Togetherness and Awareness: Young Children’s Peer Play

Abstract

The research reported here seeks to understand young children’s peer play and how it is important to their everyday learning, development, and quality of life. The research question of this chapter is: how do young children create the social conditions to achieve happiness and playfulness in peer play? The cultural-historical concept of demands and motives forms the foundation of this research project. This chapter uses two video clips to focus on how two young children create the social conditions through their awareness in the play contexts to achieve their togetherness and happiness. It is argued that young children are able to make demands to each other and through the process of interaction, also create new motive orientations to the settings in order to achieve their togetherness in peer play. This builds a foundation for young children to adjust their actions and develop their awareness of others. The findings have implications such as the need for educators and parents to understand that peer play provides a learning opportunity for children to develop flexibility and understanding of self and others.