Using a cultural-historical framework to show societal, institutional and personal influences on learning : a case study of an Australian early childhood community

Ridgway, Avis Florence

Clear Session
Change Site View
Default Site

Monash University

Monash University Library

Research Repository

Monash University Theses

Doctorate theses

Using a cultural-historical framework to show societal, institutional and personal influences on learning : a case study of an Australian early childhood community

Add to Quick Collection

Ridgway, Avis Florence. Monash University. Faculty of Education. Child and Community Development FRG Peninsula; 2010. Using a cultural-historical framework to show societal, institutional and personal influences on learning : a case study of an Australian early childhood community.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/196529

Title: Using a cultural-historical framework to show societal, institutional and personal influences on learning : a case study of an Australian early childhood community
Creator: Ridgway, Avis Florence
Contributor: Principal Supervisor: Marilyn Fleer
Subject: Cultural-historical theory
Subject: Past-present dialectic
Subject: Historical child development
Subject: Methodology
Date: 2010
Publisher: Monash University. Faculty of Education. Child and Community Development FRG Peninsula
Description: This thesis uses a cultural-historical framework to show societal, institutional and personal influences on learning through a case study in an Australian early childhood community. Scope for cultural-historical research in this community was supported by my associations over time, as a former teacher (1976-1979) and later as field researcher for an Australian Research Council (ARC) project (Fleer & Gunstone, 2005a). These associations provided temporal perspectives, which brought a dialectical frame of reference to the present case study. In particular, when community, family and institutional practices were temporally juxtaposed using dialectical methods, the research question was prompted: How do artifacts and cultural traditions become institutionalized, transmitted and reinterpreted in next generations, thereby shaping what is possible or not in early childhood education? Cultural-historical research rarely makes social pathways of childhood learning and development visible in empirical data. The literature review focused on analysis of a series of empirical studies in order to find out how other researchers interpret childhood learning and development from a cultural and historical perspective. A common theme in the reviewed studies was how researchers examined social practices over time in different institutional settings. In looking to uncover how researchers understood the epistemological origins of those institutional practices, it became evident that a new methodological tool for analysing and theorizing practices over time was required. In this case study, field research was approached using a cultural-historical frame of reference. Particular attention was given to seeking different perspectives. The use of archival materials and visual dialectics, prompted narratives around local contexts, past and present, providing examples of mediation practices that reside in institutional artifacts, rituals, traditions, and family life in the early childhood community. In a series of photo-elicitation interviews with past and present staff and one family, visual and transcript data provided opportunity to create methodological dialectics around community and societal practices, family practices, and institutional and teaching practices. From these data, it became evident that a new methodological tool that could focus on reading meaning into methodological dialectics was needed; a tool that could analyze the historical influences in childhood learning and development, and show enduring influences of cultural-historical mediations in institutional practices over time. The conceptualization of a new methodological tool for analysing methodological dialectics is the major achievement of this thesis. The methodological tool is applied and tested throughout three data chapters to varied data sets. In each of these applications it is able to show dynamic forms (hereafter: Dynamic-forms) of the cultural-historical processes at play in childhood learning and development. Influences on learning across participatory institutional practices of children, family and staff in the case study site were examined over a thirty-year time span and in this Australian early childhood community, practices were found to be transformed over time as they were iterated and re-iterated in relation to societal, institutional and personal practices. This thesis has a methodological outcome. The new methodological tool theorizes social, cultural, and historical influences in childhood learning and development, thereby adding to cultural-historical scholarship.

collection(s): Doctorate theses
collection(s): Monash University Theses
Identifier: http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/196529
Identifier: ethesis-20100519-161726
Identifier: monash:34929
Language: eng
Rights: Open access: open access to thesis full text.
Rights: This thesis is protected by copyright. Copyright in the thesis remains with the author. The Monash University ARROW Repository has a non-exclusive licence to publish and communicate this thesis online.
Type: thesis
Type: thesis(doctorate)

117 Visitors

212 Hits

89 Downloads

Doctorate theses

Using a cultural-historical framework to show societal, institutional and personal influences on learning : a case study of an Australian early childhood community

Monash University Research Repository