Handbook of the Cultural Foundations of Learning

Na'ilah Suad Nasir, Carol D. Lee, Roy Pea, Maxine McKinney de Royston, Na'ilah Suad Nasir, Carol D. Lee, Roy Pea, Maxine McKinney de Royston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781135039301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Edited by a diverse group of expert collaborators, the Handbook of the Cultural Foundations of Learning is a landmark volume that brings together cutting-edge research examining learning as entailing inherently cultural processes. Conceptualizing culture as both a set of social practices and connected to learner identities, the chapters synthesize contemporary research in elaborating a new vision of the cultural nature of learning, moving beyond summary to reshape the field toward studies that situate culture in the learning sciences alongside equity of educational processes and outcomes. With the recent increased focus on culture and equity within the educational research community, this volume presents a comprehensive, innovative treatment of what has become one of the field's most timely and relevant topics.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license. Funded by The Spencer Foundation.

Part 1

Human Evolution, Physiological Processes, and Participation in Cultural Practices

Introduction

Human learning and development unfold in complex systems and ecologies. Human learning and development are outgrowths of the intertwining of dispositions and competencies we inherit from our evolution as a species and the ways that such dispositions and competencies are taken up through relationships between physiological processes and people’s participation in cultural practices. These cultural practices are ecological in that they are manifested in relationships and the social organization of settings from the micro (e.g. family, social networks in communities, institutions such as schools, churches, community organizations) to the macro (broader societal policies and institutionalized belief systems at the societal level or more broadly across societies). Social relationships, perceptions of the self and others, tasks and settings influence goals, motivation, and persistence. The nature of these contributors to human learning and development are cultural in nature and influenced by differentiation in contexts and where we are, both in the life course and where we are situated within cultural-historical time. Among the challenges with which we wrestle across the life course are our navigations with issues of power and privilege as these influence what is available to us as sources of risk and resilience.

The chapters in this section individually and collectively wrestle with these complexities, interrogating relevant empirical, historical, and anthropological evidence from across disciplines. Packer and Cole examine evolutionary processes that have shaped the unfolding of human learning and possibility. Specifically, they examine how the processes of socialization through kinship groups organize social niches to support the development of children who can adapt to the demands of the social niche and the institutions that organize activity. They further examine the impacts of these socialization practices on neurological processing. Lee, Meltzoff, and Kuhl examine foundational human dispositions that undergird learning and development as they are evident in the learning and development of young children. They also consider the implications of these dispositions for the design of learning environments for young and older children, including implications for learning in the academic disciplines. Spencer, Offidani-Bertrand, Harris, and Velez examine learning and development through the lens of ecological systems and phenomenological meaning making, specifically drawing from research in Phenomenological Variant Ecologies Systems Theory (PVEST) to study how risk and resilience are an outgrowth of relationships between objective risks and the nature of supports available. The chapter addresses how vulnerabilities associated with racial positioning, poverty, and political disenfranchisement have been moderated and resulted in resilience because of adaptive supports. Rogers, Rosario, and Cielto address issues of risk and resilience in human development associated with societal positioning with regard to race/ethnicity and class. They review research on risks associated with stereotype threat, but equally the buffering role of meaning making processes associated with racial identity. Rosado-May, Urrieta, Dayton, and Rogoff examine human socialization through indigenous knowledge systems. They document learning by observing and pitching in (LOPI) to family and community endeavors, anchored in a specific case of the Yucatec Maya system for passing on and creating knowledge. LOPI’s strength in many Indigenous communities of the Americas provides a model of how such learning can be organized as a coherent, multifaceted way of supporting learning.

1
The Institutional Foundations of Human Evolution, Ontogenesis, and Learning

Martin Packer and Michael Cole

There is increasing agreement among developmental scientists that human psychological ­functioning and children’s learning and development should be considered in their cultural context. Our work has explored a “bio-cultural-historical” approach to the study of children’s development (e.g., Cole & Packer, 2016) and our goal in this chapter is to explore the consequences of attending not only to culture but also to human evolution. We have recently focused on how the ubiquitous phenomenon of niche construction offers a way to think about the role of culture in how humans have evolved, and how human children learn and develop (Packer & Cole, 2019).

In this chapter, then, we explore the evolutionary roots of children’s learning and development. Perhaps surprisingly, given our interest in culture, our line of reasoning takes us in a different direction from the view that is popular today, that humans are involved in a special kind of “cultural evolution” which has arisen from an evolved ability for “cultural learning.” Instead, we are drawn to focus on the environmental modifications that humans, like other species, make in order to exist.

It is surely an undeniable fact that humans live and care for children in constructed environmental niches that are made up of entities generally called “institutions.” There have indeed been speculations about the role of institutions in ontogenesis (e.g., Rakoczy & Tomasello, 2007) and in human evolution (e.g., Richerson & Boyd, 2001), but we shall argue that what is central is the way institutions define rights and responsibilities, so that a human environmental niche is a “deontic” niche in which obligations bind people’s activities not only in the present but also into the future. Institutional obligations coordinate activity over multiple time scales. This conclusion provides us with the basis upon which to offer a new definition of culture.

