Shared experiences and narrative positionings in the classroom

Abstract

This article examines the different positionings that preschool children develop towards the collective narrating of a school field trip to an educational farm in which only about half the class participated. The report of this excursion took place during the morningronda(the Spanish equivalent to sharing time or news sessions) and organized the children and the teacher in two groups of participants, those who went on the field trip and those who stayed home. I argue that these children displayed four discursive strategies towards the narrative and narrated events: (a) children who participated in the field trip couldincludeorexcludethe rest of the class from their narrative space; (b) children who did not participate in the field trip couldaffiliatewith orresistthe narrated events. The episode is discussed as exceptional in a classroom where precisely it has been argued thatrondaconversations play a key role in developing group identity, and shows how children have resources to develop varied stances towards school initiatives and even question the institutional and socio-economic arrangements that configure these activities. (Classroom Discourse, Ethnography of Communication, Narrative Inequality, Positioning)