Children as playing citizens

ABSTRACT

In this article, play is understood as activities of major importance for child-citizens and as activities that constitute various ways of participating. The researcher joined children in three early childhood education institutions in Norway in their activities and categorised their participation in their everyday life. The study depicts that, in some cases, routine activities can be categorised as play – for example, the movement from indoors to outdoors and ‘tidying-up time’. Thus, play in the form of doing jigsaw puzzles and playing ‘hide-and-seek’ appeared at times and in contexts that were not labelled as playtime in the daily routines. In contrast to role play, these kinds of play seem to be easier for the involved children to join in with. These findings highlight the need for facilitating multiple ways of playing, and thereby constructing conditions for children to enact their citizenship in non-formal settings such as play.

KEYWORDS:

• Child-citizens
• play
• activity
• kindergarten
• participation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.