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"DOING SIX AND BEINGBATMAN”Lynn MichellPublished online: 06 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Lynn Michell (1982) "DOING SIX AND BEING BATMAN”,Early Years: An International Research Journal, 3:1, 61-72, DOI:10.1080/0957514820030107

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"DOING SIX AND BEING BATMAN"

(Conversations in a Nursery School)

Lynn Michell

The nursery school in the Potteries where I spenta term observing and recording some of the childrenis of an open-plan, built-in-the-round design withone, large, circular play area surrounding a smallobservation unit. From the unit, one gets a goodview of the children anywhere in the play area. Indesign this nursery school is perhaps unusual, butother features make it similar to many other nurseryschools which I have visited. Spaced around theplay area are materials and equipment which havebecome 'standard fare' in most of our pre-schoolestablishments - the big wooden blocks for climbing,jumping and hiding, the water trough with itsfloating fairy.liquid bottles, the dough, collage,number and puzzle tables, the home bay and bookcorner. The sixty-five or so children mill around,moving from activity to activity. They have freeplay for a large part of the day, although themorning is broken up by milk, outdoor pley%(ifthe weather's fine), story-time and the occasionalvisitor. One is amazed at the noise and theboisterous physical activity. Some boys keep upa relentless cry of 'Batman ... batman* as theyrush about in assorted helmets and cloaks, and ifchildren can't find others to talk to, they seemcontent to talk to themselves. The constant, noisymovement of children between activities means thatthe teachers and nursery nurses need to play amanagerial role and they are kept fully occupiedreplenishing or changing the materials on thevarious tables while keeping an eye on childrenin the far corners of the.room. Sometimes theyfind time to sit and talk with a small group atone of the tables while others pin up wall displaysor shepherd children towards their morning milk.

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One begins to appreciate why reports of the language ofadults and children in nursery schools have been sounfavourable. Staff are often well aware of the import-ance of developing the children's language skills,particularly when the children come from homes whereconversations have a low priority, yet the pressures oforganising so -:nany young children in a free play contextinevitably militate against fulfilling these objectives.There simply isn't the time or the space for quiet,unhurried, purposeful conversations. Thomas (1973)says' that conversations between children and adults areshort, infrequent, dominated by the teacher andconcerned with simple directions and descriptionsrelating to the children's activities. Wood (1980)reports that 707. of adult talk with children is concer-ned with the here-and-now, and that children respondwith a predictable and narrow range of linguisticstrategies. Syiva (1980) comments, disparagingly,"children sometimes talk to themselves and oftenengage in one-off remarks such as 'I need the scissors'but they rarely have conversations".

These studies have given us a consistently depressingpicture of the verbal interaction between adults, andchildren in the nursery school. .Out are all childrenSexperiences the same? The problem with global studiesof language is that detail can be lost in the finalpercentages and we gain little impression of the variedpatterns of language used by individual children. Idecided to sacrifice generalisations in favour ofdetail and opted for a close description of thelanguage of just ten of the children in the nursery.Most of the children came from the council houseswhich surrounded the nursery school, but a sizeableminority travelled in from a private estate nearby. Itwas possible, therefore, to select two contrastinggroups of children - 5 from one-parent families orhomes where the father was unemployed or in prison(Group 2) and 5 from two-parent, lower middle-classfamilies (Group 1). Half of the children were boys,

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half girlsf and all were aged between 4% years and4% years and had spent most of a year in the nurseryschool. I used a radiomicrophone system to recordtheir language since it allowed freedom of movementabout the room and the nursery staff accustomedthe children to wearing the small microphone andtransmitter for several weeks prior to my arrival.While the children were being recorded, I observedand scored their behaviour on a structured check-list and this provided valuable information aboutcontext and play. Each child was observed andrecorded for four %-hour sessions and language wasanalysed at three different levels :

1. Amount The number and length ofcontributions.

2. Turn-taking The proportions of initiation,response and monologue.

3. Purpose How children use language tounderstand their world and interact withothers. At this level, language was eitherThematic when content was the focus andchildren talked about themselves, what theywere doing, and about happenings in thenursery, or Interactional when they usedlanguage primarily to make contact withothers and to sustain relationships. Withineach of these main categories, there werefurther, detailed sub-categories.

Thematic Interactional

1. Repetition 10. Approach

2. Description (information) 11. Negotiation

3. Description (personal) 12. Conflict

4. Explanation 13. Support

5. Factual questions

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Thematic

6. Interpretive questions

7. Fantasy

8. Monitoring

9. Affect

Miscellaneous

14. Incomplete or unclassified

15. Pardon? What?

From these analyses two interesting findings emerged.One was the contrast between the language used by thechildren in the company of adults compared to when theyplayed by themselves, :md the other was the variety oflanguage styles amongst the ten individuals.

