Amy Suzanne Johnson

Abstract: In this article we argue that early childhood educators, under the influence of last century’s grand universal theories of child development, have not been attentive enough to the centrality of culture in children’s development. We discuss how the exploration of contemporary developmental perspectives is critical to the field and illustrate cultural views of child development based on cultural psychology. The goal of cultural psychology is to study the co-creation of human beings and cultures by focusing on both mentalities and practices, on both culture and biology. Using this lens, we explore the implications that cultural psychology holds for early childhood educators.

TL;DR: In this article, the development of this approach to understanding teaching for equity, an ethics of access, is traced through the life history of one preservice teacher, Julie Robbins, through qualitative analyses of 10 European American, middle-class, female preserve teachers' life history interviews, access to diverse individuals and diverse materials was identified as a major theme in participants' understandings of teaching.

TL;DR: This paper explored the uses of literacy within the Jones family (all names are pseudonyms), an African American family who lives in the rural South of the United States, and found that family must be considered a cultural context for literacy learning.

TL;DR: In this paper, life history methods were used to explore the literate identity of one African American woman, Orlonia, who lives and works in a small rural community in the southeastern United States.