Can Cultural Psychology Help Us Think About Diversity?

My purpose today is to explore implications of cultural psychology for guiding educational practice, especially educational practice in settings where the children come from many different home cultures, ethnicities, and social classes. You will note that I phrased my topic as a question. Many scholars, including myself, have raised questions about how classical cultural-psychological ideas handed down from early in this century need to be supplemented and modified to deal with diversity. I do not have a pat answer. But I am convinced that there is an urgent need for educational researchers to work with teachers to find a way to deal productively with the cultural diversity characteristic of many American classrooms. And, as professionals, my colleagues and I use one branch of cultural psychology that I call cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to organize new forms of educational activity for children. Organizing activities that make diversity a resource rather than a problem is always at the center of our attention. CHAT is part of a large and diverse set of discourses in which psychologists, sociologists, linguists, anthropologists, and others seek to formulate a theory of human nature that places culture at the center of its concerns. Inspired by the writings of Vygotsky and his colleagues, CHAT has come to be recognized as a broad, international, theoretical movement. It is but one of the family of approaches known as cultural psychology. In the remarks to follow, I do not pretend to speak for my cultural-psychological kin, who might approach the issue differently. But I hope that they would not disapprove of what I say.