Gilles Brougère

Some elements relating to children's play and adult simulation/gaming

Children’s play and adult gaming, each of which are present in the world of education and training, too often refer to different explanatory paradigms. Is this distinction a legitimate one? In what way? This special issue of S&G and this introduction endeavor to provide some answers to these questions, based both on theoretical reflections and on examples given by the authors. The author attempts to demonstrate that these two fields of reflection have everything to gain through mutual enrichment.

Ecole maternelle (preschool) in France: a cross‐cultural perspective

SUMMARY This article looks at a cross‐cultural analysis of interviews of (im/migrant and non‐im/migrant) preschool teachers and parents, concerning im/migrant children enrolled in the French école maternelle, in the context of the international Children Crossing Borders (CCB) research project. Interviews were conducted in France following a polyphonic ethnographic method developed by Joseph Tobin, using video as a tool to stimulate a multi‐vocal, inter‐cultural dialogue. To this, dialogue collected by a US research team using the same method is added. The two meet over issues of play, learning, care and language. Each puts the underlying national (Republican) order that defines French schooling into perspective, exposes the fundamental differences between the two norms and in the way preschool children are perceived and shows the ambivalence of migrant and non‐migrant parents from diverse socio‐economic environments. The dialogue highlights the normative principles and cultural values voiced by each protagonist in their everyday expression. And finally, above and beyond apparent opposition – as strong as it may be – these voices reveal more complex and ambivalent tendencies towards education. RESUME: Cet article présente une analyse des discours croisés d’enseignantes du préscolaire et de parents (migrants et non migrants) sur les enfants (de) migrants à l’école maternelle française, recueillis dans le cadre du projet international CCB (Children Crossing Borders), en cours. Ces discours recueillis en France à l’aide de l’ethnographie polyphonique développée par Joseph Tobin, et complétés par des voix venues des Etats‐Unis, se croisent sur les questions du jeu, des apprentissages, du care et de la langue. Ils mettent en perspective l’ordre républicain qui sous‐tend le système éducatif français, laissent voir différents modèles normatifs et visions des enfants d’âge préscolaire, montrent l’ambivalence des parents migrants tout comme celle des parents aisés français. Ils donnent à voir les principes normatifs et valeurs culturelles mobilisés par chacun des protagonistes ainsi que leur traduction au quotidien. Enfin, ces voix font entendre au‐delà des oppositions apparentes, aussi fortes soient‐elles, quant au cadre éducatif, des tendances plus complexes et plus ambivalentes. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG: Dieser Artikel stellt erste Ergebnisse einer interkulturellen Analyse von Interviews vor, die mit ErzieherInnen und Eltern (mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund), bezüglich der Kinder mit Migrationshintergrund in französischen Kindertageseinrichtungen, durchgeführt wurden. Diese Studie ist im Rahmen eines internationalen Projektes CCB (Children Crossing Borders) angelegt. Die Aussagen wurden in Frankreich anhand einer, von Joseph Tobin entwickelten, polyphonen Ethnographie erhoben, die sich auf Videodokumentationen stützt, mit dem Zweck einen interkulturellen und multivokalen Dialog zu stimulieren. Hinzu kommen in den USA erhobene Gespräche, die von einem amerikanischen Forschungsteam mit der gleichen Methode gesammelt wurden. In den Interviews gibt es folgende gemeinsame Querschnittsthemen: das Spiel, das Lernen, die Betreuung und die Sprache. Jedes Interview reflektiert die Perspektive einer zugrunde liegenden republikanischen Ordnung, die das französische Schulsystem bestimmt, beleuchtet die Unterschiede zwischen den beiden normativen Modellen und die Art und Weise, wie Kinder wahrgenommen werden und zeigt die Ambivalenz von Eltern mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund aus verschiedenen sozio‐ökonomischen Verhältnissen. Die Dialoge decken die normativen Prinzipien und kulturellen Werte auf, die von jedem der Protagonisten in ihrer Alltagssprache ausgedrückt wurden. Schließlich, weit über die offensichtlichen Gegensätze hinaus – wie stark sie auch sein mögen – lassen diese Stimmen komplexere und weitaus ambivalentere Neigungen bezüglich Erziehung und Bildung erkennen. RESUMEN: Este artículo presenta un análisis intercultural de entrevistas a profesoras preescolares y a padres (inmigrantes y no inmigrantes) acerca de los niños (de) inmigrantes en la escuela maternal francesa, recogidos en el marco del proyecto internacional CCB (Children Crossing Borders), en curso. Estas entrevistas se realizan en Francia con ayuda de la etnografía polifónica desarrollada por Joseph Tobin, que se basa en el uso de vídeos para estimular un diálogo intercultural, multivocal. Estos diálogos son completados por voces recogidas en los Estados Unidos, según el mismo método por el equipo de investigación americano. Ambos se basan sobre las cuestiones del juego, de los aprendizajes, del cuidado y del idioma. Ponen en perspectiva el orden republicano en que se basa el sistema educativo francés, dejan ver distintos modelos normativos y visiones de los niños en edad preescolar, muestran la ambivalencia de los padres migrantes y de los no migrantes, de diferentes medios socio‐económicos. Muestran los principios normativos y valores culturales movilizados por cada uno de los protagonistas en sus expresiones cotidianas. Por último, estas voces revelan, más allá de las oposiciones aparentes – por fuertes que estas sean – tendencias más complejas y más ambivalentes hacia la educación.

