Mathematical learning: beliefs within this family
Pauline knows that:- her response is not always accepted
- her sibling gets it right
- numbers can be confusing.
Within this family culture, there are sometimes rules – especially about safety – and
these may make something that would be accepted normally (i.e. getting your
address wrong) unacceptable. Each family’s culture has different beliefs about this.
The child getting lost is most parents’ nightmare and this is therefore reflected in
Pauline’s mother’s anxiety. Getting the door number right is important: numbers are
important. In addition to being involved in literacy practices, Sovay, Matt and
Pauline are also learning about who can be literate, from siblings and parents to
aunts and policemen. In this example, Pauline is in no doubt about her older sister’s
knowledge of her address.
These examples highlight the central role of language in socio-cultural contexts:
we use language to change our experiences into understanding. In their study, Tizard
and Hughes found that conversations in the home were more frequent, longer and
more evenly balanced between adult and child when compared to talk in nursery
schools (Tizard and Hughes, 1984).
The questions Pauline’s mother asked are genuine, out of real concern and for
good reason, whereas Smith and Elley propose that most questions asked by teach-
ers are of the ‘guessing-what-I-am-thinking’ variety (Smith and Elley, 1997, p. 27) or
‘testing’ (Tizard and Hughes, 1984). The Tizard and Hughes study raised many
important questions. From their findings, Tizard and Hughes found that ‘working-
class’ families provided equally rich learning environments in terms of activities and
parent–child interaction when compared to ‘middle-class’ families. There were dif-
ferent values and beliefs from home to home within both class structures (Tizard and
Hughes, 1984). Bruner, writing of the notion of cultural deprivation proposes that
this concept requires rethinking: ‘cultural deprivation blames the victim, even if
only indirectly’; this implies that the culture is at fault (Bruner, 1996, p. 14). Bruner
also argues that from home to home family values and cultures are different, not
better or worse.
Tizard and Hughes highlighted the importance of learning in the home and com-
pared this to learning in nursery schools. Conversations in the home were based on
history, of knowing the family routines and values: conversations in the nursery are
based on the here and now. They suggest that in order for children to thrive in edu-
cational settings, staff need to understand their home cultures and values so that
children will feel accepted, and the teacher will understand the children’s thinking
more (Tizard and Hughes, 1984, p. 255). The socio-cultural theory of learning is
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