The Integration Of A Child Into A Social World

The final reader in the Child Development in Social Context series shows how the study of child development is inevitably bound up in more ephemeral cultural ideas about the nature and needs of children and in the educational practices that rise from these ideas. Some readings point to the dangers which can arise from the meeting of science and cultural values, using for illustration studies of the role of psychological theory in reinforcing social attitudes to child care inside and outside the family. Other readings look at children's initiation into that relatively recent cultural invention, the school, and the relationship with their learning at home. There are studies of their social development in classroom and playground, with particular emphasis on ethnic relationships.

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The first textbook of its kind, Critical Educational Psychology is a forward-thinking approach to educational psychology that uses critical perspectives to challenge current ways of thinking and improve practice.

Something instructive occurred in the process of entitling the present collection. Both editor and publisher sought a simple and succinct rubric for the various pieces of work. But they rapidly and reluctantly reached the consensus that, by either intellectual or marketing criteria, the inser tion of the adjective "psychological" to qualify the noun "development" was a communicative necessity. Much to the chagrin of the develop mental psychologist, the term development still connotes-to the world at large as well as the general community of publishers, librarians, and computer archivists-the modernization of nation states. Inside and outside the university, I find that, when asked, "What are you in terested in?" I am not at liberty to reply, "The concept of development," without being absorbed immediately into a discussion of Third World studies. The approach of the present volume should be taken as an exhortation to psychologists to take the genealogy of "development'' seriously. The history of the discipline is not so different from the histo ry of the word and, as we shall discover, the concern with developmen tal progress cannot easily be separated from the urge for dominion. This volume presents a selection from the recent critical scholarship on psychological development. The emphasis is on rethinking the field of developmental psychology at the level of theory.