Barbara Rogoff

Barbara Rogoff is an educator whose interests lie in understanding and communicating the different learning thrusts between cultures, especially within her book The Cultural Nature of Human Development (2003). Her work bridges psychology with anthropology, drawing on Vygotsky.

She holds the University of California Presidential Chair as a professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz.

Barbara Rogoff investigates cultural variation in learning processes and settings, with special interest in communities where schooling has not been prevalent. She is particularly interested in cultural aspects of collaboration, learning through observation, children's interest and keen attention to ongoing events, roles of adults as guides or as instructors, and children's opportunities to participate in cultural activities or in age-specific child-focused settings.

Her interests include cultural variation in learning processes (especially observation), the organization of people's participation in shared problem solving, children's interest and keen attention to ongoing events, and children's opportunities to participate in cultural activities or in age-specific child-focused settings, with special interest in communities where schooling has not been prevalent.

Rogoff's book, Learning Together: Children and Adults in a School Community,^[1] co-authored with teachers Carolyn Turkanis and Leslee Bartlett, profiled Salt Lake City's "Open Classroom," a parent-cooperative education program that is now a K-8 charter school.

Barbara Rogoff also wrote a chapter in the edited Handbook of Child Psychology. Her chapter was the 14th in the book and entitled Cognition as a Collaborative Process. In it, she discusses Constructivist theorist Piaget and Sociocultural theorist Vygotsky in relation to collaboration, the role of adult experts in the process of learning, peer interaction and community collaborative sociocultural activities.

Most recently, Barbara Rogoff wrote Developing Destinies: A Mayan Midwife and Town. This book not only outlines how cultural practices guide ones participation, but how community members choose and change cultural practices.

External links

• Barbara Rogoff biography
• Sociocultural Theory wiki, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

References

1. ISBN 978-0-19-516031-4, Oxford University Press 2002.