Managing accountability of children’s bodily conduct: Embodied discursive practices in preschool

This chapter contributes to the further development of Discursive Psychology by examining how children are socialized towards culturally appropriate ways of bodily conduct in preschool settings in India. The study considers how embodied resources are used in parallel with verbal discourse and how children's bodies are treated as accountable objects in teacher-child interactions. The findings demonstrate that the teacher draws on a variety of overt behavior management practices but also on more subtle actions that give children a second chance to comply. The examples show how the teacher orients to children’s agency and intentionality, and how embodied resources may serve as an upgrade of discursive resources. Finally, the chapter discusses how these practices can be seen in the wider cultural context of socialization ideologies.