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Young Children Playing pp 47–60Cite as

The Intersubjective in-between-ness in Young Children’s Playfulness

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Abstract

This chapter presents ways of interpreting and understanding intersubjectivity in young children’s playful communication. This research focuses on the in-between spaces; the area in and between children connecting, communicating and relating together in play. This is a complex area open to a diverse range of interpretations, as alluded to earlier in chapters “Framing: Young Children Relating and Playing” and “Research Methods: Observing Experience in Two Projects (Parts II and III)”. This chapter explores the nature of the intra- and inter-subjectively mediated feeling-thoughts that emerge, and are co-created within and between children communicating playfully is a complex focus. Events illuminate processes at play in children’s play. We focus on awareness of conscious and unconscious feeling-thoughts that are co-created, emerge, and change in a range of events (Benjamin J, Psychoanal Q LXXIII(1):5–46. doi:10.1002/j.2167-4086.2004.tb00151.x, 2004; Kirschner SR, Martin J, The sociocultural turn in psychology: the contextual emergence of mind and self. Columbia University Press, New York, 2010; Ogden T, Psychoanal Q LXX111:167–195, 2004; Psychoanal Perspect 6(1):22. doi:10.1080/1551806X.2009.10473034, 2009; Vygotsky LS, Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1986; Wertsch JV, Voices of the mind: a sociocultural approach to mediated action. Harvester Wheatsheaf, London, 1991; Mind as action. Oxford University Press, New York, 1998).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Sophie Jane Alcock

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  1. Sophie Jane Alcock
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Alcock, S.J. (2016). The Intersubjective in-between-ness in Young Children’s Playfulness. In: Young Children Playing. International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development, vol 12. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1207-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1207-5_3

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  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-1205-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-1207-5

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