Chapter 1: How School Enters Family’s Everyday Life

Well before entering institutional sites of education, children learn to act upon objects and to interact with people within their immediate and intimate environment—that is, the family. Some studies that have been carried out on cognitive development, within the language socialization paradigm (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1989, 1994; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) and following the sociocultural perspective (Cole, 1988, 1996; Cole & Cole, 1989; Rogoff, 1981, 1990), have highlighted how values and ideologies (related to collaboration, individualism, time, work, community, and the self) are deeply embedded in the instructional practices in both formal and informal contexts (as well as in cultural representations about childhood and parenthood).