Early Childhood Education in a Sociocultural Context: A Documentary Review

This documentary review was set to analyze various documents based on Early Childhood Education in a sociocultural context. The sociocultural theory informed the analysis of the documents based on the provision of early childhood education, specifically on how young children live and learn in their social and cultural contexts at a particular point in time. The analysis seeks to understand emphasis that sociocultural theory places on culture and social interactions as an integral part of human development. How these influences manifest within children’s learning experiences are the interest in this review. The findings indicated that education of the child in the traditional society was governed by family and community traditions and by social systems. A good curriculum is one which is drawn from society and embodied in the existing cultural norms, traditions and customs of the particular setting. Learning and development of young children occur through social interaction and guidance from skilled others within culturally rich settings. The findings have implications to childhood education, parents, educational management and community of teachers. It is suggested that curriculum design needs to promote education in caring, responsive social contexts where adult-child, child-teacher and child-child interactions and opportunities for exploration promote children’s intellectual and socio-emotional/behavioural development. Therefore, if early childhood education curriculum is not contextualised it will end up itself in the business of producing failures because the structure of educational opportunity and accessibility is such that only a tiny minority of children are able to proceed each year to more advanced levels. So to understand cognitive and non-cognitive development of a child, we must examine the social and cultural processes shaping children.

Keywords: Early childhood education, early childhood curriculum, early childhood development, and sociocultural theory.