Time dimensions in children's perception of their own development

Authors

  • Pernille Hviid

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7322/jhgd.19792

Keywords:

Development, Time, Timing, Children

Abstract

In children's understanding of their own developmental processes, socio-cultural dimensions of time have a significant importance. The study investigated, from the perspective of the child, the emergence of novelty in the interdependent system formed by the child and his/her surroundings, based on the perceptions of five 12-year-old children. This paper deals specifically with the relationship between the developing children and their meeting with and way of dealing with different dimensions of time in the spaces they lived in, the routes they followed in the landscape of childhood and the persons that in their view guided them along the way. The children moved back and forth in time, investigated their past, present and future expectations and their own developmental changes. These dimensions were introduced as 'cultural time' and 'social time'. Cultural time consisted of time built in the institutional landscape of childhood. These structures, it is argued, move children back and forth, transforming them from 'small' into 'big' and into 'small' again. Social time consisted of local discourses regarding age-appropriate engagements and actions, here investigated amongst peers. Although children are not determined by these interrelated time dimensions, it is evident that they reflect and deal with them, producing their own personal developmental time.

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References

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Published

2006-08-01

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 2 (2006)

Section

Original Research

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