Studying Children: A Cultural-Historical Approach

Chapter 1
Developmental Psychology and Childhood Education as Areas of Research
Mariane Hedegaard, Marilyn Fleer, Jytte Bang and Pernille Hviid

Chapter 2
Basic Conceptions in a Cultural-Historical Theory of Children's Development
Mariane Hedegaard

Chapter 3
Methodological considerations for a dialectical-interactive research approach to children's development
Mariane Hedegaard

Chapter 4
Differences between Protocol Collecting and Interpretation
Mariane Hedegaard

Chapter 5
The dialectical relations between the child's perspective, the institutional perspective and the researcher's perspective
Marilyn Fleer

Chapter 6
Dialogue between institutional practices analysed through child, family and teacher perspectives
Marilyn Fleer

Chapter 7
The relations between cultural-historical theory, methodology and digital video methods
Marilyn Fleer

Chapter 8
Studying Developmental Novelty in the Activity Setting - An Environmental Affordance Perspective
Jytte Bang

Chapter 9
Developmental Interviews with Children
Pernille Hviid

Chapter 10
The Questionnaire as a Tool for Researching Children's Perspective in Institutional Practices
Jytte Bang and Mariane Hedegaard

Chapter 11
The Educational Experiment
Mariane Hedegaard

Chapter 12
The Role of the Researcher in Studying Children's Everyday Lives
Mariane Hedegaard

Studying Children is the first book of its kind to offer a theoretical and practical discussion of how to undertake research using cultural-historical theory when researching the everyday lives of children.

The authors discuss the complexities of child development, providing a critique of alternative perspectives of research and notions of development. They provide a number of case studies following researchers in early childhood as they move from a developmental approach to a cultural-historical framework for observing and planning for young children.

The chapters:

• Provide a solid framework for understanding the foundations of this approach
• Address the importance of viewing research as an interactive technique
• Offer guidance on how to collect and interpret material
• Show how to make observations of and interviews with children, within a dialectical research approach
• Present examples of how to write and present findings using this technique

The book is rich with examples of how to undertake specific methods, such as surveys, experiments, case studies, digital video observations, interviews, and children as researchers.

Studying Children is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and students working in the field of Early and Middle Childhood at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.