The Cultural Nature of Civic Action: Helping Out Among Preschool Children From Latinx Immigrant Families

• In Event: 34.071 - Rethinking Civic Action as Embodied and Child-Driven in Early Childhood Settings

Abstract

While civic action is often defined and organized by adults (Mitra & Serriere, 2015) in White, mainstream, western education (Abowitz & Harnish, 2006), we argue in this paper that just as learning and development are cultural processes (Rogoff, 2003; 2014) civic action also takes place within children’s cultural understanding of their world. Using examples from the larger Blinded project in a bilingual Head Start classroom in the Southwestern US, we demonstrate the contexts that made space for preschool children from Latinx immigrant families to engage in civic action and how the civic action that we observed is culturally situated. This paper adds to our understanding of civic action in early childhood by illustrating how student choices around civic action are influenced by their culture and how the act of bringing home culture into the classroom is civic in nature.

This paper uses Rogoff’s (2014) description of learning and development as culturally embedded, particularly her conceptual model of Learning by Observing and Pitching In (LOPI) to understand how Latinx children engage in civic action in their preschool classroom. We focus on the facets motivation and means of learning to interpret the civic action that children did, particularly helping out.

This paper draws on data from the larger Blinded project, a video-cued ethnographic study (Tobin, Hsueh & Karasawa, 2009; Tobin, Wu & Davidson, 1989) of preschools in three countries. The data in this analysis is from a bilingual Head Start classroom in the Southwestern US. We used video, field notes, interviews, and audio as ethnographic data to document young children of Latinx immigrants in the classroom.

Most of the civic action we documented involved children helping out in their classrooms in a way that was distinct from the ways that helping out has been conceptualized in many US early childhood settings (Pettygrove et al., 2013). Children mostly offered unsolicited help to one another. They would notice a need and without being asked, they would offer guidance, materials, or physical support. For example, during centers time two girls were sharing a stuffed horse and pretending to ride around the classroom. A boy noticed from across the room, crossed the classroom, and dropped a second horse near the girls so they did not have to share. He then resumed his play across the room without ever talking to the girls. The girls accepted the horse and split up to gallop around the classroom. Children would often notice things that were overlooked by the teachers and researchers and offer help in situations where students were not obviously struggling or even in need of help.

This paper uses LOPI to help us expand our understanding of civic action in early childhood classrooms serving children from Latinx immigrant families and the cultural nature of civic action itself. The ways that students helped out in their classrooms was reflective of the cultural values held by their families and their bilingual teachers.

Authors

• Kiyomi Sanchez-Suzuki Colegrove, Texas State University

• Molly Ellen McManus, The University of Texas at Austin