Chapter 5: Intergenerational Learning

Children learn as members of multiple social networks in- and out-of-school. These include sibling, friendship, and activity peer groups that straddle school, home, and community settings. At home, children have vital relationships with one or both parents, or in blended or ‘patchwork’ families (Honneth, 2014), with the partners of one or both parents. Commonly, children also have valued relationships with extended family adults, such as uncles, aunts, and grandparents, who may live nearby or far away (what Honneth describes as multilocational, cross-generational families). This is not uncommon for cultural groups where extended relations more broadly are considered family, such as the Māori concept of whānau (family). Most of the children in our research lived as members of complex, fluid household and extended family and whānau groupings. From what they chose to tell and show us, we came to understand that typically these children were adept at negotiating their diverse roles within and across these groupings.