Lifespan Development
Serpell, R., & Marfo, K. (2014). Some long-standing and emerging research lines in Africa. In R. Serpell & K. Marfo (Eds.), Child development in Africa: Views from inside. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development ,146 , 1–22.
1
Some Long-Standing and Emerging
Research Lines in Africa
Robert Serpell, Kofi Marfo
Abstract
Early research on child development in Africa was dominated by expatriates
and was primarily addressed to the topics of testing the cross-cultural validity
of theories developed “in the West,” and the search for universals. After a brief
review of the outcome of that research, we propose two additional types of mo-
tivation that seem important to us as African researchers begin to take the lead
in articulating research agendas for the study of child development in Africa:
articulating the contextual relevance and practical usefulness of developmental
psychology in Africa; and making developmental psychology intelligible to lo-
cal audiences. We highlight two major challenges for African societies in this
era that call for attention by the emerging field of African child development
research: linguistic hegemony and its effects on research and schooling; and the
process of indigenization. We end with a preview of chapters in the rest of the
volume. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT , no. 146, Winter 2014 ©2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). •DOI: 10.1002/cad.20070 1 2C HILD DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA :V IEWS FROM INSIDE
T
his volume is dedicated to showcasing research on child develop-
ment in Africa by African scholars based on the continent. Re-
searchers on child development in Africa have often originated from
outside the continent, and previous commentaries have highlighted vari-
ous ways in which this has colored their approach to the topic. Douglas
Price-Williams (1975), Gustav Jahoda (1980), and Pierre Dasen (1977b),
each of whom conducted pioneering research on aspects of child develop-
ment in Africa, have all acknowledged two major types of motivation for
cross-cultural research in the region: testing the cross-cultural validity of
theories developed “in the West,” and searching for universals. These for-
mulations have persisted in slightly modified form in more recent reviews
of the field of cross-cultural psychology (e.g., Berry, Poortinga, Segall, &
Dasen, 2002; Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga, 1999). On the other hand,
the discipline of anthropology, which informed somewhat earlier studies of
African childhood (e.g., Erny, 1972; Fortes, 1938), was often motivated by a
search for cross-cultural contrasts, seeking through interpretation “to make
the strange familiar,” and thus reflexively “to make the familiar strange”
(Shweder, 1990). As Jahoda (1982) and Cole (1996) have shown, these dis-
ciplines of the Western academy emerged from common roots in the 19th
century, only gradually diverged, and have since begun to converge again
in the fields of cultural psychology and psychological anthropology, as well
as spawning the field of indigenous psychology (Kim, Yang, & Hwang, 2006;
Sinha, 1994, 1997).
Without contesting the relevance, nor indeed the legitimacy of any of
those motivations, we propose here two additional types of motivation that
seem to us important as African researchers begin to take the lead in artic-
ulating research agendas for the study of child development in Africa: (a)
contextual relevance and practical usefulness, and (b) intelligibility to local
audiences. We shall argue that there is a strong connection between these
two goals, in that a major factor influencing the usefulness of research find-
ings in developmental psychology is whether their interpretation connects
with preoccupations of the consumers to whom it is addressed (Serpell,
1990a, 2006).
In the conclusion to his overview volume on Psychology in Africa ,
Wober (1975) urged the next generation of African social scientists to con-
sider the possibility that they might become “more modern by not being
just Western” (p. 215). The globalization of international communication
has been interpreted in various ways. Some scholars see it as giving rise
to increasingly egalitarian relations between nations and cultures in op-
portunities to define the way forward in progressive social change, due
to the relatively open access to world audiences afforded by the Internet.
Others, however, construe it as intensifying inequalities between power-
ful and less powerful sections of the world’s population under the guise of
universal adoption of an agenda of modernization, whose goals have been
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad SOME LONG -STANDING AND EMERGING RESEARCH LINES IN AFRICA 3
hegemonically defined by cultures originating from the former imperial and
colonial powers. Depending on one’s position on this continuum, respond-
ing to Wober’s challenge may appear to have become more or less feasible
in the four decades since it was published.
Within the field of child development, Marfo, Pence, LeVine, and
LeVine (2011) reflected on why the field of African child development has
been so slow to emerge. African scholarship has been constrained by the
relatively late establishment of universities in most countries, by the low
priority attached by the newer African universities to research, and by the
tendency of many scholars to rely for their teaching on literature published
outside the continent. The Marfo et al. paper arose from a meeting con-
vened in 2009 on the theme of strengthening Africa’s contributions to child
development research.
A broad range of issues received attention in five other papers. Pence
(2011) undertook a provocative assessment of historical events (such as
colonization) and epistemological traditions that have resulted in the privi-
leging of Western ideas and practices over non-Western ones, cautioning
the early childhood development movement in Africa against uncritical
adoption of so-called “best practices” from the West. One group of authors
highlighted some of the major contributions to contemporary global un-
derstanding of child development generated by studies of children in Africa
led and largely reported by scholars based outside the continent with the
support of local, indigenous research assistants (Super, Harkness, Barry, &
Zeitlin, 2011).
Serpell (2011) described a sequence of systematic inquiries between
1971 and 2008, conducted within one African country, Zambia. He ob-
served that “the process through which this took place resembles an
evolving journey rather than implementation of a preconceived blueprint”
(p. 127), and that, while as lead investigator he was a long-term, cultural vis-
itor to African cultures, “at many junctures along the way, [he] was critically
supported by the co-constructive participation in research design, imple-
mentation, and interpretation by various [indigenous] African colleagues”
(pp. 127–128). In a paper focusing on the application of knowledge on child
development to the design and delivery of preschool programs in rural and
resource-poor communities, Mwaura and Marfo (2011) traced the history
of the Madrasa Preschool Resource Centers in East Africa. The paper high-
lighted both the adaptive application of Western program models and the
challenge of depending on foreign instruments with little or no local vali-
dation to measure program outcomes.
A concluding paper by Marfo (2011) envisioned a field of “African
Child Development” that addresses the most important issues within
Africa’s own context, particularly those dimensions of development, con-
ceptions of development, and practices around development that are in-
trinsically African. As part of a global field, the African Child Development
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad 4C HILD DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA :V IEWS FROM INSIDE
field should contribute to and benefit from conceptions and knowledge
of children in other societies. It should be pluralistic in terms of research
paradigms and methodologies. And it should seek to avoid some of the pit-
falls identified in Western science, recognizing sociocultural diversity both
across the continent and within nations, and avoiding the ethnocentric and
class biases for which many studies by Western psychologists have been
criticized, such as the conflation of difference with deficit. In order to build
such a field, Marfo advocates the promotion of interdisciplinarity from the
base of education, rather than cultivating separate disciplinary strands of
expertise and then facing the challenge of integrating them. He calls for es-
tablishing African Child Development as a living, real-world field informed
by a symbiotic relationship between academic researchers and professional
practitioners in the community.
Motivating Trends in African Developmental Psychology
In the sections that follow, we discuss how each of the motives outlined in
the previous section has influenced the character of research and dissemi-
nation about child development in Africa: testing the cross-cultural validity
of theories developed “in the West,” searching for universals, formulating
an indigenous African psychology, attending to contextual relevance and
practical usefulness, and intelligibility to local audiences. We conclude by
highlighting two challenges for the field: the challenge of linguistic hege-
mony and its effects on education and the challenge of indigenizing child
development research on the continent.
