Interaction rituals, emotions, and early childhood science: digital microscopes and collective joy in a multilingual classroom

In her original article, “Identity, Agency and the Internal Conversations of Science and Math Teachers Implementing instructional reforms in High-Need Urban Schools”, Stacy Olitsky (2021) takes us on an exploration of the identity development and agencies exerted by two teachers working to implement science instructional reforms in high-need urban schools. Olitsky (2021) utilizes Interaction Ritual Theory as a lens to examine a seldom viewed and even intimate aspect of teacher’s worlds, namely teachers’ self-talk. In this forum article I embrace the invitation extended by Olitsky, through an exploration of the interaction rituals that took place among students and a teacher working with digital microscopes in an early childhood classroom. I draw upon the theoretical lens of communitas to illuminate the power of collective joy that formed. Specifically, I will share two vignettes from a multilingual early childhood classroom to illustrate how teacher-guided and student-guided spaces afforded interactions that lead to the development of collective joy. I show how collective work with the microscopes allowed for joy and surprise to occur within a classroom of plurilingual students who are participating in their first schooled experiences of science. I conclude with a discussion of the power of student-driven instructional spaces as places for students working to learn science, and the language of instruction, to collectively experience joy as they explore.