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Family and Early Childhood Education


            Rogoff (2003) argues that humans are biologically cultural: "people develop as participants in cultural communities. Their development can be understood only in light of the cultural practices and circumstances of their communities - which also changes."(p. 3-4). .
             According to Gonzalez-Mena (2003) understanding cultural differences can be confusing and no one can possibly know all about the culture of every family who might come into early childhood centers so does that allows the educators to throw their hand and give up. She suggested that the answer is to seek to understand cultural difference by exploring broad themes and organizing concepts. .
             As an early childhood teacher, our role is to become conscious of how our attitudes and action are culturally-based so that we can work together effectively with families to keep children successful in their culture. .
             Everyone's activities are from their "universal social-ecological community. Their social relationships, political influences, historical events, movements, economic situation and cultural background affect their activities"(Prout, 2005, p. 25). By deeply understanding the reasons behind their activities is more important than lightly watching their surface of activities. By understanding the reasons for their activities, one would get more knowledge about other ethnic's context and would not misunderstand the ethnic's life meaning. .
             Whether the activity is an everyday chore or people's performance depends in large part on the circumstances that are routine in their community and on their cultural practices they are used to. An example in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a 11 months old baby can skilfully cut a fruit with a machete under the watchful eyes of a relative (Rogoff, 2003). However the same action in some other cultures is not appropriate. Tools, such as machetes, saws or cooking knives are not used by a child when they are young.


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