Testing the Cross-Cultural Validity of Theories Developed “in the
West,” and the Search for Universals. One of the widely agreed func-
tions of scientific theory is to provide an explanation for future events that
were not available at the time the theory was proposed. Generalization be-
yond the known is therefore an inherent feature of theories across all the
disciplines. However, it is also normal to restrict the range of that gener-
alizability when proposing a theory. The issue of what the proper limits of
generalizability are for theories in developmental psychology has received
considerable attention since the expansion of systematic cross-cultural re-
search began in the 1970s.
The goal of testing the universality of a Western theoretical model
was explicitly articulated by Price-Williams (1961) in a landmark study of
quantitative reasoning among young children growing up in a rural African
community, among the Tiv people of Central Nigeria. He concluded from
his investigation that “as regards Tiv children, in the particular fields ex-
plored, there seems little difference to the sequence which has been found
in European children” (p. 304). A burst of research along these lines was
published by Western authors on many different African communities, as
well as other “exotic” locations around the world, designed to establish
whether the stages of cognitive development expounded in Piaget’s “genetic
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad SOME LONG -STANDING AND EMERGING RESEARCH LINES IN AFRICA 5
epistemology” are found in societies beyond the narrow sample of Swiss
children studied by Piaget and his colleagues. An early summary of the
findings concluded that they confirmed Piaget’s sequence of stages, from
sensory-motor through egocentric/intuitive to concrete operational with no
reversals of sequential order among stages; that the ages at which the transi-
tions occur were variable across societies, and dependent on the pattern of
experiences afforded by the child’s eco-cultural setting, with greater suscep-
tibility to acceleration by direct training than envisaged in the original the-
ory; and that some societies seemingly do not promote the emergence of the
final (ultimate, culminating) stage of formal operational thought (Dasen,
1972). Thus, Piaget’s grand theory appeared to survive the test of relevance
to African circumstances, but required the inclusion of some detailed ad-
ditional parameters if it was to predict correctly the responses of African
participants to the particular elicitation procedures designed by Piaget and
his collaborators.
In a later review, Dasen (1977b) acknowledged some more fundamen-
tal challenges to Piagetian theory. Are there alternative developmental path-
ways to the same eventual end-state of formal operational thought, some
of which are more compatible with particular sociocultural circumstances
than others? Or is the teleological character of Piaget’s sequence of stages
a culturally specific feature of the theory that lacks cross-cultural validity?
For instance, is the model of the child as a scientist exploring the world in
search of a logically adequate explanation for its counterintuitive appear-
ances a necessary and sufficient account of what arises as a consequence
of the interaction between biological dispositions of an altricial species and
the physical world in which we live and the evolutionary need to adapt in
order to survive? Or is it informed by an ideological goal particular to West-
ern society at a particular moment in history, that of achieving technological
control over the physical environment? If the latter goal is related to specific
sociocultural circumstances, maybe Piaget’s theory is biased toward a set of
goals that are neither necessary nor sufficient for healthy human develop-
ment (Buck-Morss, 1975). Within Western psychology, several features of
Piaget’s theory came under critical examination, giving rise to a more be-
havioral interpretation of developmental change (Bruner, Olver, & Green-
field, 1966) than the epistemological perspective favored by Piaget. The
presumption of naivete that informs Piaget’s account of egocentric/intuitive
thinking has been questioned in the light of dramatic increases in logical
explanations generated by changing the elicitation procedures (Donaldson,
1978), and his reliance on verbal questioning has been critiqued as system-
atically misleading for young participants. Various neo-Piagetian models
have been proposed that preserve some but not all features of the origi-
nal theory. Pascual-Leone’s (1976) critique of Piagetian theory’s failure to
take into account dynamic processes that occur within the individual dur-
ing task performance and the information processing formulations of Case
(1972) and Siegler (1983) brought the theory more in line with perspectives
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad 6C HILD DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA :V IEWS FROM INSIDE
within contemporary cognitive science and also enhanced its relevance to
instructional practice (e.g., Case, 1975).
Cross-cultural data, including several studies in Africa, have been in-
voked as significant influences on these challenges and modifications to Pi-
aget’s theory (e.g., Dasen, 1977a). Moreover, indigenous African researchers
have played an ostensible and significant role in the elaboration of how the
theory is best applied to the interpretation of behavioral change in Africa,
both over the course of individual development and over secular time as
a reflection of sociocultural processes such as education and urbanization
(Adjei, 1977; Fobih, 1979; Kiminyo, 1977; Ogbonna-Ohuche & Otaala,
1981; Okonji, 1971; Owoe, 1973). Thus, the appearance of hegemonic im-
position of a foreign cultural interpretation that tended to misrepresent and
even sometimes to demean African cultures and societies has given way to
a more reciprocally informative account of the encounter between Piaget’s
theory and the behavior of African children.
Witkin’s theory of psychological differentiation (Witkin, Dyk, Fater-
son, Goodenough, & Karp, 1962) emerged from an initial focus on Gestalt
principles of perception, through the elaboration of a continuum of cog-
nitive styles (field dependency) to a broadly integrative account of how
gender, culture, and socialization practices interact to generate the emer-
gence of different patterns of personality functioning. Like Piaget’s ge-
netic epistemology, the underlying concept of psychological differentia-
tion interprets human development from an organismic perspective. In that
respect, just as the concept of stage holds together Piaget’s theory, a key
feature of Witkin’s theory is its postulate of self-consistency across percep-
tual, intellectual, and socioemotional domains of personality. But, as one
of its strongest African advocates observed (Okonji, 1980), cross-cultural
research conducted within the framework of the theory only seldom re-
ported evidence of intercorrelations among behaviors across that wide range
of psychological domains. Moreover, while many studies claimed to sup-
port the theory “at a global level . . . attempts to relate particular socialisa-
tion variables to particular modes of field approach have proved unsuccess-
ful” (Okonji, 1980, p. 37). A sizable body of empirical research designed to
test the theory’s applicability across cultures was conducted in Africa in the
1960s and 1970s (e.g., Berry, 1967; Dawson, 1967; Wober, 1967), and re-
viewed in contrasting ways by Witkin and Berry (1975) and Serpell (1976).
An ambitious collaborative study in the 1990s sought to provide an
acid test by comparing two adjacent African cultural groups in the Cen-
tral African Republic, one of which, the Bangandu, a subsistence agricul-
tural community, was theoretically chosen as likely to promote the devel-
opment of a field-dependent cognitive style, while the other, the nomadic,
forest-dwelling Biaka, was expected to promote field independence. De-
spite devoting great care to the documentation of the ecocultural niche of
development afforded by each society, to the development of assessment
tools, and to multivariate analysis, the study generated results so difficult to
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad SOME LONG -STANDING AND EMERGING RESEARCH LINES IN AFRICA 7
interpret that one major investigator concluded that “the hypotheses of this
study were not confirmed” (van de Koppel, 1983, p. 157), while a second,
multiauthored report interpreted the same data as broadly consistent with
Witkin’s theory and Berry’s ecocultural model (Berry et al., 1988). Thus de-
spite its meticulous attention to detail, the implications of the study are
open to widely divergent interpretations (Cole, 1996; Serpell, 1990b).