We then explore how children’s learning and development today depend upon this distinctive kind of environmental niche. Human ontogenesis has a unique character, reflecting a uniquely human mode of reproduction. We propose that “kinship” in hunter-gatherer bands and tribes amounted to the first institution, and permitted a mode of reproduction that supported the extended and costly ontogenesis which still characterizes humans today.

Ontogenesis today occurs, then, in a complex and dynamic environment of obligatory collaboration, which caregivers modify to meet children’s needs and to define a developmental pathway. In addition, children’s learning and development today have been further institutionalized. Schooling is a modification of the deontic niche that defines an ontogenetic pathway that leads towards literacy, a capacity that did not exist 10,000 years ago but has become a necessity in many societies today.

A New Understanding of Evolution

In psychology today evolution is often assumed to be a slow, continuous process of random variation (genetic mutation and recombination) and invariant inheritance (replication). The ontogenesis of an individual organism is assumed to be programed by these genes, which contain the plans or instructions for the organism’s development. Biologist Ernst Mayr put this point succinctly, “All of the directions, controls and constraints of the developmental machinery are laid down in the blueprint of the DNA genotype as instructions or potentialities” (Mayr, 1984, p. 1262). From this point of view, since ontogenesis involves no genetic change it has no influence on evolution (Walsh, 2014).

This was indeed how evolution was viewed by biologists during the second half of the twentieth century, in what became known as the “Modern Synthesis” (Huxley, 1942; Scott-Phillips et al., 2014). Since then, however, the key assumptions of this view have been challenged by new evidence showing that biological evolution involves more than chance and necessity (e.g., Keller, 2014; Jablonka & Lamb, 2005; Oyama, Griffiths, & Gray, 2003). It is evident that inheritance of genetic material is not the core process in evolution, and that genes are not the only kind of information guiding ontogenesis. It is becoming clear that the focus should be not only on genes but on whole organisms, or on organisms and their environments as a unity. In addition, it is apparent that changes undergone by organisms during their lifetime—results of learning and development—influence evolutionary outcomes.

The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

An “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis” (EES) has been proposed as an extension of the Modern Synthesis (Odling-Smee et al., 2003; Pigliucci & Müller, 2010; Laland et al., 2015). The EES ­centers around three basic ideas:

The Active Organism in a Constructed Niche

First, organisms play an active part in their own survival and reproduction, and hence in the evolution of their species. Organisms do not merely adapt to existing conditions, they select and modify their circumstances to create an environmental niche in which they, and their offspring, are more likely to thrive. Consequently, “niche construction theory” (NCT) is a central component of the EES (Odling-Smee, 1988; Laland, Odling-Smee, & Feldman, 2000; Odling-Smee, Laland, & Feldman, 2003; Laland & Sterelny, 2006). Survival is a consequence of the organism’s ongoing activity in a dynamic environment. One result is that evolutionary change can be rapid and abrupt. Biologist Kevin Laland and philosopher Kim Sterelny put the matter in these terms:

Evolution is based on networks of causation and feedback in which organisms drive environmental change and organism-modified environments subsequently select organisms.

(Laland & Sterelny, 2006, p. 1751)

Multiple Inheritances

The second idea is that genetic inheritance is only one of several kinds of inheritance, including epigenetic inheritance (passage of information from one generation to the next through changes in how genes are expressed; Jablonka & Raz, 2009), ecological inheritance (inheritance of the niche; Odling-Smee, 1988), and cultural inheritance (which the EES generally views as “high-fidelity transmission”; Laland, 2017).

Constructive Ontogenesis

Third, ontogenesis is a process of “constructive development.” A phenotype is not simply preprogramed by the inherited genotype, it is the constructed outcome of the organism’s ongoing interaction with its environment.

Evolution as an Aspect of Ontogenesis

In our opinion, the EES makes an important contribution to understanding the general process of evolution, including its relationship to ontogenesis. However, as we explored the debate between proponents of the EES and defenders of the MS we encountered the work of biologists and philosophers of biology who, though generally sympathetic to the EES, have conducted further work on each of its three central ideas. Their proposals are important to our account in this chapter.

Focus on Reproduction

First is the suggestion that reproduction is the key process in evolution. Every theory of evolution has to grapple with the link between generations, and the EES views this link as composed of inheritance of multiple kinds, of which genetic inheritance is only one. However, philosopher of biology James Griesemer emphasizes that the fundamental problem facing every living being is its mortality: the individual organism cannot live indefinitely. The solution, which species have implemented in diverse ways, is reproduction. Inheritance, Griesemer points out, is only one aspect of reproduction (Griesemer, 2016). For example, although a new organism inherits genetic material from parents, it is formed from an egg cell that was initially part of the mother’s body. Development of the organism requires this cell’s metabolic mechanisms, a uterine environment, and maternal provisioning, all in a...