Socio-cultural Practices in Literacy & Numeracy

Emmitt and Pollock (1997, as cited in Lawson, 2011, week 5) describe ‘culture’ as being, ‘the ideas, customs, skills, arts and tools which characterise a given group of people in a given period of time’.  Therefore, for a culture to develop, individuals must socially interact and communicate in some way that allows them to establish ideas; create their own customs; produce works of art and apply select communication tools in their own way.  This communication is the language upon which one may begin to understand how literacy is shaped by views of how people interact socially within a cultural paradigm. 

The formation of a family unit is an example of this.  When a child is born and raised within a family, his/her literacy will be predominantly influenced as a result of the family social and cultural experiences.  These experiences will provide the opportunity for the child to engage with the family sharing ideas, interests, language, gestures, beliefs and skills.  As the child develops he/she will rely upon this socio-cultural environment to shape their literacies, similar to that of their family unit, and begin to making sense of the world they are within.  Lev Vygotsky's (1896-1934) social constructivist or social-cultural theory suggests that a child will learn from 'scaffolding and guided discovery, continuing interaction between the child and its environment to facilitate the child's understanding of the world about them' (McInerney & McInerney, 2006, p. 62).  

A child’s cognitive development is elastic and may take many different paths dependent upon the experiences a child is exposed to within his/her sociocultural environment (McInerney & McInerney, 2006, p. 62).  For example, language is attached to sounds or images.  At the simplest level, noises made when people are in pain or happy are universal; however, complications emerge as different languages in different cultures produce different meanings for the same sounds or images. A simple example of this may be taken from different cultural perspectives of the meaning of ‘air’.  Children developed within the Indonesian culture and language ‘Bahasa’ understand the word “air” to mean “water”: whereas, children experiencing an Australian and other English language based culture understand the same word in a totally different context (White, 1994, p. 112). 

For the aforementioned reasons teachers should take into account what students already know from their own experiences in socio-cultural settings.  This gives a broader and varied opportunity for students to make sense of their own world.  As expressed in another way by Winch & Holliday (2010, p. 98), ‘A sociocultural view of literacy maintains that comprehension must be seen in its social and cultural setting’. 

References

Lawson, J. (2011, November 28). Week 5: Socio-cultural practices of literacy &

numeracy. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDVT12015 Adolescent & Adult Literacy & Numeracy, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/book/view.php?Id=

238204

McInerney, D. M., & McInerney, V. (2006). Educational psychology: Constructing

learning (4^th ed.). Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Education Australia.

White, I. J. (1994). Bahasa tetanggaku: A notional-functional course in Bahasa

Indonesia (2nd ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: Addison Wesley Longman Australia Pty Limited.

Winch, G., & Holliday, M. (with Johnston, R. R., March, P., & Ljundahl, L.). (2010). 

Literacy (4th ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press.