The application of the developmental theories of Piaget and Witkin to
the interpretation of cross-cultural variations in child behavior (notably in-
cluding studies in Africa) was sharply critiqued by Cole and Scribner (1977)
as providing spurious legitimation for a research agenda that was at its roots
hegemonic and liable to misconstrue cross-cultural differences in cogni-
tion as manifestations of cognitive deficit and cultural deprivation in non-
Western settings. The central thrust of their argument was that the focus
of the theories on developmental change is intrinsically ill-suited to cross-
cultural comparison, since cultural group differences are unlikely to lie
along a value-laden continuum such as growth or progress. A robust defense
was mounted by Dasen, Berry, and Witkin (1979) arguing, among other
things, that Witkin’s typology of cognitive styles was bipolar rather than a
value-laden continuum. Serpell (1976), however, pointed out that the vari-
able of field dependency was in practice most often construed as value-
laden, with field-independent modes of functioning represented as more
adaptive. LCHC (1982) discussed additional anomalies in the way the lit-
erature had linked field dependency to cultural variations in the African re-
gion. Okonji’s (1980) profoundly reflective chapter seemed to hold out the
promise of a further development of Witkin’s theory in ways that would free
it from such biases and generate a research program to document distinctive
strengths and affordances of indigenous African sociocultural conditions as
well as processes of sociocultural change. Sadly, his premature death, at age
39, in 1975 prevented him from implementing that agenda, and it does not
appear to have been taken up by other researchers on the continent.
The cultural-historical perspective on human development, formu-
lated by Vygotsky (1978) in the wake of the 1917 Russian revolution,
gained widespread adoption in the field of child development since 1970,
several decades after Vygotsky’s death in 1934. Several American scholars
expounded the theory for Western audiences, and one of these, Michael
Cole, drew inspiration from it for his extensive empirical research program
in Liberia in the 1960s and 1970s. A major contribution of that program
was the study entitled The Psychology of Literacy (Scribner & Cole, 1981).
This study contextualized literacy as a historically situated cultural prac-
tice and found that the cognitive outcomes of becoming literate can only be
adequately explained by including a consideration of the particular char-
acteristics of the cultural practice within which that individual literacy is
deployed. Thus, rather than a general potentiating of cognition, each form
of literacy per se conveys particular cognitive benefits, closely related to the
contextual parameters of the particular practices that it mediates.
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad 8C HILD DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA :V IEWS FROM INSIDE
The theme of testing the cross-cultural validity of theories developed
“in the West” has been represented by both the genetic epistemology camp
and the psychological differentiation camp as a test of generalizability with
a goal of establishing universals (Berry et al., 2002; Kagitcibasi, 2000). But
critics have argued that this was a disguise, and the main lessons learned
were that:
•psychological measurement is very context-dependent (Cole & Bruner,
1971; Serpell, 1979), and researchers should be wary of interpreting per-
formance on particular tasks as evidence of broad, underlying competen-
cies (e.g., intelligence or concrete operational reasoning) or dispositions
(e.g., field-dependent cognitive style), since much of the variance in per-
formance on those tasks is accounted for by situational variation rather
than individual differences;
•a major threat to the universality of Western theories of child develop-
ment was that the research strategy giving rise to them was ethnocentric
(or centri-cultural). As Wober (1969) put it, what was needed was less
about how well “they” can do “our [Western cultural] tricks” and more
about what tricks (behavioral routines) Africans do well, why they con-
sider them important, and how they achieve competence in them.
Serpell (1990a) argued that, in order to escape this centri-cultural con-
straint, studies of child development needed to
1. extend the database (observing children growing up in diverse, natu-
rally occurring environments);
2. engage scholars with a wider range of firsthand personal developmen-
tal experiences;
3. address their interpretations to a wider range of stakeholders around
the world.
In the African context, these stipulations pose three challenges: contex-
tual diversity, reflexivity, and intelligibility and relevance to local audiences.
These challenges intersect within the concept of the developmental niche
(Super & Harkness, 1986) as a mandate to investigate child development
in a variety of settings/ecocultural contexts, examining a variety of cultural
customs, practices, and traditions, and including as theoretical resources a
variety of cultural meaning systems (including languages).
Articulating the Contextual Relevance and Practical Usefulness
of Developmental Psychology in Africa. Most of Africa’s universities
were established in the 1950s and 1960s around the end of the colonial
period. Embedded in the larger vision that governments of newly indepen-
dent nations had for their emerging universities was the value of contex-
tual relevance. Throughout the continent, parliamentary acts and leader-
ship speeches inaugurating the new institutions conveyed the imperative
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad SOME LONG -STANDING AND EMERGING RESEARCH LINES IN AFRICA 9
for them to be contextually relevant. For instance, President Nyerere of Tan-
zania in 1966 underscored the local development value of the university in
these words quoted by Coleman and Court (1993):
The university in a developing country must put the emphasis of its work on
subjects of immediate moment to the nation in which it exists, and it must be
committed to the people of that nation and their humanistic goals . . . We in
poor societies can only justify expenditure on a University—of any type—if
it promotes real development of our people. (p. 296)
At its 1969 conference in Kinshasa, the newly formed Association of
African Universities (AAU) characterized African universities as institu-
tions “that are not only built, owned and sited in Africa, but are of Africa,
drawing their inspiration from Africa, and intelligently dedicated to her
ideas and aspirations”—institutions that will vigorously address through
research “the challenges posed by the problems of poverty, and of the need
for social rebirth, cultural rediscovery, and political identity, which confront
African countries individually and collectively” (Yesufu, 1973, p. 5).
The emergence of African universities was part of a broader political
decolonization process that famously brought a “wind of change” to the
continent, one manifestation of which was the progressive replacement of
expatriate professionals by indigenous Africans. Their preparation for this
role in society was often conceptualized as a process of training, some-
times at a higher education institution (HEI) in a former colonial metropole,
sometimes in a crash course at a newly established HEI within the conti-
nent, where the curriculum came under scrutiny for its practical usefulness
and contextual relevance for professional practice in Africa. A new genre of
scholarship and resource development emerged in this context, reflecting
critical misgivings about the pervasive tradition of unidirectional transfer
of knowledge from the Euro-American World to Africa and other parts of
the Majority World.
The nurturing of children’s development is a cultural project, and
as such those who seek to understand children’s development must un-
derstand indigenous conceptions of development—including dispositions,
abilities, and behaviors at the individual and social levels—as well as the
societal presuppositions and aspirations within the local context that drive
what is considered at any point as valued developmental outcomes. Re-
search on indigenous conceptions of development and quintessentially
African issues emanating from them contributes both to the building of a
scientific knowledge base on the continent and to a global science that ben-
efits from alternative worldviews and conceptions of developmental phe-
nomena across multiple cultural contexts (Marfo, 2011).
