Reconstructing Agency in Developmental and Educational Psychology - Inclusive Systems As Concentric Space

List of contents

Acknowledgments Part I: Setting the Scene: Key Features of a Concentric Spatial Turn for Developmental and Educational Psychology: Agency and Inclusive Systems. 1. Introduction: From Empty Space to Patterned Space through Concentric and Diametric Spatial Systems. 2. Interactive Differences between Concentric and Diametric Spatial Systems: Beyond Bronfenbrenner’s and Lévi-Strauss’ Concentric Systems. 3. Agency as Movement between Mediating Conditions of Concentric and Diametric Spatial Systems at Different System Levels: Key Problems of Agency. Part II Spatial Transitions for Inclusive Systems: Reconstructing Resilience, Early School Leaving and Bullying. 4. From Resilience to Inclusive Systems: Search in Psychology for an Agency of Mediating Conditions. 5. Challenging the diametric spatial condition underpinning ‘the other’ to change systems of exclusion for early school leaving prevention: Agency as movement from diametric to concentric spatial systems. 6. The emotional-relational turn for early school leaving prevention as promotion of concentric spatial-relational systems to challenge diametric spatial systems: Beyond emotion as the other for inclusive systems in education. 7. The emotional-relational turn for early school leaving prevention as promotion of concentric spatial-relational systems to challenge diametric spatial systems: Selected and indicated prevention strategies of system supports for moderate risk and chronic need. 8. A Spatial Hermeneutic Approach to System Change for Transitions and Developmental Cascades. Part III Concentric and Diametric Spaces as Deep Structures of Experience. 9. Spatial Phenomenology and a Protolanguage of Concentric and Diametric Space. 10. Intrapsychic Systems and a Protolanguage of Concentric and Diametric Space.

About the author

Paul Downes is Associate Professor of Psychology, School of Human Development, Institute of Education, Dublin City University. He has over 100 international peer reviewed publications across areas of psychology, education, philosophy, law, anthropology and social policy and has given keynotes and invited presentations in 29 countries.

Summary

This book reconstructs the foundations of developmental and educational psychology and fills an important gap in the field by arguing for a specific spatial turn so that human growth, experience and development focus not only on time but space.

Additional text

"On the background of the decline of theory in psychology, Paul Downes provides a highly original and philosophically informed interpretation of developmental and educational thought that opens new possibilities for research and practice. The book is a unique piece of empirically and experientially grounded theorizing that does justice to the complexity of what it means to become human. His call for a spatial turn and his focus on agency identify lacunae in the dominant developmental and educational frameworks, while opening new horizons on significant topics such as resilience, bullying, or early school leaving. Downes provides an intellectual tour de force through the most important theories in developmental psychology, making the case for spatial systems being central to human experience."
Thomas Teo, Professor of Psychology, York University, Canada
"This is an erudite work of reconstructing and reconceptualizing foundational　assumptions, standing on the shoulders of tradition and referring to many years of empirical research but, at the same time, presented with a sharpness of　argumentation and a unique freshness that makes the reader aware that this is in no way just another book about education and development...　Downes's contribution is putting intellectual energy into such a new culture [of education]...Downes's book can be recommended to researchers in a broad range of fields, both educational psychology and, for example, the field of professional learning where I have added a few perspectives and examples. The use of these additional examples mirrors the inspiration I have felt when reading the book."
In Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research (2020). Dr. Birgitte Lund NIELSEN, Senior Associate Professor, Research Centre for Pedagogy and Bildung, VIA University College, Aarhus, Denmark.

"In this innovative, scholarly book, Paul Downes proposes a different conception of development that depends on space rather than time...　He presents a powerful argument that challenges the domination of time over space by developmental psychologists... he considers movements from one space or　system to another as offering a much deeper understanding of agency and lived　experience...His illustrative examples really help you to understand the theory and encourage you to apply his thinking to the aspects of children development and education that are of specific interest to you. This is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and post-graduate students of psychology, sociology, education, anthropology and psychotherapy."
In International Journal of Emotional Education (2020), Professor Helen Cowie　Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey

"Paul Downes provides an integrated and relational perspective to envision the complexity of the educational system within the wider range of systems, appreciating its various layers and hidden and overt aspects in an inclusive, productive and creative way."

Associate Professor Ozden Bademci, Psychology Department, Maltepe University, Istanbul, Turkey
"Many scholars have examined the numerous, fascinating connections between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on points of art, ethics, and metaphysics. Many, too, have done so with the aim of locating both figures in their shared intellectual and historical milieu. Paul Downes’s Concentric Space as a Life Principle Beyond Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Ricoeur: Inclusion of the Other, does both of these things, with an eye to philosophical ambitions of its own that make the work remarkably original. Downes is not interested only in telling us what these three key post-Kantian European figures think, but, more vitally, in getting us to identify and think about the important subtleties they themselves have left unthought, or at least unsaid...In a time when the space of discourse is increasingly less a space of reasons, a work as this, sensitive and subtle and deeply humane, is a thoughtful refuge from the shrill and shallow, one that repays the attention we provide it."
Steven DeLay, Christ Church, University of Oxford

Product details

• Authors: Paul Downes, Paul (Dublin City University Downes, Downes Paul
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.09.2019
• EAN: 9781138158856
• ISBN: 978-1-138-15885-6
• No. of pages: 252
• Series: Routledge Research in Educational Psychology; Routledge Research in Educatio
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Psychology > Applied psychology; EDUCATION / Educational Psychology, EDUCATION / Philosophy, Theory & Social Aspects, PSYCHOLOGY / Developmental / Child, EDUCATION / Learning Styles, Educational psychology, Child & developmental psychology, Child, developmental and lifespan psychology, Philosophy & theory of education, Philosophy and theory of education