Recent decades have seen a growing emphasis, in a number of professional contexts, on acknowledging and acting on the views of children. This trend was given added weight by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified in 1990. Today, seeking the perspective of the child has become an essential process in all sorts of tasks, from framing new legislation to regulating professions.
This book answers the fundamental question of what it is that constitutes a ‘child perspective’, and how this might differ from the perspectives of children themselves. The answers to such questions have important implications for building progressive and developmental adult-child relationships. However, theoretical and empirical treatments of child perspectives and children’s perspectives are very diverse and idiosyncratic, and the standard reference work has yet to be written.
Thus, this work is an attempt to fill the gap in the literature by searching for and defining key formulations of potential child perspectives within parts of the so-called ‘new child paradigm’. This has been derived from childhood sociology, contextual-relational developmental psychology, interpretative humanistic psychology and developmental pedagogy. The highly experienced authors develop a comprehensive professional child perspective paradigm that integrates recent theory and empirical child research. With its clear presentation of underlying theories and suggested applications, this book illustrates a child-oriented understanding of specific relevance to both child-care and preschool educational practice.
Author(s): Dion Sommer, Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson, Karsten Hundeide (auth.)
Series: International perspectives on early childhood education and development 2
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 233
Tags: Childhood Education
Front Matter....Pages i-xviii
Front Matter....Pages 25-27
Introduction: Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives – The Scandinavian Context....Pages 1-23
In Search of Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Childhood Sociology....Pages 29-55
In Search of Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Contextual–Relational Developmental Psychology....Pages 57-68
Childhood Sociology and Contextual–Relational Psychology – Common Platforms for a Child Perspective?....Pages 69-82
Front Matter....Pages 83-85
Fundamental Features Embedded in a Humanistic Dialogical Approach to Children....Pages 87-98
When Empathic Care Is Obstructed....Pages 99-117
The Interpretive Approach to Children....Pages 119-137
Front Matter....Pages 139-142
In Search of the Role of Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Early Childhood Education....Pages 143-149
What Can We Learn About Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives from Empirical Research?....Pages 151-161
In Search of the Features of Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Developmental Pedagogy....Pages 163-176
In Search of a Practice with Children Based on Their Perspectives....Pages 177-185
In Search of Theoretical Preconditions for an Early Childhood Education Built on Children’s Perspectives....Pages 187-196
Front Matter....Pages 197-201
The Scandinavian Approach: Does the Logic of the Welfare State Have an Important Voice in a Global Society?....Pages 203-208
Cultural Differences and Panhuman Similarities? – Problems and Dilemmas in the Globalization of a Child Perspective....Pages 209-221
Back Matter....Pages 223-245
