Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T01:14:46.086Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

18 - Friendships

from Part III - Interaction and Inclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2022

By
Maryanne Theobald
Edited by
Amelia Church  and
Amanda Bateman
Amelia Church
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
Amanda Bateman
Affiliation:
Swansea University
Get access

Summary

Responsive and respectful relationships are principal elements of early childhood curricula in many countries. Children seek to interact with peers, be included as part of a group, and make friends. Successful relationships in the early years lead to better communication skills, increased general knowledge, and feelings of wellbeing, all necessary for successful life and work outcomes. Making friends is often viewed as a ‘natural’ state of childhood, and consequently, assumes an individual’s social skills are the sole reason for a child’s ability to make friends or not. This chapter takes an interactional view to show that friendships are linked to ongoing and inter-dependent actions of the peer group. Seven examples of peer interactions highlight the ways in which children actively seek to participate and build friendships. It is these ‘implications for practice’ that demonstrate how early childhood educators might support children’s play and participation so as to develop responsive and respectful relationships. The chapter argues that when an interactional process approach, based on conversation analysis is adopted, educators can identify the criticality of the social context, and best support children’s opportunities to be included and make friends.

Keywords

friendshippeer cultureinteractionplaychildrenearly childhood educationwellbeingparticipationrelationships
Type
Chapter
Information
Talking with Children
A Handbook of Interaction in Early Childhood Education
 , pp. 368 - 387
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barley, R. (2017). Language identity and peer interaction at a linguistically diverse school. In Theobald, M. (ed.), Friendship and Peer Culture in Multilingual Settings (pp. 89–112). Bingley: Emerald Publishing.Google Scholar
Bateman, A. (2011). Huts and heartache: the affordance of playground huts for legal debate in early childhood social organisation. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(13), 3111–3121.Google Scholar
Bateman, A., and Church, A. (2017). Children’s use of objects in an early years playground. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 25(1), 55–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Björk-Willén, P. (2007). Participation in multilingual preschool play: shadowing and crossing as interactional resources. Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 2133–2158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Björk-Willén, P. (2017). Peer collaboration in front of two alphabet charts: friendship and peer culture in multilingual settings. In Theobald, M. (ed.), Friendship and Peer Culture in Multilingual Settings (pp. 143–169). Bingley: Emerald Publishing.Google Scholar
Butler, C. W. (2008). Talk and Social Interaction in the Playground. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Butler, C. W., Duncombe, R., Mason, C., and Sandford, R. (2016). Recruitments, engagements, and partitions: managing participation in play. International Journal of Play, 5(1), 47–63.Google Scholar
Carter, C., and Nutbrown, C. (2016). A pedagogy of friendship: young children’s friendships and how schools can support them. International Journal of Early Years Education, 24(4), 395–413. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2016.1189813Google Scholar
Cekaite, A. (2006). A child’s development of interactional competence in a Swedish L2 classroom. The Modern Language Journal, 91(1), 45–62.Google Scholar
Cobb-Moore, C., Danby, S., and Farrell, A. (2010). Locking the unlockable: children’s invocation of pretense to define and manage place. Childhood, 17(3), 376–395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coelho, L., Torres, N., Fernandes, C., and Santos, A. J. (2017). Quality of play, social acceptance and reciprocal friendship in preschool children. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 25(6), 812–823. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2017.1380879CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corsaro, W. A. (2003). ‘We’re Friends, Right?’: Inside Kids’ Culture. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press.Google Scholar
Corsaro, W. A. (2017). Making and keeping friends in multilingual settings: what we know and where we are going (foreword). In Theobald, M. (ed.). Friendship and Peer Culture in Multilingual Settings (pp. xi–xv). Bingley: Emerald Publishing.Google Scholar
Cowie, B., and Bell, B. (1999). A model of formative assessment in science education. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 6(1),101–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/09695949993026Google Scholar
Cromdal, J. (2001). Overlap in bilingual play: some implications of code-switching for overlap resolution. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 34(4), 421–451. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327973RLSI3404_02CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cromdal, J. (2004) ‘Can I be with?’: negotiating play entry in a bilingual school. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 515–543.Google Scholar
Cromdal, J. (2009). Childhood and social interaction in everyday life: introduction to the special issue. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(8), 1473–1476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danby, S. J. (2008). The importance of friends; the value of friends; friendships within peer cultures. In Brooker, L. and Woodhead, M. (eds.), Developing Positive Identities: Diversity and Young Children (pp. 36–41). Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Danby, S. J., Davidson, C., Theobald, M., Houen, S., and Thorpe, K. (2017). Pretend play and technology: young children making sense of their everyday worlds. In Pike, D., Lynch, S., and Beckett, C. (eds.), Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Play from Birth and Beyond (pp. 231–246). London: Springer Nature.Google Scholar
Danby, S., Thompson, C., Theobald, M., and Thorpe, K. (2012). Children’s strategies for making friends when starting school. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 37(2), 63–71.Google Scholar
