Social Interactions at Home: The Rhythm of Family Life

• In Event: 56.035 - Seeing Learning Anew: Shifting the Gaze Toward Ingenuity of the Everyday

Abstract

Objective
We explore how non-dominant families organize collective learning in the home by examining the rhythmic patterns emerging in collaborative projects/joint-activity undertaken by family members. We seek to understand how these patterns are part of the underlying structure of family life; as family members seek to organize learning, their social interactions in joint-activity point to the affordances and constraints within moment to moment interactions. Our study searches for the essence of joint-activity. By drawing on the metaphor of learning as (a) movement (Gutiérrez, 2008), we seek to illuminate how learning travels across time and space in rhythmic patterns (as a unit of a longer musical work).

Perspectives
We draw on the notion that learning is a social accomplishment (Cole & Gajdamashko, 2009; McDermott and Raley, 2011; Rogoff, 1994) and happens in and through everyday practices (Gutiérrez et al., in press; Vygotsky, 1978). In addition, we centralize artifacts in the learning process and document how they are developed over time to foster new learning in the present and future based on previous exposure to tools (Cole, 1993). This framing allows us to examine the affordances and constraints of tool use within social interactions at home as collective learning occurred toward expansive ends (Gutiérrez, 2008).

Methods, Participants, & Data
Our multi-sited research project focused on six families. For each family, we collected over 20 hours of video data, 10 activity logs, 3 hours of interview data and 6 family surveys intended to capture perceptions regarding health, education, energy, and social media use. The data sources were triangulated using two main processes. First, the open-ended and thematic codes (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Dyson & Genishi, 2005) of activity logs were created. Through these analyses we elucidate the nature of family engagement in joint-activity; their semiotic, linguistic, and social choices, intentions, and aspirations; and their evolving relationships. Next, we conducted a video analysis, consisting of time-lapsed video logs and transcriptions (Erickson, 2006) that paid special attention to gestures and how those were rhythmic productions.

Results
There are many types of joint-activity that undergird the structure of everyday family life, including but not limited to recreation, passing down of traditions, homework-time/school-related activities, cooking, dinner-time, and technology-use. We explored the rhythm underlying these joint-activities; identifying moments of harmony and dissonance (contradiction) and their catalyzing effect on the activity system of the home.

We found that as they seek to introduce new tools toward specific ends, the distributed expertise of each family member is drawn on according to the established norms relevant to the joint-activity. New learning within these activities occurs as family members marshall their expertise and work through dissonance (contradiction) while negotiating new and expansive learning opportunities.

Significance
Given that schools are traditionally grounded in White, middle-class norms (Rogoff, 2003; O’Conner & Penuel, 2010), we argue that understanding family rhythms in joint-activity provides insight into pedagogical practices and ways of organizing classrooms that are more inclusive and foster expansive learning (Gutiérrez, 2008). In addition, our study offers new ways of identifying the cultural repertoires of practice and rhythm that students develop over time.

Authors

• Arturo Cortez, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Edward Rivero, University of California - Berkeley

• José Ramón Lizárraga, University of California - Berkeley

• Andrea González, University of California - Berkeley

• Daniela Kruel DiGiacomo, University of Colorado - Riverside

• Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of California - Berkeley