Advances in this direction are manifested in the works of an increas-
ing number of African scholars. Since the 1970s, Serpell and his col-
leagues have pursued programmatic theoretical and empirical research on
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad 10 C HILD DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA :V IEWS FROM INSIDE
conceptions of intelligence in a rural Zambian community (e.g., Serpell,
1977, 1982, 1993, 2011; Serpell & Jere-Folotiya, 2008). This body of work
has demonstrated that conceptions of intelligence in the rural Chewa com-
munity studied converge around two key elements—cognitive alacrity and
social responsibility—both of which are valued in the local context.
Researchers in other African societies have reported congruent find-
ings as well as additional complexities (e.g., Dasen et al., 1985; Grigorenko
et al., 2001; Mpofu, 2002). This research has contributed to an appreciation
of the cultural grounding of intelligence in developmental science, and in
the African context, it highlights limitations of a tradition of school-driven
assessment that rests exclusively on person-level cognitive and academic
skills and, in so doing, short-changes education aimed at inculcating the
range of competencies and dispositions necessary for children to function
adaptively in school as well as community.
Earlier research on the assessment of intelligence in Africa was primar-
ily driven by the pragmatic agenda of selecting candidates for admission to
secondary and tertiary levels of formal education necessitated by the lim-
ited expansion of such provision near the end of the colonial era. Vernon
(1967) justified basing selection in this context on assessment instruments
originally validated in the West on the grounds that (a) “the developing
countries of Africa . . . want to achieve civilisations comparable to those of
the Western technological nations,” (b) they “are severely handicapped at
present by lack of intelligent, well-educated manpower,” and (c) “Western-
type tests . . . are known to be relevant to educational and vocational suc-
cess” (p. 335). Inspired by this paternalistic rationale, the local standard-
ization and refinement of educational selection tests became a thriving field
of technical psychometric research and development in Africa during the
1960s and 1970s (e.g., Drenth, 1972; Durojaiye, 1984; Irvine, 1966), feed-
ing the practice of importing from Western industrialized countries testing
procedures that have little or no grounding in the everyday lives of most
African children, outside of formal schooling (Serpell & Haynes, 2004). The
divergence between the culture of schooling and that of children’s homes
has given rise to “a credibility gap for public basic education with respect to
the values and aspirations of parents in rural communities” (Serpell, 2011,
p. 128). Some attempts to move the technology of cognitive assessment in
a different direction are discussed in Chapter 5 of this volume.
Making Developmental Psychology Intelligible to Local Audiences.
Inquiry in the academy is often produced for consumption by fellow aca-
demics and professionals. If inquiry is to have a meaningful impact on the
lives of researched communities, however, researchers have to find ways
to communicate their findings in language that is comprehensible to the
lay public. Horowitz (2000), in her presidential address to the Society for
Research on Child Development, lamented the de facto practice by many
academic researchers in the United States of delegating to the media the
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad SOME LONG -STANDING AND EMERGING RESEARCH LINES IN AFRICA 11
very important task of communicating research to the general public, and
called on developmental scientists to also communicate their findings to
“the person in the street.” This responsibility takes on greater importance
in the African context where communication of findings, whether to the
professional or lay community, is severely constrained by a wide range of
factors. Perhaps even more important, the nascence of the field in Africa
makes it imperative to make communication of research to local communi-
ties a signature feature of developmental research.
The kind of orientation required to move in this direction is illustrated
by Serpell’s successive attempts to share the findings of his research on the
indigenous conceptualization of intelligence as a dimension of child devel-
opment with the rural community in Zambia’s Eastern Province that hosted
the research (Serpell, 1977). Over the succeeding years, following up the
original child participants and their families in order to monitor develop-
mental outcomes raised his sense of accountability to the community that
had hosted more than a decade of research on the significance of school-
ing (Serpell, 1993). Reflecting on how best to share with them the findings
of the project, the research team initially adopted a seminar format based
on prevailing academic practices. Two indigenous scions of the commu-
nity, who had attained tertiary level education at the national university,
culled from the transcripts of interviews a collection of statements by lo-
cal stakeholders about the relevance of schooling to two topics of great lo-
cal salience: agriculture and health. Opposing viewpoints were selected for
juxtaposition on a one-page printed document in the local language, and
distributed within the village communities for perusal and reflection. Then
a series of meetings were held within each village environment, and two lo-
cal paraprofessionals were invited to participate: an agricultural extension
officer and a clinical officer. The design of this encounter between villagers
responsible for child socialization and service providers representing the
national government was intended to accord legitimacy to local parents,
many of whom were women, by holding the discussions in their local lan-
guage and on their home territory, using their own words as the authorita-
tive texts for discussion. Yet despite those efforts, women attending these
gatherings hardly ever spoke up, leaving the floor to the menfolk, espe-
cially the government workers, who dominated the discussions and not in-
frequently resorted to English (the language of national power) to make
their points.
Judging this first bid at generating an authentic, egalitarian discussion
of the research findings to have been a failure, the research team attempted a
very different strategy, inspired by a Tanzanian expert exponent of the “edu-
tainment” form of popular theatre, Dr. Penina Mlama (1991). This time,
the “text” was a drama composed collaboratively among a team of actor-
musician-dramatists led by the distinguished Zambian popular theatre ex-
pert, Professor Mapopa Mtonga (2012), and a number of key informants
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad 12 C HILD DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA :V IEWS FROM INSIDE
recruited informally from among the parents, teachers, and youth who had
participated in the research.
Analysis of the informal reflections by members of the audience during and
immediately following the drama showed that it had successfully engaged
a wide range of local stakeholders, including women, who are a crucially
important constituency both for understanding child socialization practices
and for participating in the design and implementation of progressive social
change. Formulating an effective dramatization of research results is at least
as challenging as writing a technical paper for publication and calls for in-
terdisciplinary collaboration. For certain important audiences, it may be the
most viable way of engaging them with substantive issues identified by sys-
tematic research on African child development. (Serpell, 2011, p. 131)
The contrast between the outcomes of these two approaches to dis-
semination of research findings illustrates the complexity of cross-cultural
communication in social science even within a single African society and
among fellow citizens living in close proximity to one another. It also sug-
gests the possibility that the most effective forms of communication may
differ depending on cultural characteristics of the audience to whom they
are addressed.
Challenges for Society and Field
In this final section, we identify two challenges facing African societies and,
by implication, an African Child Development field. First, we explore philo-
sophically the challenge of linguistic hegemony in post-colonial Africa and
examine the practical challenge it presents for children’s socialization and
learning in and out of school. Second, we present perspectives on ways to
think of and build an African Child Development field.
Linguistic Hegemony and Its Effects on Research and Schooling.
One of the earliest explicit formulations of an indigenous psychology was
by Virgilio Enriquez, who pioneered the Sikologia Pilipino movement in
the 1970s that achieved remarkable prominence in the Philippines academy
(Lagmay, 1984). Declaring that use of the English language had been one
of the major constraints on conceptualizing psychological phenomena in
ways that resonate with the indigenous culture, the movement prioritized
publication of its research findings in Tagalog (also known as Pilipino). In
a rare English-medium publication, Enriquez (1982) contended that sig-
nificant progress had been made in articulating the interpretive power of
indigenous concepts such as saling-pusa for an understanding of social be-
havior distinctive to Philippines society. In a like manner, Azuma (1984)
has advanced an influential analysis of the distinctive characteristics of
the Japanese concept of amae , which has been widely invoked to interpret
distinctive features of human relationships in Japanese society (e.g., Lebra,
1994; Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989).
