ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to present an interpretive method by which the researcher might study possible developmental novelties emerging out of child-environment reciprocity in activity settings. By activity settings we mean temporally and culturally re-occurring events organized in relation to institutional arrangements for children (home, kindergarten, school, afterschool activities, sport clubs, cultural activities, etc.). Children participate in many different activity settings, like getting ready for kindergarten in the morning (home), playing with toys in the playground (kindergarten), having a lesson (school), playing baseball or soccer, riding horses, playing an instrument or dancing (club activities), etc. Researching a child’s development therefore means researching participation across the variety of activity settings in the everyday life of the child. This wholeness perspective puts into focus when and how a child participates in what activities and how she experiences/feels about her participation. By doing so, it hopefully becomes possible to study the personal trajectories (Dreier, 2008) and development of the child in situ, that is, in and across the child-environment reciprocity of the activity settings; this unit of analysis hopefully also helps reintegrate what is often studied in fragments: social development, cognitive development, etc. The chapter seeks to argue for a methodological and theoretical wholeness approach to the study of development (see also Hedegaard et al., in press).
