Beyond the Binary of Adult Versus Child Centered Learning: Pedagogies of Joint Activity in the Context of Making

Abstract

This paper argues that the terms through which we interpret and work to develop expansive pedagogical practices are overly constrained by the binary of adult-centered versus child-centered education. Analyzing ethnographic data developed over three years in a making/tinkering afterschool program serving Black, Latinx, and Asian American students (K-5), we explicate and imagine beyond this binary by (1) analyzing key forms of pedagogical talk, listening, and embodied assistance that supported generative forms of learning and relationality and defied categorization as either adult- or child-centered; and (2) theorizing joint activity as a pedagogical practice by historicizing and unmooring the work of critical education from the perpetual negation of Western, adult-centered models, thereby creating distinct grounds for specifying the role of direct assistance and its salience for questions of educational dignity and justice. Taken together, we argue for a more complex view of when and how direct teaching can support meaningful learning, and further delineate the relationships between such teaching and a broader ethos of joint, intergenerational activity.

Keywords:

• Educational dignity
• learning
• making and tinkering
• pedagogy

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Megan Bang, Angela Booker, Manuel Espinoza, Paula Hooper, Ben Kirshner, Walter Kitundu, Ananda Marin, Barbara Rogoff, Mike Rose, Pratim Sengupta and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback on this piece. We are also deeply grateful to the educators and children who shared their experiences and perspectives with us in the Tinkering Afterschool Program.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The TAP pedagogical team was comprised of both adult and youth educators. Youth educators ranged in age from 14-20, and were either teen staff at the partnering museum or the Boys and Girls Club, or alumni of the TAP program itself.

Additional information

Funding

Funded by The Spencer Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.