Vennskap i småbarnsavdelinger som private relasjoner på en offentlig arena

The study investigates different qualities of interaction between two- and three-year-olds in two Norwegian kindergarten toddler departments. The author describes the children’s interaction as a balance between the role of an actor in public life and the opportunity to establish more private relationships, and will investigate how the children master the art of moving between these two different roles (in the article, being public is understood as being available to everyone. Being private is understood as only being available to a select few). The purpose of the study is to shed light on how the testing out of more stable relationships develop between children, and what kindergarten as an institution means in these processes. 

The article points to kindergarten as a special institutional context, characterised by ownerless things and places of which the children must constantly acquire temporary ownership. This, the author believes, influences how the children’s social interactions develop. They involve the use of private objects, invitations to visit each other at home and different ways of protecting their exclusive relationships and activities. The author claims the interactions appear to be influenced by the socially unstable nature of kindergarten, as an open space with ownerless things available to everyone, and characterises this as tensions between being an actor in an open public arena at the same time as being able to establish and protect more private and exclusive relationships. He concludes that the concept of friendship, used to describe children’s relationships with peers, often implies a simplification of a complex social reality and what social learning for a life in institutions entails.

The investigation is based on participatory observations in two kindergarten groups for children under three years of age in two Norwegian kindergartens. Video observations of play were carried out in addition to the researcher participating in the children’s daily life for one month at each place. In addition, supplementary observations were carried out over a two-week period following the first observations. Both groups consisted of 15 children and a staff of two educators and two to three assistants. At the time the observations took place, the children were all over two years old. There were eight boys and seven girls in both groups. The interpretations of various episodes that occurred were reviewed and discussed with the groups of staff and fellow researchers, in addition to being compared with patterns from other similar case studies.

Nome, D. Ø. (2018). "Vennskap i småbarnsavdelinger som private relasjoner på en offentlig arena". Nordisk tidsskrift for pedagogikk og kritikk, 4(1):1–14.