Large Group Meetings in the Preschool Classroom

The purpose of this study was to explore the everyday large group meeting interactions in the preschool classroom and its significance to preschool children. In-depth understanding on the preschool large group meeting time was mainly examined through exploring the children’s and teacher’s large group interactions and various meaning making within and across their everyday large group meetings and classroom experiences. The data was collected over a five and a half month period in one preschool classroom, taking an ethnographic research approach. Multiple methods were used to gather data, including participant observation, field notes, interviews with teachers, and video recording of classroom interaction during the large group meeting time. In this preschool classroom, the Morning Meeting consisted of five sub-events Along with the ritual-like characteristics of some sub-events (i.e., calendar/weather), the sub-event of ‘large group conversation/ talk’ was a context where various types of group interaction between the children and teacher could be observed. Through micro-level analysis of the data, four types/purposes of interaction could be identified. The ‘large group conversation/talk’ sub-event in this classroom was: 1) a context for individual’s sharing on personal stories, news, and artifacts that they brought from home within the large group; 2) a context for teacher’s announcements about upcoming events to the group in the classroom; 3) a context for group meaning making on various child-initiated and teacher initiated topics through collaborative and extensive group conversation; and 4) a context for teacher-directed interaction on certain topics that the teacher chose to introduce to the children. It was also found that the children in this classroom jointly constructed and contributed to group meaning making: 1) by linking to / making connections between their own personal experiences and on-going topics; 2) by sharing their thoughts and listening to others’ – thinking and reasoning together and building upon each other’s ideas; and 3) by sharing their prior knowledge (what they knew) with the group. The preschool large group meeting time was served as an interactive context for the children and the teacher to engage in meaning making of a socially constructed nature through their large group interaction. The different ways power was exercised between members of the classroom were explored through taking as the main construct ‘power as process’ rather than power as possession. Rather than the teacher possessed static power in the classroom process, power was relational, and that shifted from one situation to another through their interaction. In re-examination of some of the group interactions during the Morning Meeting, various power relations (‘power over’ ‘power with’ ‘power for’) were observed in the data, which also illustrated the children’s and the teacher’s multiple roles through such power relations and interactions. Looking through the entire body of data and examining the data of Morning Meeting time within the frame of the whole classroom context, it was found that sometimes the large group interaction during Morning Meeting was extended to other contexts in the classroom. The construct of ‘intercontextuality as social construction’ was built upon as main methodology to analyze and understand the large group meeting time and its occasional extension to other contexts.