Goals of this Book

Challenge Western Universalism

This text was designed specifically for the students in Early Childhood Studies (ECS) at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). I developed it in response to what I perceived as challenges of existing textbooks that were a) directed towards students of psychology and b) firmly rooted in Western notions of thinking and learning.

Since I began teaching cognitive development in 2004, I have looked again and again for textbooks oriented towards students of education, and I was unlucky. Colleagues over the years (including the many esteemed contract lecturers with whom I have collaborated) have also looked for alternate textbooks, and we have always arrived at the same conclusion: a new textbook must be written.

Through my years of teaching, I have always included supplementary readings on the important role that context and culture play in child development broadly, and cognitive development, specifically. However, I found culture was treated — through texts and even my course design using supplementary readings — as though it was “an interesting variation.” So, in other words, there was an unnamed cultural lens through which texts were being written, and this perspective was one of universalism. Or worse, it was specifically a Europeanlens (predominantly Western European, with the exception of Lev Vygotsky) being presented as universal. Therefore, the impact of culture was integrated as a “variation” of the universals of thinking in young children. This implied universalism was not my conscious intent in designing the course’s iterations over the years, but it was the outcome. It was partly due to the lack of diverse textbooks in the field, but also, quite admittedly, due to my own Western bias as a scholar.

Emphasize Social and Cultural Contexts

What I really want to examine with ECS students is what we all need to know about children’s thinking and learning when we do not assume a universal model. What happens when we approach thinking as embedded in social contexts (like family, schooling, and play) and cultural contexts (which vary tremendously in pluralistic societies)?

This idea is not novel, and to my knowledge was first proposed in the field of cognitive development by Lev Vygotsky (1962); it has since been explored within developmental psychology by Jerome Bruner, Barbara Rogoff, and other socioculturalists. If Vygotsky proposed this idea that thinking and culture are inextricably linked, why do we persist in treating culture as an “interesting variation”? Furthermore, why do Western textbooks persist in presenting Western perspectives as though they are void of culture?

There is no culture-free thinking, and there is no person without culture. Understanding cultural patterns in all aspects of human development is essential to understand human development. For this reason, the overarching theoretical lens of this textbook is indeed sociocultural theory, but as a framework, it necessarily involves multiple perspectives, including Western theory and research.

Include a Diversity of Perspectives

The goal is to broaden our lens on the basic concepts and assumptions of previous textbooks and to include studies, writings and insights from a broad range of voices to reflect the many cultures in which children’s thinking and learning develop. I do not know the many perspectives that I seek to understand. Therefore, in collaboration with others (scholars, students, and community members), I wish to explore the questions of children’s thinking and learning in both their mechanisms and their application.

Reconceptualize the Field

The course to which this text is linked (CLD307: Children’s Thinking and Learning) reflects the overhaul of the conception of cognitive development. The conception from which I have taught for almost 20 years results in the examination of discrete cognitive domains through primarily experimental models.

Cognitive development occurs in the real world — from the time an infant moves her feet to the time she works out the steps involved in solving a math equation. For instance, these occurrences are embedded in:

• the families in which she will grow up
• the community that supports her
• her relationships with a wide variety of children and adults
• the cultural values that will dictate what she learns, when she learns it, and why it is important to know

While it is important to consider the role of domains such as memory or attention, looking at these abilities in a laboratory has several serious limitations (some of which we will explore as we consider this type of evidence throughout this text).

Rather, when we look at abilities studied within contexts (such as the home, school or peer group), we emphasize the learning that is taking place and the mechanisms that are enabling that learning. This emphasis then enables a serious consideration of our role as educators in supporting this learning. By thinking about the processes of social interaction, we also acknowledge that those mechanisms are not all internal; they exist among and between us all in varying societies, each with varying goals and tools and paths towards those goals.

There is no culture-free thinking, there is no person without culture.

To begin our discussion about the course, I would like you to engage in a reflective exercise on what you have observed in young children’s thinking. The reflections are one of the interactive features of this text. Please use this Google doc template (while logged into your TMU account) for your reflections throughout the course. Further instructions are provided on “Using and navigating this book”.