are expeaectation about childs development related to different cultures? :: essays research papers

Parental expectations of their children's development can be influenced bymany factors. factors like media, family beliefs, personal experience. Expectations come from several sources- from parents, teachers, family, peers and ourselves. All these factors relate to social and culture beliefs. Piaget stressed the importance of the environment in children's learningm seeing children as active builders of their own knowledge. The social constructive perspective on child development places main emphasis on the importance of the social environment on child development. Lev Vygotsky's findings showed that children had a great deal to learn from each other through interaction and communication. Unlike piaget, Vygotsky thought that childrem's ability should not be judged only on what they can do alone, but on what they are capable of with help. So the child may be provided with a more challenging and stimulating environment. Constructivist propose that children have qualitatively distinct w ays of thinking, feeling and behaving at different stages of development. Whiting and Edwards ( 1992) discuss the importance of cultural values and their influence on what is perceived as appropriate social behaviour.Hess et al.(1980) carried out cross-culturalstudy into the expectations of American and Japanese mothers about their children's development. He design a developmental expectation procedure to study mother's expectations. The study produced some interesting dara into the cultural differences in the two group's expectations.It showed that the Japanese mother's expectations for early achievement fell into categories of compliance, independence and emotional maturity. In contrast the American mothers expected social skills and verbal assertiveness to be ascertained at a younger age. Whiting and Edwards (1992) discussed the importance of cultural values and their influence on what is seen as an appropriate social behaviour. they explain different expectations of children's development in various cultures and why different cultures expect different things of their children. For example in a more complex society literacy would seen as the most important skills to learn. Whereas in a simple society it is likely that children will learn the physical world. It can be said that cultural needs of society strongly influence parent's expectations of their own children's development.