The article provides an ethnographic study of the logic of conducting routine paediatric checkups in children from birth to the age of 5 in Germany (U1 to U9). These checkups are meant as a continual evaluation of a child’s developmental process and progress, and their outcomes inform decisions on children’s careers in educational institutions. The article focuses on the concept of ‘age-appropriate development’ as applied in the field of study, discusses its meaning in the context of the checkups’ practical anthropology and theoretically reflects on the construction of ‘normal development’. In the analysis of an example of a U9 (with a 5-year-old child) it is shown how an extremely condensed picture of a child’s developmental state and how legitimization for intervening in children’s developmental processes are produced in the course of the checkups.
Alanen, L. ( 2003) ‘Childhoods: The Generational Ordering of Social Relations’, in B. Mayall and H. Zeiher (eds) Childhood in Generational Perspective, pp. 27-45. London: Institute of Education, University of London.
2.
American Academy of Pediatrics et al. (2006 ) ‘Identifying Infants and Young Children with Developmental Disorders in the Medical Home: An Algorithm for Developmental Surveillance and Screening’, Pediatrics118(4): 1808-9.
3.
Bayley, N. ( 2005) Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, 3rd edn. Oxford: Pearson Assessment.
4.
Berg, M. ( 1996) ‘Practices of Reading and Writing: The Constitutive Role of the Patient Record in Medical Work’, Sociology of Health and Illness18: 499-524.
5.
Bernfeld, S. ( 1967) Sisyphos oder die Grenzen der Erziehung. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. (Sisyphus, or the Limits of Education, University of California Press, 1973.) (Orig. pub. 1925.)
6.
Bühler-Niederberger, D. ( 2003) ‘The Needy Child and the Naturalization of Politics’ , in C. Hallett and A. Prout (eds) Social Policy for a New Century, pp. 89-105. London : Falmer Press.
7.
Burman, E. ( 1994) Deconstructing Developmental Psychology. London: Routledge.
8.
Emerson, R.M., R.I. Fretz and L.L. Shaw ( 1995) Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press.
9.
Fine, G.A. ( 1988) Knowing Children: Participant Observation with Minors . Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
10.
Frankenburg, W.K., J. Dodds, P. Archer, H. Shapiro and B. Bresnick ( 1992) ‘The Denver II: A Major Revision and Restandardization of the Denver Developmental Screening Test’, Pediatrics89(1): 91-7.
11.
Fried, L. ( 2006) ‘Expertise zu Sprachstandserhebungen für Kindergartenkinder und Schulanfänger. Eine kritische Betrachtung. DJIMünchen’; at: www.dji.de/bibs/271_2232_ExpertiseFried.pdf (accessed 6 November 2008).
12.
Garfinkel, H. ( 2002) Ethnomethodology’s Program. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
13.
Hammersley, M. ( 2006) ‘Ethnography: Problems and Prospects’, Ethnography and Education1(1): 3-14.
14.
Heath, C. and G. Button (eds) (2002) ‘Special Issue on Workplace Studies’, British Journal of Sociology53(2).
15.
Hessen: Hessisches Sozialministerium/ Hessisches Kultusministerium (Hesse Ministry of Social Affairs) (eds) (2007) ‘Bildung von Anfang an. Bildungs- und Erziehungsplan für Kinder von 0 bis 10 Jahren in Hessen’, Wiesbaden; at: www.kultusministerium.hessen.de/irj/HKM_Internet?uid=422503e0-cf26-2901-be59-2697ccf4e69f (accessed 6 November 2008).
16.
Hirschauer, S. ( 2006) ‘How to Put Things into Words: Ethnographic Description and the Silence of the Social’, Human Studies29(4): 413-41.
17.
Honig, M.-S. ( 1999) Entwurf einer Theorie der Kindheit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
18.
Hungerland, B. ( 2003) ‘ "Und so gedeiht das Baby!" Altersgerechte Entwicklung und Gesundheit als gesellschaftliche Norm und Leistung’, in H. Hengst and H. Kelle (eds) Kinder - Körper - Identitäten. Theoretische und empirische Annäherungen an kulturelle Praxis und sozialen Wandel , pp.139-60. Weinheim: Juventa.
19.
Kelle, H. ( 2001) ‘The Discourse of "Development": How 9 to 12-Year-Old School Children Construct "Childish" and "Further Developed" Identities within their Peer Culture’, Childhood8(1): 95-114.
