Toddlers as ignorant citizens: An explorative study of conflicts and negotiations involving toys in kindergarten

Abstract

This article explores conflicts among toddlers in kindergarten and the impact of toys in these conflicts. The author describes these interactions as part of how children develop and express their citizenship, and argues that staff members should hesitate before interfering with rules in order to prevent such conflicts. This is based on Mouffe’s theory of democracy as agonistic pluralism and the way Biesta argues for the term ‘ignorant citizen’. The child is an ignorant citizen due to their lack of predefined ways to behave when obstructions and agonisms occur during play. Hence, children’s non-verbal negotiations about toys can be interpreted as political experiments.

Introduction

Norwegian kindergartens are expected to work towards children’s democratic citizenship. According to the kindergarten framework plan, the aim is to ‘lay the foundations for courageous, independent and responsible participation in democratic communities’ (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2017: 21). In Norway, free play is considered important for how kindergarten shall work towards its objective in general, including democracy. In this article, I explore how this process takes place during free play among toddlers with limited possibilities to interact verbally.

Previous observations of toddlers’ ways of playing highlight not only comprehensive non-verbal bodily expressions (Andersen and Kampmann, 1988; Greve, 2007; Løkken, 2000), but also the importance of their material surroundings. Toys seem to be a part of their social life in numerous ways (Mayer and Musatti, 1992; Nome, 2017). Many of the conflicts between children involve toys as well (Corsaro, 2014). One could ask whether the qualities of toys give children certain possibilities to act – also politically. The research question is therefore: How could free play among toddlers be an arena for democratic processes and in what ways are toys and other material objects involved?

This question is explored ethnographically by analysing two incidents of free play among toddlers in a Norwegian kindergarten. Both incidents could be considered conflicts or confrontations where toys are involved in different ways. These incidents are analysed in light of Mouffe’s radical theory on democracy and especially how Biesta has applied Mouffe’s theory to articulate new possibilities in education for democracy.

Theoretical background

In order to understand the nature of conflicts in children’s social life during play, Mouffe’s (2005) emphasis on democracy as ‘agonistic pluralism’ is a fruitful theoretical base. Her starting point is the ‘democratic paradox’ that occurs when democracy promises both liberty and equality at the same time. We are individually scattered out based on a plurality of individual intentions, needs and desires, and democracy is there to make this possible for each of us. But we are at the same time brought together based on a common idea of a large ‘we’ that connects us all. This dichotomy is called the democratic paradox, and politics are, according to Mouffe (2005), any activity where this paradox is dealt with – hence, where it is subjected to negotiations. Biesta (2011) refers to this as constantly redrawing the border between liberty and equality.

We need, according to Mouffe, to admit that the democratic paradox is an unavoidable condition in modern society. It also demands an alternative to the deliberate idea of consensus and admitting the unavoidable existence of agonists. Her radical standpoint on democracy is summarised thus: ‘agonistic confrontation is, in fact, its very condition for existence. Modern democracy’s specificity lies in the recognition and legitimation of conflict and the refusal to suppress it by imposing an authoritarian order’ (Mouffe, 2005: 103).

The distinction between ‘agonism’ and ‘antagonism’ is important for Mouffe. While antagonism is referred to as a friend-and-enemy relationship, agonism is what she calls a relationship between ‘adversaries’ or friendly enemies. Unlike antagonistic enemies, adversaries have something in common. They share a symbolic space, such as an agreement on the ethico-political principles of the community. We might all share the idea that democracy is a balance between liberty and equality, but disagree on how the line should be drawn here and now (Hirsch and Miessen, 2014).

