Lasse Lipponen: Cultural-historical approach to emotions in institutional early childhood education and care
In educational sciences, including early childhood education and care (ECEC), it is common to examine emotions as psychological constructs, and as an external force on, and distinct from the activity. Following cultural-historical approach, I take an alternative perspective on theorizing and researching emotions. I understand emotions as constituted by people, artifacts, and other matters that make up cultures, and their social-material practices. A cultural-historical approach stresses the connection of individual experiences and practices with the cultural sphere and vice versa. Based on a video-observation method and a long-term fieldwork, I will demonstrate how children and adults configure grief in institutional ECEC, and how grief serves a condition of learning, but also how it is an object of learning, part of the local moral order and normative practices.