Observing the children playing in th^ nursery, I wasaware that there were two territories. On the one handthere were the quieter table-top activities offeringpuzzles, number games, playdough, drawing and collagewhere adults often sat and worked with the children. Onthe other hand, there were areas where adults rarelyventured - the home and dressing-up corners, the toyfort and castle, and cars and ramps all offeringopportunities for fantasy play, and the spaces aroundthe room where children could organise their own informalgames. In previous studies, most of the recordings ofthe children were made in contexts where adults andchildren worked or played together, yet this cuts offhalf the picture and leaves us with an over-gloomyimpression of the opportunities for language offeredin the nursery setting. When children talked withadults at the activities tables, they used language inthe ways described by previous research. Here, ingeneral, were the uninspiring, routine and descriptivecommentaries on what the children were doing and theanecdotes triggered by the activities. Long

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contributions were uncommon, nearly 557. of thelanguage was classified as Repetition orDescription, the children talked a lot tothemselves, monitoring what they were doing,and only a small proportion of talk was inter-actional. But when the children joined inrough-and-tumble play, invented make-believescenes and organised informal games, they neededa different set of strategies. Without the adultsto guide and structure conversation, there werefewer descriptive exchanges (227. compared to 557.)»much more imaginative language and role play (227.compared to 37.), and much more negotiation aschildren decided who should do what and how thegames would progress (247. compared to 77.). Talkwithout adults can be described as a mixture ofsocial interaction, fantasy play, negotiationand monitoring." So should the nursery teacherscross over the boundaries into the children'sterritory and seize these opportunities forlanguage development in contexts where thechildren themselves are highly motivated andInvolved in the activities? Or would theirintervention ensure that conversations would bemodified towards the more prosaic exchangesalready described? Ironically perhaps thechildren are learning more about the effective-ness of certain kinds of interaction by being leftto play out their games on their own, and theseopportunities are not available to children whostay at home in the company of a single caretaker.This is possibly one advantage of nursery educat-ion which has not been stressed.

If play with and without adults is so different,how much more varied are the conversations of thetwo groups of children and of individuals? Theanswer would seem to be 'very1. Perhaps I waslucky in my selection of children because foreach the language 'profile' was very different.

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I would not be justified in drawing any generalisationsabout children's language styles on the basis ofresults from such a small sample, but intuitively Ifeel that this same finding would emerge from furtherstudies. Nor can I disentangle the effects of contexton the language of the children; some children chosealways to work with adults at the tables just as othersshunned the more structured activities in favour ofgames with their peers. Inevitably, then, differentexpectations were set up and exchanges were constrainedand defined by the settings. If Gerald, the biggest,most aggressive boy, had decided to spend some timedoing number work or making cakes out of playdoughthen we might have arrived at a quite differentlanguage profile for him. But he didn't, and choseinstead to wrangle, fight and negotiate his way aroundthe nursery, concerned about who should ride the trikefirst and who won 14 compete with him for a turn withthe fork-lift-truck. Perhaps it is enough to knowthat the free-play setting allows children to makethese choices and to know that these choices then in-fluence the kinds of language they will use in anygiven context.

A comparison of- the language and the groups of child-ren from different backgrounds makes this pointclearer. The 'middle-class* children tended to choosethe quieter table-top activities and sought, or atleast tolerated, the attention of adults. They werecontent to draw and colour, make collage pictures and'work' in their workbooks. They didn't say more thanthe children in the other group, nor were their contr-ibutions any longer, but they initiated conversationsmore often with adults than children. And perhapsbecause they talked more with adults, their languagewas more repetitive and descriptive and included moremonitoring. On the positive side, they talked moreabout themselves and exchanged personal experiencesand anecdotes, at least when the adults had time tolisten. The children from problem homes played more

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frequently on their own, and had one recorded themonly in the company of adults, one would have gaineda very biased impression of their ability to sustainconversations and to use language for a variety ofpurposes. Katherine, for example, rarely spoketo the staff, 98% of all language was addressed toother children. And when playing with others,Katherine showed exceptional and often ruthlessleadership, organising groups of children, praisingsome and rejecting others, and inventing the nextstage of whatever game she was involved in. Ingeneral, the second group of children used languageless frequently for describing events and talkingabout themselves (277. compared to 417.) but showedconsiderable skill in the imaginative use of lang-uage in role-play and fantasy games. (137. comparedto 37.) and spent more time interactingj andespecially negotiating, with others (277. comparedto 137.). For both groups there was a disappoint-ingly low level of explanatory statements and openquestions; the nursery was not the place for sus-tained, exploratory conversations that might haveincreased children's knowledge or ideas abouttheir world.

Individual children (even within the social groups)showed quite varied and distinct language styles.In a paper of this length it is not possible togive a quantitative breakdown of language intoall the categories for all the children, butreaders can gain a taste of the variation fromthe extracts of four of the children given below.

Gemma (Group 1)

Most of Gemma's conversations are task-oriented,descriptive and with an adult. She rarely init-iates or sustains conversations and her languageis mostly restricted to responses to questionsasked by teachers and monitoring comments as she

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works by herself. The extract below takes place atthe number table where a teacher is working with asmall group. The exchange lasts about 15 minutes.

