Social rules according to young children

This paper reports the viewpoint of 10 children (aged five-six years) on social rules in their Catholic (Singapore) preschool classrooms. Rather than doing research on children and construing a judgement on their behalf, data was collected through semi-structured interviews with the children. This study provides valuable insights into children's meaning-making about social practices, examples and non-examples of social rules, and how children view themselves as rule learners and followers. Themes recognised through the analysis process identified that children were united in their views about conventional social norms, including their understanding of and necessity for the rules (Thornberg, 2008b). The children acknowledged specific social standards as essential practices for an orderly and harmonious preschool environment