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This work discusses the complexity of child development. It provides a critique of alternative perspectives of research and development and shows how to do research with the concepts of cultural-historical theory.
All psychological processes—like biological and social ones—are dynamic. Phenomena of nature, society, and the human psyche are context bound, constantly changing, and variable. This feature of reality is often not recognized in the social sciences where we operate with averaged data and with homogeneous stereotypes, and consider our consistency to be the cornerstone of rational being. Yet we are all inconsistent in our actions within a day, or from, one day to the next, and much of such inconsistency is of positive value for our survival and development. Our inconsistent behaviors and thoughts may appear chaotic, yet there is generality within this highly variable dynamic. The task of s...
This book's innovative transformative stance revives the critical-activist gist of Vygotsky's project to move beyond theoretical-ideological canons in addressing the crisis of inequality.
This book brings to cultural psychology the focus on phenomenology of everyday life. Whether it is in the context of education, work, or exploration of life environments, the chapters in this book converge on the need to give attention to complex realities of everyday living. Thus, a description of pre-school organization in Japan would be in its form very different from school organization in Britain or Colombia—yet the realities of human beings acting in social roles are continuous around the world.
This book explores the dynamics in children's everyday lives as they move between school and the family, with particular consideration of how children's motives change in response new challenges. Professors Mariane Hedegaard and Marilyn Fleer follow four children, two from Australia and two from Denmark, over a twelve-month period. Using these case studies, they show how children's everyday activities, play, and the demands of both family and educational contexts influence their learning and development. The authors contribute to a sociocultural theory formulation that includes the child's perspective in cultural historical contexts. Their approach yields insights that transcend specific nationalities, cultures, and socioeconomic situations. The analysis shows not just how children's family life shapes their experiences in school, but how schools influence and shape their lives at home.
Jaan Valsiner has made numerous contributions to the development of psychology over the last 40 years. He is internationally recognized as a leader and innovator within both developmental psychology and cultural psychology, and has received numerous prizes for his work: the Alexander von Humboldt prize, the Hans Killian prize, and the Outstanding International Psychologist Award from the American Psychological Association. Having taught at Universities in Europe, Asia and north and south America, he is currently Niels Bohr professor at Aalborg University, Denmark. This book is the first to discuss in detail the different sides of Valsiner’s thought, including developmental science, semiotic mediation, cultural transmission, aesthetics, globalization of science, epistemology, methodology and the history of ideas. The book provides an overview, evaluation and extension of Valsiner’s key ideas for the construction of a dynamic cultural psychology, written by his former students and colleagues from around the world.
This book has one explicit purpose: to present a new theory of cultural learning in organisations which combines practice-based learning with cultural models - a cognitive anthropological schema theory of taken-for-granted connections - tied to the everyday meaningful use of artefacts. The understanding of culture as emerging in a process of learning open up for new understandings, which is useful for researchers, practitioners and students interested in dynamic studies of culture and cultural studies of organisations. The new approach goes beyond culture as a static, essentialist entity and open for our possibility to learn in organisations across national cultures, across ethnicity and across the apparently insurmountable local educational differences which makes it difficult for people to communicate working together in an increasingly globalized world. The empirical examples are mainly drawn from organisations of education and science which are melting-pots of cultural encounters.
Based on a collection of chapters of leading scholars in the field, the purpose of this book is to intervene in current debates on the scientific foundation of psychological theory, methodology and research practice, and to offer an in-depth, situated and contextual understanding of psychological generalization. This book aims to contribute to a theoretical and methodological vocabulary which includes the subjective dimension of human life in psychological inquiry, and roots processes of generalization in persons’ common, social, cultural and material practices of everyday living. The volume is directed to students, professors, and researchers in psychology as well as to scholars in other ...
This book studies the major characteristics of the social pedagogical approach to early childhood education and care. It does so by investigating the distinctive elements of the Nordic approach and tradition. The cultural, educational, and ideological structures and values within the Nordic tradition indicate a strong “social pedagogical” rather than “early education” emphasis. The Nordic tradition applies a social learning approach that emphasizes play, relationships and outdoor life, and presumes that learning takes place through children’s participation in social interaction and processes. Set against this background, the book examines the characteristics of the pedagogue and the important features that develop through the Nordic approach. It compares children educated in the Nordic tradition with those educated in the French-English and Anglo-American tradition. It explores quality in relation to how children can enjoy childhood, and at the same time become able to actively participate in society and develop the social and cognitive skills and competences that individuals require to do well in society.
This volume brings to the attention of contemporary readers a tradition of psychological thought that has received little attention over the last century. Psychology’s history has been unimaginatively presented as a fight between behaviorists and mentalists. A third alternative, the New Realism, which cuts through that dichotomy, has been lost. "The New Realism" was indeed once new. This volume provides a glimpse of how this school of thought attempted to redefine the notion of mental processes, including consciousness, in psychological theorizing. Holt’s rejected the nativity of iconoclastic Watsonian behaviorists, and thus the New Realism was thoughtful in ways that behaviorist social ...