Coordinated Actions at Free Play Activities on Children Interethnic Encounters

Abstract

Abstract: This study aimed to investigate coordinated actions built between Mbya-Guarani and non-indigenous children during free play activities. 21 Mbya-Guarani and 61 non-indigenous children participated in two “Encounters for Play,” a project constructed by the Indigenous Network and Mbya-Guarani communities. We recorded children’s social interactions during the free playtimes, selected the first and last 10 minutes of each encounter: (1) Performed scans every 30s registering children who were playing together; (2) Applied Social Network Analysis to explore children’s association pattern on each encounter; (3) Performed a focal continuous transcription of each child present in the interethnic clusters using an ethogram. Our results show free play was effective in promoting coordinated actions between children up to eight years old, in mixed age clusters. The “Encounters for Play” activities demonstrated the ability to mitigate the avoidance of ethnic groups in children, displaying potential as an educational intervention.

Keywords

• social interaction
• clusters analysis
• childhood play behavior
• ethnic groups