Cultures of education in action: Research on the relationship between interaction and cultural presuppositions regarding education in an international educational setting

Children's International Summer Villages (CISV) is an international organization that offers opportunities for children to learn that, despite national or cultural differences, they are members of the human community in an interdependent world. The most important CISV program of activities is the “Village”, which is a four-week meeting including between 9 and 11 national delegations of 11-year-old children. Since 1951, several villages have been organized on five continents and have involved thousands of children. CISV villages place particular emphasis on children's self-realization, promoting children's sense of responsibility and their skills in planning and managing social contexts. In this article, we analyze adult–child interactions recorded at eight CISV villages in Italy during the summers of 2006 and 2007. A total of 412h of adult–children interaction were recorded in the context of a research evaluating the concrete application of pedagogical concepts such as the promotion of active participation among children and the consideration of children's creativity. We analyze the organization of interactive sequences, adjacency pairs and projections of actions and reactions. Our analysis shows that, despite the emphasis on children's autonomy, specific interactional devices are used by the adults to maintain control over the trajectory and the “agenda” of the interactions.