Children’s perspective – concept and motive learning – a wholeness approach to children’s development

This article provides an extensive overview of my research on children’s learning and development, spanning over 50 years. The research is anchored in the cultural-historical tradition and phenomenology, integrating these two traditions to understand children’s development. The article discusses three central areas of research: perspective taking, concept learning, and a wholeness approach to evaluating and supporting children’s development. I emphasize the importance of taking children’s perspectives to analyze their activities and development in daily life practices. Methods oriented to children’s perspectives are formulated to evaluate and support their development as whole persons. The article also argues for integrating the phenomenological focus on children’s emotional experiences with the cultural-historical conception of children’s cognitive and motive development. One substantive point presented is the conclusion that spatial perspective taking is a learned conceptual process rather than a maturational one. Another key point is the development of the Double Move approach to education, which integrates children’s everyday knowledge with subject matter concepts to enhance their learning and motivation.