There is a tendency in early childhood education to make an effort to prevent conflicts and confrontations (Grindheim, 2014). According to Mouffe, a danger in a liberal democracy is to consider political processes as merely a question of everyone’s subordination to an authoritarian order between different claims and rights. It implies that the relationship between liberty and equality becomes cemented borders. In a kindergarten context, such cemented borders might appear when the teacher makes rules and prevents conflicts by enforcing those rules. If a child uses the only swing available and another child waits for their turn, it is possible for the teacher to make a five-minutes-only rule and enforce it with a stopwatch. This would prevent any conflict between the two children. To become a citizen implies, however, that the border needs to be constantly redrawn. The relationship between liberty (to swing as long as you like) and equality (each child has the same right to use the swing) needs to remain an undetermined political process, an unsettled business. One might ask whether democracy in kindergartens sometimes might imply taking a step back and letting the children explore their citizenship in an agonistic plurality of peers. They need, in order to become a citizen, to be able to deal with the resistance and interruptions posed by the child who is waiting for their turn on the swing (Biesta, 2015).

Hence, citizenship in a context such as a kindergarten is not to be adjusted to any given social order, but to constantly take part in the never-ending paradoxical democratic agonisms that challenge the order. The term ‘good citizen’ as a way of expressing the dominant expected ways of being political is hereby challenged by a more indefinite understanding of citizenship. Based on Mouffe, Biesta argues for the replacement of the ‘good citizen’ with the ‘ignorant citizen’. The ignorant citizen ‘is not a predefined identity that can simply be taught and learned but emerges again and again in new ways from engagement with the experiment of democratic politics’ (Biesta, 2011: 152). The ignorant citizen refuses to be governed by a predefined definition of what it is to be a good citizen. It implies, in every encounter with agonisms, constantly recreating and redrawing the borders between liberty and equality, and not waiting for decisions to be made by an authoritarian order.

Bearing this in mind, the assumption I want to explore in this article is that small children’s play and use of toys, filled with conflict as it is, can be seen as a polis for undetermined democratic practice and as the initial experience of agonistic pluralism.

There are both theoretical and methodological post-human approaches available which, in different ways, explore how humans relate to the material world, such as Latour’s actor–network theory. Actor–network theory requires the ability to consider material things as agents in social interactions (Latour, 2007). To look for the agency of material things discloses important aspects of our social life, but it is not easily transferred into a reflection on democracy and citizenship. To have agency is not the same as being a citizen. Hence, to call material things political beings or citizens carries a lot of implications, not least in an educational context. As the Norwegian kindergarten framework plan states, it is the child’s democratic participation that matters (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2017).

The way I describe and analyse the implications of toys in children’s interactions in this study keeps the child’s subjectivity in the centre. The only ontological presumption I have made is a phenomenological reflection on the relationship between the human body and its material surroundings. This is based on Merleau-Ponty’s (1945) description of the body-subject. The initial experience of our subjectivity is inextricably linked to the body, and hence to other living or non-living phenomena the body relates to. The way interactions with toys are described in the analyses evolves from this basic understanding. The car in a child’s hand influences how they can express their subjectivity and performance of citizenship.

Previous research

In addition to a more general interest in conflicts among peers in kindergarten (e.g. Chen et al., 2001; Singer et al., 2012), there has been some interest among researchers in how conflicts in kindergarten lead to democratic experiences based on Mouffe’s political philosophy. I have chosen four different studies.

Johansson and Emilson (2016) have analysed observations of conflicts and utterances of resistance in kindergarten, mainly between children and staff, by using Mouffe and her notion of ‘agonism’ as a necessity for democratic development. Johansson and Emilson ask for possibilities to support children to use friendly conflicts and resistance in order to strengthen the democratic learning potential in conflict encounters, rather than looking for the quickest way to consensus. However, they conclude that more research is needed in this field (Johansson and Emilson, 2016: 33).

The necessity of conflicts and resistance in democratic living among institutionalised young children is also highlighted by Grindheim (2014), who analysed observations of anger among children in kindergarten as democratic experiences. She used the same set of theoretical tools as Johansson and Emilson (2016), mainly based on Biesta’s interpretation of Mouffe. She concluded that attempts to modify anger among children can be a hindrance to their democratic participation.

