Morality and polyphony in peer dialogues

Abstract This study investigates children’s dialogic negotiation of the moral order of the classroom in a heterogeneous peer group. Drawing from video-ethnographic research in two primary schools in Italy, the study adopts a CA-informed approach to analyze 9- to 10-year-old children’s dialogic interactions around the appropriate and inappropriate ways of behaving in the classroom. As the analysis illustrates, children reproduce institutional moral norms and ideologies to sanction perceived infringements of the classroom moral order. In response to that, the recipients provide accounts to justify their conduct or resist the moral accusation of their classmates. In the discussion it is argued that these morality-building practices are relevant to (a) children’s negotiation of their social organization and local identities in the peer group and (b) children’s socialization to the moral expectations of the classroom community.