Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Theory and Practice

This book provides the reader with a rare example the application of academic wisdom to a problem of enormous complexity: how should we organize children's early education? The authors' approach is informed not only by a deep knowledge of developmental psychology, sociology, culture and history, but by deep involvement in educational practice as well. They advocate, and convincingly defend their advocacy of "developmental pedagogy" which "brings the act of learning together with the object of learning." This synthesis demands that one take as foundational the ways in which, and the conditions under which, children create meaning. It requires that pedagogues both take seriously children's perspectives and recognize that education is always a normative process, one saturated by un-cognized ideologies which are "like sand at a picnic - they get into everything."

All those who seek to understand the relationships between society, human development, and education will profit from this book. It provides a wonderful tool for thinking about how to organize children's experience in the historically evolving crises of our times so that our grandchildren's grand children may have a human world into which they may develop.

Michael Cole, University of California, San Diego, USA