Childhood, Curriculum, and Culture in Diverse Contexts

Children acquire and inherit cultural values and rules by interacting with the surroundings they live in (Fleer, 2017).The surroundings include both physical and psychological contexts, such as children's play and literature, which mirror the cultural image of childhood (Frønes, 2009;Tesar et al., 2019).It is also important to pay equal attention to both "education" and "care" in early childhood, something that traditionally varies across diverse curricula and cultures (Ailwood, 2022).In addition, many other factors may play a role in mediating or moderating the influences from culture to childhood, such as new media, religion, leisure activities, fairy tales, digital games, and curricula.All these factors are, directly or indirectly, influenced by culture.Thus, the path from culture to childhood development varies across contexts.Likewise, the mediating role of childhood curricula also varies across cultures.This implies that culture plays an important role in shaping the childhood curriculum.