A dialogue with the sociology of childhood from the interpretive reproduction and cultures of peers in children's play

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationships between the Interpretive Reproduction and the Culture of Peers in the interactions among children who play in the daily life of Early Childhood Education, without adult interference. This research is based on the Sociology of Childhood, introducing the children as full social beings, capable for action, and childhood as a culturally active and creative social group (SIROTA, 2001; CORSARO, 2009, 2011; SARMENTO, 2003).  It considers children's play as a social and cultural practice built in and through the interactions among children in articulation with the sociocultural context in which they are inserted (BORBA, 2005). This is a qualitative research based on an ethnographic perspective with children. The data were collected with video recordings and described in playful episodes of a group of 25 three year-olds’ children of both genders in a kindergarten school in the city of Aracaju, SE, Brazil. Our results reveal how children collectively produce a routine in which they share moments of tension, excitement of threat, relief and joy of escape, facing danger and fear, inserting emotions and feelings into their routines of peers, which they produce and control, evidencing that the play routines are elements that constitute the Cultures of Peers. Those routines are produced by the children and shared though their interaction with same-aged partners by the active and inventive (re)elaboration of the sociocultural environments of which they actively participate.