Social Worlds Of Children

Based on data from 2-1/2 years of observing 1- and 2-year-old children learning to talk in their own homes, this book charts the month-by-month growth of the children's vocabulary, utterances, and use of grammatical structures and evaluates the effect

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book addresses cultural variability in children’s social worlds, examining the acquisition, development, and use of culturally relevant social competencies valued in diverse cultural contexts. It discusses the different aspects of preschoolers’ social competencies that allow children – including adopted, immigrant, or at-risk children – to create and maintain relationships, communicate, and to get along with other people at home, in daycare or school, and other situations. Chapters explore how children’s social competencies reflect the features of the social worlds in which they live and grow. In addition, chapters examine the extent that different cultural value orientations manifest in children’s social functioning and escribes how parents in autonomy-oriented cultures tend to value different social skills than parents with relatedness or autonomous-relatedness orientations. The book concludes with recommendations for future research directions. Topics featured in this book include: Gender development in young children. Peer interactions and relationships during the preschool years. Sibling interactions in western and non-western cultural groups. The roles of grandparents in child development. Socialization and development in refugee children. Child development within institutional care. Children’s Social Worlds in Cultural Context is a valuable resource for researchers, clinicians/practitioners, and graduate students in developmental psychology, child and school psychology, social work, cultural anthropology, family studies, and education.

Katherine Nelson re-centers developmental psychology with a revived emphasis on development and change, rather than foundations and continuity. She argues that children be seen not as scientists but as members of a community of minds, striving not only to make sense, but also to share meanings with others. A child is always part of a social world, yet the child's experience is private. So, Nelson argues, we must study children in the context of the relationships, interactive language, and culture of their everyday lives. Nelson draws philosophically from pragmatism and phenomenology, and empirically from a range of developmental research. Skeptical of work that focuses on presumed innate abilities and the close fit of child and adult forms of cognition, her dynamic framework takes into account whole systems developing over time, presenting a coherent account of social, cognitive, and linguistic development in the first five years of life. Nelson argues that a child's entrance into the community of minds is a slow, gradual process with enormous consequences for child development, and the adults that they become. Original, deeply scholarly, and trenchant, Young Minds in Social Worlds will inspire a new generation of developmental psychologists.

The authors address such issues as the effect of institutions on family life, the changing roles of parents, cross-generational effects on development, the status of children in the legal system, schooling and learning, gender differences, the acquisition of communication skills, and the psychological impact of the nuclear threat.

Presents the results of a two-year ethnographic study of K-3 children who do not tell stories in the written language format valued by most early literacy educators.

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.