Young children’s ideas of fairness have been studied in a range of laboratory settings with findings that children see fairness as equal distribution of resources. However, many studies occurred in decontextualized environments (i.e., laboratory settings), which hardly provide opportunities for children to exhibit nuanced ways to enact fairness. By observing children in more authentic contexts, their classrooms, this article complicates the concept of fairness as equality and attends to the ways that children respond to issues of fairness by acting as contributors to their classroom communities on a daily basis. Drawing on a larger video-cued ethnographic research project, we specifically focus on full-day films taken across three early childhood classrooms to contextualize young children’s capabilities when they encounter issues of fairness. The findings indicate that young children have the ability to respond to fairness with social justice-oriented solutions by giving up resources, prioritizing other’s needs, and advocating for others. When children confront issues of fairness in real-life contexts, they are capable of finding solutions that endorse equity.

在一系列实验室环境中研究了幼儿关于公平的想法，发现儿童将公平视为资源的平等分配。然而，许多研究发生在去语境化的环境（即实验室环境）中，这几乎没有为儿童提供机会以表现出细微差别的方式来实现公平。通过在更真实的环境中观察儿童，即他们的课堂，本文将公平作为平等的概念复杂化，并关注儿童每天通过充当课堂社区的贡献者来应对公平问题的方式。利用更大的视频线索人种学研究项目，我们特别关注在三个幼儿教室拍摄的全天电影，以便在遇到公平问题时将幼儿的能力置于情境中。研究结果表明，幼儿有能力通过放弃资源、优先考虑他人的需求和为他人代言，以社会正义为导向的解决方案来回应公平。当儿童在现实生活中遇到公平问题时，他们能够找到支持公平的解决方案。