Indexing authority in the classroom

Abstract

The paper explores children’s authoritative claims in the peer group, focusing on the practices through which children achieve a position of deontic and/or epistemic authority during peer conflict. Drawing from ethnographic research documented with video recordings in two primary schools in northern Italy, this study adopts a CA-informed approach to analyse 8- to 10-year-old children’s conflictual negotiations of authoritative positions in the group hierarchy. As the analysis illustrates, children mobilize institutional entities and strategically deploy knowledge to underpin their local claims of authority. In the discussion it is argued that such practices are relevant to children’s socialization into classroom expectations and to the local negotiation of valued identities in the peer group. These insights are also declined in relation to the dichotomy between social inclusion and exclusion.