Cultural Historical Approaches To Studying Learning And Development

This collection of papers examines key ideas in cultural-historical approaches to children’s learning and development and the cultural and institutional conditions in which they occur. The collection is given coherence by a focus on the intellectual contributions made by Professor Mariane Hedegaard to understandings of children’s learning through the prism of the interplay of society, institution and person. She has significantly shaped the field through her scholarly consideration of foundational concepts and her creative attention to the fields of activity she studies. The book brings together examples of how these concepts have been employed and developed in a study of learning and development. The collection allows the contributing scholars to reveal their reactions to Hedegaard’s contributions in discussions of their own work in the field of children’s learning and the conditions in which it occurs.

Studying Children is the first book of its kind to offer a theoretical and practical discussion of how to undertake research using cultural-historical theory when researching the everyday lives of children. The authors discuss the complexities of child development, providing a critique of alternative perspectives of research and notions of development. They provide a number of case studies following researchers in early childhood as they move from a developmental approach to a cultural-historical framework for observing and planning for young children. The chapters: Provide a solid framework for understanding the foundations of this approach Address the importance of viewing research as an interactive technique Offer guidance on how to collect and interpret material Show how to make observations of and interviews with children, within a dialectical research approach Present examples of how to write and present findings using this technique The book is rich with examples of how to undertake specific methods, such as surveys, experiments, case studies, digital video observations, interviews, and children as researchers. Studying Children is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and students working in the field of Early and Middle Childhood at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

The contributors to this collection employ the analytic resources of cultural-historical theory to examine the relationship between childhood and children's development under different societal conditions. In particular they attend to relationships between development, emotions, motives and identities, and the social practices in which children and young people may be learners. These practices are knowledge-laden, imbued with cultural values and emotionally freighted by those who already act in them. The book first discusses the organising principles that underpin a cultural-historical understanding of motives, development and learning. The second section foregrounds children's lives to exemplify the implications of these ideas as they are played out - examining how children are positioned as learners in pre-school, primary school and play environments. The final section uses the core ideas to look at the implementation of policy aimed at enhancing children's engagement with opportunities for learning, by discussing motives in the organisations that shape children's development.

This book provides new theoretical insights to our understanding of play as a cultural activity. All chapters address play and playful activities from a cultural-historical theoretical approach by re-addressing central claims and concepts in the theory and providing new models and understandings of the phenomenon of play within the framework of cultural historical theory. Empirical studies cover a wide range of institutional settings: preschool, school, home, leisure time, and in various social relations (with peers, professionals and parents) in different parts of the world (Europe, Australia, South America and North America). Common to all chapters is a goal of throwing new light on the phenomenon of playing within a theoretical framework of cultural-historical theory. Play as a cultural, collective, social, personal, pedagogical and contextual activity is addressed with reference to central concepts in relation to development and learning. Concepts and phenomena related to ZPD, the imaginary situation, rules, language play, collective imagining, spheres of realities of play, virtual realities, social identity and pedagogical environments are presented and discussed in order to bring the cultural-historical theoretical approach into play with contemporary historical issues. Essential as a must read to any scholar and student engaged with understanding play in relation to human development, cultural historical theory and early childhood education.

Teachers, both in and beyond teacher education programmes, are continual learners. As society itself evolves, new settings and the challenges they provide require new learning. Teachers must continually adapt to new developments that affect their work, including alterations to qualification systems, new relationships with welfare professionals, and new technologies which are reconfiguring relationships with pupils. Cultural-Historical Perspectives on Teacher Education and Development is an international volume which clarifies the purpose of initial (pre-service) teacher education and continuing professional development, and the role of universities and higher education personnel in these processes. An edited collection of chapters by leading researchers from the UK, the US and Europe, it gains coherence from its theoretical orientation and substantive focus on teacher learning. This book: demonstrates the contribution of sociocultural and cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) towards our understandings of teacher learning offers a strong exemplification of a research focus on teachers as learners in specific sociocultural settings shows what teachers learn, how they learn and where they learn, using specific research examples, in the context of broader interests in the development of professional practice and professional education. As the only volume now available that applies CHAT principles to teacher education and learning, Cultural-Historical Perspectives on Teacher Education and Development will be highly useful for teachers and teacher educators undertaking postgraduate and doctoral studies, particularly in the area of professional learning and development. It will also be of relevance to the continuing development of teachers and other school-based professionals.

This volume is based on three years of teaching experiments with a group of primary school students as they progressed from the 3rd to the 5th class (ages 9 to 12). Whereas traditional pedagogical approaches focus on the nature of the subject matter being taught, Hedegaard assumes that any teaching program ought to incorporate children's everyday concepts and motivations. She relates this "double move" in teaching to situated learning and teaching and subsequently presents principles for putting the approach into practice. The experiments also aim to promote developmental learning rather than mere subject mastery. The first half of this book seeks to be theoretical, aiming to conceptualise the experiments in a culturo-historical framework, the second is practical in design. It presents and dissects a teaching example from history, as well as three extended case studies of individual students in orientation, an interdisciplinary subject that embraces biology, geography and history.

Applying Cultural Historical Activity Theory in Educational Settings harnesses research and development for educational improvement, bridging the gap between research and practice. Exploring how collaborations between researchers and practitioners can be used to co-construct solutions to real-world problems, this book considers key concepts in cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), including models as resources that can be used to build and facilitate collaboration between researchers and practitioners. The chapters of the book draw on research findings from the practices of learning communities in diverse educational settings: teacher education, the education of school leaders, early childhood education and driving teacher education. Applying Cultural Historical Activity Theory in Educational Settings is an excellent resource for researchers and practitioners seeking to construct new knowledge and develop practice, or wishing to expand their knowledge of CHAT.

This book explores the distinct approaches of conversation analysis (CA) and cultural-historical theory to investigations of childhood storytelling with children aged 15 months to nine years. The authors draw on a rich set of data that depict children’s interactions with parents, teachers and peers as they talk together after having read stories, as they recount their experiences, as they enact stories through play, and as they participate in school activities in science and in literacy tasks. The book demonstrates the matters that concern CA and cultural-historical theory and explore in what ways comparisons can work to inform research design to understand how far the boundaries of approaches can be stretched, and the challenges in attempting to do so. In this process the authors focus on adding to knowledge about children’s rich interactional competencies and development as they tell stories, and on providing research-based evidence for parent, teacher and teacher educator practices.