Practicing Belonging in Kindergarten: Children’s use of Places and Artefacts.

Abstract

Boldermo presents a summary of the relationship between early childhood education for social sustainability and migrant children’s negotiations of social identity and belonging in early childhood. Focusing on the football and the football pitch, the chapter draws attention to how children’s practices of belonging can be understood through their use of artifacts and places in the kindergarten. Fieldnotes, photographs and small stories from fieldwork in a multicultural kindergarten in Norway are the basis for this analysis of a migrant child’s use of the football and the football pitch. The analysis is conducted within a cultural-historical framework. The conclusion is that artifacts and places serve as tools for negotiating a social identity and practice belonging to a community.