Wholeness as a developmental goal

Wortham, Stanton; Ha, Samantha; Alexander, Jeremy

doi:10.1080/10749039.2021.1961157

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 23 publications

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“…It only argues that the findings generated from different approaches reach different goals (Grønmo, 2019). The findings generated from the “decomposition approach” successfully present the profiles of children's learning and development outcomes from different perspectives, reveal children's transition difficulties and challenges, and identify the diverse factors relevant to school transition, but they could hardly explain the complexities and dynamics of child development during the transition to school (Hedegaard, 2019; Vygotsky, 1997a; Winther‐Lindqvist, 2021; Wortham et al, 2021). In other words, by using the “decomposition approach”, the evidences on the surface (such as what achievement children obtained, and what difficulties children encounter) could be captured, but the mechanisms underlying the surface (such as how children achieve, and why the difficulties appear) could hardly be explained (Fragkiadaki et al, 2021; Ma et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role adjustment as the unit of analysis for researching child development during the transition to school

2022

Infant and Child Development

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While child development is well-recognized as a complex process which could hardly be decomposed into separate lines or domains in contemporary psychological theories, the decomposition approach is widely used in empirical studies. Based on the cultural-historical theory, this study argues for adopting the unit of analysis as a way to bridge this gap, and finds "role adjustment" as a suitable unit to analyse child development during the transition to school.The case of a 5-year-old second-generation Chinese Australian child's transition to school (with a total of 34 h of observation and 5 h of interview) is presented to verify its feasibility and to illustrate how it could be achieved in a research practice. The case study demonstrates that a child's role adjustment is in essence a process of transforming his/her role system, during which his/her major roles, the relation of the major roles, as well as his/her role-taking patterns change as a whole, and by tracing a child's role adjustment trajectory, how the child is learning and developing, what difficulties he/she encounter, and why these difficulties appear become clear.

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