Abstract:

The contemporary discourse within theory, research and practice in early childhood education conceptualize young children as active agents endowed with rights to express their own viewpoints while highlighting their capacities to act on, affecting, and shape their own lives and environments (Rodgers, 2020).

Friendships and reciprocal relationships occur early in young children's social worlds and have positive impact on their social-emotional development, self-esteem, quality of life and adaptive capabilities to handle social settings and changes throughout life. Overall, variability in the nature of relationships among children is evident in terms of time spent together, and specific aspects of engagement such as collective actions, negotiation and sharing experiences (Holder & Coleman, 2015).

This presentation aims to review a series of studies focused on children’s perceptions, understandings, meanings, and experiences concerning friendships. These perceptions were facilitated through dialogues supplemented with artistic expressive tools enabling for 100 languages of children’s expression (Edwards, & Gandini, 2018).

The presentation will feature eight studies, conducted by pre-service early childhood education (ECE) students as part of a seminar course (from 2021 to 2023). These studies aim to gain insights into how preschool-aged children (N=41, 22 girls, 19 boys) enrolled in regular education classes perceive and reflect upon ‘friendship’ in their lives.

Employing a qualitative-constructivist approach, the perspectives of preschool children were elicited through semi-structured, in-depth interviews tailored for young children and supplemented by the utilization of artistic expressive tools (i.e., drawing and photography), accompanied by personal explanations. These research tools facilitated the articulation of children's thoughts, experiences, and personal interpretation. Subsequently, all dialogues and explanations were recorded, transcribed, read, and re-read in order to engender familiarity with the data. Thematic analysis was then employed to identify, analyze, and interpret meaningful categories grounded in established theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990).

Thematic analyses conducted across the studies underscored that preschool children predominantly perceive 'friendship' as a positive form of interaction. Furthermore, additional themes emerged indicating that preschool children conceptualize 'friendship' as dynamic and changing; constituting a supportive 'safety net'; embodying social values such as cooperation, tolerance, respect, and assistance, and predicated upon mutual consent. These thematic categories were discerned from both interview transcripts and artistic expressive tools.

The findings from these studies underscore the importance of integrating children's perspective research within ECE programs to deepen pre-service students' understanding of both the children's world and their own professional roles. In addition, within both research and practice contexts, the utilization of various artistic expressive tools serves as a potent means of eliciting and elucidating young children's perceptions, understandings, meanings, and experiences.

Keywords:

Preschool, children's perspective, friendship.