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Abstract

This article is about newcomers “doing” of the reception period at preschool. The study has an ethnographic approach, which is motivated from the new sociology of childhood (James & Prout, 1990) but also from actor-network theory (van House, 2003). The data consists of 17 hours video-recordings in a Swedish preschool context with focus on two newcomers; one boy (1:6) and one girl (3:1). Our data shows that in the processes of “doing” reception period, the building of networks is important. We found that the newcomers were involved in three different kinds of networks: (1) newcomer-pedagogue-preschool; (2) newcomer-artefacts-preschool, and (3) newcomer-peers-preschool. The findings suggest that in the construction of their social lives at preschool, the newcomers rely on both human (pedagogues, peers) and non-human entities (artefacts, norm systems). With reference to our findings we argue that newcomers are active in the construction of their lives from the first day at preschool. However, individual children seem to need some help in finding possible positions in existing networks. Building networks involve developing competencies needed to be regarded as a preschool child, but also to find out the norm systems and orderings of the preschool.

Keywords

• preschool
• reception period
• newcomer
• actor-network theory
• children’s network