Zabawa jako medium dziecięcej codzienności: etnografia w przedszkolu

The main thesis of this article is that the teacher is the most competent person to carry out ethnographic research in the kindergarten. After all, it is the teacher who plays a natural part in the children’s everyday lives, where the role of play is predominant. By creating, performing and transforming the social elements of play in a collective manner, children work out procedures which give meaning to various social situations and thereby construct an individual vision of the world. This all happens in the presence of the teacher who observes children’s behaviour and by listening to what they say, and can view reflexively the social practices involved in the creation of children’s reality. A significant element in this is play, which one can describe as a medium between the child’s inner world – his knowledge, emotions, fears, fascinations – and the outer world, in which every child is an active participant and a careful observer. The second part of the article consists of an extension of this thesis, supported by excerpts of ethnographic observations recorded in a kindergarten. The observations made refer to play as a medium and state that it is 1) a mirror of ordinary children’s concerns, 2) training preparing them to participate in their future, everyday adult lives, 3) their authentic everyday life, where they succeed, fail and confront each other, 4) prediction of the types of future social interactions they will be involved in, and 5) a source of self knowledge, preferences and biases