Abstract
In early childhood education, playing with friends has long been considered developmentally appropriate and an indicator of a child’s growing social competency. ‘We are all friends’ is a familiar mantra heard in classrooms and playgrounds. For children with a diagnosed disability and their families, inclusive settings offer the promise of play experiences with children without a diagnosed disability. However, the expectation of building friendships and the opportunity to play with friends is not always realised. This article problematises and questions the way friendship play for children is discursively produced and normalised. For the most part, it remains unchallenged, leading to exclusions that are often overlooked. As the friendship play discourse is appreciated as legitimate and taken up by children, it produces a marginal Other. Examining data created during a six-month post-structural ethnography, the power of friendship play discourses comes into focus, making visible exclusionary effects that raise questions about the persistent and pervasive use of the statement ‘We are all friends’.
Keywords
Introduction: friendship play
Virtually all early childhood educators (and many others) espouse play as a sacred right of childhood, as the way in which young human beings learn, as a major avenue through which children learn to be happy, mentally healthy human beings. (Cannella, 1997: 124)
Play-centred pedagogy in early childhood education is well established and understood to positively support a child’s learning. The notion that children learn through play with each other is accepted and promoted in practice (Nolan and Kilderry, 2010). Play is thought to promote a democratic society and respond to the ‘natural’ development of children (Cannella, 1997). It is described as a ‘leading activity’ and a driving force in children’s development (Siraj-Blatchford, 2009). Young children are often positioned as experts at play (Nind et al., 2014). Play has become an essential constituent in many policy frameworks in early childhood education and is regarded as a central feature of a young child’s life, and a child’s right (Australian Government, 2009; UNICEF, 1989; Wood, 2010). Emerging from the ideas of educational pioneers, play has become established alongside hegemonic discourses of child development and developmental psychology. The historical influence and widespread uptake in early childhood education of developmental appropriate practice produced play as a primary vehicle for a child’s mental growth, as ‘play enables children to progress along the developmental sequence’ (Bredekamp and Copple, 1997: 3).
The importance of playing with others is powerfully shaped by developmental understandings. Observation of a child playing with peers is gauged as evidence of progress and achievement (Wood, 2010). Sociocultural theory, which is well entrenched in early childhood education, positions playing with and learning from peers in shared activities as pivotal for a child’s cognitive growth and development (Bodrova and Leong, 2007). Children are deemed to learn about their world, and about themselves and others, through play. Play is monitored and documented. A child’s ability to play and display competencies is scrutinised and, if needed, supported or remediated by educators in the classroom. Stages, aligning with ages, have been produced to explain how play should progress (Macintyre, 2012).
From a developmental perspective, a milestone is realised when play moves from solitary play to social play with peers. ‘Cooperative’ play or playing with others is viewed as an important signpost (McDevitt and Ormrod, 2007) and regarded as ‘typical’ or ‘natural’ for preschool-aged children in the early childhood classroom (Grieshaber and McArdle, 2010). The construction of a ‘developmental norm was a standard based upon the average abilities or performances of children at a certain age on a particular task’ (Rose, 1999: 145). Playing with peers and creating friendships in early childhood is viewed as developmentally ‘normal’ and anticipated. Classroom understandings of friendship play, produced within these discourses, however, create prescribed and limited ways of being and doing that circulate among children, where, as I will argue in this article, those who play with peers are considered to be developing normally and those who play alone, or differently, are positioned as Other. How do these embedded discourses, as they are taken up by children in their everyday negotiations, position the child with a diagnosis?
The term ‘child with a diagnosis’ is used in this article as it describes the way a child is marked by a diagnosis bestowed on them by a medical and/or psychological professional. Other, more commonly used terms such as ‘child with a disability’ or ‘child with special or additional needs’, created within special education discourses, position the problem in the child. They confer a truth and promote a privation. Disrupting practice-as-usual, I use the terms ‘child with a diagnosis’ or ‘marked child’, and ‘child without a diagnosis’ or ‘unmarked child’, in a bid to question the perpetuation of the medical model of disability in our classrooms, and disrupt the work of ‘diagnosis-as-usual’. This term underscores the way a diagnosis, no matter what it might be, positions a child in a setting.
