Everyday routines: A window into the cultural organization of family child care

Abstract

Eco(logical)-cultural Theory suggests that a daily routine results from individuals adapting cultural ideas to the constraints of a local context or ecology. Using Ecocultural Theory, this research examined family child care providers' descriptions of daily activities and overall approach to understand cultural models. The results highlighted a predominant cultural model reflecting ideas of "natural" child development facilitated by a structured daily routine. However, an alternative model emphasizing flexibility, intimacy, and relationships was also present. The results suggest that we need to better understand the conditions under which certain models become widely appropriated and enacted.

Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory Revision: Moving Culture From the Macro Into the Micro

“…This finding highlights the transactional nature of development and how it is influenced by the cultural contexts in which participation takes place. In a similar fashion, Tonyan (2015) showed that family child care providers’ descriptions of “culturally organized ideals of care, or cultural models, held by adults can impact the kind of activities that children experience in their daily lives” (p. 312).…”

“…This finding highlights the transactional nature of development and how it is influenced by the cultural contexts in which participation takes place. In a similar fashion, Tonyan (2015) showed that family child care providers' descriptions of "culturally organized ideals of care, or cultural models, held by adults can impact the kind of activities that children experience in their daily lives" (p. 312). Tonyan et al (2013) used an ecocultural model to develop a group-based approach to understand the relationship between beliefs and practice on child care providers from an archival analysis using the Observational Ratings of the Caregiving Environment.…”

Process quality, curriculum and pedagogy in early childhood education and care

“…However, in many of these contexts, play is not culturally indicated for learning per se; with learning viewed in terms of skill acquisition, mastery of content, highly-valued contributions to community, participation in oral language activities (e.g. story-telling, multi-participant conversational turn-taking, songs and rhyming), observation and modelling (Escayg and Kinkead-Clark, 2018 [93]; Tiko, 2017 [94]; Ukala and Agabi, 2017 [95]). The impact of travelling notions of play-for-learning manifests in research describing valiant efforts on behalf of educators attempting to mediate imported ideas about play within the existing culturally-derived ideological positions on curriculum and pedagogy held within their own countries (Gupta, 2020[96]).…”

“…Where such privileging occurs, cultural variations associated with both human-to-human and non-human-to-human interactions, alongside oral language and observational learning may not be embedded in approaches to teaching and learning [e.g. Escayg and Kinkead-Clark (2018 [93]); Tiko (2017 [94])].…”

“…content, interactions, routines, activities and resources) may be deployed according to the requirements of the socio-cultural situation in which they are located. There is enough evidence in the literature to suggest that content, interactions, routines, activities and resources are likely to be relatively stable features of curriculum in ECEC settings internationally [e.g., Weiland, et al (2017[174])]; especially where interactions are defined as those occurring between children and adults, the human and non-human, and within oral and observational forms of learning (Escayg and Kinkead-Clark, 2018 [93]; Melhuish et al, 2016[50]; Tiko, 2017 [94]; Ukala and Agabi, 2017 [95]).…”