“Be friends with all the children”: Friendship, group membership, and conflict management in a Russian preschool

Publication date: Available online 20 August 2019Source: Linguistics and EducationAuthor(s): Ekaterina MooreAbstractConflict is managed in diverse culturally-preferred ways in communities around the globe. This paper examines peer conflict management in a Russian preschool, a setting that is central for learning and practicing culturally-appropriate ways of conflict resolution. Conducted in a language socialization perspective, the paper examines ways in which a cultural norm of being friendly members of a group is communicated by the teachers within the context of peer conflict resolution. Teachers are observed using various resources including directives, narrative elicitations and questions, characterizations, as well as physical manipulation of students’ bodies and available material resources to encourage friendly peer interactions and positive social relationships among the children, as members of a group. The paper also examines children's reactions toward the socialization attempts demonstrating that as they learn to follow this cultural orientation, the children also learn the ways to creatively resist and appropriate such an orientation. The paper is based on discourse analysis of audio-visual recordings (40 hours) of adult–peer and peer–peer interactions and ethnographic observations conducted over a period of three consecutive summers.
Source: Linguistics and Education - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research