| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 幼兒與家庭教育學系碩士班 === 100 === This study explored how young children thought about their class rules in a kindergarten affiliated to a public primary school in Taipei, including the children’s awareness, understanding and identity degree of the rules as well as their evaluation of the violations of the rules. The researcher made twenty-eight classroom observations to understand the way class rules were practiced. Showing pictures of five everyday situations of the class, namely “free play”, “group discussion”, “rhythmic movement”, “lunch & snack time”, and “afternoon snap,” the researcher invited every child to name the rules they know in the first interview. In the second interview, fourteen most frequently violated rules observed by the researcher and confirmed by the teachers were used to elicit children’s opinions in the second interview. The research findings were as follows: first, the children were aware of more rules than the teachers and they attended to more minute aspects of the rules. ; besides, during the period of “free play” which were supposed to be more “free,” the number of the rules children perceived and reported was the largest. Second, children provided the reasons why the rules existed mainly by concerning the possible outcomes of violating the rules. The outcomes mentioned by most of the the children were “I would be punished,” followed by “It may cause harm or discomfort to others”. Thirdly, according to the children, the most important and indispensable rules were those related to “health and hygiene”, such as “Brush your teeth after dinner”, “Wash your hands with soap before eating”, “Drink enough water” and so on. They also agreed that violations of these rules were very serious and the violators were regarded to be badly-behaved. Finally, those who often violated rules had three kinds of comments (or understanding) on the rules that they usually broke: “I didn’t realize the rules”, “I realized the rules but was not clear of the reasons of their existence”, “I realized the rules and also knew the reasons of their existence.” Moreoever, given the fact that some children said that “I know I violated the rules and I know why we had these rules. I think it was bad to break the rules”, they violated the rules all the time. Based on the findings, the researcher discussed the educational implication s of the study and made comments on the concepts of “punishment”, “violation” and “well-behaved.” It is suggested that adults attend to the positive values of “children’s violations of the rules.” Lastly, the researcher provided some advices regarding how to interview children and proposed some valuable topics for further study.
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