Child Development and Everyday Action

Interdisciplinary Research between Cultural-Historical Anthropology and Cultural-Historical Psychology

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Fachbereich 2 - Universität Siegen
INEDD - International Education Doctorate Program - DFG
2nd International Symposium of Cultural-Historical Anthropology and Cultural-Historical Psychology:

Child Development and Everyday Action in Changing Educational Institutions

Thursday, 6th December 2007, 12.30 to 17.30 (Center of SiZe)
Pre-conference Working Group Sessions, 10.30 to 12.30

Anna Chronaki & Magda Damiani & Mariane Hedegaard
Michalis Kontopodis & Gabrielle Ivinson
Dorle Klika, Imbke Behnken & Wolfgang Wörster
Falk Seeger & Seth Chaiklin & Bernd Fichtner
Maria Aparecida Perez & Maria Florentina Camerini & Maria Benites

Opening, 13.30 to 14.00
Richard Huisinga (Dean of Faculty of Education and Psychology), Bernd Fichtner & Michalis Kontopodis

 

Dealing with Recent Problems & Challenges of Public Education I

1st Panel (14.00-15.30)
Papers & reciprocal commentaries:
Imbke Behnken, University of Siegen - The ‚new' childhood research-towards a new methodological direction
Mariane Hedegaard, University of Copenhagen - Minority children's development of cultural identity: Cultural differences in conceptions and practice between home and school as conditions for children's identity formation
External commentary: Falk Seeger, University of Bielefeld


2nd Panel (16.00-17.30)
Magda Floriana Damiani, Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Brazil - "Without our Meetings the school ceases to exist. There is no way it can survive": Case Study of a collaborative school
Anna Chronaki, University of Thessaly, Greece - An entry to Greek roma kids' ‘Learning identities': encouraging hybridity & dialogicality in maths classroom
Commentary: Bernd Fichtner, Universität Siegen

Christmas Bazaar, Siegen

Friday, 7th December 2007, 9.30 to 18.30
Theoretical & Methodological Issues
1st Panel (9.30-11.00)
Papers & reciprocal commentaries:
Martin Hildebrand-Nilshon & Falk Seeger, FU Berlin & University of Bielefeld - Sharing and shared meaning: Bottom-up versus top-down
Seth Chaiklin, Bath University, UK - The role of practice in cultural-historical science


2nd Panel (11.15-12.45)
Dorle Klika, Universität Siegen - Biography written in bodies
Haydee Winkler, Free University Berlin - Motherhood Constellations of First-Time Mothers - a Cultural Comparison
Commentary: Martin Hildebrand-Nilshon, FU Berlin

Dealing with Recent Problems & Challenges of Public Education II

 

1st Panel (14.00-15.30)
Papers & reciprocal commentaries:
Michalis Kontopodis, Humboldt University Berlin
Gabrielle Ivinson, Cardiff School of Social Sciences, UK - Towards a relational-processual approach to development & education (2 Papers)


2nd Panel (16.00-17.30)
Maria Florentina Camerini, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Rio de Janeiro - PUC/RJ - Exclusion and Inclusion - A project within Brasilien favelas, a short evaluation.
Maria Aparecida Perez, General Secretary of Education, São Paulo - Unified Education Centers in favelas of Sao Paulo: a community and their experience of the world - Children as agents of their own history
Commentaries: Maria Benites, University of Siegen

Dance & Music Performance (17:30-18:00)
Is it me- we or we- we? A poetical research into shared movement
Bettina Mainz & Frank Henn

Saturday, 8th December 2007, 8.30 to 10.45



Conclusion & General Discussion
Anna Stetsenko, City University New York - Conference Overview & General Comments I
Marie-Cécile Bertau, University of München - Conference Overview & General Comments II
Michalis Kontopodis & Bernd Fichtner - Dealing with Difference. Socio-cultural & Relational Approaches to the Study of Children & Childhood. Future Perspectives & Book Publication

http://www.iscar.org/de/culthistanthpsy
www.inedd.uni-siegen.de

Abstracts

4.1 General Observation & Feedback
Anna Stetsenko & Marie-Cécile Bertau

Anna Stetsenko is Professor and Head of the PhD Program in Developmental Psychology at The Graduate Center City University New York. Her research is concerned with developing cultural-historical activity theory (with roots in Vygotsky-Leontiev-Luria works) combining knowledge of its diverse international contexts and interpretations. She focuses on learning and development, development of mind and language, the self, gender, epistemology and history of psychology, re-conceptualizing these topics from the standpoint of activity theory.