Inclusive classrooms and friendship play
In Australia, as in other parts of the world, inclusion has been a relatively recent practice and policy initiative (Nutbrown and Clough, 2009). The Australian Government’s (2009: 15) Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia supports the idea of ‘inclusive learning communities’. Inclusive education in early childhood education, however, has been described as ‘far from ideal’, as barriers for a child with a diagnosis are omnipresent (Grace et al., 2008: 18).
In the inclusive classroom, friendship play is positioned as a possibility for everyone. Friendship and playing with friends are considered phenomena that naturally take place when children gather. Parents of children with a diagnosis value inclusive classrooms as they want their child to have ‘social’ experiences with typically developing peers (Rafferty and Griffin, 2005). Playing with peers is expected and advocated by educators. Friendship discourses repetitively use ‘inclusive’ language and promote ‘inclusive’ action. The phrase ‘We are all friends’ is proclaimed daily in the classroom to remind everyone of this expectation. The expectation, however, relies heavily on a developmental profile and a norm that relegates many children to the margins.
Young children actively draw on normalising discourses around their own and others’ identities and the homogenous group. They adjust their behaviours and observe the behaviour of others around them, and can decide whether or not they might be the same (Watson, 2017). Young children are aware of diversity and difference from an early age and are capable of identifying what they understand as the normal or the right way to be (Robinson and Jones-Diaz, 2006). The acceptable and sanctioned discourses in the classroom contribute powerfully to the way children come to understand themselves. They also assist them in identifying difference in the classroom. Children’s words and actions, although sometimes exclusionary, are continually made justifiable by the circulating discourses, as they are imbued with authority. Exclusionary practices, which are inadvertently made legitimate, often go unnoticed, unrecognised and unchecked by educators and children as they continue to obsess about friendship play as a prescribed milestone.
The power relations which are produced and reflected in children’s friendship play have until recently remained unacknowledged, as friendship play has been discursively produced, uninterrupted, as essential, ‘natural’ and ‘innocent’ (Grieshaber and McArdle, 2010). The focus on playing with others as educationally and developmentally appropriate has worked to conceal how children use play to position themselves more powerfully, often to the detriment of others. Uncritically taking up discursive practices where all children are understood as friends hides the way that friendship play can marginalise. While I am not arguing against friendship play or the value of friends, I am challenging the way it is (re)produced in the early childhood context – taken for granted, normalised, anticipated and endorsed, generating no challenge to the way it positions all children, and, in particular, some children as Other.
Methodology
Using post-structural theory, this article interrogates the operations and effects of the discursive normal in the inclusive early childhood classroom and, in particular, the way it constructs friendship play. While much of the research in inclusive education focuses on the needs of the diagnosed child and strategies for their successful inclusion, the larger project from which this article is procured (Watson, 2015, 2017) turned the researcher’s gaze towards the including group, the already included. Drawing on the data from the study, this article presents a few of the conversations and observations produced in a six-month ethnography in three early childhood classrooms in New South Wales, Australia. Seventy-five children, aged between two and six, and twelve educators participated. In each classroom, there were several children with a diagnosis. Contact with the classrooms was established with the centre directors, and child, parent and educator consent was obtained. All of the names used are pseudonyms.
Spending time researching among the children and attending to their everyday interactions made the operations of the normative discourse visible. Understandings of the normal in the early childhood classroom are governed by, and created within, medical and scientific knowledges, which have become so familiar that there is no longer any reflection on them, and the ‘normal’ has become a comfortable truth shared by all (Harwood and Rasmussen, 2004). Foucault (1977: 184) describes the norm as ‘the new law of modern society’, as it exercises power and gives muscle to a homogenous social body. The norm has the power to measure the gaps or differences between individuals (Watson, 2017). The norm shapes children’s understandings of themselves and each other as they negotiate daily activities in the classroom.
