INTRODUCTION

This chapter begins with a discussion of the dominant assessment practices found in many Western early childhood learning communities, and shows how they are aligned to a dualistic conception of child development. It also seeks to elaborate a cultural–historical view of how to measure learning and development and introduces the concepts of potentive assessment and the assessable moment as examples of how to conceptualise development, learning and pedagogy together.

The second part of this chapter brings together the major themes introduced in this book – pedagogy, play, concept formation and child development. Through reuniting these concepts in this final chapter the significance of the concept of obshchenie for realising a dialectical conception of development and learning is shown, and through this to illustrate the importance of Vygotsky's conception of a single process of self-development, where one stitch (concept) in the fabric (conceptual system) can only ever be understood within the context of the whole tapestry that represents the child's life.