Co-Learning from Children's Lived Experience in Context; What has Worked and Future Innovation across Disciplines

Session Type: Conversation Roundtable

Abstract

Panelists: Barbara Rogoff, Tarajean Yazzie-Mintz, Andy Dayton
Moderator: Luc Fairchild

The need for greater attention to children’s lived experience in context is being recognized across various subdisciplines of developmental science. This is evident through contributions of studies probing the importance of cultural and socialized aspects of children’s development, growing calls for improving research theory and practice by centering historically marginalized and racialized populations’ experiences of doing and knowing, research based upon the recognition of Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and calls for incorporating ecovalidity in the cognitive sciences.

By focusing on what children are doing and experiencing moment to moment in specific contexts, a fuller and more accurate reality becomes evident regarding what developmental patterns are universal, and what can be done to improve children’s and families’ lives. Indigenous Knowledge Systems that have persisted through time and scientific innovation then both emerge, innovation that holds great promise but has previously been thwarted due to assumptions of epistemic incompatibility.

Panelists will discuss their approach to integrating children’s lived experience in context into research designs and projects of inquiry from cognitive, cultural, educational, and social development points of view. This roundtable suggests that attention to children’s lived experience in context can improve research designs and questions, and further progress toward a more accurate view of patterns in development, and ultimately strengthen developmental science. The discussion will start with what has worked; the hope is to put forth key suggestions for developmental scholars across disciplines, and to set a course for future research and innovation.

Sub Unit

• Solicited Content: Indigenous Children and Families

Moderator

• Luc Fairchild, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Panelists

• Tarajean Yazzie-Mintz, First Light Education Project

• Barbara Rogoff, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Andrew Dayton, University of California - Santa Cruz