Parental
Organization of Children's Cognitive Development within Home Environment
J. Valsiner |
The
article outlines a theoretical framework for the study of socialization
of children's cognition in their social environments. It is emphasized
that human environments are culturally meaningful physical structures,
that afford different culturally canalized actions for the developing
children. The proposed theoretical framework is based on the theoretical
traditions in psychology that emanate from Kurt Lewin and Lev Vygotsky.
It explains children's development of acting and thinking through
a set of environmentally-localized zone concepts. The "zone
of freedom of movement" (ZFM) constitutes the area of environment,
set of objects in that environment, and set of actions on these objects,
which is made available for the developing child at the given period
of development. The "zone of promoted actions" (ZPA) covers
the subset of objects and actions that the child's social environment
actively promotes to the child to use and perform. The ZPA can be
observed in the parents' (and older siblings') preference structure
of the child's different actions. Finally, the concept of "zone
of proximal development", that originates from Vygotsky's theoretical
heritage, is used to explain which subset of ZPA (and ZFM) can become
actualized in the immediate future development of a given child at
any particular stage of development. The article also outlines the
need for developmental psychologists from the occidental countries
to become familiar with the phenomenology of child development in
cultures other than their own, since any knowledge of European or
American children's development in their culturally organized environments
is of limited generalizability to other cultures, particularly in
the Orient.
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