Getting newcomers into a practice

The base line of this kind of learning is that the learner is actively contributing while coming into how to do a task. It is in everybody’s best interest, the children’s included, that they increase the well-being and productivity of the family and that they steadily develop their skills by getting tasks to do that they can manage.

A little story may serve to illustrate the characteristics of such learning in a Nizaa village setting. On my first short visit to Mipom in 2005, it was harvesting time. Late in the afternoon a group of children were busy shelling corn in the compound where I was staying, squatting on the ground round a large basin full of cobs. The youngest child present was Asta, then 14 or 15 months old, the oldest was Fadi, 14 years old. I sat down to help them, though I had never tried to do this work before. It turned out to be quite hard to get the dry kernels loose and I was hard put to even get an opening on the close-set rows of kernels on my cob. Seeing my problems, Laawa, 8 years old, laughs and takes the cob out of my hands, rips off one or two strips of kernels and hands it back. Now I could press sideways on the kernels, and it became much easier to get them off. She continued preparing such cobs for me in between rapidly shelling her own cobs, so that I had a continous supply of easy-to-shell cobs. In this way I was able to actually contribute a bit, though still working much more slowly than the girls chatting and giggling around me.

What is interesting here is the fact that Laawa, seeing that I did not have the necessary skill to do this work, had a strategy ready which simplified the task and made possible my participation in shelling. All the other children except Asta had acquired the knack of getting the kernels off the cob, but they also knew how to simplify the task to include a novice, so that she could efficiently contribute.

Asta, young as she was, was not able to do it properly, but she had already started imitating the others, as is seen in Fig. 5.5 on the facing page.

At other times as well during my field work, I tried to put myself in a learner’s position among children working and the same thing happened: they knew both how to do some task and how to simplify it for guiding a new participant into doing it. They were able to show me exactly how hands should be used or things carried out, to get a good result. They had learned both to do the task and to teach others by demonstration, focusing on carrying out the job at hand.

Practicing life skills

This kind of learning probably goes on without too much attention to it as teaching and learning. Children are simply expected to pitch in, and are routinely told to carry out any chore that a parent sees they are capable of doing. They are not left completely on their own while doing it, though. The adult will usually quietly

5.2. LEARNING SKILLS IN MIPOM

Figure 5.5: Souraya, Laawa, Asta, Fadi and Halima shelling corn: acquiring skills by participating in the everyday work

monitor the child’s work and give directions if they find it necessary, even when they are seemingly occupied with other things. An example from my field journal of my later stay in Mipom shows this in the story of how 6-year-old Halima took care of her little sister Asta, then 18 months old.

22nd January 2006

Asta had diarrhea, and had already had a major accident in the courtyard which her mother Maayí had dealt with, putting Asta on her potty while clearing up. Then Maayí went out for some errand, leaving Asta behind.

When a new attack made Asta defecate several times, making a trail in the courtyard, she went herself and fetched her potty. Her aunt was present, she sat talking with Astadicko, an older woman from the neighbourhood. Noticing Asta’s problems, the aunt called for Halima to help her. Halima covered the diarrhea spots with dry earth and scooped it up on an old tray to put it in the latrine, like her mother had done. Then she managed to get the dirty dress off an angry Asta, and washed her properly, rincing her behinds with water from

a kettle. While her aunt kept up the conversation with her visitor, she monitored closely what Halima was doing, occasionally directing her. Afterwards her aunt remarked to me that Halima took good care of her little sister, but she did not praise Halima directly.

The incident as such was not meant to teach Halima or Asta anything, but they both practiced important life skills, Asta to use the potty, and Halima to keep the courtyard clean and to wash a toddler. They also learned maybe that such skills are not done for the sake of adult praise, but simply as tasks which have to be carried out.

Such ‘on-the-job-training’ stories are quite classic examples of how a community of practice works. These common processes of children getting ordinary and necessary skills for living are dubbed ‘guided participation,’ by e.g.

Rogoff (2003). In community of practice theory, the stories are examples of how the zone of peripheral legitimate participation for newcomers works. To become a competent member of a community of practice, a newcomer has to carry out his or her practices as well as possible, with more experienced members facilitating the task at first till the newcomer has learnt enough to manage.

Here the community of practice corresponds to the family group as the basic economic unit, consisting of people engaged in the joint activity of producing enough food to eat and to sell for some cash income. The children are new members, still not competent in all the practices of the community, but ready to learn, and definitely contributing to its development. They learn skills because they participate in real work tasks where their contributions are valued (Lave &

Wenger 1991).

Speech genres

Teaching is a less focused activity in the kind of learning situations described above, so there are probably fewer speech genres in use in such situations. The following seems to be a common way of proceeding: Caretakers would show things to learners, at most maybe saying things likeP´ın` l`e`e! ‘do like this!’ or using a more specific action verb. Learners were not expected to talk much in such interactions. When the task had been demonstrated, they would simply try to carry it out the same way. Such imitiation would go on also without explicit showing. Adults would watch children working and correct any problems arising.

As soon as things were going alright, the adult would turn her attention elsewhere.

The story of Halima taking care of Asta shows this directing of actions from an adult monitoring the proceedings. A fairly striking trait here is the fact that Halima is left alone to do the necessary work of cleaning up and washing Asta — her aunt just assumes that she is capable of doing most of it, though she keeps an

5.2. LEARNING SKILLS IN MIPOM

eye on her to help her over rough spots if necessary. As a teaching genre, it signals quite a lot of independence and responsability to the learner, training her to think for herself. Directions when necessary will then expand competence maximally, where the child needs it, without belittling her already acquired competence.

The next section describes a more specific teaching situation, where it is possible to abstract a teaching speech genre schema, with a corresponding learning speech genre.