Reproducing and Resisting Gender: An Instrumental Case Study of Preschool Children’s Language in Play

This qualitative instrumental case study examines how preschool children construct and negotiate gender roles through language during free play in a university-affiliated preschool in Türkiye. Drawing on naturally occurring peer discourse, it explores how gender norms are reproduced, regulated, and sometimes resisted in everyday interactions. Participants (18 children aged 48–72 months attending a university-affiliated, fee-based preschool in Türkiye) were observed during daily free play sessions. Data were collected through video-recorded non-participant observations over a 12-week period and analyzed through iterative thematic analysis informed by discourse theory, Butler’s theory of gender performativity, Bem’s gender schema theory, and Eagly and Wood’s social role theory. Findings suggest that children frequently associated leadership and physical strength with boys and caregiving and emotional sensitivity with girls, reflecting broader familial and cultural discourses and reproducing binary gender patterns in interaction. At the same time, instances of peer exclusion, correction of gender-nonconforming behavior, and inclusive statements (e.g. “everyone can play with any toy”) indicated children’s capacity to negotiate and, at times, contest dominant norms. The study demonstrates that free play functions as a discursive site where gender meanings are reproduced, regulated, and occasionally reworked within a specific institutional context.