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Styles of children’s learning across various Indigenous communities in the Americas have been practiced for centuries prior to European colonization and persist today. Despite extensive anthropological research, efforts made towards studying children’s learning and development in Indigenous communities of the Americas as its own discipline within Developmental Psychology, has remained rudimentary. However, studies that have been conducted reveal several larger thematic commonalities, which create a paradigm of children’s learning that is fundamentally consistent across differing cultural communities.
Contents
Ways of learning
Most of the learning that occurs in Indigenous communities takes place through observation and pitching-in with daily activities in the community. Learning through observation and assisting in various tasks integrate children into their community activities and encourage their participation, so that they will eventually be able to complete the various tasks independently. The overarching concept of learning by observing and pitching-in can be broken down into smaller theoretical subdivisions which interact and are not mutually exclusive: For one, these communities encourage incorporation of children into ongoing familial and community endeavors. Treating children as legitimate participants who are expected to contribute based on their individual skills and interests, aids their integration as active contributors towards mature processes and activities within their respective communities.
Community endeavors are approached collaboratively as a group. This allows for flexible leadership and fluid coordination with one another to successfully facilitate such activities. With a relatively neutral platform for everyone to be actively engaged, an environment is promoted where learning to blend differing ideas, agendas and pace is necessary and thus, encouraged. This flexible organization also promotes mixed-age socialization while working, such as storytelling and jokes, from which these children build morals and connections. In this way, tasks become anticipated social endeavors, rather than chores.
In most Indigenous American communities, communication and learning occurs when all participants view a shared reference to encourage familiarity with the task. Moreover, it incorporates usage of both verbal and nonverbal communication. When explanations are provided, it is coupled with the activity so that it can be a means of further understanding or easier execution of the ongoing/anticipated activity at hand. In addition, narratives and dramatizations are often used as a tool to guide learning and development because it helps contextualize information and ideas in the form of remembered or hypothetical scenarios. Furthermore, narratives in Indigenous American communities serve as a non-confrontational method of guiding children's development. Due to the fact that it is considered impolite and embarrassing to directly single out a child for improper behavior, narratives and dramatizations serve as a subtle way to inform and direct children's learning.
Goal of Learning
The goal of learning is about the transformation of participation in which other important skills and information are acquired in the process (i.e. responsibility, consideration, observation, etc.). Learning fosters integration within the community and activates the development of socialization skills. Learning also promotes the aggregation of knowledge of cultural practices and spirituality
Motivation to participate and learn
Another crucial component of child development deals with the initiative and self-induced motivation of the learners (or children) themselves.Their eagerness to contribute, ability to execute roles, and search for a sense of belonging helps mold them into valued members of both their families and communities alike. The value placed on “shared work” or help emphasizes how learning and even motivation is related to the way the children participate and contribute to their family and community. One of the motivational factors that contribute to Indigenous children’s learning stems from “inherent motivation” where the child feels a sense of accomplishment or contentment in helping their family or community because the contribution emphasizes their roles and value in their community. Indigenous children take pride in their contributions to the community. When they contribute to their household, children are able to see the value and importance of their work as it helps maintain their family’s well being. The children are motivated to observe and learn because they are aware that they are making an important contribution to the family or community; they feel pride and a sense of self-worth as they help provide for their younger siblings, family and community. Through such “inherent motivation,” children are expected to learn community practices in order to become valuable contributors in the community. In addition, an authentic or natural setting could be considered just as important in children’s learning as a teacher. This is because Indigenous children learn many of their skills from observing their surroundings and participating in activities with their peers and other members of the community.
Keen Attention
Another component of Indigenous communities of the Americas, advocates the idea that children’s learning should be stimulated through wide, keen attention and perceptual alertness, with only the occasional guidance or direct cues by people on what to observe, how, and why. This behavior begins in pre-linguistic infancy as babies show attention by directing body language, eye contact, and gestures towards third parties and external sources. Adults and children alike are able to form their own experience and understanding, making the transference of knowledge not unidirectional and creates an environment that fosters more of a back-and-forth conversation between children and adults/caregivers. With widened attention and selective guidance, children are able to better understand and question the world around them, subsequently being more easily incorporated and seen as stronger (and more valued) contributors to family/community learning and their various undertakings.
Storytelling
The development of children’s understanding of the world and their community is reflected in the numerous storytelling practices within Indigenous communities. Stories are often employed in order to pass on moral and cultural lessons throughout generations of Indigenous peoples, and are rarely used as a unidirectional transference of knowledge. Rather, narratives and dramatizations contextualize information and children are encouraged to participate and observe storytelling rituals in order to take part in the knowledge exchange between elder and child.
Parenting
In such cultures, community members have nearly as much agency as the child's parents in the child’s learning. Parents (and other community members) instill indirect support to activities, encouraging autonomy and self-responsibility. Learning and everyday endeavors are not mutually exclusive. Because the children are incrementally eased into taking a bigger part in the community, processes, tasks, and activities are adequately completed with no compromise to quality. Hence, the community is not weary of task risks simply due to the presence and involvement of children. Contrasted with patterns of parent-child engagement in Western communities, it is evident that child learning participation and interaction styles are relative socio-cultural constructs. Factors such as historical context, values, beliefs, and practices must be incorporated in the interpretation of a cultural community and children’s acquisition of knowledge should not be considered universal. Some Indigenous communities pass on knowledge through nonverbal communication, storytelling, teasing and monitoring. All these tools lend to the learning necessary to develop by immersion into the productive activities of the community.
Parents are not the only source that children learn from. Siblings tells us that although both first born and later born children learn from a single parent, usually their mother, both children's’ speech patterns differ because the older sibling is now more like a caregiver. In the Chillihuani community, a young boy did not learn the flute from his mother or father but by observing his brother, who learned by observing his father. These traditions continuously are being passed down through generations.
Assessment of learning
The process of assessment includes appraisal of both the learner’s progress towards mastery, and the success of support being given to the learner. Assessment occurs during a task so that it can strengthen the overall contribution being made. Then, feedback is given of the final product or effort to contribute, where it is either accepted and appreciated by others, or corrected to make future endeavors more productive. Thus, the evaluation process is ongoing and coexists with the task itself, rather than occurring after the task is completed. Assessment can also be non-verbal through hands-on correction or by performing visual cues to the learner to guide them.