Kijk eens wat ik kan! Sociale praktijken in de interactie tussen kinderen van 4 tot 8 jaar in de buitenschoolse opvang

“Look what I can do!” Social practices in the interaction of children aged 4 to 8 years old in after-school care

The after-school care in the Netherlands is, since the end of the twentieth century, a new pedagogic practice where a large group of children spend their free time after school. What the everyday life of children in the after-school care looks like, how they make friends, how they can play together and engage in conflict and solve it, in short, how they shape their social life in interaction in the after-school care has, until now, been underexposed in the scientific literature. Nynke van der Schaaf studied the social competence of children in interaction in after-school care.
In this study conversations between children in the context of entry negotiations, conflict conversations and rule negotiations were described. From this it was found that the social competence of children aged four to eight years old in after-school care is shaped by a wealth of social practices that children construct together. This means that children realize and organize actions in many different ways to gain entry to other children’s games, engage in conflicts, let them persist and end them, and use rules to develop a game and establish authority. Moreover, children’s practices are often different and more complex in a number of perspectives when compared to adult practices that have been described in earlier studies. The after-school care turns out to be an environment in which young children can develop socially by gaining experience in many different social practices.