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad SOME LONG -STANDING AND EMERGING RESEARCH LINES IN AFRICA 13
The issue of language has yet to be systematically addressed within dis-
cussions of indigenization of psychology in Africa. The strategy of turning
inward adopted by Enriquez in the Philippines has deprived the mainstream
of Western psychology of the opportunity to learn from it, a concern that
has also been voiced by some commentators on the decision by the distin-
guished African novelist and literary critic, Ngugi wa Thiongo (1986) to
write exclusively in his native language, Gikuyu, after achieving fame for
his earlier novels in English (e.g., Ngugi, 1964).
Schooling and the Marginalization of Indigenous Languages. At
the opposite end of the pole is the marginalization of indigenous languages
not only within formerly colonized societies, but also within contempo-
rary industrialized societies increasingly characterized by rapid cultural
change and linguistic diversity. In the United States, for example, theoret-
ical conceptualization of how language influences child development has
been constrained until quite recently by a convergence of two factors: the
overwhelming dominance of the English language and an attitude toward
individual bilingualism as an atypical and somewhat hazardous condition.
The marginalization of other languages in the development of assessment
instruments thus derived spurious justification from the political judgment
that mastery of the dominant language of the state was an essential pre-
condition for developmental success. However, the growing importance of
Spanish as a language of wider communication in the United States has
generated significant changes in the ways in which applied developmental
science conceptualizes language as a dimension of cognition.
The empowering effects of bilingualism have been systematically docu-
mented (Bialystok, Craik, Green, & Gollan, 2009), and the rights of families
to enroll their children in schools where the family’s heritage language is the
medium of initial literacy learning have been recognized (Cummins, 2000).
The broader implications of these contextual changes have also begun to
receive recognition (SRCD, 2013). Despite these important advances, the
dominant perspective of educational researchers in the United States and
Western Europe remains grounded in an assimilationist premise: mastery
of the language of the majority is posited as an essential survival goal for all
children.
In formerly colonized societies, a characteristic of most contempo-
rary African states, this premise does not have the same axiomatic status.
The majority of citizens of these countries do not speak English or French
as their mother tongue, nor indeed as their principal medium of every-
day communication. The dominance of those formerly metropolitan lan-
guages in public affairs arises from relations of power that are undergo-
ing a process of gradual transformation, and the emphasis on their mastery
as a goal of secondary education reflects complex political and economic
processes of class formation and international dependency whose sociocul-
tural repercussions tend to outlast the structural arrangements that gave rise
to them.
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad 14 C HILD DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA :V IEWS FROM INSIDE
In post-apartheid South Africa, educational policy has boldly desig-
nated nine of the indigenous African languages as the medium of initial
literacy instruction in government schools with equal status to English
and Afrikaans. But the implementation of this policy faces significant chal-
lenges from the education profession and from the general public, especially
with respect to the normalization of bilingualism (Banda, 2009; Heugh,
2000). Meanwhile, all across the continent, the dominance of the former
metropolitan languages as media of instruction has served to constrain the
publication of texts for adults and for children in the indigenous African
languages (Edwards & Ngwaru, 2011). This has in turn tended to stunt the
literary development of those languages.
Most African languages were first committed to writing in the 19th or
20th century by Christian missionaries, whose choice of orthographic con-
ventions was strongly influenced by the spelling system of their original
mother tongue and/or of the European language of colonial administration,
giving rise in the post-colonial era to many anomalies with respect to stan-
dardization, and to gratuitous impediments to mutual intelligibility among
cognate local languages and dialects within the region (Banda, 2008). In
Zambia, recent moves by the national government (GRZ, 2013) to intensify
implementation of its 1996 decision to provide initial literacy instruction to
all children in a familiar language point to the likelihood of a resurgence of
writing and publication for children in the African languages, and with that
a more effective mobilization of the widely acknowledged African cultural
resource of narratives (Cancel, 2013). An African field of child development
can contribute significant insights on (a) the manner in which imposed for-
eign languages affect children’s development and learning and (b) the de-
gree to which policies advancing the use of local languages in school might
rectify challenges currently attributed to schooling in a predominantly for-
eign language learning context.
The Challenge of Indigenizing the Field. The genre of scholarship as-
sociated with the indigenous psychology movement (Sinha, 1997) sheds light
on some of the challenges that an emerging African field faces. Kagitcibasi
(2000) drew a distinction between two conceptual models: (a) an indigenous
orientation to psychology that embraces one psychology benefiting from in-
digenous knowledge and (b) indigenized psychology , which, she contended,
could result in a multiplicity of culture-specific psychologies with incom-
patible bodies of knowledge and, thus, preclude the search for universals.
Marfo (2011), however, proposed a bridging epistemological perspective,
arguing that an African field of human development should contribute to
a global or unified science “in which pursuit of uniquely culture-specific
understandings is not antithetical to pursuit of understandings with cross-
cultural generality” (p. 143). Such a field should be “conceived not as a
culturally insulated enterprise cocooned in its own traditions and designed
exclusively to address questions of local relevance, but as a field that is
mindful enough of the interconnectedness of the human condition across
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad SOME LONG -STANDING AND EMERGING RESEARCH LINES IN AFRICA 15
cultures to be able to benefit from and contribute to other understandings”
(Marfo, 2011, p. 143).
A leading advocate of Africa-centered developmental psychology has
been Bame Nsamenang, whose contributions include theoretical analysis
of cultural constructs and expectations regarding human development in
an African context. As backdrop to his work he invokes Mazrui’s (1986)
historiographical positioning of Africa’s developmental landscape at the
confluence of three strands of cultural heritage: one with social and cos-
mological traditions that are endogenous to Africa, one with origins in Is-
lamic religion and law, and one originating from European Christian her-
itage, legal-administrative traditions, and scientific-technological advances.
Drawing insights from the African philosophical writings of Mbiti (1969)
and Moumouni (1968)—and extrapolating from child-rearing practices of
the Nso of Cameroon and from parallel practices in other West African
ethnic communities—Nsamenang has proposed a life-span model of “so-
cial ontogeny” that contrasts significantly with Western conceptions of so-
cial development (Nsamenang, 1992, 2006). The model delineates seven
phases in the development of social selfhood (newborn, presocial, social
novice, social entr ´ ee, social intern, adulthood, and old age), each char-
acterized by a distinctive set of developmental tasks defined within the
culture’s primarily socioaffective developmental agenda. This and other
contributions by Nsamenang “set the stage for normative and idiographic
inquiry regarding the mechanisms of developmental change” (Marfo,
2011, p. 144).
Although many advocates of indigenous psychology appear to favor a
qualitative approach, we question the presumption that pursuit of culture-
specific understandings of human development requires, ipso facto , “holis-
tic, qualitative, and phenomenological” methods that are more compati-
ble with, and therefore more appropriate for, non-Western cultures (see
Adair, 1999). As Marfo points out, the emergence of cultural psychology
has refreshingly produced interpretive-qualitative frameworks that place
understandings of psychological phenomena within the context of cul-
tural meanings (e.g., Ratner, 2008; Ratner & Hui, 2003; Shweder, 1991).
