“If you would be willing to speak with us about how young children develop a sense of I and we in your cultural context, and how these have shaped your upbringing, please sign up here! (1 hour with free lunch!)”

—excerpt from a note shared with students at the HGSE

Perhaps it was the free lunch that appealed to students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Yet beyond the shared meal, the conversations we held with 51 graduate students from 29 different national origins became spaces that nurtured reflection, cognitive exploration and collective growth—described by one participant as “an incredible moment to learn about diverse experiences and perspectives from fellows who come from so many different backgrounds and life experiences.” In fact, the voices we heard from countries such as Japan, China, India, Rwanda, Germany, Mexico, Argentina, Canada, and others allowed us to witness the breadth of perspectives that emerge when individuals raised in different cultural contexts reflect together on how they became who they are.

We conducted these conversations as part of The Good Starts Project, a qualitative research project building on the broader work of The Good Project, both housed at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The latter was initiated in 1996 and dedicated to promoting excellence, engagement, and ethics in education by exploring questions about the nature of work, its connection to one’s values and identity, and its relationship to social good. Recently, project directors Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner documented in their study of American colleges and publication The Real World of College a growing emphasis on individualism and a focus on ‘I’ rather than ‘we’ among college communities. The Good Starts Project extends this finding to include early childhood education, aiming to unveil the genesis of good work in young children and asking whether, and if so, they understand themselves as individuals and members of different groups. In parallel, the voices of international graduate students from different early childhood cultural contexts now experiencing American culture offered another lens on these topics.

The lunchtime discussions we conducted were prompted by the Good Starts’ research questions, “How do young children conceptualize `I,’ `we,’ and `they’ across cultures and subcultures?” and “How do adults foster these understandings?” But the conversations quickly extended beyond them and evolved into curiosity‑driven dialogues that resisted neat categorization and definitive conclusions, allowing deep and empathic exchanges.

Of course, this result may not be surprising: we were listening to “Ed School students,” people often accustomed to reflecting on their experiences and drawn to a school whose motto, “Learning to Change the World,” many embrace as a personal goal. We are also mindful of the particularity of our sample: self‑selected, partly binational students who had already spent at least some months in the U.S. context.

For these reasons, what follows is not an anthropological analysis about how “collectivist” and “individualistic” societies shape perceptions of the self and others. Nor are we assuming a representative portrait of any broader culture. Instead, we offer an exploratory inquiry about the sense of “I” and “we” experienced by individuals in different contexts, and how they were shaped by early childhood experiences and later upbringing. Amongst the various themes that emerged from the conversations, four stood out.

An Expanded “We”: Family and Kinship

With regard to family, in many accounts the sense of “we” extended beyond a small nuclear unit to also include further relatives. More specifically, the role of grandparents – especially grandmothers– played a major role in presenting an equilibrium between “I” and “we,” between caring for the collective and knowing the self. One student mentioned “I distinctly remember my grandparents and my great-grandmother especially, taking a lot of time to teach me one-on-one certain community values.” (Mexico) This was echoed in another student’s comment, “I think the strongest forces shaping my sense of self and community were my grandparents and the women in my family. They were the ones who modeled what it meant to care for others, but also what it meant to be responsible for yourself.” (Taiwan) The awareness of interdependence seems to also emerge from the simple presence or geographical proximity of extended relatives. “I was raised by my grandparents, but my aunts were there, and my great-grandparents were close by. We were constantly exposed to other members of your extended family. That just made you understand that it’s not just you and your parents, but you’re part of an entire system of people that exist and are there.” (Mexico)

Beyond the relational environment in which these students were raised, for some, the memory of a “we” even included physical spaces: “Thinking of my early childhood, I remember a lot being connected with nature. My ‘we’ also included the outer space, the outer environment.” (Colombia) “When I say ‘we’ I think of myself and my collaborators, but I also think about the space we take up and the environment.” (Mexico)

“We over I”: Responsibility and Reputation

The sense of responsibility emerged as central but also double‑edged, depending on whether it included the perspective and desires of the child.

