Culture and participation: a paradigm shift

• Culture can be conceived of as ways of life in which people participate.
• A focus on participation entails a paradigm shift, to a transactional worldview.
• Communities’ ways of organizing learning are based on cultural paradigms.
• Learning by Observing and Pitching In to ongoing endeavors is a cultural paradigm.
• LOPI may be especially common in Indigenous-heritage communities of the Americas.

The present article makes the case that the study of culture would do well to shift the notion of culture to ‘ways of life,’ rather than treating culture as static characteristics of groups (e.g. ethnicity). This would entail a paradigm shift, to focus on people's participation in cultural communities, across generations. The shift fits a transactional worldview, contrasting with the interactional worldview that is common in mainstream research and everyday life in the US. The article focuses on a way of organizing children's learning that fits the participation paradigm — Learning by Observing and Pitching In to the activities of family and community — that appears to be common in Indigenous and Indigenous-heritage communities of the Americas.