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Studies of children's participation in school illustrate both societal conflicts about the school and how children in school deal with quite unequal conditions when it comes to handling the conflictuality of school life. Analyses of situated interplay, coordination and conflicts between the parties involved in children's school lives (children, parents, teachers, psychologists, etc.) can elucidate the connections between intersubjective means of making things work in everyday practice, and historical struggles relating to the school as a societal institution. These dynamics reveal general conflicts over education policy, the distribution of responsibility and in which directions to change society. From a social practice perspective, and based on empirical studies of children's everyday lives, this article discusses conceptual challenges concerning how to grasp the ways persons constitute the conditions for the acting of each other in a situated interplay in which, together, they must deal with shared societal and historical issues and problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses theoretical challenges in conceptualising the dialectical relationship between historical conditions and the situated interplay between people in concrete everyday practice. The concept of conflict may help us move beyond tendencies within psychology to separate history and situated practice, structure and activity, and micro- and macroprocesses – and to regard social life as unambiguous or as governed through hegemony. Research on the everyday social life of schools describes societal conflicts about education and how school children deal with unequal conditions when handling the conflictuality of their everyday lives. Analyses of coordination and conflicts between various parties (e.g. children, parents, teachers and psychologists) elucidate connections between intersubjective efforts to make things work in everyday practice and historical struggles related to the school as a social institution. Concepts are required that enable understanding of these processes as historical and political, driven by intersubjectivity related to concrete dilemmas, connected to personal and collaborative conduct of everyday life – processes we term the politics of everyday life. From a social practice perspective, we discuss how to grasp the ways in which people constitute the conditions for each other in a situated interplay in which they deal with common problems and – through these activities – also produce history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can theoretical psychology develop concepts for analyzing connections between subjective dilemmas in everyday life and contradictions in historical social practice? We discuss this question by analyzing conflicts related to problems in children's school lives. One frequent conflict is whether school problems should be explored in relation to individual deficits and deviations, family background, how the school is organized, the societal task of education, etc. However, such conflicts often become concealed by psychological concepts, which contributes to individualization, categorization, and the displacement of problems. We argue that theoretical development of the concept of conflict may support the widespread endeavors to transcend such reductionism by developing contextual and dialectical understandings of personal dilemmas. Through examples from empirical studies, the article illustrates how political conflicts concerning societal institutions (such as schools) form part of both intersubjective conflicts about common matters and personal conflicts in the conduct of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parental collaboration is both promoted for enhancing children's performance and criticized for reproducing educational inequality. The issue of parental collaboration, thus, presents an opportunity to discuss theoretical differences in current debates about education, notably the educational consequences of social background and governmentality. The article emphasizes the conflictual nature of children's school lives and analyzes the social interplay between the involved subjects, who are connected through their engagement in common matters and concerns. Our analysis challenges approaches inspired by Bourdieu that analyze the social reproduction of inequality in terms of discrepancies between parental style and the culture of the school. It also raises questions about the Foucauldian perspective which regards policies and practices of parental collaboration as means to govern parents. Through a discussion of these analyses, the article shows how different ways of conceptualizing parental collaboration offer different opportunities for organizing collaboration and dealing with the historical problems of the school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to ongoing discussions in psychology about how to explore psychological phenomena as embedded in social practice. While recognising the valuable contributions from ethnographic methodology, we argue that ethnographic explorations in psychology can be developed further in order to shed light on psychological problems in practice. As an exemplary empirical field, we draw on studies of the everyday life of children and how children’s problems in school can be understood and explored as part of their conduct of everyday life across contexts and together with others. Through concrete examples, we elucidate an approach where theoretical concepts guide how researchers conduct observations. It is concluded that such situated observations are at odds with a tendency in psychology to focus separately on isolated individual characteristics. Situated observations thus shift awareness from categorisations of individual children to conflictual social interplay between persons in social practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our knowledge about children comes from different people, such as parents, professionals, experts and conflicting researchers. The field of children is characterised by a plurality of interconnected contexts, parties, perspectives and different kinds of knowledge and professionalism. In this article, knowledge and professionalism are discussed from the basis of a study where children and their adults (parents, pedagogues, teachers, psychologists and consultants) were observed and interviewed during the children's trajectory from kindergarten through nursery class into the first years at school. The material illustrates how knowledge is situated and differentiated; it originates in various locations in particular structures of practice. In this case, knowledge is connected to different positions in a conflictual division of labour. It is discussed how these conflicts may contribute to processes of segregation of children. If professionalism should rather contribute to the participation of the children in their multiple contexts of life, knowledge must be exchanged and compounded. And in relation to that, we must find ways to take children's perspectives as an integral point of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]