In examining the construction and manoeuvres of the normal, a Foucauldian analysis of discourses, power and subjectivity provided the tools to observe how the children take up classroom understandings which inform them about who they are and who others might be. The role of discourse and power is seen as foregrounded in the constitution of subjects in the classroom (Foucault, 1972). Knowing how to belong and how to perform as a member of the normal, and how to maintain oneself that way, involves category boundary and maintenance work (Davies, 1989; Petersen, 2004). The unmarked children take up a position within the available discourses. Identifying with others who are similarly positioned, they create a category where membership is permitted to a particular kind of person, who knows how to belong, perform and be correctly located as a member (Davies, 1993). The category boundary work accomplished by the children makes visible the inclusions and exclusions in daily practices.
Friendship groups are dynamic and sometimes volatile (Grieshaber and McArdle, 2010), but there are particular characteristics which are discursively produced that dictate the right and normal way to be a friend. The created data presented in this article scrutinises the nuanced ways friendship play is produced among the children. What happens in the inclusive classroom when play and, in particular, playing with friends contributes to expected and normalised way of being?
The following playground conversation, prompted by my questioning as the researcher, conveys how the children take up ensconced normative developmental discourses and, in doing so, construct understandings of themselves and others.
‘I play with others’
‘I’ve noticed that Ethan (a child with a diagnosis) plays a lot on his own. Have you noticed that?’
‘Max (a child without a diagnosis) plays on his own too.’
‘Why do they play on their own?’
‘Maybe … ?’ (voice rises as if thinking)
‘I never play on my own.’
‘Me neither.’
‘If I stay at home, I can play with my sister, and sometimes if my dad stays home, I can play with my dad.’
‘Sometimes my big sister only likes sporty games so I don’t offer her other games. I only offer her sporty games.’
‘Do you think children like to play on their own or with others?’
‘I just think some people play on their own and most people play with some other people.’ (Watson, 2017: 61)
‘Playing on your own’, Daniel comments, is something that ‘some people’ do, but he also says that ‘most people play with some other people’. Daniel’s declaration positions him in the normal category, as a member of the ‘most people’ group, the homogenous body. Daniel recognises that ‘some’ people – those outside this discursive category – play on their own. Daniel is quite certain about play, saying ‘I never play on my own’, and Chloe joins him to show the solidarity of her category membership by saying ‘Me neither’. They make a clear statement that they do not like to play on their own.
As the children take up discourses of friendship play, they come to understand that to play with friends is normal. Ethan is marked as different, as he does not play with others. In early childhood classrooms, the obsession with child development discourses underlines the importance of showing social competency, as children of a particular age should be playing with others. This knowledge positions Ethan as outside the boundary of the normal. Cannella (1997: 124) argues that ‘constructions of play assume linearity, universal human behaviour, unidirectional progress, and standards of normalcy’. Daniel and Chloe take these discourses up as they come to know that solitary play is not normal and they want to avoid being positioned in that way.
The effects of friendship play discourses, and how they construct play as an almost compulsory and ‘natural’ activity for children, ‘separate’ Ethan from the unmarked children as his way of being – playing alone – is not recognised as a normal way to be. In psychological discourses, it might be viewed as a form of ‘social withdrawal’ – shyness – and is often pathologised. Coplan and Armer (2007: 26) speculate about long-standing concerns for children who refrain from social interaction in the presence of their peers, and make the claim that it is widely accepted that children who do not interact with their peers are ‘at risk of social and emotional difficulties later in their lives’.
As children position themselves and others within and through the available discourses, they engage in invoking a set of rules of what it might be possible to think, feel, say and do as a subject (Campbell, 2005). This set of rules produces recognisable categories that the children work to maintain. ‘Children’s play perpetuates the status quo’ (Grieshaber and McArdle, 2010: 77), reinforcing social and cultural divisions, and strengthening those who are already in powerful positions. Play reproduces what exists in society in terms of relations of power about ‘race; gender; social, economic and cultural capital; ethnicity; heteronormativity and proficiency with English’ (Grieshaber and McArdle, 2010: 75). Gender research in early childhood (Blaise, 2005; Davies, 1989) has shown that, in play, children engage in oppressive gender relations (Walkerdine, 1981). In the inclusive classroom, power relations draw on developmental discourses to elevate the normal and subjugate the not-normal. Children, through play, marginalise and isolate, include and exclude, using societal power relations to maintain the status quo.
