Uppeldi og menntun - 01.07.2012, Side 68

Uppeldi og menntUn/icelandic JoUrnal of edUcation 21(2) 201268
YngStU leikSkÓlabörnin: Samfélag í leik
part of the process that occurs when children mutually create their communities in
play situations.
The study was conducted over a five month period, and qualitative methods were
employed, including participant observations, video recordings, and field notes. The
focus was on children’s communication when they started play, how they continued
the play, and how they tried to gain access to play that had already started. In
approaching and interpreting children’s perspectives it is necessary to gain access to
children’s actions in their own life worlds. The resulting portrait of children’s perspec-
tives is connected to the ontological stance of the researcher and how he understands,
interprets, and presents the data gathered. The objective of this study is to understand
children’s actions, their intentions and views, as well as to interpret their experience and
expression in light of their social interaction in play situations. The patterns that occur
in children’s communication are considered to reveal their perspectives. Children’s
bodily expressions, gestures, and gazes are considered as representations of how they
experience meaning and which phenomena are meaningful.
The findings show that children communicate with, relate to, and influence their
environments in various ways. Children’s actions are built upon intersubjective pro-
cesses, a foundational component of development that involves taking part in the
worlds of others. Children are active participants in their life worlds within play situ-
ations, constructing meaning and context with their actions. The play demanded that
children communicate in certain contexts. Body movements, gestures, and gazes were
important elements of children’s interaction when they tried to relate to each other
and create a mutual ground for the start of play. Some of the children participated
directly within the play context while others participated from the sideline, i.e.
watched the play and imitated the actions later. The findings also show that play
requires children to respond to and to eliminate motivation from the outside, which
could be experienced as a threat to the ongoing interaction. Children’s social commu-
nities are built upon their interactions in which their self-construction and participa-
tion in each other’s worlds emerge. When children try to present themselves to others
they have to know different codes of play, a requirement that both demands that the
children adapt their own intentions and also recognise those of others. The ambiguity
of children’s life worlds appeared in their expressions of competence as well vulner-
ability within the play situations. The children cared for each other and also used their
social and physical positions to influence who was included in the play and who was
excluded. Position within the group seemed to be connected to children’s age and
size. Children’s actions in play situations gave the appearance that they were par-
ticipating simultaneously in their own worlds and in others’ worlds, an intertwining
of the individual and the social that follows the theory proposed by Merleau-Ponty
(1962, 1994).
Keywords: young preschool children, social interactions, relations in play