Sustainability, Care, Play and the Zone of Proximal Development: A Developmental Perspective on Childhood

This book addresses the central issue of children’s social situation of development in relation to sustainability, care and imagination. The concept of sustainability is topical in current societal discussions, but much in need of further elaboration, which is provided by this book as an integrated aspect of childcare and child development. It provides an exploration of whether and how sustainability can contribute relevantly to conceptual development within the cultural-historical framework with relation to child development more broadly and care and imagination more specifically. A central question in the book is how the concept of sustainability is related to Vygotsky’s writings on the zone of proximal development and the social situation of development. It takes on the current need to understand the problem of creating more sustainable societies and practices as interconnected practices for supporting the development of children as present and future sustainability-responsible citizens.

This book provides a much needed theoretical elaboration of child care as a scientific concept, the practice context of care, and a wholistic conceptual approach to care.

Associate professor Louise Bøttcher is a member of the research programme Future technology, Culture and Learning. Her research interest has focused on the interplay between neurobiological and social and cultural conditions for development. Her research departs in in Vygotsky’s idea about disability as an incongruence between the natural and the cultural line of development and is aimed at the investigation and further theoretical understanding of children with disabilities and neurobiologically based impairments. A key publication is Bøttcher & Dammeyer (2016). Development and learning of young children with disabilities. A Vygotskian perspective. Springer. In her current research, she focuses on the role of communicational technologies and development of independence in young people with multiple impairments and no verbal language. She has received a textbook award and a research award.

Ditte Winther-Lindqvist, PhD, is Ass. Prof. at Danish School of Education, DPU, Aarhus University and UNESCO CHAIR in early years education and care. Dittes research is rooted in the tradition of cultural-historical developmental psychology and the wholeness approach, but she integrates insigths from philosophy in her theoretical work. In accordance with the wholeness approach to child development she aims at investigating phenomena that matter to children in their lives in context-sensitive and culturally situated ways. Research on children’s play, friendships, care, professional care and education, bereavement/loss, crisis, identity transitions are longstanding themes in her empirical and theoretical work, whereas world-care and sustainability in education is a new topic.

Mariane Hedegaard is Professor Emerita in Developmental Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She is doctorate honoris causa at the University of Pablo Olavide in Seville, Spain and she holds a senior research fellowship at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, UK. Mariane has authored, co-authored and co-edited 30 books, of which 16 of them are in English. These include: Learning and Child Development; Radical-local Teaching and Learning; Motives in Children’s Development; Studying Children; Learning, Play and Children’s Development; Children, Childhood and Everyday Life; Supporting Difficult Transitions; Children’s Exploration and Cultural Formation, Qualitative Studies of Exploration in Childhood Education and Taking Children and Young People Seriously: a Caring Relational Approach to Education. She has also written a number of articles in journals such as Mind, Culture and Activity; Culture & Psychology; Learning, Culture and Social Interaction

Laureate Professor Marilyn Fleer holds the Foundation Chair of Early Childhood Education and Development at Monash University, Australia. She was awarded the 2018 Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellowship by the Australian Research Council and was a former President of the International Society of Cultural-historical Activity Research (ISCAR). Additionally, she holds the positions of an honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education, University of Oxford, and a second professor position in the KINDKNOW Centre, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, and has been bestowed the title of Honorary professor at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. She was presented with the 2019 Ashley Goldsworthy Award for Outstanding leadership in university-business collaboration, and was recently elected as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, and inducted into the Honour Roll of Women in Victoria as a change agent.