A CHILD-CENTRED LENS ON THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF FRIENDSHIP AND SOCIAL SPACE WITHIN INDOOR AND OUTDOOR PHYSICAL SETTINGS IN ONE NURSERY SCHOOL

Abstract

ABSTRACT

This research investigated the role of the physical indoor and outdoor settings of a nursery school upon young children’s friendships. This research drew on three interrelated theories and concepts: Interpretive Reproduction (Corsaro 1985), Territorialisation (Sack 1986) and Children’s Active Participation (James et al., 1998). In this study, these theories and concepts were combined to form a “Child-centred Lenses on the Co-construction of Friendship and Social Space within Indoor and Outdoor Physical Settings”. To my knowledge, these conceptual lenses have not been integrated in this way within an early years’ framework. They enabled me to have a deeper understanding of children’s active participation in constructing friendships in their own indoor and outdoor physical early years environments. This qualitative ethnographic case study was conducted in one nursery setting in a small city in Southwest England. This research was conducted with four different friendship groups, three of which were comprised of two children and one group comprised of three. Children were aged between 3 and 4 years old through the course of the year-long fieldwork. The Mosaic Approach (Clark and Moss 2005) was applied as the data collection framework by developing different participatory and visual data collection tools.

There were five phases in this study, the first of which was to become familiarised with the setting, teachers and the potential participant children. This phase included the methods of participant observations and a map-making exercise in order to conceptualise the physical landscape. The second phase took place after deciding on the participant children; each friendship group led the walking tour, and they took photographs of significant spaces for their friendship group, in both the indoor and outdoor early years setting. In the third phase, each friendship group created their own map based on the photos they had taken in the second phase. Later, in the fourth phase, the researcher interviewed the children in groups on the “magic carpet”. The questions were based on each friendship group’s answers in the second and the third phases and the researcher’s field notes. In the fifth and final stage, the perspectives of the six educators responsible for the children were considered through semi-structured interviews; the questions used to ascertain the educators’ perspectives were based on the earlier responses of the child participants. In each phase, the participant observations took place as an ongoing process. The Mosaic Approach was adapted to investigate the co-construction of friendship and space for children in the early years.

This study contributes to knowledge by integrating three theoretical lenses in what I term an Agentic Interpretivist Reproduction and Territorialisation (AIRT approach). It is argued that this combination of theoretical apparatus orientates a deep understanding of young children's friendships both indoors and outdoors, as well as how space and friendship are co-constructed. This study modified the Mosaic Approach in order to allow young children's voices to be heard regarding their friendships and their spatial recognition. The findings from the study indicate that different friendship groups use indoor and outdoor spaces variously for ‘doing’ friendships; indoor and outdoor spaces were claimed by different friendship groups and controlled by them for the purposes of privacy and comparison. This finding has implications for the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) policy and practice in regard to pointing to the need to pay more policy attention to the friendships of young children, as well as practice implications regarding the importance of maintaining flexibility in the design of space to improve both indoor and outdoor spaces according to the children's preferences.


Key words: The Mosaic Approach, Indoor and Outdoor Spaces, Early Years Education, Friendship, Participatory Research with Young Children, Interpretive Reproduction, Corsaro, Territorialisation.

Date of Award	4 Dec 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Ceri Brown (Supervisor) & Elisabeth Barratt Hacking (Supervisor)