The Interpretive Approach to Children

Abstract

In Part II an interpretive approach, as part of a child perspective orientation, is explored in great detail. The whole idea of child perspective implies an interpretive approach to children where the child’s subjectivity is explored without imposing the preset standards and fixed Procedures of normal testing and experimentation. The basic principles of an interpretive approach are spelled out and discussed in relation to a critical analysis of diagnostics in tests and experiments with children. From an interpretive perspective, a child’s reply in a diagnostic situation is not only a reflection of a child’s inner cognitive capacities, it is just as a much a reflection of how the child perceives the situation (“why am I here?”), the task, and the experimenter. Examples from classical Piagetian experiments are presented to illustrate this point. At the same time, criticisms are presented regarding the naive testing approach where children’s deviant replies are interpreted as some inner deficiency like low IQ. In such approaches, the child’s perception and understanding of the situation is ignored. This is called a competence-oriented approach, in opposition to an interpretive approach… The interpretive approach would involve looking for deficient understanding (or intersubjectivity) between the experimenter’s and the child’s conception of the situational context and the task. The child is assumed to respond rationally to “another question”…