What Is Sociocultural Context?

Sociocultural context refers to the intersection of the social and cultural events of a certain time period that inform various phenomena such as art and political dealings. Of course, sociocultural context varies across cultures, nations, time periods and many other factors.

Many different academic and intellectual disciplines use sociocultural theory. For instance, psychology uses sociocultural context to understand the effects of outside stimuli on mental processes of different kinds of people. Even learning and development brings in sociocultural context in order to improve teaching methods that consider the diversity of students and the different ways they may see the world and learn from it.