ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we examine forms of endogenous pedagogy, or guided apprenticeship, the teaching of embodied skill through involvement in activity, viewing learning as situated and grounded in contexts of practice and personal engagement. In the midst of performing everyday tasks that are vital to the life of a family, such as self-care or purchasing books, we examine how parents work to promote the child’s development of embodied competence. We next turn to an investigation of enskilment, the teaching of bodily skills through apprenticeship – looking at toothbrushing, cooking, and grocery shopping. Embodied practices, the use of multiple senses such as touch, smell, and vision, are crucial to such endeavors. While selecting fruit, through practices of identifying qualities important for evaluating fruit, coupled with pointing and presenting explicit exemplars of desirable and undesirable selections of fruit, a father can shape his daughter’s qualitative experience as a shopper, apprenticing her to become a competent practitioner capable of making relevant discriminations. We demonstrate how achievement of these activities is based on an “education of attention” rather than an accumulated stock of representations.
