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Being Kitties In A Preschool Classroom: Maintaining Group Harmony And Acting Proper In A Female Peer-Culture Play Routine, Samara Madrid, Rebecca Kantor

Rebecca Kantor

This study examines how young girls construct emotional themes in their peer-culture play routines and rituals in the daily life of a preschool classroom. This research is part of a larger eight-month ethnographic study of one preschool classroom. The data selected and analysed in this article are taken from a focused six-week theoretical sampling of five female preschool children's play. Micro-level analysis of the data (field notes, videotaping, video revisiting and interviews with teachers and students) revealed how children's peer-culture and emotional themes were socially constructed through a specific play narrative that centred on five females being ‘kitties’. A closer …