Maya children working in the streets: Value mismatches from the village to the street setting.

In the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, a large number of indigenous Maya people have relocated from their villages to an urban centre where many families, especially mothers and children, work as street vendors. We were interested in the typical cultural expectations for the development of Maya girls, the ways that these expected patterns were interrupted by street work, and the ways that girls and families dealt with this novel situation. In order to provide a more complete picture, we compared the daily experiences of girls who work on the street with those of their male counterparts and with the routines of girls who lived in traditional, rural settings. Our data include ethnographic observations and a census (N = 250-300), informal chats (N = 250-300), and semi-structured interviews with children (N = 51) and adults (N = 25). Using Greenfield's theory of social change and development, we found a coexistence of value matches and mismatches. These addressed adherence to tradition versus embracing ethnic variety and innovation valued in money-based market economies and collective responsibility versus individual choice and expression. This mix of values occurred in the domains of gender roles for work, motivation for street work, leisure time, and schooling.

Developmental effects of economic and educational change: cognitive representation in three generations across 43 years in a Maya community.

We studied the implications of social change for cognitive development in a Maya community in Chiapas, Mexico, over 43 years. The same procedures were used to collect data in 1969-1970, 1991, and 2012-once in each generation. The goal was to understand the implications of weaving, schooling and participation in a commercial economy for the development of visual pattern representation. In 2012, our participants consisted of 133 boys and girls descended from participants in the prior two generations. Procedures consisted of placing colored sticks in a wooden frame to make striped patterns, some familiar (Zinacantec woven patterns) and some novel (created by the investigators). Following Greenfield (2009), we hypothesised that the development of commerce and the expansion of formal schooling would influence children's representations. Her theory postulates that these factors move human development towards cognitive abstraction and skill in dealing with novelty. Furthermore, the theory posits that whatever sociodemographic variable is changing most rapidly functions as the primary motor for developmental change. From 1969 to 1991, the rapid development of a commercial economy drove visual representation in the hypothesised directions. From 1991 to 2012, the rapid expansion of schooling drove visual representation in the hypothesised directions.

Cultural teaching: the development of teaching skills in Maya sibling interactions.

Psychology has considered the development of learning, but the development of teaching in childhood has not been considered. The data presented in this article demonstrate that children develop teaching skills over the course of middle childhood. Seventy-two Maya children (25 boys, 47 girls) ranging in age from 3 to 11 years (M = 6.8 years) were videotaped in sibling caretaking interactions with their 2-year-old brothers and sisters (18 boys, 18 girls). In the context of play, older siblings taught their younger siblings how to do everyday tasks such as washing and cooking. Ethnographic observations, discourse analyses, and quantification of discourse findings showed that children's teaching skills increased over the course of middle childhood. By the age of 4 years, children took responsibility for initiating teaching situations with their toddler siblings. By the age of 8 years, children were highly skilled in using talk combined with manual demonstrations, verbal feedback, explanations, and guiding the body of younger learners. Children's developing competence in teaching helped their younger siblings increase their participation in culturally important tasks.