If Culture is All Around Us, Where Is It In Our Theories and Our Research?

Culture is part of the macrosystem in children’s lives that exerts influence on all domains of their development and across their lifespan (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). As such, culture becomes an essential part of human development, including our identities, our thinking, and our behaviors or everyday practices. Much like the fresh air or the sunshine around us, it is easy to take culture for granted because culture is omnipresent. While the role of culture has historically received minimal attention in the educational and developmental sciences, there have always been scholars and scientists who recognized and appreciated the importance of cultural influences on learning and development (e.g., Chen, 2019; García Coll et al., 1996; Super & Harkness, 1986; Trommsdorff & Cole, 2011). In the 21st century, there are increasing numbers of commentaries and special issues from senior as well as emerging scholars that are devoted to the study of learning and development through a cultural lens (e.g., Chung et al., 2020; Fascoli & Raeff, 2021; Harkness & Super, 2020).

We are situated at a time in our field that calls us to be intentional about making our research inclusive and representative of diverse children, youth, and families whose lives we aim to positively impact through our science and our scholarship. Given this, the goal of this special issue is to be intentional in giving fair and equitable attention to the study of culture and its direct and indirect influences, through the social institutions of family and education, on children’s social-emotional development and competence. Centering sociocultural perspectives in the context of the family or home and the school as primary sources of socialization in early childhood, this special issue on “studying children’s social-emotional development in school and at home through a cultural lens” features 8 articles that collectively provides coverage of children’s social-emotional development in African, Asian, European, and North American sociocultural contexts.

Social-Emotional Development Happens in Diverse Families, Schools, and Communities

What could social and emotional learning (SEL) look like across highly different cultural contexts? Hayashi et al. (2022, this issue) explored this question, including the use of scoping review methodology to search and screen the published empirical literature on SEL and embodied learning in Japanese, African, and North American multicultural early education contexts. Of the 42 studies that were identified for the final analysis, the majority (95%) were conducted in North America with only two studies (5%) conducted in Japan and none in South Africa. In light of these findings, Hayashi et al. offer a conceptual model of culturally relevant and embodied SEL that highlights the interconnections between the family, school, and community, as well as the goodness of fit between children’s neurobiological and behavioral assets or vulnerabilities and those interconnected contexts, that result in transferable social-emotional competence. In sum, Hayashi et al. advocate for culturally relevant and embodied SEL as part of a whole child and whole-body experiential learning approach.

Teachers as Socializers of Children’s Social-emotional Competence

Few SEL programs in early childhood have been developed for, and evaluated in, Asian communities. Paik et al. (2021, this issue) introduced the Global Classroom SEL training program as a promising and culturally sensitive program for use in China. This program consists of 14 SEL lessons that emphasize emotion knowledge and social awareness, especially children’s understanding of the theory of mind, to promote SEL for Chinese preschoolers. One hundred and sixteen children across four classrooms from Mianyang City of Sichuan province participated in the study. Two classrooms were randomly assigned to the intervention group and the other two to the control group. On the posttest, children in the intervention group performed significantly better than their peers in the control group on emotion knowledge and, to some extent, social awareness, particularly those with lower social awareness skills. These results point to the Global Classroom SEL training program as efficacious for Chinese preschoolers.

Using a cultural comparative, qualitative design, Thapa et al. (2022, this issue) examined how kindergarten teachers defined social-emotional development in Nepal and Kenya, which are communities that are traditionally based on collectivistic value systems and yet highly influenced by supranational organizations since the early 60s. Focus groups and individual interviews with kindergarten teachers revealed that Nepali and Kenyan teachers believed that children develop their social-emotional skills by adhering to their own cultural traditions and cultural practices. Moreover, both Nepali and Kenyan teachers believe that SEL takes place beyond the classroom, so that socially and emotionally competent children know how to develop close bonds with their parents as well as members in their communities. However, Nepali teachers noted that both boys and girls can express emotions in similar ways in their communities, whereas Kenyan teachers noted that in their communities there seems to be different rules on how boys and girls should express themselves. Overall, Thapa et al.’s findings affirmed that culture may affect how important socializers define social-emotional competence, echoing the view of Hayashi et al. (2022, this issue).

While Thapa et al. conducted a cultural comparative, qualitative study, Denham et al. (2021, this issue) conducted a cultural comparative, quantitative study to examine whether kindergarten teachers and children might express emotions and react to each other’s emotions differently in the US and Italy. Although the US and Italy are similar in certain ways, Italy places a particularly strong emphasis on the value of emotions and the emotional ties between children and adults. Kindergarten teachers and children were observed for their emotion expression and their supportive and nonsupportive reactions to each other’s emotions. Moreover, children were observed (by researchers) and rated (by teachers) for their social-emotional competence. Results revealed important cultural differences in teachers’ and children’s expression of and reactions to emotions. For example, both Italian teachers and children, on average, showed more sadness/dejection than their US counterparts. Additionally, Italian teachers showed more supportive reactions to children’s emotions than their US counterparts. Interestingly, culture moderated the association of teachers’ expression of and reactions to emotions with children’s social-emotional competence. Overall, Denham et al.’s findings affirmed that culture may affect how teachers socialize children, and the same socialization practice may have different meanings and downstream implications for children’s adjustment across different cultural contexts.

