Child Development in Cultural Context Series – serie

As societies are experiencing increasing levels of immigration from contexts outside of the Western, industrialized world, child care programs are experiencing, simultaneously, increasing diversity in enrollment. A question that has been raised by early childhood advocates and practitioners is whether the former articulations regarding definitions of quality, models of relationships, and peer relations in the child care context are accurate and relevant within the increasing racial, linguistic, and ethnic diversity of the United States.The Culture of Child Care provides a much-needed integration of research pertaining to crucial aspects of early childhood development-- attachment in non-familial contexts, peer relations among ethnically and linguistically diverse children, and the developmental importance of child care contexts during early childhood. This volume highlights the interconnections between these three distinct bodies of research and crosses disciplinary boundaries by linking psychological and educational theories to the improvement of young children's development and experiences within child care. The importance of cultural diversity in early childhood is widely acknowledged and discussed, but up until now, there has been little substantive work with a cultural focus on today's educational and early child care settings. This innovative volume will be a unique resource for a wide range of early childhood professionals including basic and applied developmental researchers, early childhood educators and advocates, and policymakers.

Women's schooling is strongly related to child survival and other outcomes beneficial to children throughout the developing world, but the reasons behind these statistical connections have been unclear. In Literacy and Mothering, the authors show, for the first time, how communicative change plays a key role: Girls acquire academic literacy skills, even in low-quality schools, which enable them, as mothers, to understand public health messages in the mass media and to navigate bureaucratic health services effectively, reducing risks to their children's health. With the acquisition of academic literacy, their health literacy and health navigation skills are enhanced, thereby reducing risks to children and altering interactions between mother and child. Assessments of these maternal skills in four diverse countries - Mexico, Nepal, Venezuela, and Zambia - support this model and are presented in the book. Chapter 1 provides a brief history of mass schooling, including the development of a bureaucratic Western form of schooling. Along with the bureaucratic organization of healthcare services and other institutions, this form of mass schooling spread across the globe, setting new standards for effective communication - standards that are, in effect, taught in school. Chapter 2 reviews the demographic and epidemiological evidence concerning the effects of mothers' education on survival, health, and fertility. In this chapter, the authors propose a model that shows how women's schooling, together with urbanization and changes in income and social status, reduce child mortality and improve health. In Chapter 3, the authors examine the concept of literacy and discuss how its meanings and measurements have been changed by educational research of the last few decades. Chapter 4 introduces the four-country study of maternal literacy. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 present the findings, focusing on academic literacy and its retention (Chapter 5), its impact on maternal health literacy and navigation skills (Chapter 6), and changes in mother-child interaction and child literacy skills (Chapter 7). Chapter 8 presents a new analysis of school experience, explores policy implications, and recommends further research.

Guided by developmental cultural psychology, this volume focuses on understandings and responses to disability and stigmatization from the perspectives of educators practicing in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. Synthesizing research that spanned over a decade, this volume seeks to understand disabilities in different developmental and cultural contexts.The research presented in this book found that educators from all four cultural groups expressed strikingly similar concerns about the impact of stigmatization on the emerging cultural self, both with children with disabilities and their typically developing peers, while also describing culturally nuanced socialization goals and practices pertaining to inclusive education. In providing a multicultural view of common challenges in classrooms from around the world, this book provides important lessons for the improvement of children's lives, as well as the development of theory, policy, and programs that are culturally sensitive and sustainable.

Immigrant Stories portrays the contexts and academic trajectories of development of three unique immigrant groups: Cambodian, Dominican and Portuguese. The children of immigrant families - or second generation youth - are the fastest growing population of school children in the US. However, very little is known about these children's academic and psychological development during middle childhood. We examine the previously under-explored intricacies of children's emerging cultural attitudes and identities, academic engagement, and academic achievement. These processes are studied alongside a myriad of factors in the family and school environment that combine to shape children's academic psychological functioning during this important period. Through a three-year longitudinal study, including interviews with teachers, parents and children, this book presents a fascinating look at the community, school, and family contexts of child development among second-generation children. Both pre-immigration and post-immigration characteristics are explored as critical factors for understanding children of immigrants' development. In the current climate of US immigration policy debate, we offer research findings that may inform educators and administrators about the sources of community strengths and challenges facing our newest immigrant generations.

Although New England boarding schools have been educating America's elite for four generations, they, along with their privileged students, rarely have been the subject of study. Living in a senior boys' dorm at a co-ed school, Sarah Chase was able to witness the inner workings of student culture and the dynamics of their peer groups. In an environment of ivy-covered buildings, institutional goals of excellence and aspirations to Ivy League colleges, the boys and girls acted extremely masculine or feminine. While girls typically worked themselves into a state of sleep deprivation and despair during exam period, the boys remained seemingly unconcerned and relaxed. As much as the girls felt pressure to be "cute" and "perfect," the boys felt pressure to be "bad ass" and the "best at everything." Tellingly, the boys thought that "it would suck" to be a girl, while over one third of the girls wanted to be male if given the chance. From her vantage point of sitting in the back of the football and field hockey buses, attending prom and senior pranks, and listening to how students described their academic and social pressures, competition, rumors, backstabbing, sex, and partying, Chase discovered that these boys and girls shared similar values, needs and desires despite their highly gendered behavior. The large class, ethnic and individual differences in how the students perform their genders reveal the importance of culture in development and the power of individual agency. This book examines the price of privilege and uncovers how student culture reflects and perpetuates society and institutional power structures and gender ideologies.

