2020 Volume 34 Issue 1 Pages 15-33
This hypothesis-generating study developed an inductive model of relational changes among participants in a parent-child gymnastics class from the instructor's perspective, and looked at these changes in terms of how they were associated with persons and events in the class. The authors led a parent-child gymnastics class, enrolling young children not yet in nursery school (aged 3-4 years) and their mothers, for one year as part of a first-person study. After each session, qualitative data were generated from dialogue-based reflections with the instructor (the first author) and the assistant. The modified grounded theory approach was adopted for analysis.
Seventeen concepts were generated across six categories, broadly consisting of opinions on relational changes per se, and views of specific factors related to said changes. The instructors recognized that the relational changes among participants in the class could be conceptualized as “transformations from the ‘mother-child unit' to a ‘collective motherchildren group,'” and “mutually independent relationships with the instructors”. These changes allowed the parent-child gymnastics class to be viewed by mothers and children as “a space for communication”, and by all participants (including the instructors) as “a space for ‘platform'”.
