Construction of the social world in narratives of slum children

Pages: 1109-1114
Jyoti Gupta, Subhasmita Panda and Nandita Babu (Department of Psychology, University of Delhi, Delhi)

Stories are a part of a child’s everyday experience and narration helps to describe this experience. Children from slum generate narrations to reflect their social world. This study attempts to explore slum children’s construction of the social world in their narratives. To gain an in-depth understanding of children’s construction of their social world, fifteen 6 and 7 year olds were selected from a slum area located in the city of Delhi. They were asked to narrate stories based on story leads and pictures which were provided to them. Their narrations were coded and significant themes such as: social engagement, personal likes and dislikes, mental state attribution, emotions and concern with authority emerged illustrating children construction of a meaningful social world through their narratives.