Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction and Stage Setting
- 2 The Daily Lives of Toddlers
- 3 Cultural–Ecological Theory and Its Implications for Research
- 4 Methods
- 5 Life in the Cities
- 6 Everyday Activities
- 7 Settings and Partners
- 8 Everyday Lives
- 9 The Cultural Ecology of Young Children
- References
- Index
3 - Cultural–Ecological Theory and Its Implications for Research
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction and Stage Setting
- 2 The Daily Lives of Toddlers
- 3 Cultural–Ecological Theory and Its Implications for Research
- 4 Methods
- 5 Life in the Cities
- 6 Everyday Activities
- 7 Settings and Partners
- 8 Everyday Lives
- 9 The Cultural Ecology of Young Children
- References
- Index
Summary
I have always been in favour of a little theory: we must have Thought; else we shall be landed back in the dark ages.
(George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1872/1988, p. 15)In the previous two chapters, I talked about what is currently known about the everyday activities of young children in societies from the industrialized and majority worlds. In this chapter, before describing a theory that's relevant to the study of everyday lives, I argue for the necessity of theoretically driven research, with links between our basic assumptions about the world (our meta-theory), the theory we use, the methodology employed, and the way we analyze our data (see, for example, Richters, 1997; Tudge & Hogan, 2005; Winegar, 1997). I begin by discussing two of the most important metatheories or paradigms, namely, mechanism and contextualism, as a way of illustrating the differences between a positivist (or neo-positivist) and a nonpositivist position. The two currently most influential contextualist theories are those of Vygotsky and Bronfenbrenner, and I present summaries of their theories. Both theories have weaknesses, from the contextualist perspective, however, and I present cultural–ecological theory as a contextualist theory that builds on Vygotsky's and Bronfenbrenner's theories in a way that I find useful for my research. I end the chapter by talking about some of the implications for using this type of contextualist theory in doing both what is often referred to as cross-cultural research as well as research on within-society heterogeneity.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Everyday Lives of Young ChildrenCulture, Class, and Child Rearing in Diverse Societies, pp. 56 - 87Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008