Dramatic to Cultural-Dramatic Perezhivanie: The Lived Experience of Early Childhood Interventionists

Abstract

This article examines how early childhood interventionists reconfigured their developmental practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on cultural-historical theory, the study uses the concept of dramatic perezhivanie—the lived, emotional experience of resolving contradiction—as a central unit of analysis. Through a novel qualitative method in which nine interventionists served as a reference group analyzing their own experiences, the findings reveal how practitioners resolved the contradictions between their professional roles and the overwhelming social and material needs of the crisis. The analysis demonstrates that their individual experiences, when placed in dialogue, give rise to a cultural-dramatic perezhivanie: a collective, lived experience of a community navigating a shared historical drama. Rather than viewing practitioners’ adaptations as mere deviations from fidelity, this study positions them as ethically and emotionally charged acts of praxis that force a rethinking of intervention as a historically situated, co-constructed developmental process.