Selected Publications:
Stetsenko, A. (2005). The birth of consciousness: Early stages in the development of systems of meanings [Rozhdenie soznanija: rannie etapi v razvitii sistemi znachenij]. Moscow: CheRo Press.
Robbins, D., & Stetsenko, A. (2002) (Eds.). Vygotsky's psychology: Voices from the past and present. NY: Nova Science Press.
Stetsenko, A. (1999). Social interaction, cultural tools, and the zone of proximal development: In search of a synthesis. In M. Hedegaard, S. Chaiklin, S. Boedker, & U. J. Jensen (Eds.), Activity theory and social practice. Proceedings of the ISCRAT 1998: Keynote speeches and panels (pp. 235-253). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.

See also: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/psychology/developmental/Anna.htm

Marie-Cécile Bertau is Staff scientist at the Institute for Phonetics and Speech Processing, at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. She is interested in the socio-historical school of former Soviet psychology (Vygotsky, Leont'ev, Luria, Gal'perin), especially Vygotsky's thinking. Her work deals mainly with development and the relation of speaking and thinking, with inner speech and problem-solving. She is also interested in approaches in psychology and linguistics grounded in a dialogical epistemology, and their precursors: L.P. Jakubinsky, V.N. Voloshinov, M.M. Bakhtin and works on developing a dialogically founded concept of language as well as modeling the self as a dialogical process, especially in regard to ontogenesis.

Selected publications:
Bertau, M.-C. & Gonçalves, M. (eds.) (in press). International Journal for Dialogical Science (IJDS), Special Issue on the Developmental Origins of the Dialogical Self. IJDS
Bertau, M.-C. (in press). Encountering objects and others as a means of passage. Culture & Psychology, 13(2).
Bertau, M.-C., Werani, A. & Kegel, G. (Eds.) (2005), Psycholinguistische Studien 2. Aachen: shaker.

See also: https://ssl-id.de/bertau.de/en/


4.2 The „new“ childhood research: towards a new methodological direction
Imbke Behnken

My presentation will draw on recent research of the Center for Research in Childhood, Adolescence and Lifecourse and outline a new direction on childhood research, which brings together ethnographical principles and historical analysis. This research direction focuses on the dramatic changes and transformation processes which have affected the development of the younger generation, relations between the generations, and human life stories globally, regionally and in various national cultures in the 20th und 21st centuries. The disciplinary basis for this is Pedagogy, which is understood as a social and cultural science. Modernization is seen as a multi-layered, jeapardous and conflictive societal process, whose consequences to a large extent must be dealt with by affected cultures and groups themselves, and in which they must find meaning in their lives. As a result, the research of the Center concentrates on the perspectives of groups affected by modernization and asks for their strategies for coping and imbuing meaning, as well as the subjective and cultural costs and the risks of biographical failure.

Imbke Behnken (Dr. phil) is scientific associate at the Department of Education of University of Siegen and the director of the research archive ‚Childhood – Adolescence’ of the Center for Research in Childhood, Adolescence and Lifecourse, Siegen, Germany. She is interested in historical, qualitative and biographic childhood and youth research. Her last book „Urbane Spiel- und Straßenwelten“ (Urban play- and street- worlds) (Juventa, 2006) reconstructs through witnesses’ narrations how public spaces and streets were used as playgrounds and lifeworlds of children in the first half of the 20th century.

