Cultural Ways of Learning: Individual Traits or Repertoires of Practice

Our article addresses the theoretical issue of how to characterize commonalities of learning approaches of individuals who are members of ethnic groups that historically have been underserved in U. S. schools (e.g., AfricanAmerican, Latino, and Native American students). We believe that a cultural-historical approach offers a way to get beyond a widespread assumption that characteristics of cultural groups are located within individuals as “carriers” of culture—an assumption that creates problems, especially as research on cultural styles of ethnic (or racial) groups is applied in schools.1 In this article, after a brief discussion about how cultural styles research has helped the field think of differences rather than deficits, we use cultural-historical theory to revise this default assumption. Our article also presses cultural-historical research to make progress in characterizing commonalities in the variations across individuals and groups.