Birth to three matters - Communities and Local Government

thus showing that the theory was ‘contextdependent’ (Hutt 1979).In other words,familiarity with particular activities andexperiences, usually those that areembedded in the everyday life of the child,lead to developments in the abilitiesinvolved, as Margaret Donaldson (1978)pointed out. The task for early childhoodpractitioners is to make activitiesmeaningful to young children and so leadthem from those that make sense withina particular context to those which areless context-dependent (for examplebecoming able to count a small numberof objects anywhere when you are aboutfour years old, because you have hadexperiences of counting drinks or seatsneeded for a little group, or other objects,in the familiar world of your home,childminder’s or nursery).Some researchers (see for exampleDahlberg et al 1999; Singer 1992) arguethat one cannot generalise aboutchildren’s learning and development,that it is dangerous to impose ideas fromone culture onto others, because it isimportant to take account of the contextdependentnature of children’sunderstandings. After all,it is importantto note, as we argued in chapter 1,thattheories, as well as research,happen inparticular places at particular times andboth are therefore subject to culturalassumptions and values. However, theimpact of postmodern 1 ideas cansometimes mean that, unintentionally,a flight from theorising follows – ‘throwingthe baby out with the bathwater’ – whichcan also be dangerous, because when weexplore the reasons underpinning practiceor policy we become aware of our ownassumptions, ideas or theories, and we canenhance them by debating the ‘grandtheories’. By reflecting on ‘grand theories’in the light of our own practicalexperience, we can decide how applicableeach of them is to the children we workwith and in our own work contexts. Butwe also need to see the extent to whichtheories are supported by researchevidence, at least where they can beresearched empirically. We can thenaccept, adapt or reject the ‘grand theory’in question and be more aware of our owntheories – how we ‘make sense’ of children– and how our theories affect our work.So some researchers (for example, Rabanet al 2002) propose that we should usea range of theories, while recognising theirlimitations, so that we can move the fieldof Early Childhood Education and Care(ECEC) forward, and include ideas andresearch findings from other relevantfields.This chapter outlines the majorMinority World child developmenttheories, which have influenced the fieldof ECEC and readers are urged to use thereferences to pursue further debate.1Philip Gammage (1999:163) argues that the ‘core of postmodernism is essentially this:a time when rules, customs, beliefs, values andideas are subjected to reanalysis, when a greater awareness of their context-dependent, subjective nature is revealed’.24 EDUCATIONAND SKILLS B I RT H T O T H R E E M AT T E R S