Further publications:
Behnken, Imbke; Messner, Rudolf; Rosebrock, Cornelia & Zinnecker, Jürgen (1997). Lesen und Schreiben aus Leidenschaft. Jugendkulturelle Inszenierungen von Schriftkultur. Juventa: Weinheim/ München.
Behnken, Imbke & Zinnecker, Jürgen (Eds.) (2001): Kinder. Kindheit. Lebensgeschichte - Ein Handbuch. Kallmeyer: Seelze/Velber.
See also: http://www2.uni-siegen.de/~zse/English/start-engl.htm

4.3 Exclusion and Inclusion - A project within Brasilien favelas, a short evaluation
Paper by Maria Florentina Camerini
Commentary by Maria Benites

The presentation gives insight into my work and research within two communities in Rio de Janeiro/Brazil. Goup meetings for children and youths have been established, as an outcome of 25-years long work with young families. By exercising activities such as athletics, music and theater and, thus, by developing new abilities the children were supposed to gain higher self-esteem. The courses were each followed by a group talk with psychology trainees. These meetings were intended to mobilize the readiness of the groups to solve joint problems by mutual discussion and reflection. For this purpose the group coordinators used different types of intervention including videotaping group discussions and working out strategies for the solution of problems. My presentation will draw on this experience and provide the ground for broader reflection on intervention practices and actual social and educational problems.

Maria Florentina Camerini is Professor at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Rio de Janeiro.

Maria Benites is scientific coordinator of the International Doctorate in Education University Siegen and the Vygotskij Institute Sao Paulo, Brazil. She works on research projects on “Contemporary Arts” and the “Relation of Arts and Learning”.
See also: http://www.inedd.de, http://www.janelasparaomundo.org

4.4 The role of practice in cultural-historical science
Paper by Seth Chaiklin
Commentary by M. Hilderband-Nilshon & F. Seeger (s. abstract 4.8)

In a 1927 manuscript (on the historical meaning of the crisis in psychology), Vygotsky promotes the importance of ‘practice’ in forming the methodology of psychological science, and gives applied psychology the leading role in the development of psychology. This manuscript was first published in Russian in 1983 (and translated to German, 1985, Spanish, 1990, and English, 1997). As a historical fact, the international reception and application of cultural-historical ideas during the 1980s and 1990s developed with little or no explicit consideration of the methodological arguments formulated in this manuscript, and the cultural-historical research traditions established during this period have not usually returned to this conceptual source to consider its significance in relation to the further development of the tradition. In my view, many researchers who use the cultural-historical tradition seem to implicitly reproduce conceptual logics that come from other social scientific traditions, in part because they do not consider the implications of practice for formulating the logic of research. My chapter first presents Vygotsky's arguments about the role of practice in psychological research, elaborates some of the epistemological and methodological implications of this theoretical position, and then gives a short presentation of the idea of practice-developing research as one illustration of a cultural-historical research approach that reflects some of the implications of Vygotsky's analysis. Key assumptions in practice-developing research are: (a) it is possible to formulate a theoretical analysis of a particular practice, (b) which can be used to guide the formulation of tasks for practitioners, which (c) have productive or developmental consequences for a practitioner’s relation to their practice. The analysis of practice is grounded in theory of activity, while the formulation of tasks are motivated by considerations about their relations and consequences for individual development of activity. An example of practice-developing research – development of instruction for nursing students – is presented with a focus on exemplifying the role of practice in research.

Seth Chaiklin (Dr. phil) is a Lecturer at the Department of Education, University of Bath, UK. He has been trained as psychologist and has done research on mathematical problem-solving, subject-matter learning in natural science, history, and physics, and also some work with cultural minorities and development of societal relations. His current research interests are theoretical conceptions for describing and analysing practice, and strategies for the development of professional practice. Since 2002 Chaiklin is president of the International Society for Cultural and Activity Research.

Selected Publications
Chaiklin, S. (2007). Modular or integrated? — An activity perspective for designing and evaluating computer-based systems. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 22, 179-197.
Hedegaard, M., & Chaiklin, S. (2005). Radical-local teaching and learning. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press
Chaiklin, S. & Lave, J. (eds.) (1993). Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
See also: http://www.bath.ac.uk/education/profiles/schaiklin.html

4.5 An entry to Greek roma kids’ ‘Learning identities’: encouraging hybridity and dialogicality in the maths classroom
Paper by Anna Chronaki
Commentary by Kathrin Audehm

