Maja Røn Larsen

Young children and their conduct of everyday life

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 childrens conduct of everyday life in and across different institutional settings; professional pedagogical work related to supporting childrens 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 professionals complex efforts to support the many childrens personal conduct of everyday life in and across their different life arenas, involving ongoing situated and sensitive exploration of childrens 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.

Psychological perspectives on children's conduct of everyday life

This texts is introducing the special Issue “Psychological perspectives on childrens conduct of everyday life” touching on the concept of conduct of everyday life and some of the theoretical debates in relation to this. The common aim of the issue is to unfold and explore the concepts potential meaning to a psychology for children and their development. By addressing development as persons activities and involvement in a collective, shared everyday life, the authors emphasize the relations between the context and the person as a dialectical relation of developing through the process of gaining access, influencing and contributing to the collective, social life conditions. In this way, the discussions of the text are dealing with some of the fundamental theoretical debates about persons and their social lives. The discussions in this special issue is anchored in the Nordic, pedagogical traditions, and draw on a number of different empirical research projects involved in childrens everyday life across different contexts, such as family, child care and school. Additionally the issue investigates different problematics related to childrens lives across the so called normal, and the special pedagogical area. Conclusively this text resumes the different articles in the special issues, their theme, intentions, main points and contributions to the development of the concepts of childrens conduct of everyday life.

Collaboration Between Child Care and Parents: Dilemmas and Contradictory Condititions in the Institutional Arrangement of Child Care

In Denmark, as in many other countries, children live their lives across different contexts, primarily in the home and in childcare institutions. The child’s contexts are simultaneously both separated and related. On the one hand, the family and childcare are not automatically involved in each other’s arrangements, but on the other hand, they are structurally connected and continuously interacting due to the crossover of the children’s activities. Therefore, collaboration and coordination between parents and professionals is an important part of childcare practice. Based on comprehensive empirical work in different Danish childcare centres, this chapter discusses how parental collaboration in the pedagogical practice is often a rather paradoxical effort, developed in relation to contradictory historical and institutional conditions and requirements to treat parents both as equal participants, consumers and clients. In this way, challenges and dilemmas in parental collaboration in childcare are analysed in relation to larger societal conflicts about the relation between society and citizen and the overall purpose of childcare as state institutions.