Let’s hide it! – Unfolding Play and Peer Culture in a Danish Prep Class

Abstract

This article focuses attention on how children in a Danish prep class do, unfold, and expand play and peer culture as an aesthetic practice. Play is always framed, and play in school settings attaches to the school’s structure and schedule and to rules made by adults. The present study focuses on play scenes taking place outside and inside between 8:00 am and noon. The article analyses and exposes the intentions from the children’s perspectives and the different strategies and intentions behind doing and protecting play. The study draws on notions of play from cultural and aesthetic perspectives and how children do culture aesthetically through play. The study is part of a larger collaborative work undertaken in one school and involving three researchers. As a result of Covid-19 restrictions, the research design implies focused ethnography with short, intensified fieldwork and creating fieldnotes, video recordings, photos, drawings, and interviews. In addition, reflective workshops with the teachers involved were developed.