Building a common culture of reading during collective learning groups in pre-school

Abstract

In our Swiss context, play moments and collective learning groups disappear from our pre-school classes. Unfortunately, pedagogical practices are increasingly inspired by those of higher levels. However, it is necessary for the child to be able to enter into a school culture, that there is a balance between spontaneous learning in which the child follows his or her own agenda and reactive learning in which he or she pursues a specific teaching goal (Vygostki, 1935/1995).

During collective learning groups, children negotiate, share and create a common culture with their peers and teachers (Bruner, 1986; Vygotsky, 1934/1985). Corsaro (1994) speaks of interpretive production, because children do not simply and individually integrate adult culture, but integrate it through interactions with adults and creative productions with their peers. During these collective moments, children are encouraged to develop their learning skills in a participatory structure and to acquire the knowledge content provided by the teacher (Amigues & Zerbato-Poudou, 2000; Selleri & Carugati, 1999).

The purpose of this paper is to describe the role of the teacher and to understand how children appropriate and interpret the specific tools to participate in collective learning groups and the cognitive and metacognitive tools used to enter into the learning process of the written world. Our analyses are based on the dialogical analysis model of Muhonen et al (2016). This research is conducted on the basis of a corpus of 21 filmed sessions of about 20 minutes each and ritualized about twice a week over a school year with pupils of an average age of 5 years.