Belonging in Preschool: Listening to Children's Perspectives

• In Event: 75.041 - MTCC Roundtable Session 33
  In Roundtable Session: 75.041-13 - Enhancing Young Children's Learning Through Robots and Digital Technology

Abstract

The study builds on the ideology of Childhood Studies which views childhood as a social construction, contingent upon culture, time and context and focuses on children’s strengths and competencies to actively influence their surroundings. The study also draws on the politics of belonging within which belonging and exclusion are understood as relational rather than individual phenomena. Nine children participated in the study. Data gathering included individual interviews that were based on photos that the children took with computer tablets, as well as group interviews. Findings reveal that participation in the community of peers was most important for the participating preschool children.

Author

• Johanna Einarsdottir, University of Iceland