Tillträde, förhandling och deltagande i förskolebarns egenorganiserade gemensamma aktiviteter

The aim of the study is to investigate pre-school children’s participation in and initiation of self-organised joint activities/play in a Swedish pre-school. The study has the following research questions: (1) How are episodes of self-organised joint play/activities established, maintained, changed and concluded by kindergarten children? (2) How do children start, negotiate, participate in and conclude these activities? (3) What type of structural resources do children adopt in order to design themes, procedures, and to organise conversational exchanges in activities with peers?

The result shows that there is a great breadth and depth in the work involved in children’s participation in activities with peers. The author has analysed the children’s inclusion, participation and exclusion as a step-by-step process. Children’s activities can be divided into episodes that are characterised by frequent shifts in children’s interactions or the theme of the activity. Children’s self-organised play is divided into the following episodes: established, maintained, changed and fully negotiated play/activity.

The data material was collected using video observations as the investigative method. In total, 25 activities were highlighted to study children’s negotiations and self-organised activities. In order to study how the children responded to each other’s utterances, the author applied an ethnomethodological and conversation analysis binding theory. A total of 15 hours of video observations were used in the analyses. All of the 22 children in the sample were between the ages of 3 and 7.

Jivegård, U. (2018). «Tillträde, förhandling och deltagande i förskolebarns egenorganiserade gemensamma aktiviteter.». Akademisk avhandling. Göteborgs Universitet.