Seminar in Early Childhood Education

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 s...