'I told you so': Justification used in disputes in young children's interactions in an early childhood classroom

Abstract

While justifications are frequently used by young children in their everyday interactions, their use has not been examined to any great extent. This article examines the interactional phenomenon of justification used by young children in their everyday interactions as they work to manage social organization of their peer group in an early childhood classroom. The methodological approaches of conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis were used to analyse video-recorded and transcribed interactions of young children (aged 4–6 years) in a preparatory classroom in a primary school in Australia. The focus is an episode that occurred within the play area of the classroom and involved a dispute of ownership relating to a small, wooden plank. In analysing this dispute, justifications used by the children were frequent occurrences and the young participants drew upon justificatory devices to support their stances. The justifications related to the concepts of ownership and were used as devices by those engaged in the particular dispute to support their positions and provide reasons for their actions. Four types of justificatory responses are highlighted. These involved using certain child-constructed rules to justify, including justification based on the rule of transferred ownership; the rule of first possession; rules associated with custodianship; and the rule of third-party verification. The justifications are practices that work to build and reinforce individual children’s status within the group that, in turn, contributes to the social order of the classroom.