the video allows people to observe these processes!  Viewing video of subtle processes is an important way of examining and communicating information that can be observed but is difficult (not impossible) to describe.  This is why I'm enthusiastic about showing research videos.  When I return to a university where I gave a colloquium years before, often someone says, "I'm still thinking about that video clip you showed us last time, about...."  I doubt they remember what I say so vividly.

At the same time, we are also finding ways to describe these subtle ways of organizing learning.  A description articulating this approach, and some publications, can be found at https://learningbyobservingandpitchingin.sites.ucsc.edu/

I want to add that I REALLY appreciate NSF for providing this opportunity to showcase the research! 

Thanks for the speculations about neural systems, Mary Helen!  I find it interesting to consider the parallels between collaboration among neurons and collaboration among people.

The sophisticated collaboration that we focus on in this video among Mayan family groups in Guatemala with very young children has been found in a number of Indigenous-background groups in different countries of the Americas, in a number of activities.  It also shows up in Mayan families with older children, with fathers as well as mothers (several studies by Chavajay).  Sophisticated collaboration is also found in Mexican background children in California, in triads of near-peers folding origami figures (Mejía-Arauz et al), between pairs of classmates programming in scratch (Ruvalcaba & Rogoff), and between pairs of siblings in a planning task (Alcalá & Rogoff).  Sophisticated collaboration was also found among Navajo children teaching a game to younger children (Ellis).

We find a pattern of relations between sophisticated collaboration and use of keen attention (of parents as well as children), considerateness in requesting help, initiative in helping at home, guiding (as contrasted with controlling) approaches of parents, and inclusion in family endeavors.

Next stage of research?  The patterns that we have found in Indigenous-heritage families of the Americas seem to attenuate with decreases in involvement in relatively traditional Indigenous practices and with greater family experience in school and related practices.  That is, Mexican and Mayan children and adults from families with limited experience in Indigenous practices and with 12 or more years of Western schooling show patterns more like European American children and adults from families with 12 or more years of Western schooling.  This loss across generations in important practices may be more likely with some aspects of the pattern; other aspects (such as sophisticated collaboration) may be more resilient. 

We would like to understand this process of change by examining changes in families.  In addition, it will be interesting to watch the efforts of several US Native tribes to reinstate Indigenous ways of learning, in support of reinvigorating their languages and fostering their children's learning and well-being in more traditional ways.

I'm collaborating on a project with the Arapahoe tribe on the Wind River Reservation as they teach the traditional language to K-8 students (and adults), as well as some of the traditions that are also in danger of being lost (sacred and medicinal plants, for example). I'll mention your project to the team leading this.

Great!  They may want to be in touch with Rich Henne-Ochoa, who is also working on this.

Hello Lisa,

We are also working with folks at the Cherokee Immersion school in Tahlequah (pK-6) and community-based adult language learning programs in Northeastern, Oklahoma.  We'd love to make contact with anyone involved in this ongoing collaboration to maintain our languages, ceremonies and traditional ways of knowing.

We are just beginning to flesh out this project and it's going to be really cool. The core components will include using traditional stories and incorporating augmented reality to "subtitle" in Arapahoe. We're also talking about using AR in a fashion similar to the index cards that were pasted around our home and classroom when I was learning French. We're working with the school district to ID a few cultural projects as well books with AR overlays, etc...we are in the planning and design stage right now and would love to know more about what you are doing and where you are in the process. Our next planning meeting is May 30-31. Perhaps we could speak before then?

That would be great.  I have some ideas about AR and language instruction also...

 

Andy

adayton@ucsc.edu

Yes, and the research shows the important role that thinking together plays in children's learning and cognitive development.

You have given me lots to think about and observe.  Thankyou.  I'll watch how families and students work together much more closely in the future, but in reflecting on all the group interactions I have witnessed, I can remember such practices.

Wonderful!  One of our goals is to help people SEE the sophisticated collaboration that is common in a number of Indigenous-heritage and Mexican communities, and to SEE the cultural practices of working together that are common in families and institutions that are based on extensive experience with the ways of organizing learning in Western schooling.

Thanks, Roberto!  For people who are used to collaborating, this sophisticated collaboration may be just normal, but for people who are used to dividing up resources and roles, it seems to be a paradigm shift.

Yes, and this would have important practical implications.  We are in the midst of figuring out how to do such a study.  What would you predict, Fast Pete?

Thanks!

Gracias, Blanca!

Wonderful!  Some people have asked if they can use this video in classes and conferences -- yes, absolutely!  The whole reason for making the video is to help people see this pattern.

That is my hypothesis too...I am also interested in seeing under what circumstances the sophisticated collaboration model could prevail the turn taking or division of tasks model

I wonder if an experiment mixing people who come from communities that favor collaboration and people who come from communities that favor division would result in short term domination by the dividing individual but long-term success of the collaborative approach.  This is of course all tied up with relative status and domination...

Anyway, it will be interesting to investigate this.

Yes, I agree. The prioritization of ranking and assessing individuals appears to get in the way of many important learning goals -- not just learning to collaborate and be curious, but also really learning STEM information and skills and the rest of the curriculum too.  And learning how to learn.

Hi Bob, Thank you! Coming from you as one of the leading figures in this field, this means a lot to me!  I think that visual validation, through video, is an extremely important tool for helping people make a paradigm shift.

Thank you for your question. Yes, the sophisticated fluid collaboration that the Mayan families show relates to joint problem space theory in the sense that everyone is actively engaged, participate and share meanings and references.

Yes, the idea of a shared problem space is a cousin to our approach, in its emphasis on the process of collaboration.  However, I think there is an important distinction to be drawn, based on the sophisticated collaboration that we have seen among Mexican and Mayan groups, which looks like one organism with many limbs, with partners coordinating so skillfully toward their unified intention that they do not need to make proposals to each other.  They just fluidly engage together toward their goal. 

 

This sophisticated collaboration was rare among the European American middle-class groups, whose collaboration, when it occurred, usually relied on one person making a proposal and another accepting or revising it.  Similar to the process of collaboration observed by Roschelle and Teasley. 

 

Our emphasis places shared action as a central feature of collaboration (and also includes talk); Roschelle and Teasley put talk as the central feature (and they also include shared action).

Thanks so much for your comment!

By the way, some participants in this forum may be interested in the workshop that deepens these ideas, with a focus on Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavors.  The workshop is to be held the day before the ISCAR meetings in Quebec, on August 28.  My colleagues and I are organizing the workshop, and it will include research on cultural differences in collaboration and attention.  http://iscar17.ulaval.ca/pages/cultural-histori...