This thesis focuses on interaction among young toddlers during their second year of life in a Swedish preschool. The overall aim of this thesis was to explore interaction, communication and the creation of friendship between the young children during self initiated play activities. In addition, this thesis presents the background of Early Childhood Education in Sweden, which may serve as an extended context for the study. An ethnographic study was carried out in a toddler unit with 15 children. Six one year old girls and boys were in focus during the observations for nine months. Participatory methods, photos, fieldnotes and videorecordings, were used for the data collection. The theoretical framework for the study is built on phenomenology, the view of the child as a social person and a child oriented perspective. The overall findings support a theoretical perspective where the young toddlers are seen as social actors, with social competencies. Their play invitation strategies, as well as their play enactment and play-closing moves, were mostly found to be based on nonverbal communication such as movements, gestures, voice quality and facial expressions. The competencies of attunement, taking others’ perspectives and turn-taking were found in play among the young toddlers, and they also showed negotiating skills while playing. The findings also show how young toddlers make friends. During their second year of life, they monitor and pay attention to individual peers, displaying intentionality and agency by spontaneously greeting their peers, by offering play invitations, and by helping peers. Mutual awareness, joint attention, shared smiles, coordinated movements, as well as other types of synchronized actions are seen as parts of nonverbal elements in emerging friendship. The findings in this thesis support an understanding of young toddlers as social persons in the preschool, engaged in consistent interest and attention towards each other while playing. / Avhandlingens fokus är hur små barn interagerar med varandra under sitt andra levnadsår i en svensk förskola. Det övergripande syftet var att undersöka interaktion, kommunikation och skapandet av vänskap mellan yngre toddlare under lekstunder då barnen hade möjligheter att ta egna initiativ. Lek betraktas som en rik arena för studier av toddlares samspel. Avhandlingen presenterar även svensk förskolas utveckling som en bakgrund som placerar in den enskilda förskolan i ett större sammanhang. En etnografisk studie genomfördes på en småbarnsavdelning med 15 barn i åldrarna ett till tre år. Sex ettåriga flickor och pojkar fokuserades särskilt genom observationer under nio månader. Deltagande observationer, fotografier, fältanteckningar och videoobservationer, användes för datainsamlingen. Teoretiskt vilar studien på fenomenologi, synen på barn som sociala personer och ett barnperspektiv. Resultaten stöder ett teoretiskt perspektiv där mycket små barn betraktas som sociala aktörer med social kompetens. Deras initiativ till lek, under lek och avslut av lek byggde framför allt på icke-verbal kommunikation, som exempelvis rörelse, gester, röstkvalitet och ansiktsuttryck. Barnen visade i sin lek förmåga till intoning, att ta andras perspektiv och turtagning samt att de förhandlade med varandra under lekens gång. Resultaten visar också hur yngre toddlare bygger vänskap. Ettåringarna uppmärksammar sina kamrater även som individer, exempelvis genom att spontant hälsa på dem, bjuda in till en särskild lek och genom att hjälpa varandra. I skapandet av vänskap använde barnen sig av icke-verbala handlingar i form av ömsesidig och gemensamt riktad uppmärksamhet, smittande leenden och koordinerade rörelser, vilka kan tolkas som intentionellt agerande. Sammanfattningsvis visar resultaten att små barn under sitt andra levnadsår kan betraktas som sociala personer som i leken i förskolan intresserar sig för och uppmärksammar varandra. / At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Accepted.

Communication between the youngest preschool children is the focus of this essay, primarily on how the children communicate with each other, what they are communicating about and what meaning the communication holds for the children. The aim is to describe and understand communication that takes place in the regional life-world of the preschool between the youngest children in a Swedish preschool. Video recordings of six preschool children between the ages of 14 and 24 months were made both inside and outside the preschool, at times when the children were able to choose for themselves who to communicate with, in which room to be in and which toy to play with. The focus during the video recordings was naturally occurring situations where these six children communicated with each other. 51 relevant situations were selected for more thorough investigation. These specific situations were chosen because the children’s bodies were directed towards each other and the children were communicating in an intercorporeal way with each other. In order to describe and understand communication between lived bodies in the regional world of the preschool, a phenomenological study was carried out. In order to deepen the understandings of the empirical data theoretical concepts like life-world, the lived body, the concept of horizons and intercorporeality were used. The findings indicate five different aspects of what type of meaning communication holds, divided into five themes. These themes are represented by communication as: creation of a shared phenomenon, acknowledging someone, coordination of access to play, coordination of access to place or object, and sharing an already experienced event with someone who was not present. The findings of the study show the children’s usage of an advanced coordination between the lived bodies of the children, the lived space, the lived time, and the lived relationships. Together the children create, coordinate, and maintain a creation of meaning in which the children structure their participation in the life-world. / Uppsatsen handlar om kommunikation mellan de yngsta förskolebarnen ur ett fenomenologiskt perspektiv. Mer specifikt handlar uppsatsen om hur barnen gör när de kommunicerar med varandra, om vad de kommunicerar och vilket meningsskapande som manifesteras i kommunikationen. Genom en rad olika empiriska exempel synliggörs barnens kommunikation där kroppen och rörelsen är central. Resultatet visar på de yngsta förskolebarnens kommunikation som ett skapande av en gemensam handling, som ett uppmärksammande av någon annan, som ett samordnande av tillträde till lek, som ett samordnande av tillträde till plats och/eller föremål och som ett delande av någon annans erfarenhet. Detta åstadkommer barnen genom att upprepa varandras gester och koordinera sina handlingar. Resultatet visar att barnen är sensitiva inför varandra och anpassar sin kommunikation utifrån en rad olika förutsättningar. Uppsatsen riktar sig till förskollärare, forskare och andra som är intresserade av de yngsta förskolebarnens kommunikation. Uppsatsen har finansierats inom ramen för Nationella forskarskolan för förskollärare: Barndom, lärande och ämnesdidaktik (FöFoBa), diarienummer 729-2010-200.