Kindergarten teachers as mediators in sociodramatic play interaction: A study of how kindergarten teachers function as mediators in sociodramatic play interaction with children aged four and five

Abstract

This study investigates how kindergarten teachers function as mediators when they attempt to interact in sociodramatic play frames with children aged 4–5. This study focuses on the adults—on the kindergarten teachers and their communicative and interactional skills within the sociodramatic play frame. The aim of the study is to look at what is and to discover and chart mediational signs, areas and levels that may enable kindergarten practitioners to gain a better, reflected, and nuanced understanding of the intricacies of play participation.

This study is hermeneutic in its approach, and it has become an ethnographic cultural portrait of mediational signs as creators of play actions and cultures. It is a qualitative study within the sociocultural paradigm. In the field, I use ethnographic methods such as observations, interviews, video recall, research diaries, video observations, and focus groups to generate data. The data-generating approach employed is ethnographic at its base. Later in the research process, after the initial analysis, I organise the empirical data as cases in which selected transcripts and video episodes are my focus. The epistemological frame for this study is sociocultural theory, represented in part by Lev Vygotsky and theories of social-semiotic mediation. In the analysis, I apply an approach inspired by grounded theory (GT) for the coding and generation of categories.

This study identifies mediational signs and acts within sociodramatic play frames and the interactions therein. The study reveals four principal areas of mediation: oral, corporeal, spatial, and connected mediation. The overriding core function levels of the kindergarten teachers’ mediation in sociodramatic play are categorised as the apprentice dramatist teacher level and the master dramatist teacher level. The relevance of this study is connected to the development of pedagogical and didactic practice among kindergarten teachers working with children in various pedagogical and cultural settings.