Children’s Cultural Learning in Everyday Family Life Exemplified at the Dinner Setting

The aim in this chapter is to propose a way to conceptualize children’s learning through their participation in activity settings in everyday practices at home. I argue that children learn practice traditions and values through the demands that children experience both indirectly through the setting and directly from parents and siblings. Children’s also put demands on the setting and its participants and how these are met leads to children’s development of new forms of social interaction, new motive orientation, and competences. The argument builds on a research project following children through participant observations in their everyday activities in two families (Hedegaard & Fleer. 2013. Play, learning and children’s development. Everyday life in families and transition to school. New York: Cambridge University Press). The family members in the two families got an instant camera and were asked to take photos of what were important for them. In this chapter, the focus is on how demands and motives influence both parents and children at the dinner setting.