However, a good amount of research conducted within a cultural psychol-
ogy framework employs quantitative methods as well (e.g., Cole, 1996;
Greenfield, 1997). Seen in the context of mounting critiques of varying
forms of hegemony (cultural, epistemological, and methodological) within
Euro-American inquiry (Paul & Marfo, 2001), the emerging African field
of African child development would do well to embrace methodological
pluralism.
Preview of Chapters in the Rest of This Volume
In this final section, we present a brief foretaste of each of the four chapters
written by cultural insiders of African societies.
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad 16 C HILD DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA :V IEWS FROM INSIDE
Children with (or exposed to) HIV/AIDS constitute a significant pro-
portion of children growing up in conditions of high risk in Africa. The
health needs of these children and the challenges of meeting them are bet-
ter known than either their developmental challenges or the prospects they
have, with appropriate interventions, for optimal well-being in the cogni-
tive, socioemotional, and academic competency domains. Scholarship on
this subject makes a crucially important contribution not only to the emerg-
ing child development field on the continent but also to the knowledge base
of the global field of developmental science. In Chapter 2, Amina Abubakar
draws on her years of tool development and field research experience in
Kenya to present a comprehensive portrait of some of the innovative re-
search being done on the continent. In particular, she reviews and integrates
empirical research findings from disparate realms of inquiry and method-
ological genres, and addresses a broad range of issues with significant
implications for developmental interventions, conceptual analysis, and the
advancement of empirical tools within the emerging field of pediatric de-
velopmental science.
The significance of early childhood development/education continues
to gain global attention, with significant increases in investments by in-
ternational donor agencies to encourage national governments in low- and
middle-income countries to develop and implement policies to give all chil-
dren a strong start in life. Accompanying the widespread appeal of these
global investments, however, are deep concerns, within the Majority World,
about the service delivery models and program content being promoted
globally.
In Chapter 3, John T. Ng’asike goes beyond these program-level con-
cerns to explore fundamental issues of profound epistemological and onto-
logical importance for the African child development field. Using his native
Turkana pastoralist cultural heritage as a case study, Ng’asike presents a
penetrating critique of the content and methods of official early childhood
developmental and educational programs in Kenya. The chapter provides
insights into the daily lives of children in pastoralist communities, under-
scores how developmental and learning processes in the community con-
text are at variance with the content and pedagogy of official Early Child-
hood Education, and presents a reconceptualist case for rethinking Early
Childhood Education in the African context.
The home setting is the earliest context for children’s acquisition of
the competencies and dispositions that will define their readiness to en-
ter and do well in school. The home is itself nested in the larger commu-
nity and cultural context with values, resources, and knowledge traditions
that shape socialization practices. A challenge in children’s literacy devel-
opment is that parents and significant other agents of socialization may
not bring significant schooling experiences of their own to their roles as
children’s foundational educators. This does not mean, however, that par-
ents and other caregivers in the lives of children do not possess valuable
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad SOME LONG -STANDING AND EMERGING RESEARCH LINES IN AFRICA 17
knowledge with direct relevance to literacy development. Marriote Ngwaru
brings to the analysis of contextual issues in literacy development the ben-
efit of his research in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Ngwaru
foregrounds issues of parental involvement and empowerment in his dis-
cussion, placing them in juxtaposition to parents’ own conceptions of what
they bring to their children’s literacy development and to a tradition of
schooling in which the sociocultural funds of knowledge within local com-
munities are often discounted, if not disregarded outright.
Assessment, whether for diagnostic and intervention purposes or for
research designed to gain basic understandings about psychological and ed-
ucational phenomena, remains one of the most vexing problems in the field
of human development globally. In the North American context, the persis-
tent use of assessment tools outside populations for which they were vali-
dated has been criticized (e.g., Betancourt & Lopez, 1993) and blamed in
part on the culture gap in the developmental science knowledge base (Marfo
& Boothby, 1997). In the African context, the preponderant dependence
on assessment tools developed and validated outside the continent is even
more profoundly problematic. In Chapter 5, Beatrice Matafwali and Robert
Serpell address multiple dimensions of this problem. Beyond critique of the
status quo , the authors highlight and offer perspectives on issues pertinent
to the development of instruments appropriate for the African context. The
insights and recommendations Matafwali and Serpell present in the chap-
ter are informed by test design research projects in Zambia with which they
have had varying levels of involvement in recent years.
In our concluding chapter, we reflect on some key insights presented
in the four invited chapters, and, drawing on some of the broader themes
addressed in the present chapter, we outline what appear to us important
growth points of the emerging program of research initiated by this vol-
ume’s sample of the current generation of African scholars studying African
children within the African continent.
References
Adair, J. G. (1999). Indigenization of psychology: The concept and its practical imple- mentation. Applied Psychology: An International Review ,48, 403–418. Adjei, K. (1977). Influence of specific maternal occupation and behaviour on Piagetiancognitive development. In P. R. Dasen (Ed.), Piagetian psychology: Cross-cultural con- tributions (pp. 227–256). New York, NY: Gardner Press. Azuma, H. (1984). Psychology in a non-Western country. International Journal of Psy- chology ,19, 45–55. Banda, F. (2008). Orthography design and harmonization in development in SouthernAfrica. Open Space ,2(3), 39–48. Banda, F. (2009). Critical perspectives on language planning and policy in Africa: Ac- counting for the notion of multilingualism. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, PLUS , 38 , 1–11. Berry, J. W. (1967). Independence and conformity in subsistence-level societies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ,7, 415–418.
