Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Theory and Practice

• In Search of Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Childhood Sociology and Developmental Psychology.- Introduction: Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives – The Scandinavian Context.- In Search of Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Childhood Sociology.- In Search of Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Contextual–Relational Developmental Psychology.- Childhood Sociology and Contextual–Relational Psychology – Common Platforms for a Child Perspective?.- A Child Perspective to the Care for Children in Practice: A Humanistic and Interpretative Approach.- Fundamental Features Embedded in a Humanistic Dialogical Approach to Children.- When Empathic Care Is Obstructed.- The Interpretive Approach to Children.- In Search of Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Early Childhood Education.- In Search of the Role of Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Early Childhood Education.- What Can We Learn About Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives from Empirical Research?.- In Search of the Features of Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Developmental Pedagogy.- In Search of a Practice with Children Based on Their Perspectives.- In Search of Theoretical Preconditions for an Early Childhood Education Built on Children’s Perspectives.- Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Theory and Practice: Summary, Discussion, and Conclusion.- The Scandinavian Approach: Does the Logic of the Welfare State Have an Important Voice in a Global Society?.- Cultural Differences and Panhuman Similarities? – Problems and Dilemmas in the Globalization of a Child Perspective.

This book provides the reader with a rare example the application of academic wisdom to a problem of enormous complexity: how should we organize children's early education? The authors' approach is informed not only by a deep knowledge of developmental psychology, sociology, culture and history, but by deep involvement in educational practice as well. They advocate, and convincingly defend their advocacy of "developmental pedagogy" which "brings the act of learning together with the object of learning." This synthesis demands that one take as foundational the ways in which, and the conditions under which, children create meaning. It requires that pedagogues both take seriously children's perspectives and recognize that education is always a normative process, one saturated by un-cognized ideologies which are "like sand at a picnic - they get into everything." All those who seek to understand the relationships between society, human development, and education will profit from this book. It provides a wonderful tool for thinking about how to organize children's experience in the historically evolving crises of our times so that our grandchildren's grand children may have a human world into which they may develop. Michael Cole, University of California, San Diego, USA