A day on a school playground: a story of power and gender stereotypes

The school playground abounds with examples of how power, stereotypes and discrimination work at school. This paper presents data on these issues in a specific primary-school context. The narrative strategy makes use of evocative ethnographic texts to give voice to the children featured in the story. The fieldwork was carried out on the playground of a public school in the city of Valencia, where the researcher conducted 60 hours of participant observation supplemented by informal conversations with the children. By using a creative analytical practice, the paper presents a story in the form of a dialogue between the researcher and schoolgirls, who have been recreated for the reader. In this way, the paper reveals a variety of forms of power that shape playground activity and affect above all the youngest girls, who learn strategies of resistance to cope with discrimination.