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Video assignment: Analyzing Preschool in Three Cultures

Preschool in Three Cultures is a research-focused documentary that observes children attending preschool in China, Japan, and the US. Unique to this documentary is that in addition to observing childrens behaviors, the researchers also ask school teachers from each country to comment on their own teaching and socialization practices, as well as provide commentary on the practices from the teachers in the other two countries. While this video is quite old and a lot has changed in each country since then, it still reflects some underlying cultural differences that have stayed stable across generations.

You can find the videos here (Note some of the film gets cut off between parts 1 and 2).

Part 1:
Preschool in Three Cultures, part 1 (Links to an external site.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGddSi4T1kY

Part 2:

Preschool in Three Cultures. (Links to an external site.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIrNBrjUmgY

For this assignment, you will watch and analyze this documentary from the perspective of the Socio-Cultural Historical Theory as well as additional concepts we have covered in such as those found in the Acala reading (e.g., Independent vs. Interdependent view of the self, Helping out and Pitching In).

In watching the documentary, your ultimate goal is use what you have learned in class so far to answer the following:

How are cultural practices and values shaping preschooler’s development?

Technical Requirements

You only have to describe and compare similarities and differences between two countries (e.g., US and China, China and Japan).
Please use google docs to write your assignment.
Your writing assignment should be 3-4 pages in length.
Use 11-point Arial font, 1.5 spacing

Writing Assignment Requirements

You will answer the question, How are cultural practices and values shaping preschoolers development?, by using what you observe in the videos, and using the events that occurred in the video as a way to think about how these experiences shape children’s their social development, intellectual development, and general maturity.

An easy way to do this is to break your essay into two parts. The first part consists of describing and observing differences and the second part consists of analyzing the role of cultural values in shaping preschool childrens experiences.

PART 1:

Describing and Observing Differences in Socialization Practices

Describe what the teachers and children are doing in each of the two preschools you chose. For instance, you can describe how teachers in either country resolve conflicts that occur among schoolchildren. The key here is to simply describe the contrasts or similarities in their approaches.

You can do this by describing the following:

What kinds of activities (or lack thereof) are children participating in throughout the school day?
How is the teacher organizing the childrens day?
In what ways do teachers help children socialize with each other, learn, and exercise responsibility?
When children interact with one another, are these interactions occurring in a teacher-led fashion or a child-led one?

When thinking about what kids develop in preschool, you can focus on 2 (or more) of the following:

Gross- and fine-motor
Social and interpersonal
Intellectual
Exercising maturity and responsibility
Psychological understanding of the self and its relation to others

PART 2

Analyzing How Cultural Values are Instilled in Schoolchildren

After you write about your general observations, you can write a separate set of paragraphs analyzing the differences and similarities in what you observed using the Socio-Cultural Historical Perspective, where we understand culture through childrens participation in community activities, the way childrens days are organized, and whether children experience dyadic or social interactions in their day-to-day experiences.

1. For each teacher, how did the activities they provided for the children to inform what schoolchildren were learning and valuing?
2. How did the way the teachers organized the day of the school children inform children’s autonomy and/or independence?
3. What messages or behaviors, explicit or implicit, inform children’s psychological understanding of themselves and their relation towards other children?
4. Finally, because this video is old,  provide any additional insights, whether for your experience or knowledge, about how schools in these countries have changed, or whether certain practices have stayed the same.