"Posso giocare anch'io? Buone pratiche per favorire la socializzazione tra pari al nido d'infanzia"

This research deepens educational strategies that early childhood educators use to improve peer socialization at childcare center (nido d’infanzia). Through descriptions of episodes, the research presents: educational strategies, reflections about these strategies and childhood theories that inspire education. In addition to initial review objectives, the research pursues objectives of transformative character (Mortari, 2009) and then helps educators to reflect (Schön, 1993) upon the practices that enact and on the intentionality that move them. The research question that guides this project has been: how do educators promote relational dynamics between peers? The data have been collected in twelve chilcare centers and a micronido. Eleven of these childcare centers are located in the province of Reggio Emilia, one in the province of Modena and the micronido in the city of Milan. Services are managed by municipal governments, a social cooperative and a company. Twenty-one early childhood educators (all women) have been involved: eight for the social cooperative, twelve for public service corporation and one for a private childcare center. The data collection has been structured in two phases: throughout the first phase a non-directive interview (Bichi, 2007) has been proposed with exploratory purposes; in the second phase, a semi-structured interview has been proposed (Bichi, 2007) in order to enhance those focuses that, from the literature and from the analysis of the first interviews, are found to be the most extensive meaning (Mortari, 2007). Two interviews have been conducted with each participant: a first in-depth interview and a second return interview. The data analysis has been done in two steps: the first step inspired by the concept of fusion of horizons (Gadamer, 2010); for the second step it has been used Moustakas’s (1994) eidetic- phenomenological method. Data analysis has produced three different coding systems: one for the first interviews and two for the second interviews. First interviews: the essential profile emerged is represented by macro-category: Creating a good climate. Second interviews: starting from first interviews results, these second interviews have deepened two different themes: how can educators create a good climate? And how can educators encourage peer mutual aid? The two essential profiles emerged from the second coding system are Slow down and Exercising in recognising others’ needs. A comprehensive reading of the second interviews has revealed a great deal of attention to the emotional child (Savio, 2003) and anything that includes the teacher-child relationship; it has also shown that there was a specific expertise developed by educators over the years: the ability to think in situation. Finally, starting from the idea of pedagogy as a empirical-eidetic-practical science (Bertolini, 1988), it has been conceived and designed an in-service training able to link results of data analysis and suggestions offered by literature. The in-service training proposed focuses on three main themes: implicit curriculum, reflective practice and emotional skills as base on which to develop social skills (Baumgartner, 2010; Denham, 2001).