Children's conduct of life: Across general school, educational psychology consultation and psychiatry

Abstract

The referral and diagnosing system in Denmark is organized as an institutionalized practice consisting of various practices and procedures that frame criteria for normality or deviance, thus enabling intervention. This institutional practice has been criticized for building on a compensatory orientation supported by testing technologies, with a lack of sensitivity to the context which the difficulties can be seen as part of (McDermott, 1996; Allodi and Fishbein, 2000; Storbie, I., Gemmell, M., Moran, E., & Randall, L. (2002). Challenges for educational psychologists and their services: A qualitative analysis. In School Psychology International, 23; Ekström, 2004; Røn Larsen, 2012; Kristensen, 2013). Taking its point of departure in Klaus Holzkamp's critique of traditional psychology's structure blindness (Holzkamp, 2013), this article will discuss how the concept of conduct of everyday life may inform and inspire both professional practice and our scientific understandings and developmental possibilities concerning referral processes in relation to children in school. The empirical point of departure will be taken in a collaborative practice research project in a Danish municipality where I followed children across general school, educational psychology consultation and psychiatry. Based on the children's participation in and conduct of life across these contexts, the focus is placed both on how the different interventions and procedures in relation to referral and diagnosing interact, and on what it means to the children to be part of these referral and diagnosing processes. Secondly, the focus is placed on cooperation between the professionals (e.g. teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists) in these processes, and developmental possibilities in relation to cooperation across different professional practices. The article will draw on thinking related to the concept of conduct of everyday life to suggest the importance of what is referred to as structure relevance, a concept that seeks to show the importance of connecting to and working with the structures of relevance as experienced by the child in the referral process.

Keywords::

• conduct of life
• educational psychology consultation
• critical psychology
• cooperation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.