Culture
Current definitions of culture are informed by research from a variety of fields: anthropology, psychology, sociolinguistics, and critical theory, among others. Nieto (1999) offers an extensive definition of culture as "the ever-changing values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview created, shared, and transformed by a group of people bound together by a combination of factors that include a common history, geographic location, language, social class, and religion" (p. 48). She goes on to list several attributes that are helpful and necessary to understand the connection between culture and learning: "Culture is dynamic; multifaceted; embedded in context; influenced by social, economic, and political factors; created and socially constructed; learned; and dialectical" (p. 49).
Numerous researchers have commented on the connections between culture, language, and literacy. Wells (1981) has observed the social role of language and states that it represents "people collaborating in the negotiation of meaning; talk as a form of social action; the reciprocal influence of language and context" (p. 2). Gee (1990) also argues, "Literacy has no effects--indeed, no meaning--apart from the particular cultural contexts in which it is used, and it has different effects in different contexts" (pp. 61-62). Gutierrez (1992) maintains that "language learning is socially and cognitively constructed" (p. 261).
Meaning making is at the heart of literacy. How people learn to make sense of their world is affected by the culture into which they are born (Moll, 1992; Scribner & Cole, 1981; Vygotsky, 1978, 1987). Bruner (1996) observes, "Culture, then, though itself man-made, both forms and makes possible the workings of a distinctly human mind. In this view, learning and thinking are always situated in a cultural setting and always dependent upon the utilization of cultural resources" (p. 4).