In addition to these two observation-based studies, Skoglund (2019) has recently analysed how staff reason about their interventions in conflicts among children based on focus-group interviews. She argues, like Johansson and Emilson (2016), for strategies for intervention that do not undermine the possibility to use conflicts between children as a place for democratic learning.

Tofteland draws a similar conclusion in her doctoral thesis from 2015. She studied meals in kindergarten for toddlers based on focus-group interviews with the staff. The informants described what Tofteland calls a ‘meal community at “the edge of chaos”’ (Tofteland, 2015: v). Such communities emerged when sudden and unexpected occurrences took place, like when a child broke the rules or in different ways challenged the order of the meal. Tofteland refers to ‘the edge of chaos’ as agonistic confrontations and, like Johansson and Emilson (2016), as well as Grindheim (2014) and Skoglund (2019), argues that such confrontations, if allowed, can give possibilities for children to participate in democratic processes in kindergarten.

All of the studies mentioned here argue for the value of agonistic conflict encounters both between children and between children and staff. In addition, they all discuss the difference between agonistic and antagonistic conflicts and the need to keep conflicts in kindergarten agonistic in order to give children democratic experiences or the potential for democratic learning. None of these studies have looked particularly at how toys and other material objects are taking part in conflicts and utterances of resistance among children, although the staff in Tofteland’s (2015: 110) research described, for example, how the toddlers turned their plates upside down as a way of creating chaos. Besides a need to explore further the connection between conflicts, resistance and the development of citizenship and democratic participation in general, it is of great interest to look closely at the way in which the youngest children use their material surroundings to conduct their citizenship.

Method

This ethnographic study is based on two specific incidents from participatory observations in a Norwegian kindergarten. I made video recordings of playtime among a group of children between two and three years of age, and I joined their everyday life for 20 days. My intention was to understand the nature of social engagement between the children during play. To manage this, I needed to follow sequences of interactions closely, but also relate them to the material surroundings and all the other incidents and utterances taking place in the room at the same time. I observed the room as a public space, a child polis, where various kinds of citizenship could be expressed. Video recording is, in general, a frequently used method in ethnographic research in early childhood settings (Heikkilä and Sahlström, 2003) since it gives the researcher good opportunities to examine subtle gestures and non-verbal expressions. Hence, I found video recordings suitable for answering my research question, supported by field notes made during the participatory observations.

Participants

The kindergarten was organised flexibly with a great deal of variety regarding groups and locations. Consequently, the main play area was quite small since part of the group was often absent, relocated to rooms shared with other groups. The group that was observed comprised children between the ages of one and three. In each group, there were 15 children and a staff of two teachers and two or three assistants, depending on the day of the week and working hours. When the video recordings were made, there was always at least one member of staff present on the floor with the children. The children were mostly between two and three years of age at the time, and there were eight boys and seven girls in the group. The study did not collect information about family backgrounds, except that two children came from non-ethnic Norwegian families (one of them appears in both of the analysed incidents).

Ethical considerations

The study has been approved by the Norwegian Data Protection Official for Research, and the thorough involvement of the parents was ensured. In addition to giving their required approval, they received information about the progress of the study, including reviewing part of the video footage. In order to ensure anonymity, pseudonyms are used.

Procedures

Video observations were carried out first in the morning when the children arrived and then after the first meal. These settings were chosen because they were times in between the staff-governed activities, which provided rich opportunities for self-regulated peer interactions among the children in the main playing area for almost an hour. How many and which children were present varied. While making the video recordings, I withdrew to a position in the corner of the room to be able to take notes that could help me better understand the context in which the situations occurred – for example, what took place outside the picture’s frame that might have influenced the interactions. A steady camera was used that captured the whole room from the same corner – a method that is well suited for the purpose of observing a public space. Each observation lasted between 30 and 45 minutes. This provided approximately 12 hours of footage of interactions in play for analysis.

