As announced in the Editorial introduction of Infancia y Aprendizaje's new stage, in the second issue of 2012 the Prospectives section was launched, featuring Dr. Barbara Rogoff's Learning without lessons: Opportunities to expand knowledge.

All articles published in the Prospectives section will be freely accessible in the journal's electronic edition. We thus invite all our readers to view and spread the articles published in this section if they cater to their interest.

Read the abstract or access directly the full text article.

A puzzle presented itself when I began to study cognitive development in a Guatemalan Mayan town, decades ago: How do people learn without being taught? In many Indigenous communities of the Americas, children are included in the wide range of activities of the community and they learn by observing what goes on around them and by pitching in. A new puzzle emerged as I wrote my 2011 book, Developing Destinies: A Mayan Midwife and Town. The midwife who is central to this book claims that she did not learn by being taught, nor by observing and pitching in to childbirth events, but through dreams and divine selection. This invited article reflects on this research and my ongoing work on cultural values and practices associated with children pitching in to collaborative endeavors with initiative.