Examining Exclusionary Pressures Through the Prism of Perezhivanie

This chapter draws upon Lev Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory of individual activity and in particular his notion of perezhivanie as a framework for thinking about exclusionary pressures in schools (Vygotsky, 1994; Vygotsky et al., 1997a). Questions are raised about the treatment of children who are struggling to cope with the mainstream school environment with little consideration of their individual cultural, social, emotional, developmental or cognitive needs. We are not all the same and an educational model designed for a ‘norm’ will inevitably only work for some (Ball, 2013a, 2013b, p. 54). Indeed, Vygotsky (2004) argues that our thoughts and activity evolve from our history, experiences within society and in relation to the environment. It is this entangled nature of human activity that really matters, how we make sense of the world, respond to situations, and how these responses are interpreted by those around us. What become important are the intra-actions (Barad, 2007) that arise between schools, families and the environment that can change the way we think about behaviour and thus the decisions made to exclude a child from school or to adapt to meet their needs.