Dunn, J. (2004). Children’s Friendships: The Beginnings of Intimacy. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Evaldsson, A.-C. (2007). Accounting for friendship: moral ordering and category membership in preadolescent girls’ relational talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 40(4), 377–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evaldsson, A.-C., and Svahn, J. (2012). School bullying and the micro-politics of girls’ gossip disputes. In Danby, S. and Theobald, M. (eds.), Disputes in Everyday Life (pp. 297–323). Bingley: Emerald Publishing.Google Scholar
Fleer, M. (2013). Collective imagining in play. In Schousboe, I. and Winther-Lindqvist, D. (eds.), Children’s Play and Development: Cultural-Historical Perspectives (pp. 73–79). London: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
García Sánchez, I. M. (2017). Friendship, participation, and multimodality in Moroccan immigrant girls’ peer groups. In Theobald, M. (ed.), Friendship and Peer Culture in Multilingual Settings (pp. 1–32). Bingley: Emerald Publishing.Google Scholar
Göncü, A. (1993). Development of intersubjectivity in social pretend play. Human Development, 36(4), 185–198.Google Scholar
Hartup, W. W. (2000). The company they keep: friendships and their developmental significance. In Craig, W. (ed.), Childhood Social Development. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Iqbal, H., Neal, S., and Vincent, C. (2017). Children’s friendships in super-diverse localities: encounters with social and ethnic difference. Childhood, 24(1), 128–142.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kultti, A., and Pramling, N. (2015). Bring your own toy: socialisation of two-year-olds through tool-mediated activities in an Australian early childhood education context. Early Childhood Education Journal, 43(5), 367–376.Google Scholar
Kultti, A., and Pramling Samuelsson, I. (2017). Toys and the creation of cultural play scripts. In Pike, D., Lynch, S., and Beckett, C. (eds.), Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Play from Birth and Beyond (pp. 217–230). London: Springer Nature.Google Scholar
Kyratzis, A. (2014). Peer interaction, framing, and literacy in preschool bilingual pretend play. In Cekaite, A., Blum-Kulka, S., Grøver, V., and Teubal, E. (eds.), Children’s Peer Talk: Learning from Each Other (pp. 129–148). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Laursen, B., Bukowski, W. M., Aunola, K., and Nurmi, J. (2007). Friendship moderates prospective associations between social isolation and adjustment problems in young children. Child Development, 78(4), 1395–1404.Google Scholar
Lillard, A. S., Lerner, M. D., Hopkins, E. J., Dore, R. A., Smith, E. D., and Palmquist, C. M. (2013). The impact of pretend play on children’s development: a review of the evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 139(1), 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029321Google Scholar
McDonnell, S. (2017). Speaking distance: language, friendship and spaces of belonging in Irish primary schools. In Theobald, M. (ed.), Friendship and Peer Culture in Multilingual Settings (pp. 33–54). Bingley: Emerald Publishing.Google Scholar
McLeod, S., Verdon, S., and Theobald, M. (2015). Becoming bilingual: children’s insights about making friends in bilingual settings. International Journal of Early Childhood, 47(3), 385–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paley, V. G. (1993). You can’t say you can’t play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Peräkylä, A., and Vehvilƒinen, S. (2003). Conversation analysis and the professional stocks of interactional knowledge. Discourse & Society, 14(6), 727–750.Google Scholar
Rubin, K., Bukowski, W., and Parker, J. (2006). Peer interactions, relationships, and groups. In Damon, W., Lerner, R., and Eisenberg, N (eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology: Vol. 3. Social, Emotional, and Personality Development (6th ed., pp. 571–645). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1995). Lectures on Conversation (Jefferson, G., Trans. Vol. I and II). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sidnell, J., and Stivers, T. (eds.). (2012). The Handbook of Conversation Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Theobald, M. (2013). Ideas as ‘possessitives’: claims and counter claims in a playground dispute. Journal of Pragmatics, 45(1), 1–12.Google Scholar
Theobald, M., Bateman, A., Busch, G., Laraghy, M., and Danby, S. J. (2017). ‘I’m your best friend’: peer interaction and friendship in a multilingual preschool. In Theobald, M. (ed.), Friendship and Peer Culture in Multilingual Settings (pp. 171–196). Bingley: Emerald Publishing.Google Scholar
Theobald, M., Busch, G., and Laraghy, M. (2019). Children’s views and strategies for making friends in linguistically diverse English medium instruction settings. In Liyanage, I. and Walker, T. (eds.), Mulitlingual Education Yearbook 2019: Media of Instruction and Multilingual Settings (pp. 151–174). London: Springer.Google Scholar
Theobald, M., and Danby, S. J. (2019). Children’s competence and wellbeing in sensitive research: when video-stimulated accounts lead to dispute. In Lamerichs, J., Danby, S. J., Bateman, A., and Ekberg, S. (eds.), Children and Mental Health Talk: Perspectives on Social Competence (pp. 137–166). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Theobald, M., Danby, S. J., Thompson, C., and Thorpe, K. (2020). Friendships. In Garvis, S. and Pendergast, D. (eds.), Health and Wellbeing in Childhood (3rd ed.) (pp. 235–256). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vaughn, B. E., Azria, M. R., Caya, L. R., Newell, W., Krysik, L., Bost, K.K., and Kazura, K. L. (2000). Friendship and social competence in a sample of preschool children attending Head Start. Developmental Psychology, 36(3), 326–338. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.36.3.326Google Scholar
Vaughn, B. E., Colvin, T. N., Azria, M. R., Caya, L. R., and Krysik, L. (2001). Dyadic analyses of friendship in a sample of preschool-age children attending head start: correspondence between measures and implications for social competence. Child Development, 72(3): 862–878. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00320Google Scholar
Weisberg, D. S. (2015). Pretend play. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 6(3), 249–261.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×