Description
Sociocultural theory acknowledges external contexts, interactions, and key relationships as foundational sources in shaping young children’s learning and development (Vygotsky, 1978). Even today, this remains a predominant framing. Unfortunately, this creates a socially deterministic understanding of development and does a disservice to young children because it bypasses their agency and active role in participating in, interpreting, producing, and configuring their situations of development (González Rey, 2017). Newer conceptualisations of children’s involvement in processes of development are being considered through Vygotsky’s (1994) concept of perezhivanie and González Rey’s (2017) social and individual subjectivities. These dialectical concepts draw attention to both the complexities of the social and cultural lives or situations of development that young children are influenced by and participate in along with their individual interpretations, actions, responses, and meanings. This creates a unique context where both personal and environmental or situational characteristics come together (Fleer, 2016).This presentation highlights data from a case study with two immigrant children in kindergarten. Examples from varying play and art-making explorations (dolls, plasticine, drawing, and cardboard constructions) illustrate how these child-led explorations were repeatedly used to recall and share personally significant relationships, environments, and experiences, and distinctive understandings from each child’s culture, gender, identity, and situations of development. Also discussed are how these experiences offered opportunities to generate, revise, and refine interpretations and positions into more appealing versions of each child’s realities. The presentation concludes with consideration of young children’s play and art-making in classroom and research contexts in relation to perezhivanie and subjectivities as this still remains largely absent in early childhood and yet it offers an important framing for considering the young child’s active role, how subjectivities are developed, negotiated, and expressed with young children and can be drawn on to make visible and understand a young child’s unique perezhivanie.
| Period | 2 Dec 2024 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Annual Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) Conference: Education research in a changing world |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Sydney, Australia, New South WalesShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | National |