Perhaps, today, we are in a position of acknowledging the complexities we live through our educational institutions. This is due to the fact that local communities cannot claim anymore their homogeneity in a place-bound culture, since global practices and international policies require mobility across cultural and societal frontiers. Schools therefore need to face the fact that on the one hand, classrooms are multicultural and on the other, teachers (or curricula) are not the only ones who can regulate and control the fate of individuals in each multicultural classroom. As far as mathematics education is concerned, there is currently an increasing awareness that children who belong to minority groups still opt out from mainstream school mathematics courses. Predominant perspectives concerning the generally poor performance of minority pupils have mainly focused attention on what individuals cannot achieve, and assume that the problem resides in genetic, cognitive or cultural deficits. The Roma (or Gypsy) community in Europe is perhaps the most stigmatized as far as school-based activity and educational achievement is concerned. Roma girls, in particular, experience extreme marginalization and exclusion from educational practices and are being produced as ‘other’ not only from.

The purpose of my presentation is to discuss the role played by a teaching experiment in a mathematics classroom located in a small city in Greece. A main objective in writing this research text is to explore the possibility of engaging with a hybrid narrative concerning the ‘learning identities’ produced by/ for Greek Roma kids. Taking into account that dominant public narratives mainly construct fixed identities for Gypsy people (or Tsiganee) and describe in very restricted terms their possibilities for school learning, the main scope of this teaching experiment was to attempt a provocative challenge on the discursive basis of such storied identities. As such, the aim was to encourage gypsy and non-gypsy kids not only in taking a leading role in using Roma funds of knowledge as a resource for teaching/learning, but mainly as a means for facilitating dialogicality (i.e. enabling the incorporation of multiple voices) in the course of their narrative experiences in the mathematics classroom.

Anna Chronaki (Dr. phil) is Associate Professor at the University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece. Her research deals with social, cultural and political aspects of mathematics education.

Recent Book Publication:
Anna Chronaki & Iben Maj Christiansen (2005) (editors). Challenging Perspectives in Mathematics Communication. Information Age Publishing.

Kathrin Audehm (Dr. phil) studied pedagogy, philosphy, and educational science in Leipizig, Berlin, and Dundee and now works at the Center of Excellence Cultures of the Performative, Department of Education, Free University Berlin.

Recent Book Publication:
Audehm K. (2007). Erziehung bei Tisch. Zur sozialen Magie eines Familienrituals (Education on the table. On the social magic of a family ritual). Bielefeld:Transcript

4.6 “Without our meetings the school ceases to exist. There is no way it can survive!” Case study of a collaborative school
Magda Floriana Damiani

This paper presents the findings of a case-study carried out within a research project aimed at investigating the genesis and the advantages of collaborative cultures in schools. In such cultures, people systematically share interests and knowledge, take joint decisions, feel responsible for the quality of their actions and value group work. The case-study was focused on a medium-size public school (administered by the city educational authority) which is famous for the quality of education they provide to their students. It presents low failure rates and is characterized by its innovative projects (such as interdisciplinarity, dance, theatre, mothers’ club, garbage recycling, among others). Staff is very proud of their school and makes a point on publicizing its work in academic events. A large proportion of teachers had gone back to the university for graduate studies, motivated by the inquisitive climate of the institution. They have organized weekly meetings to discuss administrative matters, study and plan school policies and actions - which is an uncommon action in Brazilian schools. Data has been collected through observations of the weekly staff meetings, and through semi-structures interviews with the head and the deputy head of the school, besides a group of teachers chosen at random. It has been content-analyzed and interpreted under the light of Socio-historical theory, which emphasizes the role of inter-psychological activities for learning and the role of culture in psychological development. The findings suggest that the high level performance of the school is related to the collaborative culture that prevails in it. The meetings take place in a playful atmosphere, although it is not free from conflicts and disputes. The collaborative activities started around 1990, when staff decided to take action against the “bad fame” school was developing in town. They started by organizing joint meals, on Saturdays, to make plans. Since then, meetings became essential for the school.

Magda Floriana Damiani (Dr. phil) is professor at the Universidade Federal de Pelotas in Brazil. She has accomplished her PhD in UK and published on cultural-historical aspects of learning and education mainly in Portuguese.

