Seminar in Early Childhood Education
Here are the instruction below. I am attaching all the instructions so you can have a good understand of what is being looked for. I have conducted the interviews and I am attaching the notes. What I need is 5 pages that connect the information gathered through the interviews to what has been learned and discussed about sociocultural perspectives of learning. I am attaching all the articles and resources used. Please feel free to use what you feel links to the interviews and sociocultural contexts within. There also needs to be a connection to the interviews and sociocultural contexts to Bronfenbrenner's ecological system and Vygotsky’s socio-cultural approach. I have indicated 10 sources but less is fine...It depends on you and the sources you feel you need. I have attached one on Bronfenbrenner but please use a better one if you have access to it. Please let me know if you need me to send one on Vygotsky.
Please note that I will complete the introduction and re-write the interviews in a professional manner to fit into the paper - what I need help with is connecting the information gathered in the interviews to sociocultural perspectives of learning (contexts), the resources (how many you feel you need), and to Bronfenbrenner and Vygotsky. Please let me know if you need any other information. Thank you!!!
Assignment Instructions given by professor...
Two Sociocultural Interviews and Analysis. Interview two adult friends, family members, or colleagues about the sociocultural contexts that are currently part of their worlds, and the sociocultural contexts that were part of their worlds during their childhoods. In regards to their childhoods, you could pose the following questions: What activities did you engage in, and who supported or influenced your learning at home, at school, or in other contexts (e.g., Sunday School, swimming lessons, after-school club, camp)? What did this support look like? Did your learning in one sociocultural context emerge in another sociocultural context (e.g., did your interests and valued practices at home ever cross into your learning at school?). For the paper portion of your assignment, link your participants’ answers to what we have learned about a sociocultural perspective of learning.
Sociocultural Context - Advanced Research Seminar in Early Childhood Education
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Vygotsky’s socio-cultural approach
The case for sociocultural perspectives of learning is that children often grow up in different homesteads whereby their social and cultural experiences differ, and this influences their development. Vygotsky’s approach focuses on the role of social factors in influencing cognitive development. Children inevitably learn from their surroundings given that proximal development is guided by learning from the surroundings. As such, there is a need to understand how the environment affects the development of children and how to integrate this in the sociocultural context to enhance learning (Edwards, 2006). This is attested by the interviewees who highlighted that their families were crucial in their development to offer social support and encourage them to achieve their set goals.
Childhood development has mostly focused on adults especially parents and their influence on children. However, sibling relations have a long lasting impact since siblings typically relate for longer periods of times. Howe and Recchia (2006) highlighted that understanding sibling relations make it easier to understand how the context affects the development of children. The siblings share similar social and moral worlds, meaning that they are more likely to influence each other as well as understand the intentions and emotions of amongst themselves. Another issue is sibling conflict which affects their development, with those experiencing frequent conflicts likely to be affected negatively (Howe & Recchia, 2006).
The role of social interaction in development cannot be downplayed, and there is a need to integrate cultural elements in learning. The rationale for this is that the children may have certain ways to process information because of their sociocultural contexts. Even though, there are certain aspects of learning that are dependent on biology and genetics, the sociocultural context influences learning strategies. At the same time, children are seen to have the innate ability to adapt intellectually in the Vygotsky approach. Children use their mental functions by at times adapting them based on their experiences. Hence, the sociocultural context integrates the role of cognitive functions that dependent on intellectual adaptation.
The dominant perspectives and theories on development and learning have tended to focus on children as individuals while ignoring the role of interpersonal relations. For teaching and learning to be more effective, then integrating the sociocultural context is necessary. The context, meaning, family and cultural bounds are some of the elements that are common to specific people that distinguish them from others and they also influence learning. In any case, the sociocultural approach seeks to establish the relations of human mental functioning with the historical, institution and cultural situations (Robbins, 2005). Learning does not occur in a vacuum, and learners are more motivated when teaching and learning take into account their uniqueness. On one hand, learners are driven to learn on they own, but on the other cognition also depends on the sociocultural context.
Minority children are likely to learn slower if the education system merely projects the beliefs of the dominant culture. According to (Punch,2003), one of the main differences between children from the first and third world, is that those from the third world typically work and play, but those from the developed nations are overly protected. This further highlight the lives of children differ considerably based on the sociocultural context. The aspect of over protecting the children at times excludes the role of adults. At the same time, the children are removed from working given the assumption that at a young age they are mostly supposed to be schooling.
Bronfenbrenner - ecological system
The bioecological systems theory proposed by Bronfenbrenner highlights a child’s biology being the primary environment for development (Härkönen, 2007). The complexities then appear as a child grows with as they develop both physically and cognitively. The model is conceptualized based on the idea that children dependent on the environment, with socialization an element that affects development (Härkönen, 2007). It follows that a child’s surroundings influence their world view, given that the sociocultural context can cross over between the home and the school. The families, peers, the media and schools are agents of socialization that influence how children interact highlighting that understanding the sociocultural context of learning is beneficial.
To Bronfenbrenner, the different levels of the environment affect development and socialization based on interactions in the contexts. The approach further assumes that an individua...