The Japanese Preschool's Pedagogy of Peripheral Participation

This article examines Japanese teachers' beliefs about children's peripheral participation in emotional interactions in the classroom, and especially in fights. The article is based on a reanalysis of scenes of fighting in Japanese preschools from Tobin and colleagues' 2009 book and video, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited. The reanalysis shifts the focus of attention from the protagonists in the fights, who occupy the center of the video frames, to the children on the margins. Japanese teachers have an emic cultural vocabulary for conceptualizing such peripheral participation, including the terms gyarari (gallery), gaiya (outfielders), seken (the generalized audience), and mawari no ko (the children around). Our analysis suggests that Japanese preschool teachers believe that in responding to children's fights their goal should be to give not only the protagonists but the class as a whole opportunities to experience emotions and to cultivate a sense of collective responsibility for events in their classroom community.