[Xmca-l] Re: Child Development: Understanding a Cultural Perspective

[lpscholar2@gmail.com]

Martin,
I just read the introductory chapter and kept thinking as I went through the chapter that the way you have organized the book and laid it out in front of the reader  would have been such a valuable resource for trying to engender looking through a developmental lens that is also a cultural lens that some call *developmental science*. 
As an elementary school counsellor, I was continually trying to shift the other 33 elementary school counsellors to shift their focus from the currently dominant forms of school normativity [counselling psychology *as* clinical psychology for example]  towards putting developmental language at the heart of all orientations to *schooling* but was not successful in positing a developmental/cultural lens as the most general framework from which to operate normatively [institutionally].

The clarity with which you navigate towards this new and deeper engagement with the centrality of developmental science as at the heart or core or foundation of how we could [possibly] engender new forms and models/modes of schooling would have been indispensable for arguing my case. 
I see the potential of this book as also used in a *book club* format and I will attempt to generate interest in this possibility occurring in the Vancouver school *system*.  

Martin, as an artifact this book has the potential to take us in new directions  opening new *doors* of perception. [Georg Simmel’s metaphor of door] for a symbol that indicates travelling BOTH ways [back & forth or in & out. Moving beyond the hegemony of clinical accounts towards educational accounts.
I am going to attempt to create a *book club* up here on the westcoast of Canada using your book as a catalyst for expanding our understanding of developmental science [expressing a more expansive notion than developmental psychology]. 
Your introduction creates an appetite for more and I look forward to engaging with your book when it arrives on the *scene*

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Carol Macdonald