Coders used real-time focal-child sampling methods to observe the playground behavior and victimization experiences of 600 third to sixth grade youth. Person-centered analyses yielded three profiles that specified aggressive function (reactive, proactive) and form (direct, indirect), and conformed to social-information-processing functional…

This case study examines the role of playful talk in negotiating the "how" of collaborative group work in a 6th-grade science classroom. Here we develop and test a Vygotsky-derived hypothesis that postulates playful talk as a mechanism for identity exploration and group status negotiation. Our findings indicate that students utilized the…