UC Santa Cruz psychologist Barbara Rogoff has been working with Mayan communities in San Pedro la Laguna, Guatemala, for five decades and has noticed a complex, fluid, and inclusive collaboration among children in these communities. During a study conducted 30 years ago, mothers and their two young children interacted very differently; All 3 people mutually participated in exploring new objects provided by the research team.

This type of collaboration is a key element of the method of organizing learning that Rogoff and his collaborators call Observational Learning and Delivery into Family and Community Studies (LOPI). This is a common traditional practice in many Indigenous and Mexican-descended communities in the Americas; Through this practice, children learn by participating alongside adults in all daily activities of their families and communities.

“Everyone contributes by taking the initiative to collaborate and improve the direction of the group, and during these shared activities, children receive feedback and corrections on their contributions,” Rogoff explained. “Over the years, the growing understanding of this method of learning has inspired educators and developmental psychologists around the world and supported Indigenous and Mexican-descended communities who seek to organize learning this way.”

Because LOPI is so different from Western approaches to classroom learning, Rogoff wondered how globalization might affect the practice in San Pedro la Laguna. Therefore, the research team repeated the study with relatives from the same families who participated in the first study.

New research has found that current groups consisting of a mother and her two young children now collaborate among all members of the group at half the frequency of their predecessors 30 years ago. In this regard, extant Mayan families begin to resemble European American middle-class families who, under similar circumstances, often interacted to the exclusion of at least one in three participants.

Some trends that may contribute to these changes in Mayan family interaction include the declining use of Indigenous Mayan language and cultural practices and the increasing interest in Western education and digital technology. Rogoff and his graduate student also noted that the increased use of chairs and couches, as opposed to the traditional practice of kneeling on a mat on the floor, has led to increased physical separation, which has been shown to hinder inclusive collaboration.

But Mayan families still differed strikingly from European American families in maintaining harmony in their interactions with minimal conflict. Current Mayan families, similar to their predecessors, participated harmoniously in all but about 5% of the interactions in the study, compared to European American families who under similar circumstances engaged in conflictual or resistant interactions more than 20% of the time.

In related studies, Rogoff and colleagues found that in collaborative environments, children of European heritage were more likely to patronize, ignore, or resist, and to negotiate separate ideas and goals rather than mutually cooperate to advance a common vision.

In contrast, maintaining harmonious relationships is an important cultural value for many Indigenous communities in the Americas. Rogoff believes that this emphasis is not only important for the Mayan community, but can also help combat many of the social and environmental problems that globalization has brought around the world.

“LOPI is a learning powerhouse for entire communities, including children who learn as alert and community contributors,” Rogoff said. “This was known in many societies in daily life and in the wisdom of elders long before our research efforts. Bringing the understanding of LOPI to more people from different cultures can help us all learn to be community-oriented.”