How can food become fun? Exploring and testing possibilities …

Purpose – This paper aims to understand, from a theoretical standpoint and from an empirical perspective, why food products can be designed and perceived as “playful” and “funny”. Drawing on the experiential framework developed in marketing research and recent advances in theories of play, it seeks to clarify the conceptual articulation of “play” with “fun” and it seeks to highlight the need to reconsider the contribution of the product in framing situations that children experience as “playful” and “fun”.Design/methodology/approach – The paper focuses on qualitative data gathered through a combination of observations and in‐depth interviews of 14 dyads “child‐mother” confronted by four product innovations at a prototype stage, and a series of eight focus groups involving children from three to eight years old as well as their mothers.Findings – Children were very able to categorize food products by appreciating their different degrees of fun. The study led to the identification and coding of 13 key dimen...

Licensing and the rhetoric of fun: the cute and the cool

Purpose – This paper was presented at the CTC conference of Milan 2012. It aims to analyse how licensing is used in the different ways of addressing items to children. This way of addressing the child can be called rhetoric in that it is a way of persuading, seducing, capturing children with the product itself. For this, the object has to be fun, and using mass-culture and licensing is an easy means to develop this address. There are different kinds of rhetoric of fun. Using the analysis of Cross, this paper seeks to discriminate between the rhetoric of cute (using the example of Hello Kitty) and the rhetoric of cool (using the French-Swiss comic character Titeuf). Design/methodology/approach – The paper analyses the meanings of objects offered to children. The author uses a socio-anthropological approach first developed for the toy (Brougere) that consists of analysing the meanings of an object while taking into account the different dimensions that link it to network design, manufacturing, distribution ...

Les parcs d'attractions: jeu - divertissement - éducation

The amusement parks grew in France, in the nineties, as they did all over the world. They appear as places dedicated to entertainment within the construction of an illusion based frequently on sophisticated cultural and/or scientific contents. Wherefrom comes the temptation of seeing in them new education places that could serve as models to the museums. The universal exhibitions are places that frequently mix pedagogic perspectives with procedures of amusement parks. The article tries to analyze what characterizes this type of leisure and the architecture related to it, which proposes new objects that resemble oversized toys, since their logic is similar. It is indeed important to analyze the logic and the operation of these new leisure supports, to understand their limits as sites of formal education. This can only happen on the basis of an analysis of parks, of a deconstruction of their effects.

Children of Two to Three Years of Age in France: Early Childhood Settings and Age Divisions.

ABSTRACT In a French early childhood care and education system that is strongly divided by age and institution, the current research studies the collective life of children at the pivotal age of two to three years of age in four different early childhood settings: 1) a group of ‘grands’ (nursery) in a crèche (daycare centre), 2) a jardin maternel, 3) a classe passerelle and 4) a group including ‘tout-petits’ in an école maternelle (nursery school). Our methods combine the observation of children and the point of view of professionals, obtained using visual aids (photos and videos). We analyse successively the institutional organisation of ages, material culture and professional practices. Depending on the ways in which their age is defined by these settings, we show how these settings create different experiences for children, which make them ‘petit’ (at the école maternelle) or ‘grand’ (at the crèche). The interest of the jardin maternel and the classe passerelle is to show intermediate ways of framing the age of children two to three years old.