‘We play games with friends’
Jack and Noah (children without a diagnosis) are in the sandpit. Each has a large plastic tip truck which they fill and empty. I move towards the sandpit and sit down on the edge. Ethan (a child with a diagnosis) has been following me for several minutes. He dances in circles, dancing away from me and then back again. He is singing, as well as telling a story with melody. He returns and stands in front of me each time and waits for me to say something. This goes on for many minutes. Jack and Noah look up each time Ethan returns. Their faces show surprise and bemusement. They look at me for a reaction:
‘Why does he keep dancing?’
‘Probably cause he likes it?’
‘Do you like to do that?’
‘Nah.’
‘Why not?’
‘Cause I like playing with my friends.’
‘What about Ethan? Does he like playing with friends?’
‘No.’ (Watson, 2017: 65)
As Jack and Noah ‘do’ their kind of play in the sandpit, they take note of Ethan’s play. This play scene could be regarded as ‘typical’ and normative in the early childhood centre. Ethan does not join the normative sandpit play, but dances around in circles, moving towards and away from the sandpit while singing ‘a story song’. Jack and Noah look at him and then look at me, somewhat perplexed. Ethan is not observed to play in the sandpit at all.
When asked why Ethan dances, Noah states that he probably likes it. In the child-centred pedagogy of early childhood classrooms, there are prevailing notions about autonomy and democracy (Burman, 2008), where children are thought to be able to, and encouraged to, make choices and self-regulate. A desirable level of self-direction in play, as an innocent and enjoyable endeavour, shapes pedagogical practices (Grieshaber and McArdle, 2010). This ignores, however, the possibility that play and its interactions can sometimes be coercive, cruel and dangerous (Burman, 2008). Play is discursively produced with some degree of ‘free choice’ and self-initiation, but, as Cannella (1997: 121) argues, ‘choice for children is an illusion’, as adults control the choices that surround children. The unmarked children take up the idea that they have choice and can make decisions about what they do in this context. Ethan is positioned by Noah as a choice-maker, but makes it clear that Ethan’s choice is not one that he would make.
Historically, children’s play has been considered as a self-initiated spontaneous activity – an act of ‘freedom’ (Grieshaber and McArdle, 2010) where children do what they want and follow their interests in an uninhibited way. The image of the young child as ‘innocent’, playing happily and harmoniously with others, has been (re)produced and permeates present-day approaches to a child-centred approach in early childhood education (James et al., 1998). Contemporary pedagogical discourses encourage children to show self-initiative and follow their interests. Even though choice might be limited within educational settings (Wood, 2014), the idea of deciding what, where and with whom to play is seen as both a privilege and an obligation. Playing with others is regarded as a standardised imperative for the young child.
Noah comments that Ethan is probably doing what he likes to do, making his own choice. Early childhood classrooms are fashioned as places where choices can be made, where children are positioned as ‘autonomous choosers’ and ‘decision makers’ (Millei, 2011: 89), and are trusted to direct themselves (Porter, 2008). More recently, early childhood classrooms have usurped adult control and discipline, with more egalitarian and democratic ideas for managing children, using a ‘guidance approach’, thought to empower children (Millei, 2011). The children readily take up the idea that they have the power to choose. But they also take note of what might be regarded as a good/poor choice, as the regulation that adults once performed is now often undertaken by the children, who regulate their own conduct and the conduct of others (Millei, 2011).