In many contexts, the “we” depicted a sense of responsibility for younger siblings and relatives when students told us how "Older kids are to protect and take care of younger kids.” (Liberia) “[I] knew I had to be aware of my younger cousins, and kind of develop a sense of responsibility with that.” (Mexico) “As an older sibling, I would have the responsibility to take care of and watch the baby. If the baby cries, go get adults.” (Kenya)

In other instances, responsibility and community seemed to go beyond caring for others. The “I” in these cases was intended to benefit the version of “we” that is exposed to society and external judgment, where individual behavior isn’t judged as an isolated choice but rather as an expression of the collective–contributing to a moral reputation. “You don’t make decisions just to benefit yourself; we want to elevate the name of the whole family. How can we each elevate family together?” (China) “People don’t want a bad member in the family,[they] want their names to be attached to be ‘good,’” (Ghana) One student raised the question, “ How many ‘I’s’ are silenced when they don’t fit the ‘we’ that exists around them?” (Canada/ China) A closer reading of these statements suggests that these students had an awareness of the “I” and its intentions and desires. Even if behaviors were largely shaped by external expectations, students recognized the gap between personal inclination and those pressures, which necessitated controlling and adjusting the “I” to the accepted “we”.

In other accounts, there seemed to be less awareness of the “I,” and an unarticulated identity of the self perhaps indicating an overemphasis on the “we.” In such cases, the “I” appears to be fully built through socially prescribed patterns of conformity: “In Pakistan we– especially women– are brought up in a way that we're very people-pleasing. So there is no sense of I. When we think of ourselves, we think of our family first. My sense of “I” actually came much later when we moved to Germany.” (Pakistan) “In many ways, the “I” felt shaped by how others saw me rather than through introspection.” (China) “Teachers didn’t teach us how to promote ourselves as an ‘I’ –only as a “We have to do something,” or “We are” ... So it would be really hard to think by yourself.” (Taiwan) This reflects a tension between the need to fit in and the desire to stand out –a tension pushed to its extreme when coupled with a competitive atmosphere.

“I or We”: A Singular “Good” and a Necessity of “Better”

Competitive classrooms were indeed mentioned as a setting where a tension arose between the need to conform and to distinguish oneself. “At school, conforming was the definition of a good child.“ (China) “This pressure to be distinct and distinguish yourself and be exceptional, to prove yourself...” (Canada) “We were curated together as a collective, though we also had to out-compete each other over limited resources — teachers’ attention, scholarships. When you walked onto the stage to receive the scholarship, you felt people’s gazes [...] It creates this dynamic: the “we” is together, but we are not actually together, because one day we’ll be competitors.” (China) These comments indicate a missed opportunity to create understandings of the “I” and “we”: “I didn't get to learn how to identify and name my emotions inside a classroom in Vietnam. I missed that piece in my really early education to really learn how to connect with myself.” (Vietnam)

“I without We”: Migration and Loneliness

It was perhaps unsurprising yet still striking to hear how often the theme of loneliness surfaced. Students mentioned the prevalence of isolation when arriving in an American individually- oriented environment. They could only appreciate the texture of their original “we” after leaving it. “I grew up in a community where we used to have open doors. People came and went without a knock, never a bell, and without really saying anything. It taught me about being together. When I arrived in the U.S., I didn’t see open doors.” (India) “Moving here made me realize how lonely the United States could be, and how smaller your world can feel.” (Mexico)

Further Reflections

While we initiated these student gatherings with the intention of informing and expanding our research questions, we soon noticed they also led to cross-cultural discovery, genuine bonding, and self-reflection. Students commented that the lunches were “an incredible moment to learn about diverse experiences and perspectives from my fellows who come from so many different backgrounds and life experiences.” and “This kind of space is so hard to find in academia as it holds lots of nuances.” After our meeting, students shared their gratitude for being guided “to see the similarities and differences in different cultures and contexts.”

These lunches remind us of something deceptively simple: there is demonstrable value in bringing together, around one table, people who would not necessarily sit together otherwise. This value tends to be overlooked in many university settings, where academic and social life tends to crystallize around affinities —shared languages, regions, interests, or programs. By convening students from diverse cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic contexts, the gatherings created a space in which participants could speak about their early years to a group that could not assume a shared background. This setting helped each person to both recognize themselves and be productively puzzled by the stories of others.

We see this study as a small prototype for a practice that could be curated and continued in other educational settings. The conversations add another layer of insights about how dimensions of “I,” “we,” and “they” develop differently in varying cultural contexts. They provide rich examples of how social and cultural forces shape one’s place within a community, reminding us that individualistic and collectivistic behaviors involve nuanced understandings of the self and belonging. International students’ reflections on their upbringing through the lens of their recent experiences in the U.S. notably help us to reconsider the affordances and constraints of moving within and between dimensions of “I” and “we”. Going forward, we hope to identify “educational pointers” that could be useful broadly, if not universally.

NOTES

The Good Starts Project is generously funded by the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation.

I would like to thank Howard Gardner and Mara Krechevsky for their valuable comments on an earlier draft.