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT •DOI: 10.1002/cad 18 C HILD DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA :V IEWS FROM INSIDE
Berry, J. W., Poortinga, Y. H., Segall, M. H., & Dasen, P. R. (2002). Cross-cultural psychol- ogy: Research and applications (2nd Rev. ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Berry, J. W., van de Koppel, J. M. H., Annis, R. C., Senechal, C., Bahuchet, S., Cavalli- Sforza, L. L., & Witkin, H. A. (1988). On the edge of the forest: Cultural adaptation and cognitive development in Central Africa . Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. Betancourt, H., & Lopez, S. R. (1993). The study of culture, ethnicity, and race in Amer- ican psychology. American Psychologist ,48, 629–637. Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., Green, D. W., & Gollan, T. H. (2009). Bilingual minds. Psychological Science: In the Public Interest ,10(3), 89–129. Bruner, J. S., Olver, R. R., & Greenfield, P. M. (1966). Studies in cognitive growth .New York, NY: Wiley. Buck-Morss, S. (1975). Socio-economic bias in Piaget’s theory and its implications for cross-cultural studies. Human Development ,18, 35–49. Cancel, R. (2013). Storytelling in Northern Zambia: Theory, method, practice and other necessary fictions . Cambridge, UK: Open Books. Case, R. (1972). Learning and development: A neo-Piagetian interpretation. Human De- velopment ,15, 339–358. Case, R. (1975). Gearing the demands of instruction to the developmental capacities of the learner. Review of Educational Research ,45, 59–87. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline . Cambridge, MA: Har- vard University Belknap Press. Cole, M., & Bruner, J. S. (1971). Cultural differences and inferences about psychologicalprocesses. American Psychologist ,26, 867–876. Cole, M., & Scribner, S. (1977). Developmental theories applied to cross-cultural cog-nitive research. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences ,285 , 366–373. Coleman, J. S., & Court, D. (1993). University development in the Third World: The Rock- efeller Foundation experience . New York, NY: Pergamon Press. Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power, and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire . Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.Dasen, P. R. (1972). Cross-cultural Piagetian research: A summary. Journal of Cross- Cultural Psychology ,3(1), 23–40. Dasen, P. R. (1977a). Are cognitive processes universal? A contribution to cross-culturalPiagetian psychology. Studies in Cross-Cultural Psychology ,1, 155–201. Dasen, P. R. (1977b). Piagetian psychology: Cross-cultural contributions .NewYork,NY: Gardner (Halsted/Wiley). Dasen, P. R., Barthelemy, D., Kan, E., Kouame, K., Daouda, K., Adjei, K. K., & Assande, N. (1985). N’Glouele, l’intelligence chez les Baoule. Archives de Psychologie ,53, 295– 324. Dasen, P. R., Berry, J. W., & Witkin, H. A. (1979). The use of developmental theo- ries cross-culturally. In L. Eckensberger, Y. Poortinga, & W. Lonner (Eds.), Cross- cultural contributions to psychology (pp. 69–82). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger.Dawson, J. L. M. (1967). Cultural and physiological influences on spatial-perceptualprocesses in West Africa, Part II. International Journal of Psychology ,2, 171–185. Donaldson, M. (1978). Children’s minds . London, UK: Fontana. Drenth, P. J. D. (1972). Implications of testing for individual and society. In L. J. Cron- bach&P.J.D.Drenth(Eds.), Mental tests and cultural adaptation (pp. 23–26). The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton. Durojaiye, M. O. A. (1984). The impact of psychological testing on educational and personnel selection in Africa. International Journal of Psychology ,19, 135–144. Edwards, V., & Ngwaru, J. M. (2011). Multilingual education in South Africa: The role of publishers. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development ,32, 435–450.
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT •DOI: 10.1002/cad SOME LONG -STANDING AND EMERGING RESEARCH LINES IN AFRICA 19
Enriquez, V. G. (1982). Towards a Filipino psychology: Essays and studies on language and culture . Quezon City, Philippines: Psychology Research and Training House. Erny, P. (1972). L’enfant et son milieu en Afrique noire . Paris, France: Payot. (cf. English translation by Wanjohi) Fobih, D. K. (1979). The influence of different educational experiences on classificatory and verbal reasoning behaviour in children in Ghana (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Fortes, M. (1938). Social and psychological aspects of education in Taleland. Africa , 11 (Suppl.), 1–64. Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ). (2013). National Literacy Framework . Lusaka, Zambia: Ministry of Education, Science, Vocational Training and Early Edu-cation. Greenfield, P. M. (1997). You can’t take it with you: Why ability assessments don’t cross cultures. American Psychologist ,52, 1115–1124. Grigorenko, E. L., Geissler, P. W., Prince, R., Okatcha, F., Nokes, C., Kenny, D. A., . . . Sternberg, R. J. (2001). The organization of Luo conceptions of intelligence: A study ofimplicit theories in a Kenyan village. International Journal of Behavioral Development , 25 , 367–378. Heugh, K. (2000). The case against bilingual & multilingual education in South Africa . PRAESA Occasional Papers. Retrieved from http://www.praesa.org.za/files/2012/07/Paper6.pdfHorowitz, F. D. (2000). Child development and the PITS: Simple questions, complex answers, and developmental theory. Child Development ,71, 1–10. Irvine, S. H. (1966). Towards a rationale for testing attainments and abilities in Africa. British Journal of Educational Psychology ,36,24 −32. Jahoda, G. (1980). Theoretical and systematic approaches in cross-cultural psychology.In H. Triandis & W. Lambert (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 69–141). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Jahoda, G. (1982). Psychology and anthropology: A psychological perspective . London, UK: Academic Press.Kagitcibasi, C. (2000). Indigenous psychology and indigenous approaches to develop- mental research. Newsletter of the Society for the Study of Behavioral Development ,1 (Serial No. 37), 6–9. Kim, U., Yang, K. S., & Hwang, K. K. (Eds.). (2006). Indigenous and cultural psychology: Understanding people in context . New York, NY: Springer. Kiminyo, D. M. (1977). Is the rate of cognitive development uniform across cultures?A methodological critique with new evidence from Temne children. In P. R. Dasen(Ed.), Piagetian psychology: Cross-cultural contributions (pp. 26–63). New York, NY: Gardner Press. Lagmay, A. V. (1984). Western psychology in the Philippines: impact and response. International Journal of Psychology ,19(1–4), 31–44. LCHC. (1982). Culture and intelligence. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of human intelligence (pp. 642–719). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lebra, T. S. (1994). Mother and child in Japanese socialisation: A Japan–U.S. compari-son. In P. M. Greenfield & R. R. Cocking (Eds.), Cross-cultural roots of minority child development (pp. 259–274). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Marfo, K. (2011). Envisioning an African child development field. Child Development Perspectives ,5, 140–147. Marfo, K., & Boothby, L. (1997). The behavioural sciences and special education re-search: Some promising directions and challenging legacies. In J. L. Paul, M. Churton,H. Rosselli-Kostoryz, W. C. Morse et al. (Eds.), Foundations of special education: Basic knowledge informing research and practice in special education (pp. 247–278). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT •DOI: 10.1002/cad 20 C HILD DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA :V IEWS FROM INSIDE
Marfo, K., Pence, A. R., LeVine, R. A., & LeVine, S. (2011). Introduction to the special section: Strengthening Africa’s contributions to child development research. Child De- velopment Perspectives ,5, 104–111. Mazrui, A. (1986). The Africans . New York, NY: Praeger. Mbiti, J. S. (1969). African religions and philosophy . London, UK: Heinemann. Mlama, P. (1991). Culture and development: The popular theatre approach in Africa . Upp- sala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Moumouni, A. (1968). Education in Africa . London, UK: Andre Deutsch. Mpofu, E. (2002). Indigenization of the psychology of human intelligence in Sub- Saharan Africa. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, Unit 4 . Retrieved from http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol4/iss3/2Mtonga, M. (2012). Children’s games and play in Zambia . Lusaka, Zambia: University of Zambia Press. Mwaura, P. A. M., & Marfo, K. (2011). Bridging culture, research, and practice in early childhood development: The Madrasa Resource Centers in East Africa. Child Devel- opment Perspectives ,5, 134–139. Ngugi, J. (1964). Weep not child . London, UK: Heinemann. Ngugi wa Thiongo. (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature . London, UK: Currey/Heinemann. Nsamenang, A. B. (1992). Human development in cultural context . New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Nsamenang, A. B. (2006). Human ontogenesis: An indigenous African view on devel- opment and intelligence. International Journal of Psychology ,41, 293–297. Ogbonna-Ohuche, R. O., & Otaala, B. (Eds.). (1981). The African child and his environ- ment . Oxford, UK: Pergamon. Okonji, M. O. (1971). The effects of familiarity on classification. Journal of Cross- Cultural Psychology ,2, 39–49. Okonji, M. O. (1980). Cognitive styles across cultures. In N. Warren (Ed.), Studies in cross-cultural psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 1–50). London, UK: Academic Press. Owoe, P. J. (1973). On culture and conservation once again. International Journal of Psychology ,8, 121–128. Pascual-Leone, J. (1976). On learning and development, Piagetian style: II. A critical historical analysis of Geneva’s research program. Canadian Psychological Review ,17, 289–302. Paul, J. L., & Marfo, K. (2001). Preparation in the philosophical foundations of inquiry. Review of Educational Research ,71, 525–547. Pence, A. (2011). Early childhood care and development research in Africa: His- torical, conceptual, and structural challenges. Child Development Perspectives ,5, 112–118. Price-Williams, D. R. (1961). A study concerning concepts of conservation of quantities among primitive children. Acta Psychologica ,18, 297–305. Price-Williams, D. R. (1975). Explorations in cross-cultural psychology . San Francisco, CA: Chandler and Sharp. Ratner, C. (2008). Cultural psychology and qualitative methodology: Scientific and po-litical considerations. Culture and Psychology ,14, 259–288. Ratner, C., & Hui, L. (2003). Theoretical and methodological problems in cross-cultural psychology. Journal of the Theory of Social Behavior ,33, 67–94. Scribner, S., & Cole, M. (1981). The psychology of literacy . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Segall, M. H., Dasen, P. R., Berry, J. W., & Poortinga, Y. H. (1999). Human behavior in global perspective: An introduction to cross-cultural psychology (2nd Rev. ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Serpell, R. (1976). Culture’s influence on behaviour . London, UK: Methuen.