There is an obligation in the early childhood classroom to ‘do’ something and not be idle. Idleness is viewed as unconstructive and possibly suspicious. Play has been constituted as ‘the work of childhood’ (Ailwood, 2003: 293), and not playing, being unoccupied, is like being ‘out of work’ and unproductive. Being occupied is regarded as necessary and essential for being a rational being. Being idle is undesirable. Idleness has a historical connection with the irrational in psychological and psychiatric discourses (Foucault, 2006). Noah positions himself as someone who plays with friends constructively and appropriately, while Ethan’s actions are unproductive and irrational. Dancing around alone and being impotent and not playing with friends positions Ethan outside the membership of the normal. The circulating discourses subject children in distinct ways, othering those who ‘do’ things differently.
‘We are all friends’
The following section of data came from a longer conversation about friends. When talking about Hugo (a child with a diagnosis), the children (without a diagnosis) make these comments (their expressions have been transcribed verbatim):
‘He doesn’t do anythink.’
‘We don’t play wiff him.’
‘Is there any reason why you don’t?’
‘Yeah … you have to be friends but you don’t have to play with them.’ (Watson, 2017: 67)
For these children, being friends with everyone is compulsory and a rule in the classroom. The distinction made here by Jon is between ‘being friends’ and ‘playing with friends’. Jon describes Hugo as not doing anything, and Jake explains that they do not play with him. Hugo is positioned as idle, like Ethan in the earlier scenario. Jon perhaps thinks that Hugo does not do the kinds of things that other unmarked children do. What Jon thinks he does ‘do’ is described as nothing or of no value from his position as a member of the normal category. Hugo’s idleness positions him outside the rational normal membership.
The unmarked children name Hugo as a friend, but they do not play with him. Nevertheless, friendship play discourses that circulate and regulate children in the classroom inform them that they must call him a ‘friend’. Friendships are oftentimes fluctuating and impulsive, but having friends, knowing who your friends are and performing friendship by playing are central to category production, maintenance and recognisability.
‘We are all friends’ is a statement that is voiced regularly in the early childhood classroom by both teachers and children. Social competency is assessed on one’s ability to play cooperatively with others, as the capacity to understand the emotions and thoughts of others is considered to develop during the preschool years (Gifford-Smith and Brownell, 2003). The ‘We are all friends’ instructive in the classroom shepherds children to become cooperative peers (Wohlwend, 2007) who can conceivably, with guidance, develop perspective-taking and moral reasoning (Piaget, 1965). How do children position themselves and others in this discursive context where everyone is a friend? What work does this statement do? What are its effects? These words, used by children and teachers, have a particular meaning, but what is observed in actions suggests that the statement ‘We are all friends’ has multiple meanings and modes of practice in the classroom. ‘We are all friends’ is not taken to mean that friends necessarily ‘play’ together. The words are created to promote ‘inclusive’ practice, but the children’s actions as they take up and perform within the sanctioned discourse are not always ‘inclusive’.
Jon’s comment that ‘you have to be friends but you don’t have to play with them’ could be understood to mean that you have to include, but at the same time you can also exclude. It is the act of playing that produces the normal subject and category membership. It is in the performativity (Butler, 1997) of playing where friends become recognisable members of the category, and from that position do their maintenance work. Friendship, in this sense, is a performance that ‘must be understood not as a singular or deliberate act but rather as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names’ (Butler, 1993: 2). In many ways, friendship comes from the act of doing friends, in playing. The act is political and the subject is discursively produced, not just in utterances, but also in bodily performances of belonging to a particular discursive group.
