‘I don’t think that it’s play. Because we have to play’. Norwegian six-year-old children’s understandings of play when they start in primary school

ABSTRACT

This article aims to explore how Norwegian six-year-old children talk about and show their understandings of play when they have just started primary school. The research design is a focused ethnographic fieldwork, reporting on participant observations and group interviews with children in the first year of primary school, and interpreted through a thematic analysis. The analysis indicates that the children consider play as important to the transition process and their everyday school life. They express and show their understandings of play in various ways, thematized as freedom of choice, resistance, and community. The article suggests that children’s joint play can be understood as an underlife in school and introduces the term playful (re)production as a theoretical approach for exploring children’s understandings of play. The study raises awareness of the role play has for children’s well-being, agency, and relationships with peers in the transition process and in general activities in school.

KEYWORDS:

• Play
• transition to school
• children’s perspectives
• peer culture
• playful (re)production

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the children who contributed to my study, and the educators who allowed me to take part in their everyday school practice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Corsaro’s use of the term underlife derives from Erwing Goffman (1961).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maja Reinåmo Olsson

Maja Reinåmo Olsson is a PhD student in pedagogy at the Department of Teacher Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Her research focuses on how play is understood by various actors involved in the transition from kindergarten to school.