Chapter 2 - A Cultural-Historical Approach to Children’s Development and Childhood

Summary

Education and child development are intrinsically intertwined. For us, development is not a predetermined unmediated unfolding of moves toward maturity. Rather, development is seen in relation to cultural expectations recognizing the potential agency of the learner in relation to these expectations. Hedegaard’s Wholeness Approach with its three different perspectives, the societal, the institutional practices and the person’s perspective is central to how we understand children’s development. The societal perspective, gives the conditions that a society with it cultural traditions and values create for children’s participation in different institutional practices. The practice perspective focuses on children’s participation in the different activity settings that characterize a given institutional practice like the breakfast and leaving for school setting, and the homework setting in a family. The demands children meet through participation in these settings are the focus for understanding children’s interactions with caregivers and their social situations. The person perspective focuses on the children’s intentions, agency and motive orientations, which may be different for children in different age periods. We have argued that age periods and the demands children meet as they move through different societal practices are crucial for understanding their social situation of development. Vygotsky’s account of the neoformation of higher psychological functions is introduced and how their emergence in a child’s consciousness changes a child’s relation to their environment and in particular their emotional relation to their world.