‘They are friends but we don’t play with them’
Jonathan (a child without a diagnosis) is standing next to the see-saw as Joseph and Angus (children without a diagnosis) are having their turn. Jonathan is waiting for his turn. Abbey (a child without a diagnosis) approaches the trio, asking for a turn on the see-saw. She asks: ‘Who’s in charge?’ No one answers her. Jonathan seems to notice Abbey’s unhappy face as she turns to move away and he calls to her: ‘OK, you can have a go’. Abbey waits. Jasmine (a child with a diagnosis) approaches the see-saw and she places a hat from the dress-ups on Angus’s head. He immediately throws it away, a little annoyed. Angus and Joseph then get off the see-saw and move away and Jonathan gets on. Jasmine quickly gets onto the other side and Jonathan says to Abbey: ‘You missed out.’ After a quick turn, Jonathan gets off and moves away. Abbey gets on the see-saw hesitantly, opposite Jasmine. Jasmine enthusiastically starts up the see-saw. Abbey: ‘Stop … Stop … I don’t want to do it with you, I want … Jasmine … Stop’. Abbey calls out to Angus nearby, saying: ‘I don’t want Jasmine on here with me’ – her face contorted with anger, her checks flushed and her eyes narrowed. As noise levels rise, a teacher arrives and says: ‘No one else is here waiting. She’s your friend too. Jasmine is a great friend to everyone here’. Abbey: ‘I don’t want her! Jasmine, go and get someone’. Jasmine is not listening to Abbey. She is enjoying the see-saw going more quickly up and down and laughing. The teacher says: ‘Just gentle Jasmine. It will hurt you if you go down too hard’. Abbey then says to the teacher: ‘Can you count to ten so she can get off’. After the count, Jasmine gets off and Henry joins Abbey on the see-saw. Soon after the incident, I asked Abbey why she did not want to ride on the see-saw with Jasmine and she replied: ‘She’s not my friend’. (Watson, 2017: 69)
Not often, the compulsory ‘We are all friends’ mantra is resisted and disrupted. As the see-saw scenario unfolded, alternative subject positionings became visible. When Abbey moves to the see-saw and waits her turn, asking who might be in charge, she is drawing on regulatory discourses around the socially expected norms of turn-taking and sharing at preschool (Dunn, 1988). She understands that she is entitled to have her turn but must wait for it. Jonathan, also drawing on this discourse, reassures Abbey that she can have a turn.
When Jasmine moves to the area and jumps onto the see-saw ahead of Abbey, the sanctioned social practice of turn-taking is interrupted. Turn-taking is considered developmentally appropriate, and those who do not engage in turn-taking practices are often pathologised and judged as socially incompetent and immature (Burman, 2008). Jasmine’s action, in not waiting for a turn, however, is not disciplined or challenged by Jonathan, even though the children are observed to be recurrently negotiating turns on the see-saw. Jasmine’s ‘unruly’, rule-breaking behaviour is, conversely, not confronted by Jonathan, as she is positioned as Other, socially immature and incompetent, and directly addressing Jasmine’s unreasonable action is avoided.
Abbey and Jonathan at this time tolerate Jasmine’s actions and keep quiet about her transgressions, maintaining the social order of the classroom. Jonathan remarks to Abbey: ‘You missed out’. Jonathan’s statement of resignation communicates to Abbey that she should just endure Jasmine’s action. By waiting for her turn, Abbey takes up the position of the recognisable normal.
When Abbey finally gets a turn on the see-saw, she expresses a strong opposition to riding the see-saw with Jasmine, saying that Jasmine is not her friend. The friendship discourse taken up here appears to permit some level of exclusion, even though the statement ‘We are all friends’ seems to be a mantra. The normative friendship discourse produces all children as friendly, good-humoured and getting along together (Grieshaber and McArdle, 2010). However, as remarked before, it is in the playing and interacting, and the performance of friends, that the belonging and the category membership are created.
Jasmine is produced here as what Butler (1993: xiii) refers to as ‘abject’ – ‘those who are not yet “subjects” but who form the constitutive outside of the domain of the subject’. The ‘abject’ is produced in the category boundary work; the ‘abject’ represents what it is not possible to be. The abjecting of another is thought to be a way of establishing an ‘I’. Kristeva (1982) contends that in order to establish an ‘I’ – one’s own subjectivity – there is a separation of a part of oneself that is considered the ‘not-I’. The available discourses provide the ways of being the ‘I’ and also ways of being that are the ‘not-I’. ‘This expulsion is thought of as an expulsion of some aspect of the self’ (Davies, 2006: 74). Jasmine’s way of being – rushing in and not waiting her turn – is rebuffed by the unmarked children as not a part of them.
