Negotiating involvement: The emergence of a shadow break time play activity

This article concerns the emergence of primary schoolchildren's non-regular shadow break time play. The reported study is part of a bigger project. The observational data upon which the study is based reports on a peer-group between the ages of 10 and 11, in the same school class, and their drifting in the schoolyard. The data was produced during five consecutive school days comprising 8 breaks at one Swedish primary school. A cultural historical activity theoretical analysis was carried out emphasizing the children's micro-adjustments of their courses of actions in a particular transition into a non-regular shadow break time play activity. The findings of this research show how the children negotiate involvement, co-produce the game and continuously elaborate the playful conditions into different versions of the game. The findings moreover emphasize how the negotiation here concerns the co-creation of a tool further used in co-producing play. It is argued that the children, based on negotiagency (Waermö, 2016b), co-produce the play and that negotiagency runs from the individuals' profound sociality and is to be understood as a collectividual (Stetsenko, 2005, 2013) form of agency.