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Kindergarten Children’s Attitudes Towards Homosexuality: The Influence of Puppet Theatre on the Topic of Diversity in a Group of Kindergarten Children

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Abstract

Homophobic stigmas and the discrimination of homosexual people are still worrying in today’s society. The current study seeks to investigate kindergarten children’s attitudes towards homosexuality and how they are influenced by their peer-groups and authorities. It does so by means of a puppet theatre presentation including ‘Kasperl’ and ‘Seppel’ puppets as the main protagonists in a German puppet theatre. The audience consisted of six German kindergarten children aged 4–6 years, randomly selected by the kindergarten director. A participant observation has been conducted with the first researcher as the presenter of the puppet show. The results of the recorded puppet theatre showed that several intragroup processes including the social identity theory with regard to group membership could be observed within the puppet theatre. Groups have been formed and children of the same ingroup showed equal attitudes towards homosexuality. However, the researcher’s influence as an authority figure could have as well impacted their attitudes through positive reinforcement. The present study contributed to the gap in research regarding kindergarten children’s attitudes towards homosexuality. To have a better overview of the results, future studies should include additional variables like kindergarten’s cultural and geographical differences.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to data protection.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful for Henning Lütje’s and Janna Hämpke’s input concerning the methodological aspects of this paper and I would like to especially thank Janna Hämpke and her mother for writing and providing the text for the puppet theatre. Many thanks to Prof. Jaan Valsiner for his constructive suggestions in terms of the structure of this research project.

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  1. University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette (Belval), Luxembourg

    Johanna Maus

  2. Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette (Belval), Luxembourg

    Gabrijela Aleksić

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Both Gabrijela Aleksić and Johanna Maus contributed to the design of the study. Johanna Maus implemented the research, contributed to the analysis of the results and to writing the manuscript. Gabrijela Aleksić was in charge of overall direction providing critical feedback and contributed to the shaping of analysis and the manuscript and supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Johanna Maus.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by Dr. Gabrijela Aleksić, the supervisor of the first author.

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Maus, J., Aleksić, G. Kindergarten Children’s Attitudes Towards Homosexuality: The Influence of Puppet Theatre on the Topic of Diversity in a Group of Kindergarten Children. Hu Arenas (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-022-00320-8

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