From March 2020 in Australia, the covid-19 pandemic resulted in regulations for social distancing, which meant that students were homeschooled. Social distancing exponentially increased the exposure of most young children to digital technology such as touchscreens (iPads) and digital flip cameras. This study focuses on two seven-year-old children who maintain their friendship during covid-19 by imaginary performances and playing virtual games. A cultural–historical approach is used in the study to analyze the children’s experience as they connect through virtual worlds and build imaginary spaces, contributing to sustaining their relationship during challenging times. Findings indicate that the children built a collective social situation of development integrating sophisticated imaginary, real and virtual worlds. The children’s perspective – their motive orientations and intentions towards a new social situation provided new opportunities for learning in a virtual imaginary world. The combination of a real, an imaginary and a virtual world supported the children to experience a range of emotions including joyous moments, empathy and attunement as they encouraged each other to participate.
This paper examines an experimental technique that uses visual narrative methodology and dialogue commentary to create an effective research methodology for a pilot project studying babies and toddlers in long day care centres and family contexts. Researchers from different cultural backgrounds using video technology, formed the team of chief investigators. One video clip was chosen to make independent descriptions, comments and interpretations of what was noticed. Later, initial visual narrative descriptions were shared and extended after reading one another's responses. This process created a dialogue commentary that enabled data overview, interpretative analyses and synthesis supported by snapshot moments taken from video clip. One aim of the project was to visually capture the cultural worlds and transitory relationships of babies and toddlers. Researchers showed the selected video clip separately to babies' room educator, centre director, and parents recording their responses. Using visual narrative methodology, dialogue commentary, and a shared cultural historical theoretical framework, revealed useful contradictions that raised social and cultural questions such as: How do educators recognize cultural worlds and transitory relationships of babies and toddlers? How are transitory moments related to pedagogically by educators? Integrating researchers' personal, cultural and affective responses, affords new critical cultural perspectives. This paper draws on screen capture snapshot moments from one video clip, taken from babies' pilot project data. These offer small windows into methodological approaches used to research the cultural world and transitory moments of three infants and their educator, located in the babies' room of an Australian long day care (LDC) site.
A GROWING INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT to improve the quality of education and care for infants and toddlers is prevalent in the current research agenda. However, recent research on infant-toddler education is yet to provide a holistic view of the specialised practices for this age group. Drawing upon Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory, a holistic view is used to investigate collective reflection in order to transform educators' professional practices. Data consisted of video observations of educators' practices and three collaborative forums. Participants included six educators who worked in three long day care centres. The collaborative forums aimed for collective reflections, and educators were positioned as agents of change. Findings revealed challenges in practice and educators' motivational systemstheir aspirations for their work were important for improving practice. Collaborative forums offered an affective space for educators' collective reflections. Implications show that when thinking occurs collectively, educators are able to reflect on their emotions and aspirations for the education of infants and toddlers.
Early childhood education and care (ECEC) educators’ well-being and emotional demands during COVID require careful attention. This article explores the emotional demands experienced by ECEC educators in Australia during ongoing periods of lockdown. A survey was designed to gather quantitative and qualitative data and participants were asked to participate in in-depth interviews. Thirty participants were interviewed to explore personal experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic; of these, a selected sample of six participants is presented, drawing on Honneth (1995) as an analytical framework. The findings show ECEC educators struggle for recognition and how solidarity amongst educators emerged as a key response. Implications provide impetus for the active recognition of the early childhood profession. Solidarity as a new concept in ECEC includes the recognition of the early childhood profession at a societal level, recognising the significant professional work early childhood educators accomplish, and their struggle during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
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