From newcomer enculturation to fertile zones of cultural encounter: A bidimensional metaphor for schooling

Instructional approaches that rely on the theoretical concept of learning as a process of enculturation usually regard the teacher as the expert and the students as the newcomers. We suggest an alternative metaphor, where students are viewed as longstanding members of an overlapping yet different culture than that represented by the instructional setting. This metaphor allows for sensitivity to learning difficulties that arise when students' contextualization of the milieu is dominated by the other cultural viewpoint. We suggest the concept of fertile zones of cultural encounter as a pedagogical approach to bridging the gap between cultures by designing interventions appreciated by members of both cultures, while also encouraging students to engage in the practices of the professional culture. We demonstrate the usefulness of such conceptualization in two school subjects: computer science and history.