4.7 Minority children’s development of cultural identity: Cultural differences in conceptions and practice between home and school as conditions for children’s identity formation
Mariane Hedegaard

Cultural identity is seen as an aspect of children’s psychic development that is created through their participation in the everyday life in institutional practice. The primary institutions in childhood are home, daycare and school. These conceptions is based on a theory of children’s development as dependent on the conditions and demands they meet in home, daycare and school within the different practices they participate in. Both the general conception that guides daily practice and the children’s concrete ways of acting in their historical concrete family and school creates the practice traditions of which a specific child’s life becomes a part. Development is seen as based on how problems are tackled and how they proceed as part of daily life activities. In this development the interconnections between a child’s social relations, capacities and motives are central.

In the concrete project young person, from Turkish cultural minority families that have just finished 9 years in the Danish school have been interviewed about their experience and conceptions about school life - subject matter, friends and teachers. The analyses focus on the problems they have experienced as children of emigrants parents and how these problems have contributed to their identity of who they are today: which type of problems can be seen as developmental and which as hindrance - for their feeling of happiness over who they are - and for creating future plans for education and life.

Mariane Hedegaard is Professor of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen. Her research focus is on child development in a cultural-historical perspective and the formation of personality (i. e. concepts, identity, and motives) through school teaching. She is also interested in the position of Middle Eastern children in Danish schools, their learning, development and conceptions about school life, as well as the teaching of social science to minority children.

Recent book publication:
Hedegaard, M. & Chaiklin, S. (2005). Radical-local teaching and learning. A cultural-historical approach. Arhus University press.

4.8 Two lines of development – Reconsidering and updating Vygotskij.
Paper by Martin Hildebrand-Nilshon & Falk Seeger
Commentary by S. Chaiklin (s. abstract 4.4)
In this paper we will pick up some lines of discussion started in our paper from the first symposium 2006 in Berlin. In particular, we will have a closer look at how our critique and elaboration of Vygotskij’s famous example of the development of the pointing gesture is situated within more recent developments in developmental psychology, comparative psychology and analytical philosophy of language. Experiments concerning joint attention and sharing of intentions of great apes and human babies show more similarities than differences between species. In addition, converging research results have revealed that basic cognitive prerequisites for physical, mathematical, language specific and social performances are present in humans soon after birth. We will analyse if these facts constitute evidence for the two-lines-model of development (sensu Vygotkij). Interestingly enough, we did find material for our analysis in the writings of Wittgenstein, Davidson and other exponents of the Philosophy of Mind supporting the ideas of two lines of development in human language. We will discuss the controversial issue with Vygotskij in mind.

Martin Hildebrand-Nilshon is professor for developmental psychology at the Free University Berlin. His research focuses on developmental and cultural psychology, especially on the ontogenetical development of language and on pre-linguistic and linguistic communication in different cultural contexts. Martin Hildebrand-Nilshon is co-editor of the series Internationale Studien zur Tätigkeitstheorie (IST, International Studies on Activity Theory).
Selected Book Publication:
Hildebrand-Nilshon, M., Kim, Ch.-W. & Papadopoulos, D. (Hrsg.) (2002). Kultur (in) der Psychologie. Über das Abenteuer des Kulturbegriffs in der psychologischen Theoriebildung. Heidelberg: Asanger

Falk Seeger (Dr. phil) is senior lecturer in psychology and mathematics education at the Institute of Mathematics Education at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. His current research focuses on external representations and on computer-mediated communication.

Recent Book Publication:
Michael H.G. Hoffmann, Johannes Lenhard & Falk Seeger (Eds) (2005). Activity and Sign: Grounding Mathematics Education. Springer.

4.9 Biography written in bodies
Dorle Klika

Biographical narration develops throughout adolescence. Often young people are able to reflect upon their life story and portray it as a whole only after completing their school education. In our DFG research project we study how new students construct their educational biographies: which educational processes in their own lives lead young women and men to choose a pedagogical study? How do they develop preferences for certain subjects? The choice for certain majors or vocations cannot be observed independently of the development of self-image and therefore correspond with other processes such as doing-gender. In the project the photographic self-portraits of students as well as biographical interviews are examined. The capacity of ‘triangulation’ to analyse text and picture material as documents of self-portrayal is tested, whereby the biographical interviews and the photographs are both understood as such documents. Through the initially separate analysis of the text and picture materials, a surprisingly high and unexpected resemblance was determined in the high degree of correspondence independently-constructed examples. This means that the students’ biographical themes/habitualisations are depicted in a similar way in both the interviews and the photographs—a result surprising from a methodological and contextual standpoint and quite encouraging for the problems of triangulation. The presentation will introduce first results of the project.

