Crossing Boundaries: A Culture-First Approach to Studying Early Learning

How do children learn in everyday situations? This article reviews recent findings of cultural variation in effective support for infants’ learning and navigating challenging situations to illustrate a culture-first approach to studying early learning. It contrasts the paradigm that treats culture as a variable added to a generic process for differentiating outcomes across groups. Culture-first research begins with analyzing cultural frameworks of how learning is defined, practiced, and fostered by the focal community, which informs the selection of behaviors to measure. The culture-first approach shifts the perspective from deficit-oriented to strengths-based to identify different profiles of parental guidance that effectively support early learning and various strengths that children begin to develop during infancy. The article underscores the need to bridge domains and cross disciplinary lines toward an understanding of learning that is culturally construed from the outset to inform strategies to support all learners.