ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the analysis of teacher-child interactions during pretend play episodes, as this was one of the activities found to be engaged in every day at the early childhood centre. Existing literature investigating pretend play in early childhood has often explored these types of playful interactions from a psychological perspective. Pretend play between children has been investigated through a conversation analysis approach where the benefits of investigating these types of interaction from a data-driven approach were identified by the authors. These prior studies demonstrate how conversation analysis can provide a detailed description and analysis of the activity of pretend play as locally produced through the joint attention of the participating children in their turns at talk. The inclusion of ethnomethodological research that explores pretend play is important to the analysis of the current interactions as it provides an insightful background for revealing the conversational features that co-produce knowledge and relationships as a members matter.