Gemma (Takes a piece of paper) Can I do a picture?

Teacher Do you want to do some work? .... paper isfor babies you've got a work book ...you were doing about six weren't you Gemma?

(Teacher finds Gemma's book, draws in it andhands it to Gemma. Gemma gets on very slowly)

Gemma (Tipping her chair back and talking to her-self). I'm falling right down ... I'm fallingright down ... I'm falling right down.

(Long pause. Teacher talks to other children)

Teacher How many there, Gemma?

Gemma One ... two ... three ... four

Teacher How many there?

Gemma One ... two ... three ... four ... five ...six

Teacher

Rebekah

Six ... can you put a six in there for me?... Now what did you do to that? ... Did yougo like that and then put a little tail on?... It goes down from the top ... do itstail first and then round at the bottom ...that's it ... good girl.

Roughly two thirds of Rebekah's conversations are withan adult and half of her contributions are initiatingmoves. Although there is a high proportion of straight

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description in her language, it is the personalquality of Rebekah's talk that is distinctive. Shehas the confidence to talk about herself, and seemsto expect others to find her anecdotes interesting.In the extract below,she is at the dough table,sustaining the conversation by directing questionsat the nursery nurse.

Nurse Do you help Mummy to do some baking athome?

Rebekah Sometimes I play with pastry ... once Iplayed with pastry ... once I was.goingto make a cake and it went all funnybut once I put jam on tap of me cake andit turned out lovely and we all had apiece. _

Nurse Oh how nice

Rtbekah And once I made a jam ... a ginger manfor Lisa and a cake for me

Nurse You are a busy girl when you're at homearen't you?

Rebekah Mm sometimes I do that

Nurse I like baking as well

Rebekah Did you like baking when you was a littlegirl?

Nurse Yes, when I was a little girl my mummyused to give me a little piece of pastry... sometimes I used to play with it forsuch a long time that it used to go allgrubby and funny and you couldn't eat itso sh'd say you can make a cake for thedog and I used to make a cake for the dog.

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Rebekah Did you have a cat?

Nurse I don't think we ... oh yes we did have a cat... but the dog was my favourite though

Rebekah

Robert

I've got a cat

What is distinctive about Robert's language is thenoticeable number of interpretive statements and quest-ions. He is the only child in the sample who makesrepeated efforts to make sense of things for himself.Although the organisation of the nursery makes itdifficult for children to buttonhole adults in thisway, Robert manages it better than most and interrupts.,any activity (such as the story belox*) until he issatisfied. But adults do not always have time forRobert, like the teacher here who is more concernedabout finishing her story about the white bear whoacquired a new, colourful coat.

Teacher

Robert

Now then if the bear sits on his iceberg andhis coat is all green, his enemies will easilybe able to see him won't they?

But they won'tanimal

they'll think he's another

Teacher But they'll still be able to see him and eathim up

Robert He could run in a tree and they could onlysee the tree left

Teacher There aren't any trees though in the land ofice and snow ... you look ... let's lookback at the first page ... no trees ...nothing green is there?

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Robert But ...

Teacher You see he's white and his iceberg'swhite so that he can hide

Robert But why doesn't he fill up his hole withgreen leaves?

Teacher Because you can't get them around there... trees don't grow, it's too cold ..."and the parrot said to the whale ..."

Jason (Group 2)

Jason's language is for the most part a combinationof elaborate fantasy play and negotiation. Heoften chooses to play with cowboys and Indians atthe toy fort (as below) or with the model carsand ramps, and weaves together stage directions,character voices, and suggestions to others play-ing with him (admittedly, without hearing the tapesit is not easy to disentangle these three!)

Jason Right ... now no-one's going to get mehere ... no-one can get me down here ...stay where you are ... stay where youare ... stay where you are ... staywhere you are Indian or I will strikeyou

Mark The horse is carrying him ... becausethey're both friends ... let's alljump down

Jason Oh no ... please don't shoot (shootingnoises) ... no he doesn't shoot him ...I know this can be a river and thesefall in ... I know ... when the cowboysshoot him ... when the cowboys shoot himdown there ... right? ... When the cow-boys shoot the Indians down there theyfall in the river ... (noises) ...

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splash ... if you don't move I'll push youin the river ... I'm shooting them all inthe river

Mark They're pushing them in the river ... thenthey shot him

One needs, then, to be somewhat cautious about makinggeneral statements about the language of nursery schoolchildren if those generalisations do not acknowledge thevariation that exists.between groups of children andindividuals. By recording children only in the presenceof adults one can underestimate both the learningopportunities that are available and the languagestrategies that are practised. Playing with theirpeers may not be the most effective way of acquiringnew information or extending ideas, but then neitheris sitting, at a table doing number work with a teacher.At least in the former context, children can learn toget on with others and can exercise their imaginationsin fantasy play. The language profiles of the tenchildren show that there is considerable variation inthe way children use language, even given the same" ' <setting, and suggest that the knowledge children gainfrom their nursery experience (tihether about things,ideas or people) is equally likely to be very different.

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