Children’s Communities and their Meaning

Abstract

This article paraphrases the lecture I gave defending my thesis on May the 30th 2011. The thesis develops theory on the meaning of children’s social life and children’s subjective orientation in the transition from kindergarten to school.

Through analysis of empirical work con- cerning children’s subjective perspectives on the life they live and take part in, the thesis substantiates the development of theoretical concepts on how to understand children – or put in another way: If we wish to understand children and children’s acting, we need to grasp the world children live in; exactly how the world stands in relation to the children in places where children take part.

This article contains the central points from the thesis and elaborations on the concept of communities in relation to children’s interre-

latedness and how the children’s interrelations are intertwined with the adult’s arrangements of the settings they participate in. Finally the article argues for a social approach towards children’s potential difficulties and discusses, why this social approach opens for more pro- ductive arrangements than individualistic approaches.