Vygotsky (discussed in Chapter 4) believed in the social origins of the human mind, recognizing the importance of culture in human development. Probably the best way to think of culture is to view it as the sum of meanings, norms, habits, and social phenomena that give people an identity as members of a given community. It includes behavioral patterns, beliefs, attitudes, values, traditions, and other aspects of a group of people that are passed from generation to generation.

The well-known psychologist Jerome Bruner (1996) stated that culture is the framework around which humans build their minds. Human behavior emerges from unique cultural settings, which must be identified and accepted if researchers are to penetrate the secrets of development. Barbara Rogoff (1990) has studied cognitive development in children around the world; she views it as an “apprenticeship in thinking,” because how children learn to think is embedded in the daily life of their unique cultural context.

Table 8-1 illustrates the increasingly varied nature of the population of the United States. As a culture is dynamic and continuously changes in an effort to maintain itself, we could say that the culture of the United States itself is changing while remaining uniquely itself. It is important to remember that white, middle-class America is its own culture, and has developed over a period of time, while borrowing and integrating influences of other cultures. “Different” and “diverse” are in the eye of the beholder.