Pen
Pen Green Research Project: Developing ‘Negotiation Capital’
Developing ‘Negotiation capital’: influence and imagination in three and four-year-old triadic collaborative play in nursery
Kate Hayward, Jackie Raine & Carla Hendry
European Early Childhood Education Research Journal
ISSN: 1350-293X (Print) 1752-1807 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/recr20
About the Research
This study was the focus of discussions over a two-year period with family workers, researchers and parents at the Pen Green Centre for Children and their Families. Based in the nursery environment this study looked at how 3 and 4-year-olds interact in spontaneous imaginary play. The focus was on how children use strategies to negotiate, influence and collaborate in their play. Research questions were:
. How do children negotiate with each other in imaginary play?
. What strategies do they use?
. How do they work within the group to gain influence while maintaining the collaboration of others?
ABSTRACT
This project seeks to understand the ‘possible worlds, possible selves’ (Carr, M., A. B. Smith, J. Duncan, C. Jones, W. Lee, and K. Marshall. 2010. Learning in the Making. Rotterdam: Sense) afforded to children by collaborative imaginative play involving negotiation. We investigate how 3 and 4-year-olds achieve their ends through negotiation and collaboration in imaginary play. Preliminary findings suggest that the ability to influence the play appears to depend on the amount of ‘negotiation capital’ held by each child. Children engage in a process of ‘brinkmanship’ assessing how much ‘negotiation capital’ they hold at any time. The capacity to influence is, therefore, both individually and socially determined and time specific. The study raises questions about how adults can move from being ‘solution fixers’ with an emphasis on adult determined ‘rules’ as a way of settling differences of opinion in the nursery to engaging in a more reflective pedagogy where the adult ‘tunes’ to the child’s collaborative play in action.