Dorle Klika (Dr. phil) is Professor at the Department of Education, University of Siegen. She specializes in gender and biography research in educational science.

Recent book publication:
Klika Dorle, Glaser, Edith & Prengel, Annedore (Eds.) (2004). Handbuch Gender und Erziehungswissenschaft. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt.

4.10 Towards a relational-processual approach to development & education
Michalis Kontopodis & Gabrielle Ivinson

In the past several years, interest in what can be called ‚relational-processual’ approaches has been growing steadily. Drawing mainly on the works of classic thinkers such as A.N. Whitehead (1841- 1947), F. Nietzsche, (1844-1900), H. Bergson, (1859-1941) and Ch. Pierce, (1839-1914) philosophers (Deleuze, Badiou), philosophers of science (Latour, Stengers), and feminist/ and queer scholars (Haraway, Barad) have recently tried to politicize epistemology and bring together social and natural-scientific approaches. These approaches redefine the problems of duration and process. They examine the issue of generation of difference and novelty as well as discuss sociality and collectivity in terms of multiplicity, networks, and/or rhizomes. In doing so, they identify themselves as non-modern, in contrast to modernist and post-modernist approaches.

Our complementary papers investigate if and how relational-processual approaches can be of relevance for the study of developmental-psychological phenomena and educational issues. The following questions will be dealt with: (How) can the relational-processual epistemology be related to semiotic and other relational developmental-psychological approaches (Vygotsky, cultural psychology)? Is there any complementarity between sociological-educational approaches (Bernstein) and the relational-processual way of thinking? How can the relational-processual epistemology be made relevant for current educational problems and challenges? How can relational-processual discourses be related to empirical research materials? What are the challenges and limitations of such an approach? Our presentations should illuminate different ways of understanding the notion of ‘difference’ and ‘othering’, thus contributing to the general discussion on cultural-historical approaches and the study of children and childhood.

Michalis Kontopodis is a research associate at the Research Cluster "Preventive Self" at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He has just written his PhD in Psychology at the Free University of Berlin. His research interests concern Cultural Psychology, Anthropology, Critical Psychology and Science & Technology Studies.

Recent Publications:
Kontopodis, Michalis (2007, January). Fabrication of Times and Micro-Formation of Discourse at a Secondary School [88 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [On-line Journal], 8(1), Art. 11. Available at: http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/1-07/07-1-11-e.htm
Kontopodis, M. (in press). Human Development as Semiotic-material Ordering: Sketching a Relational Developmental Psychology. Critical Social Studies.

Gabrielle Ivinson (Dr. phil) is a lecturer in psychology in the Cardiff University School of Social Sciences. She is a social and developmental psychologist whose main interest is in the way knowledge is socially represented and constructed with a particular focus on gender and knowledge in education. Currently she is researching pedagogic strategies in secondary schools which involves ethnographic work in secondary school classrooms using various observation methods and in-depth interviews with students about undertaking tasks teachers set them in lessons.
Recent Book Publication:
Ivinson, G. and Murphy, P. (2007) Rethinking Single Sex Teaching: Engendering Critical Pedagogy. Berkshire, England: Mc-Graw Hill/Open University Press.

4.11 Unified Education Centers in favelas of Sao Paulo: a community and their experience of the world – Children as agents of their own history
Paper by Maria Aparecida Perez
Commentary by Maria Benites

Social exclusion can no longer be regarded as mere economic marginalization. It is much more a complex segregation process, visible but also invisible, taking place at all levels: income height, political participation, cultural identity, gender, sexual identity, and last but not least the access to knowledge. On the other hand, social actions and relations depend on the territorial context: the acknowledgment of the "self" through the "other" and of the "other" through oneself determines the social relations in a given territory. Within this context, school is generally the only social space being offered to all by the municipality for the re-conquest of local, public and popular territories. Thus, the re-appropriation of such critical spaces in order to combat social exclusion implies restructuring local educational processes. This is why a first step against social exclusion must be to (re)define the role of school as a center of divulgation of learning experiences, involving all actors of the school community and, more generally, of the local society. The relations of the institutions with the local social actors as well as among themselves must be valorized and strengthened in order to build up a network of protection for children and adolescents, within which the community plays a responsible and active part. Such inclusive education relies on two premises: acceptance and respect for the individual differences, and the collective striving for development opportunities. Both help reducing the inequalities of social relations.

