David E. Fernie

Becoming a person in the preschool: creating integrated gender, school culture, and peer culture positionings

This article explores social processes related to the social competence of children evident in preschools and to researchers’ collaborative efforts to understand it. Drawing examples from the authors’ respective programs of research in the United States and Australia, we demonstrate how preschool children struggle to construct their full social membership in classroom discourse to achieve the often simultaneous accomplishment of oneself as a student, peer, and gendered person. With regard to research processes, we demonstrate how researchers with different but compatible theoretical#shresearch perspectives may widen their interpretive lenses through collaborative dialogue, the yield being a more multifaceted vision of young childrens social competence.

Play and the Peer Culture: Play Styles and Object Use

Abstract In this paper, childrens play and friendship in relation to the peer culture was examined from, an ethnographic perspective. Because the majority of interactions in the preschool take place during play, a unique view of the classroom may be obtained by examining the social dynamics of play in the peer culture. This view is based on the assumption that classroom life is at least partially constructed and negotiated through the peer culture. Nineteen children ages three to five, enrolled in a university preschool, were observed and data were collected through extensive videotaping and daily field notes taken by participant observers. Analysis of the data for the first five weeks of school consisted of identifying patterns of object use and types of play styles through the construction of a domain analysis (Spradley, 1980). The findings suggest that, first, the peer culture is not a unitary whole but rather a differentiated social system comprised of various groups and different types of players. S...

First the Look and Then the Sound: Creating Conversations at Circle Time.

Abstract Becoming a student means learning to interpret and construct the multiple demands for interaction in distinctive classroom events. For an increasing number of children, the preschool provides the setting for the first encounter with these complex and dynamic classroom communicative environments. This article presents an interactional analysis of preschool circle time from an ethnographic perspective. The social participation structure for conducting these events is uncovered using Greens conversational mapping system. Findings suggest that the rules and guidelines, expectations, and roles within the event change over time. The focus of learning within the event, evident in social action rules ( Erickson, 1982 , Philips, 1972 ), shifts from the formation of the circle itself to actual collaborative conversation. This shift is interpreted in terms of the childrens developing competencies for participating in group conversation. In a final section, a potential peer culture dimension to this event is proposed.

Becoming Students and Becoming Ethnographers in a Preschool

Abstract Preschool poses unique schooling demands which challenge young children to become young students. This distinctive socialization process is the research problem addressed in an ethnography of a preschool classroom. The introduction details practical considerations which suggest the distinctiveness and importance of early education and of childrens socialization to it. The first major section presents an integration of relevant socialization theories and a discussion of ethnography as a research perspective. In the next section, the ethnographic research procedures used in the study are explained generally. In a final section, a conceptualization of this preschool classroom as a dynamic configuration of school culture and peer culture (Corsaro, 1985) is proposed, serving as hypothesis and heuristic tool for ongoing research.

Stages in Children's Play of Tic Tac Toe

Abstract Results of a cross-sectional study of how 102 children 3 to 9 years of age play and think about Tic Tac Toe are reported. An evolution in reasoning is described by 5 general levels of play: motor and individual play, egocentric play, cooperation in beginning competition, consolidation of defensive with simple offensive strategies and coordination of advanced offensive and defensive strategies. An 8-item Guttman Scale describes nine sublevels. Kohlbergs criteria are used to assess evidence for the hierarchical sequentiality of these levels, and their transformational rather than additive character is discussed. Educational implications are suggested.

Young children's reasoning in games of nonsocial and social logic: “Tic Tac Toe” and a “Guessing Game”☆

Abstract These are the results of a developmental comparison of childrens play and reasoning in games of mathematical logic (Tic Tac Toe) and social logic (a Guessing Game), exploring a distinction posed in Selman (1980) . Eighty-seven children, 3- to 7-years old, played a series of each game with an experimenter and then participated in an exploratory interview. Childrens sophistication in reasoning was positively related across the two games, suggesting a common three level progression from mastery of procedures to a competitive attitude to advanced strategy. At the same time, the unique demands of each game were evident in the earlier appearance of a competitive attitude in Tic Tac Toe (TTT) and in a ceiling effect found for Guessing Game (GG) performance. Curricular implications are drawn using a constructivist framework.