Louise Bottcher – författare

This book addresses the central issue of children's social situation of development in relation to sustainability, care and imagination. The concept of sustainability is topical in current societal discussions, but much in need of further elaboration, which is provided by this book as an integrated aspect of childcare and child development. It provides an exploration of whether and how sustainability can contribute relevantly to conceptual development within the cultural-historical framework with relation to child development more broadly and care and imagination more specifically. A central question in the book is how the concept of sustainability is related to Vygotsky's writings on the zone of proximal development and the social situation of development. It takes on the current need to understand the problem of creating more sustainable societies and practices as interconnected practices for supporting the development of children as present and future sustainability-responsible citizens. This book provides a much needed theoretical elaboration of child care as a scientific concept, the practice context of care, and a wholistic conceptual approach to care.

This book introduces current theories and research on disability, and builds on the premise that disability has to be understood from the dialectical dynamics of biology, psychology, and culture over time. Based on the newest empirical research on children with disabilities, the book overcomes the limitations of the medical and social models of disability by arguing for a dialectical biopsychosocial model. The proposed model builds on Vygotsky’s cultural-historical ideas of developmental incongruence, implying that the disability emerges from the misfit between individual abilities and the cultural-historical activity settings in which the child with impairments participates. The book is a theoretical contribution to an updated understanding of disability from a psychological and educational perspective. It focuses on the first years of the life of the child with impairment, and travels through infancy, toddler, preschool and early school age, to track the developmental trajectories ofdisability through the dialectical processes of cultural, social, individual, and biological processes. It discusses a number of themes that are relevant for the early development and support for children with various types and degrees of disability through the lens of Vygotsky’s cultural-historical developmental theories. Some of the themes discussed are inclusion, mental health, communication, aids and family life.