Beyond Bullying: Understanding Children’s Exploration of Inclusion and Exclusion Processes in Kindergarten

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Abstract
For several years, there was resistance to the use of the concept of bullying in Norwegian kindergartens and to labelling individual children as bullies or victims – as exhibiting certain characteristics or lacking certain skills. This chapter investigates a theoretical framework beyond the perception of bullying as being as resulting from individual factors. An alternative approach is the democratic theoretical perspective, in which children are considered as explorers of complex, dynamic relations, which can lead to their inclusion or exclusion. The research questions are: How can children’s bullying in free play be seen as explorations in inclusion and exclusion processes? How are children’s explorations of social processes during free play supported or restricted by institutional practice? Children’s exploration of their own and others’ changing positions and power in a group are seen as part of their democratic and cultural formation. Hedegaard’s model for child development (Chap. 2) provides possibilities for analysing children’s exploration of social processes at a relational, institutional and societal level. An illustrative example is an observation protocol regarding three boys in an outdoor free-play setting. The boys explore their positions and how material and physical factors affect their access to power, resulting in internal exclusion of one of the boys. It is difficult to detect inclusion and exclusion processes because of their simultaneity: they co-occur in a way that does not result in the total exclusion of either. The cultural value of outdoor free play expects children to be self-directed and provides them with possibilities to hide their exploration of inclusion and exclusion processes, ensuring a lack of involvement from practitioners. (I use the term practitioners for all employees working with children in Norwegian early education institutions, named kindergartens. These employees consist of formally educated kindergarten teachers as well as skilled workers and assistants with no formal education at the university level).

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