In Denmark, almost all children under the age of three attend full-day nurseries – an institutional arrangement that reflects both collective trust in welfare institutions and a deep societal dependency on them. Yet this extensive institutionalization contains a paradox. While early childhood policy emphasizes learning, development, and participation, everyday life unfolds under conditions of staff shortages, administrative control, and the erosion of professional expertise. The very institutions that promise equality and care also come to produce new forms of inequality, vulnerability, and exclusion.

My PhD project explores these tensions through ethnographic studies of young children’s everyday lives in Danish nurseries. Drawing on critical psychology and practice research, I examine how children participate in settings shaped by institutional arrangements that both enable and constrain their possibilities for action and their ways of entering shared practices. Rather than understanding inequality as a background variable – typically linked to children’s socio-economic circumstances – I approach it as situated: something produced and negotiated in the micro-practices of care, attention, and organization, as well as in the children’s own engagements with one another. The study adopts an analytical child’s perspective to develop a deeper understanding of the fundamental institutional practices and the conditions of participation that shape nursery life.

In “dark times,” where early childhood care is increasingly framed by efficiency, standardization, and measurement, theorizing participation becomes a political act. Focusing on the subtle, situated forms of inequality emerging in everyday institutional life is simultaneously to ask what it means for young children to live, learn, and connect with one another in a world marked by institutional pressure. The presentation suggests that theorizing situated inequality requires remaining close to the lived, embodied practices of children and professionals.

This presentation explores how psychological theory operates within conditions of social inequality through the lens of academic self-efficacy: students’ belief in their capacity to plan, perform, and succeed in academic tasks. Within mainstream psychology, self-efficacy is often treated as an internal, value-neutral determinant of motivation and performance. Yet in times of widening social and economic inequality – dark times – the very idea of individual agency calls for renewed theoretical scrutiny.

The presentation examines how psychological theory can obscure or reveal the social structures that shape the experience of agency. When students’ ”confidence” or ”motivation” is explained as a matter of personal belief, structural conditions such as class, privilege, and access are displaced. Thus, theory risks naturalising inequality by framing systemic constraints as individual deficits.

Drawing on an ongoing pilot study among first-year psychology students at Aarhus University, the study investigates how socioeconomic background influences the development of academic self-efficacy during the transition into higher education. Preliminary analyses suggest that students with greater economic, cultural (educational) and social resources develop stronger and more stable confidence in their academic abilities, while others experience more fragile or situational forms of efficacy. By connecting these empirical insights with theoretical reflection, the presentation invites discussion on how psychological theory might resist normalising inequality and instead contribute to rethinking agency and education under unequal conditions.

This paper focuses on how alternative schooling programs influence young people's understanding of themselves in relation to their school life.

In Denmark, all lower secondary schools are now required to offer alternative, craft-based programs aimed at students who are disengaged from traditional academic pathways. These programs emphasize manual skills, motivation, and practical learning.

My study explores the intersection between politically informed initiatives and the underlying logics and ideologies that shape this alternative, craft-based educational programs in Denmark. It examines how these frameworks influence the lived experiences and meaning-making processes of young people within specific educational settings.

Using a decentered view of learning from a situated perspective, the project critically engages with issues of social inequality, class, and cultural difference, highlighting how broader structural conditions are negotiated and reproduced in everyday (school)life practices. Inspired by critical psychology and Jane Laves situated learning theory, I approach learning as a changing practice, that is influent by cultural norms, political change and struggles over what learning are for (Lave). By following young people closely, the project explores how they navigate diverse demands, participate differently across contexts, and develop self-understandings as “suited for school”.

The paper invites discussion on how social differences - particularly those related to class and culture - contribute to experiences of marginalization and alienation. It also raises questions about how educational spaces can foster belonging in times of institutional and societal trans-formation, and how responsibilities for supporting vulnerable children are distributed within educational systems.