In addition to making video recordings of the children during play, I took part in their daily activities, joined in with their meals and lessons, and accompanied small excursions, as well as spending time playing together with them. This provided opportunities to take field notes to supplement the videos. Making observations in which the children’s perspectives could be explored resulted in several difficulties concerning the role of the researcher, as has been previously discussed by various ethnographers (e.g. Gulløv and Højlund, 2003). By joining the staff completely, as I did easily considering my previous experience as a kindergarten teacher, I risked adjusting my understanding too much to their opinions based on their experiences and professional judgment, whilst by completely blending in among the children, I risked appearing as a disturbing non-typical adult who would unduly affect the given situations. I tried to find a compromise between these two extremes, inspired by Mandell (1988), who argues for a position called ‘the least adult role’. This choice could entail being, at times, passive in situations where the children needed assistance or acted inappropriately.

Data analysis

First, all the video footage was reviewed with an open-minded approach and without clear assumptions or prejudices. I was generally interested in how the children acted and how their actions affected others in the room. This first review provided the possibility to identify some general themes – for example, the role of toys and other material artefacts in the interactions. Then, short episodes in the material in which toys seemed to affect the situation were analysed, extracted and watched several times at different speeds. The aim was to detect and describe how toys seemed to affect the way the children interacted in the situations in question on a micro level.

I labelled the different incidents as, for example, invitations, interruptions, initiatives, negotiations, protections or disturbances. All of them could be seen as political actions or different expressions of citizenship. In this process, I noticed several related incidents that involved a two-year-old Polish boy (Andrej), a couple of other boys of the same age and different kinds of toys. Despite limited possibilities to interact verbally, they appeared to interact vividly with each other, seemingly with toys as active mediators. I decided to look at these incidents in particular in order to explore this phenomenon further. These parts of the footage were extracted as separate files, watched at different speeds and made into a series of still photographs. I made different kinds of short narratives based on the footage as well. During this process, I conducted phenomenological reflections, from which my conclusions derived. These reflections were based on my own experiences and affective responses as a spectator, both in the room as a participant and in the processing of the material.

Findings

I will present two of the incidents Andrej was involved in as narratives, followed by a short analysis, before a final and general discussion is made. The incidents occurred during two periods of playtime in the morning while the children arrived one by one. Hence, for most of the children, they were periods for making connections for the first time since the day before.

Incident 1

Andrej sits on the round green carpet that covers the main playing area in the room. Slowly, he picks different kinds of toy cars and plastic animals and sets them up in a row close to the edge of the carpet. He sits behind the set-up and adjusts some of the items. He works slowly. The set-up takes almost five minutes to be arranged. John comes along. He stops in front of the carpet, looking at Andrej’s set-up. Andrej looks up and grins as he yells, ‘No’. John comes even closer, leaning forwards to reach one of the small cars. Andrej holds him back by touching his knees with both hands. John does not pull back, and Andrej changes his approach and offers him the car. John seemingly wants more. He points out additional items from Andrej’s set-up and sits down close to Andrej with the set-up between them. Instead of giving him more, Andrej picks up most of the toys one by one and puts them in his lap; he sweeps the rest together behind him as he turns his back to John. This way he gets all of the items out of John’s reach and he even covers them with his body.

Analysis

There are at least two things of interest in this incident when it comes to the impact of toys in the situation: Andrej’s set-up of the different toys and what looks like negotiations that took place when John came along.

The set-up that Andrej so carefully arranged along the edge of the carpet created a curved room for him to stay in. He sat behind it and made adjustments here and there, making sure the wall of his curved room was properly constructed. Corsaro (2014) describes how children develop and defend such interactive spaces around their play activities. This is especially important in kindergarten since any activity is so easily in danger of being disturbed and interrupted. No rooms and no toys are private. Everything is available for anyone at all times. To keep a space and the items in it means having to defend its borders. The borders of these contemporary private spaces are often imaginary or symbolic, but defending an imaginary or symbolic border is, based on my data, often done verbally. Children can say things like ‘You can’t go there, that’s a wall’ or ‘Don’t sit there, that’s a river’, and so on. Sometimes, the border needs to be concrete and visible, like Andrej’s. It seems like the toys in Andrej’s set-up more or less replace the word needed to defend it. As I looked at the scene, it struck me that what the set-up of toys seemed to do was give Andrej a sense of security. Each toy expanded his body, giving him a place to stay in the room full of other children with other intentions and desires. I found that Andrej appeared different – more secure and more visible in the room – thanks to the borderline of toys. Hence, there and then, the toys were all parts of his citizenship.

