Investigation of the leadership strategies of preschool children in the context of play

This is a qualitative study conducted to explore the leadership strategies used by pre-school children and how they use these leadership strategies in different play types. The syudy is designed as case study. The study was carried out with a five- year old age group consisting of 15 children in an independent nursery school in the central district of Şahinbey in the province of Gaziantep. The data were collected through observations, interview, document analysis and researcher's diary. The data were interpreted by the content analysis method. During this process, the data were coded, the appropriate categories and themes were formed and these categories and themes were interpreted. In this study, the leadership strategies used by pre-school children were examined in four categories as physical aggression, physical assertiveness, relational aggression and relational assertiveness as it was mentioned in the study of Mawson's (2011) study. The play categories that defined by Lillard (2014) were used in order to examine the leadership strategies related to the types of children's play. According to the findings, it was seen that among the four leadership strategies, relational assertiveness strategy was used the most. It was found that all of leadership strategies were used during dramatic play and structure-building play. Physical aggression leadership strategy was seen mostly during structure-building play, physical (locomotor) play, dramatic play and games with rules. Physical assertiveness strategy was seen in dramatic play as controlling power by having the resources; in structure-building play and physical (locomotor) play as controling play mates; in games with rules as dominance by bringing toys from the house and by playing the hero. Relational aggression strategy was seen in dramatic play, structure-building play and physical (locomotor) games by putting pressure on others and to be able to show themselves as more successful. Relational assertiveness strategy was seen in dramatic play, structure-building play and physical (locomotor) as for gathering supporters, focusing on attention and being close to the strong. In the manipulative play, relational assertiveness strategy was seen that it emerged as a leader by gathering supporters. Keywords: Leadership, leadership strategies, preschool play, power balance in the play