Learning cultures
Documenting children’s learning through documenting their participa- tion in cultural activities is an idea which proves highly problematic in practice, because of the very different cultural activities, beliefs and values which make up the complex worlds of children living in plural societies. The activities found in children’s home cultures change over time, and vary with children’s age as well as their gender and ethnicity; and over time, children construct their own hybrid cultures, which incorporate the values of their families, peers and school. But the critical moments, like the start of school, when children encounter new and strange ‘learning cultures’ are times when some children fail to understand the rules for participation, or choose to participate in avoidant activities, using the solidarity offered by their peer culture to resist the agenda offered by adults.
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If children are to continue learning in all the cultural contexts they experience, and make connections between the ways they participate in each, the adults who construct these environments must allow some of their most deeply-held convictions to be challenged by other views: beliefs about childhood and the role and status of children; about goals and values for children’s present and future lives; and about the nature of learning itself. Research on the pedagogy of play, since the 1970s, has moved from the laboratory into the classroom, and from the classroom into the family and community. We could now try, in Rogoff’s terms, to ‘provide bridges from known to new’ (1990: 65), for the adults as well as children whose learning is at issue.
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