’Men hun er ikke sånn typisk leder’: Barnehagelæreres fortolkninger av lav lekestatus i foreldresamtaler

The study investigates the kindergarten teacher’s interpretations of status inequality in children’s play as they appear in conversations with parents in kindergarten. The analysis concentrates on six conversations in which the children’s parents have a minority language background, and where the problem of subordinate play was addressed in three of the conversations. The research questions are: 1) How does the kindergarten teacher interpret minority language children’s subordinate play role? 2) What can the kindergarten teacher’s positioning in the conversation reveal about the professional views of the profession?

How the kindergarten teacher views or understands episodes in which children have a subordinate play role was highlighted through three cases involving different actions: 1) ‘Harmony story’, 2) ‘Uphill story’ and 3) ‘Happy ending’. If the child does not want to (1) or is able (2) to take more leading roles in play, some in some of the conversations are seen as problematic. Conversely, it is gratifying when, after prolonged adversity, the child succeeds in acting more ‘bossy’ (3). Kindergarten teachers introduce different explanations of what is happening, with a tension between positioning that uses a ‘personality repertoire’ and positionings that use a ‘language repertoire’. According to the language repertoire, the child is not a leader in play because of insufficient Norwegian language skills, while the personality repertoire explains low play status based on the child’s personality (shy or uncertain). The analysis indicated that the kindergarten teacher emphasised the personality explanation somewhat more than the language explanation. The researcher believes that these tensions may reflect a multifaceted professional view, but that they may also be due to non-professional reasoning.

The article is based on data from a qualitative research project on parental collaboration from a diversity perspective at the University of South-Eastern Norway. The data material consists of audio recordings of ten conversations with parents from two Norwegian kindergartens. After a thematic survey of all parent conversations, the analysis concentrated on the three conversations with parents in which status in play was or had been a problem.

Solberg, J. (2020). «’Men hun er ikke sånn typisk leder’: Barnehagelæreres fortolkninger av lav lekestatus i foreldresamtaler». Praktiske Grunde - Nordisk tidsskrift for kultur- og samfundsvidenskab, 2020(3-4):31-48.