Using a multi-informant and cross-sectional design, Lam et al. (2021, this issue) also studied teachers’ socialization of children’s social-emotional competence in the classroom. Specifically, Lam et al. examined the class- and child-level associations between social-emotional competence and behavioral and academic adjustment in a sample of kindergartners in Hong Kong, China, with children’s mothers and class teachers as informants. Results from multi-level modeling showed that both class- and child-level social-emotional competence were linked to low externalizing behaviors and to high school readiness, but only class-level social-emotional competence was associated with high word reading ability; effect sizes were small to medium. Lam et al. conjectured that these findings reflect the fact that young children’s self-regulatory abilities are limited and emerging and they often rely on caregivers or teachers as external sources of regulation (Bernier et al., 2010). Indeed, prior research has shown that children with poor self-regulation skills perform just as well as those with good self-regulation on reading and math achievement tests when paired with a supportive teacher who could serve as an external source of regulation for students (Liew et al., 2010).

Cultural Variations in Parental Socialization of Children’s Emotion Regulation

While Lam et al’s study examined children’s social-emotional competence in the school context with teachers as socializers, Fung (2021, this issue) focused on parents as socializers of children’s social mastery motivation and social-emotional competence in Hong Kong Chinese kindergarten children. Social mastery motivation was tested as a mediating mechanism between paternal or maternal responsiveness and children’s social-emotional competence. Results showed that while paternal and maternal responsiveness were associated with each other, only maternal responsiveness was directly linked to children’s social mastery motivation and social-emotional competence. In addition, social mastery motivation partially mediated the relation between maternal responsiveness and social-emotional competence.

There are linkages between culture, parenting, and children’s motivation with different cultures varying in the valuing of independence and interdependence. To better understand cultural variations in parental socialization of children’s emotion regulation, Cho et al. (2022, this issue) conducted a cross-cultural study on mothers’ reactions to children’s expressions of positive (i.e., joy and pride) and negative emotions (i.e., sadness and shyness) in Nepal, Korea, and Germany. Cho et al. tested and found cross-cultural differences in mothers’ emotion socialization practices, with German mothers generally encouraging and less distressed or punitive of their children’s expression of positive as well as negative affect than Nepali and Korean mothers. Furthermore, Korean mothers were in an intermediate position between the reactions of Nepali and German mothers in terms of acceptance of children’s expressions of negative emotions. In addition, German mothers’ ratings of their children’s emotion regulation were the highest, followed by those of Korean and then Nepali mothers. Furthermore, differential associations between mothers’ emotion socialization practices for specific types of emotions and children’s emotion regulation were found across the Asian and European cultures. Overall, findings highlight that emotional and social behaviors could have different meanings in different cultures and that social-emotional competence is defined in culturally specific ways.

Sociocultural Contexts Matter for Risk and Resilience

Resilience is a dynamic process resulting from the ongoing reciprocal transactions between individuals and their environments, including their sociocultural contexts (Masten, 2014; also see Chen, 2019). Thus, the goodness of fit between individuals and their sociocultural contexts may explain whether individuals may experience risk or exhibit resilience, especially in the face of stress or unexpected events (Dressler, 2020). The stress and social isolation associated with the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic have challenged the resilience and social-emotional competence of children, youth, and families worldwide. Indeed, many schools and districts have prioritized SEL and children’s social-emotional development in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (Zieher et al., 2021). In Indonesian children, Pujiastuti et al. (2022, this issue) examined whether there were differences in the preschoolers’ social-emotional competencies (specifically self-regulation, emotion and expression, and social interaction skills) between the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods and among three major provinces in Indonesia (i.e., DKI Jakarta, DI Yogyakarta, and West Java).

Among preschool children from the province of DI Yogyakarta children from the pre-pandemic cohort were rated by their teachers as higher than those in the pandemic cohort on self-regulation, emotion and expression, and social interaction skills; effect sizes for these differences were medium to large (Pujiastuti et al., 2022). In addition, Pujiastuti et al. found that even though children from the DKI Jakarta were higher on family socioeconomic status than those from DI Yogyakarta and West Java, children from DKI Jakarta fared the worst in all three indices of social-emotional competence. This finding may reflect the resilience of children and families from disadvantaged backgrounds who may have had to exhibit resourcefulness and resilience in their daily lives even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, these findings are consistent with the view that individuals’ psychosocial adjustment and resilience as well as their domains of competence could differ across levels of risk, time (e.g., pre-, during, or post-pandemic), location such as neighborhood, region, or province (Vanderbilt-Adriance & Shaw, 2008).

