Cajsa Ottesjö

Participation and Enjoyment in Play with a Robot between Children with Cerebral Palsy who use AAC and their Peers

Abstract This study explores children with complex communication needs, their peers and adult support persons in play with the talking and moving robot LekBot. Two triads were filmed playing with LekBot at pre-school. LekBot was developed to facilitate independent and enjoyable play on equal terms for children with significant communication disabilities and their peers. Using Conversation Analysis, participatory symmetry and enjoyment were investigated in relation to spoken and gestural communication, embodied stance, gaze, and affective display. Data originated from three video-recorded sessions that were approximately 2 hours long. Four different interaction situations were identified and explored: Participatory Asymmetry, Adult Facilitation, Greater Participatory Symmetry and Creativity, and Turn-taking and Enjoyable Play with LekBot. Neither participatory symmetry nor enjoyment were easily achieved in the play sessions and may require considerable effort, including adult involvement, but creative, spontaneous and highly enjoyable play, correlating with participatory symmetry to various degrees, was observed in a few instances. The findings are discussed with regard to play, AAC and the future development of robots to facilitate play.

Children’s agency in creating and maintaining language policy in practice in two “language profile” preschools in Sweden

Abstract This paper presents results from an ethnographic study of language policy as it is enacted in everyday interaction in two language profile preschools in Sweden with explicit monolingual language policies: English and Finnish, respectively. However, in both preschools, children are free to choose language or code alternate. The study shows how children through their interactive choices create and modify language policy-in-practice. We analyze extracts from typical free play interactions in each setting. We show how children use code alternation as a contextualization cue in both settings, but with somewhat different interactional consequences. Children in both preschools tend to follow the lead of the preceding speaker’s language choice. Code alternation is also a means to manage conversational roles, for example, to show alignment. While the staff give priority to the profile language, the children show through their interaction that skills in both the preschool’s profile language and in Swedish are valuable.

Adult monolingual policy becomes children’s bilingual practice: code-alternation among children and staff in an English-medium preschool in Sweden

ABSTRACT Parents, teachers and institutions often attempt to implement monolingual policies in bilingual settings, believing that they thereby facilitate children’s bilingual development. Children, however, often have their own communicative agendas. In this study, we investigate how the twofold language policy of an English-medium preschool in Sweden is put into practice in everyday interaction. The results show that children (aged 3–4) develop a broader range of code alternation practices than the staff uses in their interaction with the children. The paper analyses several examples of spontaneous interaction either between staff and children, or among children playing with each other in the preschool. We show how the preschool’s English language profile in practice becomes a bilingual policy, which encourages children not only to acquire English and Swedish in the preschool, but also to learn different ways to manage their bilingualism in the school context.