The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of making peer relationships in kindergarten - elementary school transition. For this purpose, in the first year, one 5 - year - old class from two kindergartens per each were selected. From the ...
The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of making peer relationships in kindergarten - elementary school transition. For this purpose, in the first year, one 5 - year - old class from two kindergartens per each were selected. From the two classes, three boy- and girl-groups were selected for this study. As data collection, in the first year, children’s experiences of relationship making was examined by participant observation, interviews of children, teachers, and mothers. In the second year, mothers and children were interviewed for the children who were mainly observed during the first year of research and assigned to the same elementary school and the same class. In order to collect additional data on the experiences of adaptation and peer relationships after entering elementary school, interviews were conducted with five mothers of first grade children and two, first-grade teachers. As additional research data, research journal, children’s activity data. Observation and interview data were transcribed first and then were read repeatedly in order to systematically find out the relationship between the cultural patterns and the attributes of cultural patterns.
The results showed that the characteristics of children 's relationships in peer group interacted with the classical and peer group' s contextual characteristics such as class size, space and play characteristics in addition to the personal tendencies of children. In other words, the characteristics of children 's relationships varied according to the characteristics of class environment, the characteristics of class environment, the role of teachers, the characteristics of class context, the characteristics of children in peer group, and the characteristics of play culture in peer group. The characteristics of children 's relationship after elementary school transition tended to be dependent on the tendency of children, but they varied according to various contextual characteristics such as elementary school classroom allocation, participation of after-school activities, and mothers' continuous relationship with other mothers.
Based on these results, it can be concluded that the specific forms of young children's peer group formation and group - forming relationships are not affected by the singular action of specific factors such as gender or teacher support, but rather the context of the various classes in which various peer groups are located. These results show that there is a limit to see that the children’s relationship making may be predictable by the individual characteristics of children.
Despite the high interest in social problems such as peer bullying today, lack of research on the experiences of children 's relationships in peer culture has made it impossible to provide appropriate coping and prevention education materials. This study will provide a basic data on the meaning of children 's experiences of making peer-to-peer relationships in the metacognition process.