Centering Culture in Our Theories and Our Research

Children’s environments are organized in a systematic (i.e., non-arbitrary) way as part of a cultural system that exerts influence on their learning and development (Harkness & Super, 2021). Several key themes emerged in this special issue. First, social-emotional development occurs in families, schools, and communities that serve as primary systems of socialization. Given this, it is important to afford parents, teachers, and educational and community leaders the opportunities to participate in the co-creation of curriculum, programs, and instruction that reflect the sociocultural values of the students, families, and key community members (Jagers et al., 2019). Ongoing communication, coordination, and collective efficacy are essential processes for the successful development, implementation, and sustainability of inclusive curriculum and programs that support SEL and development in diverse children and youth.

Second, parents and teachers are the primary socializers of children’s social-emotional competence. Thus, parents’ and teachers’ meta-emotion philosophy (Gottman et al., 1997), which is their organized set of feelings and thoughts about their own and others’ emotions can influence how parents or teachers interact with children, which in turn could influence the development of children’s emotional self-regulation and social-emotional competence. The cultural values and beliefs of parents and teachers are important driving factors of their pedagogical or socialization practices with children and youth. To understand how or why parents and teachers socialize children to express or inhibit certain emotions or to enact certain social behaviors, it is important to consider the socializers’ and the children’s cultural value orientations or ethnotheories regarding interpersonal relationships and emotions (Harkness & Super, 2021; Matsumoto et al., 2008). Furthermore, given that parents and teachers are the primary socialization agents for children’s social-emotional competence, parent-teacher cooperation and school-family-community partnerships are essential to align parents’ and teachers’ cultural value orientations to ensure that the social and emotional skills that children learn and adopt will serve their needs and goals when children are in- and out-of-school.

Third, there could be cultural variations in the way that parents and teachers socialize children about emotion and the expression or inhibition and masking of emotions and social behaviors (Kwong et al., 2018; Sun et al., 2021). The variations in the degree of affordances for natural or open expression versus regulation or inhibition of emotions and social behaviors provided by different socializers and across cultures and contexts warrant greater theoretical and empirical attention in our science. Compulsory education laws require all children to participate in formal education, so schools and teachers are powerful sources of socialization for entire populations of children. Indeed, teaching and learning have been described as acts of culture and freedom with teachers, particularly those working in schools with diverse and high-need students, empowered as cultural workers (Freire, 1998). When teachers are granted the privilege as well as the serious responsibility to serve as educators and cultural workers for entire populations of children, social and emotional development and cultural competence must be part of the core curriculum for teacher education programs so teachers are equipped to meet this challenge successfully. In addition, pre- and in-service teachers must be valued and afforded with ongoing professional development opportunities and resources to increase their own cultural and social and emotional competence as educators and cultural ambassadors in our schools. For example, mindfulness-based SEL programs for teachers can support them to better meet the developmental and learning needs of their students (Garner et al., 2018; Hirshberg et al., 2020; also see Denham et al., 2012).

A final theme is that sociocultural contexts matter for children’s risk and resilience. Emotional self-regulation is posited as person-in-context dynamics that represent a core transdiagnostic factor for multiple, different developmental trajectories and short- and long-term outcomes (Gross & Jazaieri, 2014; Liew et al., in press). Research on interventions aimed at reducing or ameliorating risk and increasing or cultivating resilience have often used traditional randomized clinical trials (RCTs) as the “gold standard” in the development and evaluation of such interventions. While RCTs represent the highest levels of evidence to demonstrate causal effects, such a scientific approach does not typically provide much insight on the person-in-context dynamics that bring about desired changes in individual’s risk or resilience, making it extremely difficult to replicate the desired processes and effects in individuals or contexts that differ from those in the RCTs (Harkness & Super, 2021). Furthermore, risk and resilience could have different meanings and look different across cultures and contexts (Ungar, 2008). Particularly for minoritized children or children of color, social and emotional competencies and adaptive skills “cannot be judged solely in relation to a specific `standard norm’ applied to all children, but must be considered within the context of specific ecological circumstances” (García Coll et al., 1996, p. 1907). The dynamic process of “resilience is negotiated, navigated, and driven by culturally specific, diverse, and often-changing goals” (Panter-Brick, 2015, p. 242). Thus, a transdiagnostic developmental approach to the study of emotional self-regulation processes (Liew et al., in press) that considers the goodness of fit between children and their sociocultural and ecological contexts is needed to understand which, when, and how sociocultural contexts matter in children’s risk and resilience.

In conclusion, if culture is all around us then culture deserves to be not only included but prominent in our theories and research. We reiterate that we have always had educational and developmental scientists who valued the role of cultural influences on learning and development, although they were frequently in the minority and marginalized in the field. Because of their pioneering and persistent efforts to render the invisible visible (e.g., García Coll et al., 1996; Super & Harkness, 1986), culture has its rightful place in educational and developmental science. The early work on cultural influences on social-emotional development laid the foundation for the articles in this special issue. This special issue represents the ongoing efforts in our scientific communities to advance conceptual frameworks, measurement approaches, and empirical studies on diverse children’s social-emotional development and competence.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).