Poster #66 - "Una biblioteca viva": Community-Based Library Learning in a Rural Indigenous Community in Mexico

• In Event: 79.052 - MTCC Poster Session 19
  In Poster Session: 79.052-8 - Informal Learning Environments Research Poster Session

Abstract

This paper stems from a larger ethnography of community-based learning in an Indigenous Mexican pueblo. The focus is on how Learning by Observing and Pitching-In (LOPI) (Rogoff, 2016) was used as a learning pedagogy in the pueblo library using a "biblioteca viva” (Living library) philosophy. The research question is: Can LOPI guide learning in “formal” contexts like libraries? Work in Mayan communities indicates that the more schooling mothers had, the more they organized learning around school-ways of learning (Chavajay, 2006). In this community, however, the mothers who ran the library had very little formal schooling; therefore, this inquiry explores if, and how their orientation toward LOPI guided their work with children at the library during a summer embroidery workshop.

Author

• Luis Urrieta, The University of Texas at Austin