Children's collaborative encounters in pre-school

Abstract

Collaboration is often described as a situation whereby two or more children work together towards a common goal. When viewed from a socio-cultural learning perspective, a broader understanding of collaboration is suggested. This article investigates the forms and pathways of children's collaboration and how the institutional demands influence children's collaborative encounters. The study is based on video recordings of paedagogical activities (workshops and circle times) in two Danish pre-schools over a period of 11 months. Although institutional demands challenge children's initiatives, it is found that children build friendships, assist, inspire, and imitate one another in their collaborative encounters in paedagogical activities. In order to better support children's learning and engaged participation in paedagogical activities, an increased attention to the institutional demands on children's collaborative encounters in early childhood education is suggested.

Keywords:

• children's collaboration
• early childhood setting
• learning
• institutional demands

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Professor Marilyn Fleer, Monash University, Australia, for her constructive comments on an earlier draft of this article. This research was funded by Egmont Foundation, Denmark.

Notes

Each vignette has a code attached referring to the indexed recordings (Derry et al. 2010). All names are anonymous.

In this article, practitioner refers to both adults with or without a bachelor degree in social education. ‘Pre-school’ refers to early childhood settings for three–five-year-old children.

OECD (2006) identified two approaches to early childhood education and care: the early education approach and the social pedagogy approach. The early education approach generally results in a more centralising and academic strategy towards curriculum content and methodology, while the social pedagogy tradition remains more local, child-centred, and holistic. The social pedagogy approach has traditionally been associated with the Nordic countries, including Denmark. National curriculum guidance was implemented in Denmark in 2004.

The workshops in this study involved different tools and materials such as scissors, paper and glue, paint, and play dough. Circle times in this study involved IRF (initiative–response–feedback) sequences where the practitioner asks a question for a specific child to answer (what day is it today, what is your address, who has a dog called Max, etc.), singing, storytelling, rehearsal of factual knowledge, and recognition of one's own and another's name on name tags. Adults also interact with children in less structured and more spontaneous situations, for example, when they read a book aloud or assist with a puzzle.

The literature is also rich on children's collaboration in relation to play, for example, Parten (1932) but it is beyond the scope of the article to include this literature.

This research is part of a larger study (LUDVI) on the learning and developmental conditions of pre-schools within a relatively low-socioeconomic area of a municipality.

Vygotsky (1998) proposes the concept of interest, but as Hviid (2008, p. 145) argues, does a child's interest in Vygotsky's understanding develop over a longer period of time through the child's selective participation.