The teacher attempts to guide Abbey, by teaching her to take up the friendship discourse, saying that Jasmine is a friend. This does not change Abbey’s desire to ride the see-saw with someone else. Abbey’s actions do not position her as a ‘cooperative peer’, and the teacher acts as a neutral guide, providing support (Wohlwend, 2007) for Abbey in learning this cooperation. This does not appear to work. Abbey’s response to Jasmine is very loud and visceral, her actions and forceful words creating Jasmine as the ‘abject’ (Butler, 1993). The ‘We are all friends’ discourse is openly challenged here by Abbey, and Jasmine is loudly excluded. Jasmine is positioned as unpredictable, undesirable and best avoided. Abbey moves to separate herself from Jasmine. Abbey does not seem to be constrained by the prevailing discourse and, by her actions, is positioned as unsocial or immature in the classroom. Abbey unsettles and challenges the boundary of the normal, but also loses her membership in the process. In the main, the normal do not often take the ‘risk’ of unsettling their membership.
Discussion
Play and friendship discourses are actively (re)produced among children in the early childhood classroom. These pervasive discourses constitute cooperative play with friends as developmentally privileged. They position those subjects who play with others as authoritative. For the most part, they are reproduced in the classroom without question and without any challenge to the power relations they effect – to include and exclude. Certain but limited subject positions are produced. Playing with friends within these discourses is the performance of the normal subject. Playing alone, being idle and not taking turns are the actions of a not-normal subject. Multiple ways of being and making meaning are not explored, as only familiar tales are told that constantly work to (re)legitimise the normal.
The expectation to play in ways that are predictable, acceptable and in line with rules marks the boundary of the normal category, while also establishing the criteria for category membership. Those who fall outside the boundaries are produced as not yet subjects (Butler, 1993) and assigned other positions. Created as an underdeveloped subject, the Other is missing the necessary skills needed to perform as a friend, and a loner in play. Pathologised among the children as sometimes shy, often unpredictable or unruly, the understanding is shared that interactions with the Other are best avoided. The word ‘friend’ is pervasive but, according to the children, there are those who are friends in name only and there are friends created in performances of playing. It is the social interaction, prescribed in developmental discourse, that the children rely on to tell them who is a friend. Without the ‘correct’ performance, the Other is positioned outside the boundary of the normal, and excluded.
Using post-structural theory in the classroom, educators can question what is taken for granted, rousing an alternative view, where friendship play is not developmentally produced but is, instead, contextually and discursively constructed (Grieshaber and McArdle, 2010). Discourses that produce difference as a deficit and draw attention to binary understandings that reduce and regulate need to be unsettled in the classroom. Friendship play discourses reimagined would stop producing friendship play as a sign of progress, as somehow better than playing alone or an indicator of social competency. Playing alone would be acceptable and possibly desirable, instead of being created as a concern or a signal of an impending diagnosis.
The phrase ‘We are all friends’ has powerful effects in the classroom. Where does this view of friendship play in the classroom leave inclusive practice? Its discursive fabrication creates limited understandings, a marginalisation of difference, and reinforcement of the power and privilege of the normal. In a similar way, the often-used phrase ‘Everyone is welcome’ in the classroom, no matter what gender, sexuality, race, religion or class, ignores and/or overlooks the exclusionary effects that hinder the possibilities of inclusive practice. These ‘welcoming’ utterances fail to recognise or confront the discrimination that is imposed on difference. Interrupting the discursive practices which strengthen the idea that difference is problematic might be a place to start. As educators, there is promise if we can hear, recognise and challenge conversations among children, and among educators and children, which recreate the norm and the status quo, providing for children, and with children, other ways of appreciating the multiple ways of being and doing subjecthood. There is a need in early childhood for a continuing critique of dominant classroom discourses that at first appear inclusive but, when placed under greater scrutiny, are far from it. We would do better to understand that we are all involved in the making of ourselves as subjects, and in the making of each other.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.