Enacting Agency: Young Children’s Choice-Making in Shaping Participation in Conventional and Subversive Shared Play

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Arts-Based Approaches in Early Childhood (Table 4)

Abstract

Children’s play is often highly regulated by schools with acceptable norms drawn from understandings of both adult-centric views of kinderculture and the desire to protect children from play practices deemed unacceptable. This study documents children’s engagement with participatory videography during a multi-year exploration of children’s outdoor play in preschool. Findings indicate that the children displayed a sophisticated understanding of how they could construct, co-construct, and de-construct knowledge, culture, and identity through their play given the presence or absence of adults. In particular, children’s videography documented their consistent renegotiation of established play boundaries and demonstrates how children develop their play identities in relational and contradictory ways in light of the polarities of school norms and children’s play cultures.

Author

• Angela L. Eckhoff, Old Dominion University