• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.407-436
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• 2013

This study, based on understanding the play features of the participants, explores early children's peer-relation strategies of maintaining and altering play frame and understanding the meaning of the strategies. Free play of 5-year-old children's was observed. The child-care center was visited 1 or 2 days a week, from March to October, 2012. The data collected were based from field notes, interviews with participants, their workbooks and more. The participants used strategies such as 'refusing', 'incapacitating', 'interpreting in a way to sympathize', and 'changing the rules of play' to maintain the play, whilst 'tell-on', 'being on the same side', 'accepting 3rd party' features were used to alter play frame. Participants using these various play-frame strategies experienced life implications of 'dialectic of exclusion and selection' and 'quiver of boundary'. This study, specifying efforts of the children to maintain and alter the play frame, will provide an understanding of perception of "social exclusion" to children, which has been viewed negatively in the past. It will also benefit on-site teachers in helping them understand peer-relationship within children and provide a more in-depth intervention for peer-relationship issues.