Children Learn by Observing and Contributing to Family and Community Endeavors: A Cultural Paradigm

Maricela Correa-Chávez is an assistant professor of developmental psychology at Long Beach State University in California. Her work centers on understanding children’s learning as a cultural practice that develops through participation in activity with others in communities that have Indigenous Mexican and Central American roots, focusing particularly on how children use forms of attention and communication in learning that are different from the forms of attention and communication expected by the institution of school. She has conducted research on these topics in Mexico and Guatemala, as well as in the United States with both immigrant and middle-class families. Dr. Correa-Chávez received her doctoral degree in Developmental Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her work has been funded by the Ford Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the American Educational Research Association/Institute for Educational Sciences, the UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute, and the Foundation for Child Development.

Rebeca Mejia-Arauz is faculty professor and researcher in the Department of Health, Psychology, and Community at ITESO University, Guadalajara, Mexico. She obtained the doctoral degree in Developmental Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the M. Sc. in Social Psychology at the London School of Economics, and a specialty in Cognitive Development at ITESO University, in México. Her line of research focuses on sociocultural and cognitive development, specifically on processes of social interaction, participation, and communication for learning. Her current research projects study cultural contrasts in interaction, attention, communication and collaboration among Indigenous and urban children; children´s out-of-school practices in urban and Indigenous contexts; cultural and intergenerational family transformations affecting children´s participation in cultural activities and their education and development; and children´s literacy development in urban Mexico. She is representative of Latin America and The Caribbean at the International Society for Cultural and Activity Research; she is a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI) in México. In 2014 she received the award for Research Trajectory and Contributions to Knowledge in Psychology from the Society of Intervention Psychologists of the State of Jalisco.

Barbara Rogoff is UC Santa Cruz Foundation Distinguished Professor of Psychology. She received the 2013 Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contributions to Cultural and Contextual Factors in Child Development, from the Society for Research in Child Development. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Education, Association for Psychological Sciences, American Anthropological Association, American Psychological Association, and American Educational Research Asociation. She has been Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Kellogg Fellow, Spencer Fellow, and Osher Fellow of the Exploratorium. She has served as Editor of Human Development and committee member for the U.S. National Academy of Science.