The other thing I noticed was what happened when the agonist John arrived. They could not exchange many words, but they could exchange pointing, leaning forwards, pushing, turning away, stepping back and stepping forwards. These are all gestural expressions that were going on between Andrej and John, almost like a dance. But the use of things was, as I experienced it, also a way of communicating. Andrej offered John one item from the set-up he had made. By doing so, I felt that he weakened his defence slightly. He lowered his guard a little. It can be interpreted as a small token of invitation or an attempt to reduce the agonism in the situation. Unfortunately, it did not solve much in this instance. John kept on pushing, the whole borderline collapsed and all the items were hastily swept under Andrej’s enclosed body. The incident did not end in consensus or an authoritarian regulation of their rights. It remained unsolved and could be seen as an undetermined political practice, where both boys acted as ignorant citizens.

Incident 2

Andrej has just arrived and has placed himself alone on a bench. He has gathered two wooden train wagons, his drinking bottle and a folded blanket. These items are placed side by side in front of him. Peter is approaching, crawling on the floor pushing a train set in front of him. He looks at Andrej, and Andrej is looking back at him. As Peter is coming closer, Andrej takes the folded blanket up from the bench and holds it tightly in his left hand. He takes a good grip of one of the train wagons with his right hand. Soon after, he puts the folded blanket back but keeps his hand on the train wagon. Peter holds his train set in the air in front of him while looking at Andrej. Then, he puts it down on the bench beside Andrej. They both keep their eyes on the train set. Peter starts driving the train set slowly towards Andrej. Andrej stretches out his legs in front of him. Peter lets the train set drive in between Andrej’s legs. Andrej closes his legs and Peter drives the train set rapidly and firmly back and forth several times. Andrej pushes Peter’s train set backwards with his right leg. Peter tries several times to get close to him with the train set, but Andrej keeps pushing it back with his legs. They both keep their eyes on the train set. Peter stops and leaves, but before he walks away, he smashes his hand with his full strength on the bench in front of Andrej. Then, he sits down on the bench opposite Andrej and continues playing with the train set. Andrej keeps sitting with his legs stretched out looking at Peter.

Analysis

In this situation, I once again saw how Andrej used different items to create what looked like a visual border in front of him. This time, he included two private things as well – the drinking bottle and the blanket. We can assume that it gave his play space an even stronger defence, since private things seem to be better protected from the interests of other children than things that are collectively owned by the group (Nome, 2018).

The most striking thing about the situation, however, was the way the agonist Peter tried to interact with Andrej. He drove his train set up in front of Andrej, then showed it by holding it up for a few seconds. Then, he let the train set roll on the bench in between Andrej’s legs, as if it was the train set that made contact. Previous research has shown similar social phenomena in other kindergarten groups. Children manage to use items as entrance tickets to activities. If a group of children is playing with toy animals, the best way of joining the group is to get hold of an animal of a similar type and let the toy animal approach the scene first (Nome, 2017).

Peter seemingly tried to make contact with Andrej in a way that made words unnecessary. He let the train set do the talking for him. While I observed this incident, I wondered if even the quality of this specific train set mattered. Just the fact that it could roll rapidly made a difference. The sound it made could also be seen as part of Peter’s way of interacting with Andrej. Previous research has disclosed how children can strengthen or weaken their position by which toys they choose (Nome, 2017). A big and noisy car dominates smaller and less audible ones and, as a consequence, the citizenship of the children holding it in their hands is affected by these different qualities.

