A window into different cultural worlds: young children's everyday activities in the United States, Brazil, and Kenya.
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.
Tudge
Jonathan R H
JR
Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27402-6170, USA. jrtudge@uncg.edu
Doucet
Fabienne
F
Odero
Dolphine
D
Sperb
Tania M
TM
Piccinini
Cesar A
CA
Lopes
Rita S
RS
D000124:Achievement; D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D001938:Brazil; D002652:Child Behavior; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007630:Kenya; D008297:Male; D012919:Social Behavior; D014481:United States