This article discusses theoretical challenges in conceptualising the dialectical relationship between historical conditions and the situated interplay between people in concrete everyday practice. The concept of conflict may help us move beyond tendencies within psychology to separate history and situated practice, structure and activity, and micro- and macroprocesses – and to regard social life as unambiguous or as governed through hegemony. Research on the everyday social life of schools describes societal conflicts about education and how school children deal with unequal conditions when handling the conflictuality of their everyday lives. Analyses of coordination and conflicts between various parties (e.g. children, parents, teachers and psychologists) elucidate connections between intersubjective efforts to make things work in everyday practice and historical struggles related to the school as a social institution. Concepts are required that enable understanding of these processes as historical and political, driven by intersubjectivity related to concrete dilemmas, connected to personal and collaborative conduct of everyday life – processes we term the politics of everyday life. From a social practice perspective, we discuss how to grasp the ways in which people constitute the conditions for each other in a situated interplay in which they deal with common problems and – through these activities – also produce history.

The article presents findings from a practice research project dealing with the everyday life of 0-2 year olds across family and different day-care settings. From a critical psychological perspective, it explores three related issues: Young children's conduct of everyday life in and across different institutional settings. Professional pedagogical work related to supporting children's conduct of everyday life, and finally the restricted political and bureaucratic conditions for exactly these forms of pedagogical practice. The article addresses the theoretical challenge of understanding children through their conduct of everyday life in the field of tension between being someone who is dependent on others, being taken care of and arranged for-and, at the same time, someone who is actively participating, arranging and contributing to the reproduction and change of the collective life conditions in the social practice of day-care. These compound processes include the professional's complex efforts to support the many children's personal conduct of everyday life in and across their different life arenas, involving ongoing situated and sensitive exploration of children's perspectives through observations, conversations and collaborative processes with the different children, colleagues, families in the day-care environment. However, at the same time, exactly these situated explorative processes tend to be unheeded as professional in the more explicit professional explanations of problems in day-care. Through a discussion of this apparent contradiction and the conditions for developing a more situated approach, the article aims to contribute to the current professional and political discussions about day-care practice for the youngest children.

This article addresses inter-professional work and decision-making around inclusion in school, using an approach inspired by social practice theory. Based on a case analysis, the article presents analytical examples of the ways in which knowledge from children's everyday life tends to be considered anecdotal and disregarded in the decision-making processes. This leads to an institutional blindness to life aspects important to children, such as their peer relationships, and the ways in which interventions sometimes further complicate children's life situations, hence leading to mutual processes of powerlessness among children, parents, and professionals.

No abstract

No abstract