Peter’s political action could be seen as an invitation or attempted persuasion, and the citizenship of both boys was at stake. Andrej’s dilemma was whether he should let Peter in. Peter’s dilemma was whether he should try even harder or withdraw. Unfortunately, Andrej’s legs made any contact difficult. Even when the train set rolled more rapidly and insistently up to him, Andrej did not open up; the democratic experiment ended in withdrawal and the interaction remained unresolved.

Final discussion

This article has investigated how small children can start expressing their citizenship even before verbal language is fully established. As the two incidents show, conflicts and collisions of interests and desires are an unavoidable part of children’s play experiences. They get in each other’s way. They want to have the thing others are using, and they seem in general to be experimenting with different kinds of agonistic encounters. These encounters could easily be interpreted as unwanted conflicts that should be prevented, and a lot of effort is made to curb conflicts in early childhood education practices (Grindheim, 2014). Johansson and Emilson (2016: 33) have warned against authoritarian shortcuts to consensus and argued for supportive guidance to keep conflicts agonistic – that is, ‘friendly contradictions’. Their message, to which my article contributes, is that some conflicts are actually worth having.

Mouffe’s (2005) notion of democracy as agonistic pluralism might help practitioners to understand what is at stake in these small everyday conflicts between children. To be civilised is not to stay clear of agonistic conflicts, to be able to reach consensus or to accept an authoritarian order. To be civilised is to have the ability to take part in undetermined political processes and manage to live with unsolved agonistic pluralism. The process of how children find a place to stay on this floor with all these ownerless toys and all these other children actualises questions such as: ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who are you?’ and ‘Where is the border between us?’ The situations I have analysed could be expressed in Biesta’s (2011) terms as an undetermined political process or experiments of democratic politics between ‘ignorant citizens’.

Furthermore, the two incidents display how small children depend on material things and toys in order to express their citizenship through agonistic encounters. This is my main contribution to the existing body of research on democratic education in kindergartens, especially among toddlers. Toddlers have limited possibilities to interact verbally, and things talk on their behalf. The small car or the plastic animal can, in fact, be seen as part of a child’s subjectivity. It seems clear, due to previous research, that all interactions and social initiatives, regardless of age, depend on much more than words (Løkken, 2000; Merleau-Ponty, 1945). Our gestures and non-verbal expressions must be included, of course, but how we interact and connect with the material world around us must also be taken into account. To set up things like a border around you, to offer things to the agonist who approaches you or to lose or gain material things affects how you are seen by others, your social abilities and your citizenship.

This kind of reflection is necessary to grasp the idea of what it implies to ‘create a base for brave, independent and responsible participation in democratic communities’ in kindergartens (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2017: 21), especially in a group of toddlers. As already mentioned, play is regarded as the preferred arena where such objectives can be achieved. But not any kind of play. Kindergartens need to ensure time and space for play that involves uncertainty and social risk. Children need play that has an undetermined quality. Guided play and other attempts to reduce the undetermined quality of play by enforcing an educational goal are counterproductive. It is possible to look at the phenomenon of play as a prototype for democratic experiments or an undetermined political process, and the one who plays is the prototype for the ‘ignorant citizen’ who, according to Biesta (2011: 152), ‘refuses to be domesticated, refuses to be pinned down in a pre-determined civic identity’. That is not done with words alone, as the toddlers show. The things between us play an important part as well.

Both of the incidents described here involved boys, and it might be of interest to discuss whether this is a coincidence or if boys already from age two have a different and more conflicting or agonistic pattern in their play and interactions than girls, as previous research has indicated (e.g. Børve and Børve, 2017). Without being the main focus, my research still seems to confirm this to some extent. Although this article does not conclude that boys and girls are given different opportunities for being ignorant citizens, and hence different opportunities for democratic learning, it is certainly an issue that deserves further research.