The importance of understanding children’s lived experience

Abstract We argue that the field of developmental research needs a course-correction, to focus more on describing the cultural paradigms of children’s lived experience — children’s participation in the settings of their lives. This is essential information for understanding child development. We describe a sociocultural theoretical perspective that focuses on children’s participation in the everyday practices and settings of their lives, and examine the field’s efforts over the past half-century to understand children’s lives in context. Several emphases are needed for the field to understand lived experience: It is crucial to examine (rather than assume) generality of findings across populations and situations; to interpret findings based on knowledge of children’s lives rather than researchers’ intuitions; and to study children’s development in the ecologies in which it occurs. We call for research on how children everywhere learn to navigate across and participate in the distinct cultural settings of their everyday lives.