Young children and their conduct of everyday life

Abstract

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.

Putting the child at the centre of inter‐professional cooperation in out‐of‐home care

“…Edwards () recognizes (referring to Engeström ( p. 312) that ‘objects resist and bite back, they seem to have lives of their own’, meaning that children are subjects that react to the support they are given. However, along with Højholt () and Røn Larsen & Stanek (), I will argue that children do not only react to professional arrangements. Through their engagements in different contexts, they actively create their own agendas and goals in their social life with other children.…”

I tell my mother that … sometimes he didn’t love us–Young adults’ experiences of childhood in refugee families: A qualitative approach

“…This transactional model views developmental outcomes as a result of the continuous dynamic interplay between the child, the caregiver, and the environmental variables that may influence the child, the caregiver, and the family at large: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. (Røn Larsen and Stanek, 2015)…”

“…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. (Røn Larsen and Stanek, 2015)…”

Preverbal children as co-researchers: Exploring subjectivity in everyday living

“…Christensen, 2004; James, Jenks, & Prout, 1998). As various investigations point out, studies that endeavor to include children in participatory research mainly involve children over three years of age (Elwick, Bradley, & Sumsion, 2014b) but that an increasing number of studies have begun including the perspectives of very young children (Clark, 2003; Clark & Moss, 2001; Elwick, Bradley, & Sumsion, 2014a; Røn Larsen & Stanek, 2015). In several of these studies, researchers have put a substantial amount of effort into developing methods capable of including multimodalities in the attempt to listen to children in various ways.…”