Women's schooling is strongly related to child survival and other outcomes beneficial to children throughout the developing world, but the reasons behind these statistical connections have been unclear. In Literacy and Mothering, the authors show, for the first time, how communicative change plays a key role: Girls acquire academic literacy skills, even in low-quality schools, which enable them, as mothers, to understand public health messages in the mass media and to navigate bureaucratic health services effectively, reducing risks to their children's health. With the acquisition of academic literacy, their health literacy and health navigation skills are enhanced, thereby reducing risks to children and altering interactions between mother and child. Assessments of these maternal skills in four diverse countries - Mexico, Nepal, Venezuela, and Zambia - support this model and are presented in the book. Chapter 1 provides a brief history of mass schooling, including the development of a bureaucratic Western form of schooling. Along with the bureaucratic organization of healthcare services and other institutions, this form of mass schooling spread across the globe, setting new standards for effective communication - standards that are, in effect, taught in school. Chapter 2 reviews the demographic and epidemiological evidence concerning the effects of mothers' education on survival, health, and fertility. In this chapter, the authors propose a model that shows how women's schooling, together with urbanization and changes in income and social status, reduce child mortality and improve health. In Chapter 3, the authors examine the concept of literacy and discuss how its meanings and measurements have been changed by educational research of the last few decades. Chapter 4 introduces the four-country study of maternal literacy. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 present the findings, focusing on academic literacy and its retention (Chapter 5), its impact on maternal health literacy and navigation skills (Chapter 6), and changes in mother-child interaction and child literacy skills (Chapter 7). Chapter 8 presents a new analysis of school experience, explores policy implications, and recommends further research.

Born with the destiny of becoming a Mayan sacred midwife, Chona Pérez has carried on centuries-old traditional Indigenous American birth and healing practices over her 85 years. At the same time, Chona developed new approaches to the care of pregnancy, newborns, and mothers based on her own experience and ideas. In this way, Chona has contributed to both the cultural continuities and cultural changes of her town over the decades. In Destiny and Development, Barbara Rogoff illuminates how individuals worldwide build on cultural heritage from prior generations and at the same time create new ways of living. Throughout Chona's lifetime, her Guatemalan town has continued to use longstanding Mayan cultural practices, such as including children in a range of community activities and encouraging them to learn by observing and contributing. But the town has also transformed dramatically since the days of Chona's own childhood. For instance, although Chona's upbringing included no formal schooling, some of her grandchildren have gone on to attend university and earn scholarly degrees. The lives of Chona and her town provide extraordinary examples of how cultural practices are preserved even as they are adapted and modified. Destiny and Development is an engaging narrative of one remarkable person's life and the life of her community that blends psychology, anthropology, and history to reveal the integral role that culture plays in human development. With extensive photographs and accounts of Mayan family life, medical practices, birth, child development, and learning, Rogoff adeptly shows that we can better understand the role of culture in our lives by examining how people participate in cultural practices. This landmark book brings theory alive with fascinating ethnographic findings that advance our understanding of childhood, culture, and change.

Adults were once children, yet a generational gap can present itself when grown-ups seek to know children's lives, in research. In A Younger Voice discloses how qualitative research, tailored to be child-centered, can shrink the gap of generational unintelligibility. The volume invites and instructs researchers who want to explore children's vantage points as social actors. Its suggested tool kit draws from both academic and applied research, based on the author's lifelong career as a child-centered qualitative researcher. World round, research in knowing children has grown recently in anthropology, sociology, geography, economics, cultural psychology and a host of applied fields. This book draws widely from the trending child-centered research movement, taking stock of methods for fulfilling its aims.In A Younger Voice provides mature researchers with a kid-savvy guide to learning effectively about, from, and with children. The highlighted methods' are steadfastly child-attuned, "thinking smaller" in order to free children to participate with empowerment. From fieldwork and observation, to focus groups and depth interviews, to the use of photography, artwork, and metaphors, viable methods are discussed with an old-hand's acumen for making the procedures practical with children in the field. Whether an investigator is at the beginning of a project (designing from scratch procedures to involve and reveal the young) or at the final stages (conducting interpretations and analysis true to children's meanings) In A Younger Voice gives know-how for a challenging area of inquiry. Playfully interviewing children as young as five years old, as well as empowering teenagers to tell it like it is, are tasks revealed to be both doable and essential. For adults seeking to overcome generational-cultural myopia, these methods are invaluable.