Beyond Pathologizing Education: Advancing a Cultural Historical Methodology for the Re-positioning of Children as Succes
The field of early years education has in recent times received increasing policy and research attention due in part to the growing evidence that investing early in education increases the lifelong chances of children. Emerging from this focus on early ed
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Beyond Pathologizing Education: Advancing a Cultural Historical Methodology for the Re-positioning of Children as Successful Learners Marilyn Fleer and Fernando González Rey Abstract The field of early years education has in recent times received increasing policy and research attention due in part to the growing evidence that investing early in education increases the lifelong chances of children. Emerging from this focus on early education has also been a multidisciplinary approach (e.g. educators, speech therapists, psychologists, social workers) for supporting children and families. Unfortunately, in some situations this has meant that particular theoretical models for interpreting children’s behaviours at school have pathologised their everyday interactions. In this chapter we report on two case examples, where a medical model is used to explain children’s behaviours, resulting in a deficit view of the children. In contrast, we argue for a holistic conception of the child in the context of family and community for interpreting children’s behaviours in school. In drawing upon the concept of perezhivanie, communication, spaces of socialisation, emotions, and forms of subjectivation, we show how an alternative reading of the children in the case studies can be made when different theoretical and research lenses are used. We argue for the need to move away from a traditional medical model for explaining school behaviours where education becomes pathologised and children are othered, and suggest that a cultural–historical methodology allows for the reinterpretation of children who are positioned in deficit as successful learners.
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Introduction
The topic of othering has traditionally not been the focus of cultural–historical psychology. Othering is taken to mean that individual processes should not be defined as inherent to the individuals or as separate from the complex social M. Fleer (&) Monash University, Melbourne, Australia e-mail: [email protected] F. González Rey University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 M. Fleer et al. (eds.), Perezhivanie, Emotions and Subjectivity, Perspectives in Cultural-Historical Research 1, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4534-9_8
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networks in which social life takes place. Even though the topic of othering from other theoretical traditions has been studied, we believe that a cultural–historical examination of this ongoing problem can foreground the social practices and personal orientations of individuals in new ways. Through the presentation of two case studies, we make visible how a traditional medical model when used in education generally, positions children in deficit. Our focus is not on special education per se, where a medical model predominantly features (see Bottcher 2012 for a critique), but rather on general education, where a medical model appears to be increasingly being used for understanding children who interact in ways that are different to teachers’ expectations (Daniels and Hedegaard
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