This Open Access Brief analyzes the dynamics in which children's selves emerge through their everyday activities of meaning construction, both in their relationships with family and within school education. It begins with a discussion of new psychological inquiries into children's selves and builds upon the innovative theoretical notion of the Presentational Self, developed by the author over the last decade.

The book illustrates how the observation of children's meaning construction in their everyday lives becomes a starting point for theoretical and empirical inquiries into child development and gives a framework that promotes new inquiries in this area. The book describes the Presentational Self Theory as a sense of how the notion of the Self is being worked upon in everyday life encounters. Chapters feature in-depth analyses of exchanges between adults and children in the Japanese cultural context.

Meaning-Making for Living will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in the fields of cognitive, social, developmental, educational, and cultural psychology.

Provides a comprehensive overview of the Presentational Self Theory Explores activities that are related to the structure of children's lives and dialectic tensions that are essential for children's meaning construction Offers a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary theory of child development

Autorentext

Koji Komatsu is an associate professor of psychology at Osaka Kyoiku University. The inquiry into the process of children's meaning construction and the emergence of their selves presented in this book is the result of his longstanding interest in human development in society. In addition to this subject, he inquires into several topics concerning culture and mind that also describe our meaning construction in mundane lives.

Inhalt

Chapter 1. Who Can Know My Self ? A New Look Into Psychological Inquiries Into the Self.- Chapter 2. Self as Gestalt Quality.- Chapter 3. Selves Emerging in Meaning Construction: An Analysis of Mother-Child Conversation from a Semiotic Perspective.- Chapter 4. Rethinking the Frameworks of Psychology: What the Self Was and What it Was Not in Developmental Psychology.- Chapter 5. Construction of Selves Through Written Stories.- Chapter 6. Reunion With Others: Foundations of the Presentational Self in Daily Lives.- Chapter 7. The Visibility of the Invisible: What Propels Meaning Construction in Our Lives.- Chapter 8. The Dialectic Dynamics of Same Non-Same and Human Development.- Chapter 9. The Presentational Self and Meaning Construction in Our Lives.- References.- Commentary 1: An Original Contribution with Great Potential.- Commentary 2: Children Emerging Laughingly Through Dialogue.