Learning the practice, learning from the practice: tourist practices and lifelong education

This article will examine the relationship between learning and tourist practices in two fields of survey: social tourism and self-observation. Daily learning resulting from tourist activities developed for integrating disadvantaged communities into a mainstream norm, learning the tourist practice itself, and learning stemming from the tourist practice that furthers knowledge or know-how not limited to appropriating the practice, are interdependent. The notions of guided participation and of guided exploration reveal the learning mechanisms at work. The latter also affords us a lifelong informal education potential.

Jouer avec des figurines a l’école maternelle

ResumenLes écoles maternelles utilisent le plus souvent un matériel spécifique, différent des jouets avec lesquels les enfants jouent chez eux. Cela renvoie à une vision étroitement fonctionnelle du matériel ludique et en conséquence du jeu. Une place peut être faite à des jeux symboliques non imitatifs, supports d’investissement imaginaires. L’article présente, pour illustrer ce point de vue, une expérience réalisée dans plusieurs classes maternelles françaises: il s’agit de l’introduction de figurines fantastiques liées à un dessin animé télévisé d’origine américaine. Nous analysons les conséquences de cette introduction quant à la vie de la classe, à l’attitude des institutrices, des enfants et des parents. Il s’agit de prendre en compte aussi bien le jeu libre à l’école que la culture proposée par la télévision et certains jouets récents.RésuméLos jardines infantiles utilizan generalmente un material específico, diferente al de los juguetes con los cuales los niños juegan en sus hogares. Eso crea una visión puramente funcional del material de juego y por lo tanto del juego. Es posible hacer un lugar al juego simbólico no imitativo, como apoyo a una invensión imaginaria. Para ilustrar este punto de vita, el artículo presenta una experiencia realizada en varias clases de jardines infantiles franceses: se trata de la presentación de personajes imaginarios asociados a un dibujo animado televisado de origen americano. Analizamos las consecuencias de esta presentación en lo que respecta la vida de la clase, la actitud de las educadoras, de los niños y de los padres. Se trata de considerar, a la vez, el juego libre en la escuela y la cultura propuesta por la televisión y ciertos juguetes recientes.AbstractPlay materials in nursery schools are usually quite different from the toys children play with at home. This has created the impression that most play materials, and consequently play itself in nursery schools, are strictly functional. However, room can be made for symbolic non-imitative play, including fantasy play. The current article illustrates this point by describing what happened when children in several French nursery school classes were presented with figurines modeled after cartoon characters of an American television show. The results of this presentation are examined in terms of the class itself, the attitude of the teachers, of the children and of their parents. The article also considers how free play in the nursery school is influenced by television and by certain toys that have recently come on the market.

Toys: Between Rhetoric of Education and Rhetoric of Fun

A toy is mainly an object addressed to children. It must persuade children or parents who are its addressee. To analyze this kind of communication, we can use the notion of rhetoric—that is, what the toy means to its recipient, how the object seduces, catches, and captures the consumer and/or the user, child, or adult on behalf of the child. The main way today is to make the object fun, mainly in relationship to children’s mass culture—that is, a rhetoric of fun. Another way is to connect children with education or development. The toy or other goods for children are seen as educational tools; that means they are for children and only for them. But if the rhetoric of education has become less central and important for the toys, it still perpetuates this mainly for younger children who are more dependent on the adult’s choice. The chapter has as its objective to show the rhetoric of education in some contemporary toys, and analyzes education more as a discourse, an image than a reality.

Learning by Participating: A Theoretical Configuration Applied to French Cooperative Day Care Centres

This chapter connects two areas: that of early childhood education (particularly for children under the age of three) and adult education in a framework where there is no explicit educational objective. Using the concepts of participation, community of practice and repertoires of practices, it examines and elaborates the different kinds of participation occurring in parent-run cooperative day care centres. The research shows differences of modalities of participation between the day care centres, with some limitations and obstacles, but full participation with no visible differences between parents and professionals in others. These day care centres can be seen as communities of practice, where the shared repertoire of practice is an important aspect with a dynamic of learning for parents, workers and children. We can see the development of knowledge-in-practice in relationship to the diversity of the families comprising these parents and their children. But this account also challenges the issue of truth and best practices and, behind this, the difference between professionals and parents. It appears that the shared repertoire is, in fact, the result of a cultural negotiation which is largely implicit and in any event not explained except in person to person relationships and rarely at the level of the day care centre as a whole. It is through their participation (whose modes, linked to the affordance of each day care centre, vary) that parents learn and negotiate the practices, likewise transforming their repertoire of practice. This is also true of workers and children, making parent-run cooperative day care centres particularly remarkable the learning effects communities of practice.