ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the connection of the third column of the matrix consisting of primary socialization, secondary socialization, and improvisational self-determination. It focuses on the cultural practices young people appropriate as the tools for defining, projecting, and improves self in school settings and the role these play in achievement motivation. The chapter considers which of these cultural practices are vital to school achievement and need our attention in the academic socialization of young people. The unit of analysis for student learning and development consists of persons-in-situations, including cultural practices of the particular site of social and instructional interaction. The chapter discusses primary socialization and considers some of the cognitive capabilities that are shaped by both experience and by culture and how they mediate achievement motivation. Cultural practices acquired in primary socialization provide children the rudiments of sense making in a variety of forms including making inferences, deductions, and interpreting symbolic material—the foundation of literate proficiency in schools.
