Abstract

In the city of Toronto in 1991, I worked with preservice teachers in the context of an educational psychology course entitled "Understanding Children and Youth." I like this title. It means something very different from "All You Ever Wanted to Know About Children and Youth" or even "Explaining Children and Youth." Understanding, as best I can glean from my hermeneutic readings, means finding a fusion of horizons with the other person and in the process becoming more self-conscious about whatever you had previously taken for granted or accepted as given. For adult-children understanding, this entails genuinely attempting to make sense of the child within the child's own terms or frame of reference and becoming more self-reflexive about your role or what you can be for that child.