Co-producing cultural knowledge: Children telling tales in the school playground

Abstract

The school playground is a place where children socially engage with peers and attain membership and participation in group activities. As young children negotiate relationships and social orders in playground settings, disputes may occur and children might ‘tell’ tales to the teacher. Children’s telling on each other is often a cause of concern for teachers and children because tellings occur within a dispute and signal the breakdown of interaction. Closely examining a video-recorded episode of girls telling on some boys highlights the practices that constitute cultural knowledge of children’s peer culture. This ethnomethodological study revealed a sequential pattern of telling with three distinct phases: (1) an announcement of telling after an antecedent event (2) going to the teacher to tell about the antecedent event and (3) post-telling events. These findings demonstrate that telling is carefully orchestrated by children showing their competence to co-produce cultural knowledge. Such understandings highlight the multiple and often overlapping dimensions of cultural knowledge as children construct, practise and manage group membership and participation in their peer cultures.