​A study from a Slovak kindergarten reveals that preschoolers don't equate power with wisdom—they value kindness, helpfulness, and following the rules.

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I'm excited to share that my latest research, co-authored with my student Sára Mikuškovičová, has just been published in Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. The study explores a question that fascinates me: How do young children understand the concept of wisdom within their peer groups?

 

The Big Question

Adults often think of wisdom in abstract terms—philosophical ideals, accumulated knowledge, moral reasoning. But what about four-, five-, and six-year-olds? When they call someone "wise" or "smart," what do they actually mean? And does being socially powerful in the peer group make a child seem wiser to others?

 

What We Did

We spent six weeks conducting ethnographic fieldwork in a kindergarten in a small Slovak village, observing 10 children aged four to seven. Our approach combined:

• Participant observation during free play and daily routines

• Semi-structured interviews with children and teachers

• Children's drawings of peers they considered wise

• Systematic observations of social conflicts to map dominance hierarchies

This mixed-methods design allowed us to capture both what children said about wisdom and how they demonstrated their understanding through everyday interactions.

 

The Surprising Findings

Dominance ≠ Wisdom

Perhaps our most striking finding: children did not conflate social dominance with wisdom. The child who ranked highest in the dominance hierarchy received zero "wisdom" nominations from peers. Meanwhile, children at the bottom of the social hierarchy were among the most frequently nominated as wise.

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What Makes a Peer "Wise"?

According to the children themselves, wise peers were those who:

• Respected and followed social rules

• Helped others and shared their belongings

• Protected their friends

• Demonstrated specific skills or knowledge

• Were kind and fair

One child was nominated as wise because she reminded others not to laugh at classmates. Another was considered wise because he "avoided fighting and kept the peace." These children valued prosocial behaviour, emotional intelligence, and rule-following—not power or assertiveness.

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Age Matters, Gender Doesn't

Children consistently associated being "bigger" or older with being wiser. As one child put it: "Mathias knows everything and doesn't lie because he is big." Teachers confirmed this pattern, noting that older children were seen as role models. Gender, however, played no significant role in wisdom nominations—boys and girls were equally likely to be nominated.

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A Gap Between Adult and Child Perceptions

One particularly interesting discovery: the teachers' assessments of who was "dominant" in the group completely contradicted our observational data. The two children teachers identified as most dominant actually ranked at the bottom of the hierarchy based on observed peer interactions. This highlights how adult perceptions—possibly influenced by factors like verbal assertiveness or family background—may not accurately reflect children's actual social dynamics.

 

Why This Matters

This research matters for several reasons:

For early childhood education: Understanding how children construct social concepts like wisdom can help educators develop more culturally sensitive and developmentally appropriate curricula. If we want to nurture "wisdom" in young children, we need to understand what wisdom means to them.

For inclusive practices: We found that children with communication or developmental differences were rarely described as wise by peers. This points to the need for intentional strategies to support social inclusion.

For research methodology: Our findings underscore the importance of observing children directly rather than relying solely on adult reports. Children's social worlds operate by their own logic, and we miss important nuances when we study children only through adult perspectives.

 

Children as Competent Social Actors

This study reinforces what I've long believed: children are not passive recipients of adult knowledge. They actively construct their own social cultures, with distinctive rules, hierarchies, and value systems. When we take the time to observe and listen—really listen—to children in their own contexts, we discover sophisticated social reasoning that often surprises us.

The children in our study weren't simply mimicking adult definitions of wisdom. They were building their own understanding through play, conversation, and everyday interactions with peers.

 

Read the full article: Bombjaková, D., & Mikuškovičová, S. (2026). Wisdom and dominance in preschool peer culture: A mixed-methods exploration. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491251404956

Data availability: The dataset and R script for the dominance analysis are available on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17978276

 

I'm grateful to Sára Mikuškovičová for her dedicated fieldwork and collaboration on this project, and to the kindergarten staff and families who welcomed us into their community.