Convencional games: a multimodal analysis of teacher’s regulation of play situation

Abstract

Within the framework of the sociocultural perspective on human learning and development (Elkonin, 1980; Vigotsky, 2009) the game is considered as the leading activity of childhood, on this paper. In family contexts as well as in the kindergarten, several studies (Bruner, 1986; Fimreite, Flem y Gudmundsdottir, 1999; Haight, 1997; Howe, Petrakos, Rinaldi y Lefevre, 2005) have shown the  scaffolding that adults or older children provide to young children in playing situations. However, these investigations have not done a micro-discursive  analysis of the exchanges that guide and support the children’s participation in the game.
This paper proposes a multimodal analysis of conversational movements through which a kindergarten teacher regulates conventional games situations during the play corners activity. For this, two video-recorded game situations were qualitatively analyzed. The analysis articulated Conversation Analysis (Goodwin 2000; Tusón,  1995) proposals with Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 1982). The results  show the juxtaposition of different semiotic resources in the teacher’s scaffolding to regulate the game situation.