Abstract:

Theoretically, family sociocultural values are core to childcaring and rearing, crucial and a necessity for children’s cognitive development, growth, and learning; thus, this qualitative study sought views of parents on the sociocultural development of their 0-4-year-old children attending ECD centres/preschools, in four ECD centres in the East London District, of the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa (SA). Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) Ecological Systems theory was used as a theoretical framework to guide this study. The study was located within the Interpretivist paradigm and used a Case study design to explore the topic. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data, which was analyzed using a thematic approach. Purposive sampling was used to sample fourteen parent participants comprising nine females and one male aged between 25 and 50 and four grandmothers aged between 55 and 80 years. The research question was; do parents perceive any alignment between home and ECD centres where their children or grandchildren spend most hours weekly. The participants in this study overwhelmingly echoed the theorists’ views on the importance of family sociocultural values. The findings also revealed that family sociocultural values of the majority of SA children (Africans particularly) are not perceived as the foundation for continued learning; instead, they get ignored and rejected by the SA ECD sector. The result is knowledge acquisition and language (L1&L2) proficiency fragmentations. Achieving continuity of family sociocultural values beyond home in diverse societies like SA is proving to be a challenge demanding greater consciousness, commitment and consistency in dealing with domination of the education system by English and school cultures, even in preschools.

Keywords:

Context, Culture, Family, Sociocultural values, Universal.