Children’s everyday life across institution

and how this influences their learning and development

Mariane Hedegaard

Professor, Dr.Phil.

University of Copenhagen

Why bother to present a theory of development?

• Because conceptions of children’s development effect all society’s institutions that deal with children:

• in maternity wards • in family’s upbringing of children, • in kindergarten, • in schools, • in foster homes and • all institutions of social service for children

Maternal ward

• Like Denmark today • Like Denmark in 1960

Theories of development

• A Cultural-Historical Wholeness approach

• Focus: Children’s participation in Cultural practices

• A Functional approach

• Focus: Children’s functions

• Intelligence, memory, motor skill, language

• Societal conditions perspective

• Institutions practice’ perspective – Famile – Daycare – School

• Children’s perspective

A Cultural-Historical Wholeness theory of children’s learning and development

Schoolpractice

Daycare

practice

Home practice

Society

Cultural traditionI

Cultural traditionII

Cultural traditionIII

Person

Everyday practice

• Children learn and develop through participating in the everyday practices in different institutions

• Institutions are not static and the social relations that a child enter into are changing

• Each child contribute to this change and development

Breakfast time

• • .

Morning in the Fredriksberg family gathered around the breakfast table 7 pm., Grandma is visiting

• When I (obs.) arrive Emil is very unhappy. Mother explains that he is sad because he is not allowed to stay home with Grandma.

• Emil is sitting at mothers lap, and she tries to explain to him, that he needs to go to school today.

• Emil tells mother that his friends do not want to play with him in school and his best friend Tom bosses him around. Mother tells Emil that he should talk with Tom about that. Emil does not think this will help and is still crying and unhappy.

• Grandma who sits opposite Emil makes him a piece of bred with jam. He calms down when she gives it to him. He eats his bread still on mother’s lap. Grandmother asks Emil when school is finished in the morning. She promises to meet him at school, and he can skip the afternoon school activity.

• Emil accepts; he talks with mother and still cries a little.

• Then Emil takes the newspaper and asks Mother about what is written in an article. Mother reads that it is about the Pope's visit to Turkey. Emil asks who the Pope is. Mother explains that he is the head of the Catholic Church. Lulu and Laura starts to tell about the Pope. Emil points to a new article and ask what it is about. Mother reads again. It's about farm workers who use too many pesticides. Then mother rises to help Lulu fetch some juice. Emil promptly turns towards Father. Father strokes his hair.

• Mother starts to solve other tasks, so she can leave for work, Emil orients himself toward Father, Laura and the observer

• Laura tells about a play they are going to perform at school. Emil asks if they are allowed to come and see the play [the children in the family] when they have finished the rehearsals. She does not hear him. Emil crawls on Father’s lap. Mother calls from the bathroom and asks Emil to go to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Emil still looks sour. He answers he is on his way. After Mother has left, Emil puts on his clothes and prepares for school quite independently.

Children learn both motives and competences that reflect the demands of the institutional practices in which they

participate.

• The result of a child’s acquisition of a new motive and learning new competences is that the child’s relation to other persons in the everyday setting changes.

• The child has to be seen as an active agent in this process.

Difference in practice between home and school reflects differences in dominance between general

and specific traditions

Institutional Practice

general traditions specific traditions

Formal traditions societal conditions

Sunday morning with Grandmother

My class and my teacher

• 22

Emil in school

• They are drawing. There are three boys (Hector, Tom and Emil) sitting at a table. The teacher goes to their table and looks at the boys’ drawings. Emil and Hector talks about that they both have to be fetched early and do not have to go to after school day-care. Emil tells that Grandmother is visiting. He thinks that Tom his best friend has to meet her one day. Tom agrees that he would like that. The teacher asks them to be quiet.

•

It is not enough to see a child in one institution to understand his motive and activities.

• A person’s activity always have to be seen in relation to a specific practice, but often several practices influences the actual activity setting a child is part of

• The actual practice gives the frame but the child’s experiences and activities in other practices influences the actual settings as well as the demands from other practices

Society

Person

Cultural traditionI

Cultural traditionII

Schoolpractice

HomePractice

DaycarePractice

MotivesCompetences

Cultural traditionIII

Value positions

Activity settingActivity setting Activity settingActivity seeting

Activity settings that school children partipate in a family and in school

• The morning setting with raising in the morning, getting dressed and breakfast

• Going to school• Partipating in lessons• Having recess

• Comming home from school having snacktime

• homework• play time• dinner• preparation for going to bed

Learning at home:: Emil and Laura helps to make pancakes.

Mother: We try to get the children involved in everyday chores

Learning in school

Learning in Activity settings

• Children learn through the demands they meet particpating in activities in activty settings

• The activity settings change through children’s demands

• learning is appropriation of competencies and motives that dominates the different activity settings

The child’s perspective

• Why is it important to understand children’s intentions, and motives for understanding their learning and development ?

• Because the child’s interactions in the social situation make necessary to catch the child’s perspective on the demands they meet in the different activity settings

Development

• Development takes place through crises, often when the child meets new demands in new institutions or gets new competences that do not fit the existing practice (e.g. when a child starts to walk).

• Crises in children’s life can then be seen as something necessary, reflecting contradictions between the child’s wishes and the institutions or other person’s demands.

• Crises can become detrimental if the caregivers do not support the child’s capabilities to move forward to new motives and competences.

• Development can be seen when children’s social relations to other persons are reorganised in all the different practices the child attends.

To conclude with the main pointsA central characteristic of human life is that every person participates in different practices where each practice is influenced by cultural traditions.

• Second children contributes both to change of practice and the conditions for their own learning and development through their participation in the activity settings in home and school.

• Third the way children learn are different at home and in school. This reflects the difference in the formality of traditions in these practices.

• Finally development takes place when learning restructures the child’s relation to other persons in all the practice s/he participates in.