Cultural Practices as Contexts for Development: New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education

by Jacqueline J. Goodnow (Editor)

How can the concepts of culture and context be incorporated into acounts of development and research on development? This volume of New Directions for Child Development introduces approaches based on the notion of cultural practices; these are viewed as meaningful actions that occur routinely in everyday life, are widely shard by members of the group, and carry normative expectations about the way things should be done. To illustrate use of the concept, four of the chapters describe specific research studies, drawn from anthropology, psychology, and sociology. these are framed by a general introduction to the conept of cultural practices and a commentary on its connection to toher concepts, such as activity and activity systems. This is the 67th issue of the journal series New Directions for Child Development.

136 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 1995

About the author

Jacqueline Jarrett Goodnow was a cognitive and developmental psychologist. She studied the interaction of culture and thinking, writing a monograph on the use of Piagetian tasks with schooled and unschooled children in Hong Kong.