Context Matters: Supporting Children’s Development in Local Settings

2010 Helen Robb LectureEarly Learning Research Unit Cape Town, South Africa

Kofi Marfo, Ph.D.Professor of Educational Psychology

University of South Florida, Tampa, USA

No matter how long a piece of log lies in water (a lake, a river), it can never turn into a crocodile (Akan Proverb, Ghana)

You can take a boy out the village, but you cannot take the village out of this boy!My childhood revisited in Tampa, Florida.c. 2003

“Sankofa” Carving by Local Youth

Ahwiah, Ashanti Region, Ghana

“Sankofa” Symbol

Credit:http://www.vampire-huntress.com/sankofa.html

May your important message of building the future on the best of our past values, principles, and practices find fertile ground in the work and aspirations of all conference attendees.

Kofi Marfo, April 20, 2007

Special Season’s Greetings to Friends of ELRU

“Investing in the Future” Awards (October 2009)Pride and Joy in the Service of Children, Families, and Communities

In Celebration of Accomplishment , Pride and Continued Dedication

“… despite the hype of the event the message that must have hit home to everyone present was that there is still so much to do. We, at ELRU, are certainly inspired to explore more and better ways of working with others and remaining critical of our practice”

Freda Brock, October 2009

“Congratulations … Organizations like ERLU often go about their work in silence, driven not by public recognition but by the solemn determination to remain a significant part of the solutions to the untold number of challenges children and families face on a day-to-day basis”

Kofi Marfo, November, 2009

Revelation in our own backyard: the power of context; the power of experience; the power of upbringing – the power of CULTURE!

Grounding ECD and Education in Culture and Values in L:ocal Context

CULTUREas worldviews, values, traditions, and

lived experiences of a people

DEVELOPMENTendpoints/valued lifeoutcomes/milestones

expectations

CHILDREARINGethnotheories, routines, and

practices

EDUCATION/INTERVENTION

in institutional settings

Threats to Cultural Continuity and Preservation

Socialization and valued outcomes in the local context

Values, content and socialization in schooling

Cultural Disenfranchisemen

t

Potential Cultural Decline

Compromised Individual Identity

and Psychic Growth

Zone of Disjuncture

Social change and our children’s new reality

Our children’s lives are now lived at the intersection of local realities and inevitable forces of global change. Many children are thrust into multiple worlds, in none of which they feel at home. How do formal and informal socialization agents prepare children with the competencies necessary to function optimally across contexts?

Marfo & Biersteker (in press)

A heritage to protect

“… any intervention aimed at understanding and stimulating children’s development, averting their adversity and enhancing their well-being should take into account the region’s … realities. A feature of the realities worth noting is the immersion of the developing children into communities of linked, ‘bonded’, related and interdependent persons whose existence is understood and expressed in a corporate way.”

Zimba (2002)

From My Family and My Village to My ELRU Family

“Sankofa” Carving by Local Youth, Town of

Ahwiah, Ashanti Region of Ghana

For Your Efforts to Ground Your Vision of the Future in the Best of Our Past and Our

Humanity

A Marfo Family Collection Item

Presented to Early Learning Resource

Unit, October 18, 2010