Abstract

The purpose of this study is to contribute with knowledge about how educationalists’ think and act when children are interrupted in their play at preschool. To find out, I have done qualitative interviews with five female educationalists that all are active in preschool. In the literature section, I highlighted my subject from the literature that I found in the limited time I had. I have used both new and old research about the topic. My specific question is about interruption of children’s play, as it appears to be limited research about it, I have therefore spent much of the literature section to write about the play because it is relevant to my study.

The results show that there is no unambiguous way on how to interrupt children in their play when it differs from child to child and in different situations. The educationalists gave several suggestions on how they can interrupt the play. They also talked about how to work for the children to be able to handle interruptions in their play easier. They talk about the tools and means to facilitate or attempt to avoid too many interruptions. You get a picture of how the educationalists think and work. The educationalists emphasizes that it is their responsibility to work so that interruption is manageable for the children, but also raises problems with the work, which means that it can be fast interruptions without thinking about it. These are things such as stress, large groups of children, no or too little reflection and planning time or for scarce resources. They also say that you must be flexible and able to compromise so that if children play an important game you should allow the play to continue sometimes. They also speak about times when they were about to stop children while they were playing but changes their minds about interrupting when they see what the children are actually playing. Sometimes educationalists have to wait in order to create a picture of the play, even if they at first glance think they should interrupt it.

Keywords  interuption, play, educationalist.