Qualitative Studies of Exploration in Childhood Education: Cultures of Play and Learning in Transition

Description

This book uses the concept of exploration as a way of understanding transitions in children between the ages of 5 to 18 years old. Written by an international group of scholars from Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, India, Norway and the UK, the chapters offer a diverse set of case studies. The topics and themes covered include transitions in outdoor playtime, the transition to daycare, compassion in kindergarten, learning with fathers, transitions of Chinese traditional culture and disability. The chapters are organised into two parts, the first part covering macro transitions and the second covering micro-genetic transitions. The contributors show how both macro and micro-genetic transitions influence children’s everyday lives, and how these different transitions open up new possibilities for play, learning and development. The contributors draw on Vygotsky’s cultural historical theory and the understanding that children’s cultural formation takes form in a dialectic relation between children’s interests and motives and the institutional settings they participate in. Cover Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Preface Series Editors’ Foreword Acknowledgements 1 Cultures of Play and Learning in Transition Marilyn Fleer, Mariane Hedegaard, Elin Eriksen Ødegaard and Hanne Værum Sørensen Part I: Macro-transitions within and across Educational Cultures: Children’s Explorations as a New Conception in Transitions 2 Ideas for a Radical-local Approach to Care and Support for Children’s Playful Exploration in Preschool and Transition to School Mariane Hedegaard and Naussúnguag Lyberth 3 A Pedagogy of Collaborative Exploration Elin Eriksen Ødegaard 4 Play Exploration and Active Learning in a Chinese Kindergarten: An Educational Experiment into How Teachers Meet the New Societal Demands of the Educational Reform and Transition into New Play Practices Marilyn Fleer and Liang Li 5 Children with Disabilities Growing Up and Exploring Life as Adults – Sociocultural Challenges around the Transition to Adulthood Louise Bøttcher Part II: Children’s Explorations during Microgenetic Transitions within Activity Settings 6 Crisis as Microgenetic Developmental Transitions: Using Explorative Activities in Micro-transitions to Recognize Opportunities for Development between Young Children and Their Fathers – A Cross-national Study Rita Chawla-Duggan and Rajani Konantambigi 7 Babies in Motion within Daycare Transition: (Co)construction of Locomotor Exploration in a Brazilian Case Study Natália Meireles Santos Da Costa and Katia De Souza Amorim 8 Transitional Activities: Children’s Projects in Finnish Pre-primary Education Jaakko Hilppö, Teemu Suorsa and Anna P. Rainio 9 Moth Funeral: Exploring Issues of Life and Death in Early Childhood Education Lasse Lipponen, Jaakko Hilppö and Antti Rajala 10 Micro-transitions in Outdoor Playtime in Kindergarten: Conditions for Children’s Exploration and Cultural Formation Åsta Birkeland, Hanne Værum Sørensen and Min He Index