A window into different cultural worlds: young children's everyday activities in the United States, Brazil, and Kenya.

Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 0372725 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Print ISSN: 0009-3920 (Print) Linking ISSN: 00093920 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Child Dev Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishers
Original Publication: [Chicago, etc.] : Published by the University of Chicago Press for the Society for Research in Child Development [etc.]

Child Behavior* ; Culture* ; Social Behavior*; Achievement ; Activities of Daily Living ; Brazil ; Child, Preschool ; Cross-Cultural Comparison ; Female ; Humans ; Kenya ; Male ; United States

A powerful means to understand young children's normative development in context is to examine their everyday activities. The daily activities of 79 children (3 years old) were observed, for 20 hr each, in their usual settings. Children were selected from 4 cultural groups: European American and African American (Greensboro, United States), Luo (Kisumu, Kenya), and European descent (Porto Alegre, Brazil), evenly divided by social class. Examining children's naturally occurring engagement in school-relevant activities, both in and out of child care, revealed the importance of ecological context. The variation in activities was not explainable simply by cultural group (including race within the United States) or social class, but by the intersection of culture and class. The developmental implications of these findings are discussed.

Date Created: 20060927 Date Completed: 20070110 Latest Revision: 20060926

20231215

10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00947.x

16999811