The CEU-centers (Centro Educacional Unificado), which have been built in the poorest living areas of São Paulo, Brazil, have been conceived as an attempt to put these theoretical ideas in practice. They offer a wide range of intellectual and practical activities all day long, for schools as well as for the local population. The conception of the CEU-centers is based on the integration of various levels of action: education, culture and sports. This integrative approach shall improve learning processes of students, especially by giving them access to new information and new technologies. On a more general level, through the CEU-centers, the underprivileged can use of the municipality and its infrastructures and exercise their citizenship in an active way. According to the experience made by the CEU-centers, the promotion and participation of local actors appears to be one of the best ways to build up a network of social protection and of emancipation for the local community. The CEU-centers have therefore quickly become a new reference within the local urban landscape, a pole of creation for social relations and cultural identity. They represent an infrastructure of a new kind that leads to establish new relationships within the community and to rethink and revalorize the dialog with the own milieu.

Maria Aparecida Perez was till recently General Secretary of Education in São Paulo, Brazil.

4.12 The 5th Dimension game – a design for the age of uncertainty?
Estrid Sørensen

There are team games and games for individuals, there are all-against-all games, and zero-sum games, games with several winners or losers. There are games with pre-defined solutions and games that are open-ended. There are all kinds of different games, and each game has a different ordering (Law 1994). With ‘game’ as a semiotic metaphor we can describe life as a game of a certain ordering, and school as another game. Learning is a game, and the task of the pedagogue is to design an ordering of the learning game that is adequate for the learners and the learning environment. Following Lee’s (2001) diagnosis of our current world as an age of uncertainty, and Deleuze’s (1995) description of our society as a ‘control society’ the paper asks what learning design may be appropriate for such a condition. It takes a point of departure in the well-known, CHAT founded 5th Dimension learning design (Cole 1998), and applies an Actor-Network-Theory approach to analyse the ordering of the 5th Dimension game. On the basis of detailed analysis of the artefacts involved in 5th Dimension, the paper argues that the 5th Dimension is designed to create immutability (a certain version of sustainability). Questioning the adequacy of the ordering of the 5th Dimension game, the paper suggests a reinvention of the 5th Dimension that allows for more mutable orderings.

The work of Estrid Sørensen brings together education and science and technology studies. She has accomplished her PhD in Psychology at the University of Kopenhagen, Denkmark and works as a scientific coordinator of the Research Cluster Social Anthropology and Lifesciences at the Institute of European Ethnology of the Humboldt University Berlin.

Forthcoming Book Publication:
Sørensen Estrid (in press). Knowledge, Presense and Educational Technology, Cambridge University Press.

See also: http://www.materiality-in-action.net/

4.13 Motherhood Constellations of First-Time Mothers – a Cultural Comparison
Paper by Haydée Winkler

My work, based on Daniel N. Stern’s Theory of Motherhood Constellation (1995), compares the situation of mothers in Germany and in Uruguay and Argentina. According to the Cultural-Historical School every developmental process takes place within a cultural context. For this reason this work analyses the cultural variations of the kinds of constellations which Stern used for the description of Western, developed and post-industrial societies.

According to Stern, the transition to motherhood entails four priorities:
(1) maintaining the child’s life
(2) establishing and developing the relationship between mother and child
(3) arranging an environment which supports the mother
(4) taking on a new role by the woman after childbirth

My qualitative empirical analysis has been based on interviews with women during the first year after their giving birth. The results of the study show differences caused by socio-economic, political and societal reasons as well as by intergenerational conflicts. What can also be noticed is that, in the context of this work, cultural reasons and ethnic phenomena seem to be less important for motherhood constellations.

Haydée Winkler is a pedagogical therapist. She studies Psychology at the Free University of Berlin. She grew up in Argentina and has lived in Germany since 1988.