Overview
These papers were presented as a roundtable at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, California, 28 April, 2013.
Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) provides conceptual tools allowing scholars to simultaneously build scientific understanding and inform practice. One such conceptual tool is the idea of artifact-mediated, object-oriented action as a unit of analysis. Each paper in this session uses this concept to understand how learning environments for children and their educators can be enriched. This common focus integrates diverse contexts (centers and home-based care; USA and Australia) and foci (associations between models of caregiving and the organization of daily routine activities, teacher interpretations of children’s use of digital media, and a professional development intervention). Thus, the session illustrates the potential utility of CHAT for comparative understanding and for informing practice through different but simultaneous perspectives across temporal contexts.
Participants
The session included papers by three authors and a discussion by Alison Wishard (University of California, San Diego).
- The handout of the slides we used during the roundtable session: Download
- Cultural Models as Mediators of What is Possible in a Day by Holli Tonyan (California State University, Northridge): Download
- Integrating Digital Technologies, Traditional Play, and Popular Culture in Early Childhood Curriculum: Toward a New Cultural Tool for Practice by Suzy Edwards (Australian Catholic University): Download
- Affordances and Constraints Facing 'Educational Leaders' in Australian Early Childhood Centres by Joce Nuttall (Australian Catholic University): Download
Thank you for your interest. To contact any of the authors, please click on her name to find her professional web page with contact information.