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Abstract
Western concepts of prosocial behavior dominate formal discourses of early childhood education worldwide. This dissertation is a study on prosocial behaviors in an Indonesian kindergarten. I interwove components of traditional and video cued ethnography to explore the various ways children’s behaviors in classrooms can be interpreted by the adults who make decisions about children’s schooling. This includes members of the children’s immediate community, such as family and neighbors, but also includes Indonesian scholars and teacher educators of early childhood and moral education as well as early childhood teachers. Their interpretations, in conversation with prior research, provide a deeper understanding of the way children’s emotions are interpreted as cultural performances in the Indonesian kindergarten classroom.