20.
Kelle, H. ( 2006) ‘Sprachtests ethnographisch betrachtet. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturanalyse frühdiagnostischer Testverfahren’, Zeitschrift für qualitative Bildungs-, Beratungs-, und Sozialforschung (ZBBS)7(2): 271-91.
21.
Kelle, H. ( 2007) ‘ "Ganz normal": Die Repräsentation von Kinderkörpernormen in Somatogrammen. Eine praxisanalytische Exploration kinderärztlicher Vorsorgeinstrumente’, Zeitschrift für Soziologie (ZfS)36(3): 197-216.
22.
Kelle, H. and A. Tervooren (eds) (2008) Ganz normale Kinder. Heterogenität und Standardisierung der kindlichen Entwicklung. Weinheim : Juventa.
23.
Knorr-Cetina, K. ( 1999) Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
24.
Langness, A. ( 2006) ‘Früherkennungsuntersuchungen bei sozial benachteiligten Kindern. Eine Studie zur Inanspruchnahme und Akzeptanz der U1 bis U9’, dissertation, University of Bielefeld.
25.
Law, J. and A. Mol (eds) (2002) Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
26.
Link, J. and M. Hall ( 2004) ‘From the "Power of the Norm" to "Flexible Normalism": Considerations after Foucault’, Cultural Critique57: 14-32.
27.
Mayall, B. ( 2000) ‘Conversations with Children: Working with Generational Issues’, in P. Christensen and A. James (eds) Research with Children , pp. 120-35. London and New York: Falmer Press.
28.
Nadesan, M.H. ( 2008) Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life. London and New York: Routledge .
29.
NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) (1997) ‘Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8: A Position Statement of the National Association for the Education of Young Children’; at: www.naeyc.org/about/positions/dap (accessed 6 November 2008).
30.
Place, B. ( 2000) ‘Constructing the Bodies of Ill Children in the Intensive Care Unit’, in A. Prout (ed.) The Body, Childhood, and Society, pp. 172-94. Basingstoke : Macmillan.
31.
Rapley, T. ( 2008) Doing Conversation, Discourse and Document Analysis. London: Sage.
32.
Reckwitz, A. ( 2002) ‘Toward a Theory of Social Practices’, European Journal of Social Theory5(2): 243-63.
33.
Richter, S. ( 1999) ‘"Schulfähigkeit des Kindes" oder "Kindfähigkeit der Schule"?’, in H. Brügelmann , M. Fölling-Albers, S. Richter and A. Speck-Hamdan (eds) Jahrbuch Grundschule, pp. 7-29. Seelze : Friedrich.
34.
Saluja, G., C. Scott-Little and R.M. Clifford ( 2000) ‘Readiness for School: A Survey of State Policies and Definitions’, Early Childhood Research and Practice2(2); at: ecrp.uiuc.edu/v2n2/saluja.html (accessed 5 November 2008).
35.
Scheffer, T. ( 2007) ‘Event and Process: An Exercise in Analytical Ethnography’ , Human Studies30: 167-97.
36.
Smith, D.E. ( 2002) ‘Texts and the Ontology of Organizations and Institutions’ , Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies7(2; Special Issue: ‘Studies in Institutional Ethnography’): 159-98.
37.
Spradley, J.P. ( 1979) The Ethnographic Interview. New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
38.
Strauss, A. and J. Corbin ( 1990) Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. London: Sage.
39.
Textor, M.R. ( 2005) ‘So werden Kinder in den USA erzogen: Der entwicklungsgemäße Ansatz’, in M. Textor (ed.) Online-Handbuch Kindergartenpädagogik; at: www.kindergartenpaedagogik.de/11.htm
40.
Turmel, A. ( 1997) ‘Childhood and Normalcy: Classification, Numerical Regularities, and Tabulations’, International Journal of Educational Research27(8): 661-72.
41.
WHO (World Health Organization) (1993) ICD-10. The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioral Disorders. Geneva: WHO.
42.
Wintersberger, H., L. Alanen , T. Olk and J. Qvortrup (eds) (2007) Childhood, Generational Order and the Welfare State: Exploring Children’s Social and Economic Welfare. Vol. 1 of COST 19: Children’s Welfare. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark.