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT •DOI: 10.1002/cad SOME LONG -STANDING AND EMERGING RESEARCH LINES IN AFRICA 21
Serpell, R. (1977). Estimates of intelligence in a rural community of eastern Zambia. In F. M. Okatcha (Ed.), Modern psychology and cultural adaptation (pp. 179–216). Nairobi, Kenya: Swahili Language Consultants and Publishers. Serpell, R. (1979). How specific are perceptual skills? A cross-cultural study of pattern recognition. British Journal of Psychology ,70, 365–380. Serpell, R. (1982). Measures of perception, skills, and intelligence: The growth of a newperspective on children in a Third World country. In W. W. Hartup (Ed.), Review of Child Development Research (Vol. 6, pp. 392–440). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Serpell, R. (1990a). Audience, culture and psychological explanation: A reformula- tion of the emic-etic problem in cross-cultural psychology. Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition ,12(3), 99–132. Retrieved from http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/newsletters.html Serpell, R. (1990b). Book review of Berry et al. On the Edge of the Forest. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology ,21, 119–121. Serpell, R. (1993). The significance of schooling: Life-journeys in an African society .Cam- bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Serpell, R. (2006). Negotiating the middle ground between the ostensible and sharedhorizons: A dynamic approach to cross-cultural communication about human devel-opment. In J. Straub, D. Weidemann, C. K ¨ olbl, & B. Zielke (Eds.), Pursuit of meaning: Advances in cultural and cross-cultural psychology (pp. 393–433). Berlin, Germany: Ve r l a g . Serpell, R. (2011). Social responsibility as a dimension of intelligence, and as an educa-tional goal: Insights from programmatic research in an African society. Child Develop- ment Perspectives ,5, 126–133. Serpell, R., & Haynes, B. (2004). The cultural practice of intelligence testing: Problemsof international export. In R. J. Sternberg & E. Grigorenko (Eds.), Culture and compe- tence: Contexts of life success (pp. 163–185). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Serpell, R., & Jere-Folotiya, J. (2008). Developmental assessment, cultural context, gen-der and schooling in Zambia. International Journal of Psychology ,43, 88–96. Shweder, R. A. (1990). Cultural psychology—What is it? In J. W. Stigler, R. A. Shweder, & G. Herdt (Eds.), Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development (pp. 1–43). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Shweder, R. A. (1991). Thinking through cultures: Expeditions in cultural psychology . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Siegler, R. S. (1983). Information processing approaches to development. In P. Mussen (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (pp. 129–211). New York, NY: Wiley. Sinha, D. (1994). Indigenous psychology: Need and potentiality. Journal of Indian Psy- chology ,12,1–7. Sinha, D. (1997). Indigenizing psychology. In J. W. Berry, Y. H. Poortinga, & J. M. Pandey(Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology, Volume 1: Theory and Method (2nd ed., pp. 129–169). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.SRCD. (2013). Ensuring that multilingual children benefit from best practices (Policy Brief No. 27(4): sharing child and youth development knowledge). Retrieved fromhttp://www.srcd.org/sites/default/files/documents/washington/spr brief 2014 04 09 multilingualchildren.pdf Super, C. M., & Harkness, S. (1986). The developmental niche: A conceptualization at the interface of child and culture. International Journal of Behavioral Development ,9, 515–569. Super, C. M., Harkness, S., Barry, O., & Zeitlin, M. (2011). Think locally, act globally:Contributions of African research to child development. Child Development Perspec- tives ,5, 119–125.
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT •DOI: 10.1002/cad 22 C HILD DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA :V IEWS FROM INSIDE
Tobin, J. J., Wu, D. Y. H., & Davidson, D. H. (1989). Preschool in three cultures: Japan, China and the United States . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. van de Koppel, J. M. H. (1983). Developmental study of the Biaka Pygmies and the Ban- gandu . Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. Vernon, P. E. (1967). Abilities and educational attainments in an East African environ- ment. Journal of Special Education ,1, 335–345. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: Development of higher psychological processes . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Witkin, H. A., & Berry, J. W. (1975). Psychological differentiation in cross-cultural per- spective. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology ,6, 4–87. Witkin, H. A., Dyk, R. B., Faterson, H. F., Goodenough, D. R., & Karp, S. (1962). Psy- chological differentiation . New York, NY: Wiley. Wober, M. (1967). Adapting Witkin’s field independence theory to accommodate new information from Africa. British Journal of Psychology ,58, 29–38. Wober, M. (1969). Distinguishing centri-cultural from cross-cultural tests and research. Perceptual and Motor Skills ,28, 488. Wober, M. (1975). Psychology in Africa . London, UK: International African Institute. Yesufu, T. M. (Ed.). (1973). Creating the African university: Emerging issues of the 1970s . Ibadan, Nigeria: Oxford University Press.
ROBERT SERPELL is a professor of applied developmental psychology and co-
ordinator of the Center for Promotion of Literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa
(CAPOLSA) in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of
Zambia.
KOFI MARFO is a professor and founding director of the Institute for Human
Development, Aga Khan University (South-Central Asia, East Africa, and the
United Kingdom), and coleader of the Africa Child Development Research Ca-
pacity Building initiative.
NEWDIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cad Copyright
ofNew Directions forChild &Adolescent Development isthe property ofJohn
Wiley
&Sons, Inc.anditscontent maynotbecopied oremailed tomultiple sitesorposted to
a
listserv without thecopyright holder'sexpresswrittenpermission. However,usersmay
print,
download, oremail articles forindividual use.
