Infant and teacher dialogue in education and care: A pedagogical imperative

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis exploratory study investigated the nature of teacher-infant social dialogue in a high-quality education and care centre in New Zealand. Employing dialogic methodology (Bakhtin, 1986), interactions between infants and teachers were analysed in terms of the language forms used in the social event. Polyphonic video footage of two infants' social experiences and subsequent teacher interviews were coded to identify forms of language that occurred in dialogues and their interpreted pedagogical significance to teachers. The results revealed four central features of teacher-infant social exchange: (i) infants were more likely to respond to teachers interaction initiations when teachers used verbal and non-verbal language form combinations; (ii) when initiations were verbal and non-verbal combinations, both teachers' and infants' responses were significantly more likely to be also combinations of verbal and non-verbal language forms; (iii) both infants and teachers altered their responses to the language forms used by the initiator regardless of whether that was an infant or a teacher; and (iv) when teachers did not respond, they had a pedagogical rationale. Results highlight the multi-voiced and synchronous nature of teacher-infant interactions, the complex nature of communication in a formal out-of-home setting, and the pedagogical nature of teacher dialogue with infants.

Dialogue and Interaction in Early Childhood Education: A Systematic Review

“…Unlike the studies mentioned above, two small-scale studies used video recording and analysis to carefully examine the interaction behavior between children and teacher in a few high-quality classrooms (RaskuPuttonen et al, 2012;White et al, 2015). It seems particularly relevant that these studies explore dialogic patterns of interactions in five preschools in Finland (Rasku-Puttonen et al, 2012) and analyze the interactions between teachers and infants and the language forms they used in the social event (White et al, 2015).…”

“…The rest of the small-scale studies also focused the research on high quality education and a care centre in New Zealand (White et al, 2015) or in preschool classrooms in Finland (Rasku-Puttonen, Lerkkanen, Poikkeus, & Siekkinen, 2012). Three studies evaluated the implementation of a particular strategy such as an intervention to develop emergent literacy skills (Lonigan et al, 2013), a dialogic reading program for parents (Towson & Gallagher, 2014) or a professional development on preschool teachers (Piasta et al, 2012).…”

“…Research on infant-adult communication have provide evidence of toddlers being 'highly social communicators' capable to engage with others through material, cultural or psychological tools (White, Peter, & Redder, 2015). However, many psychological studies with infants have analyzed dyadic encounters in laboratory settings and less attention has been paid to the significance of these social acts in educational contexts.…”

Early childhood educator’ perspectives on how infants and toddlers learn: Australia and China

“…In recent years, however, there has been a growing interest in pedagogical practices for infants and toddlers (e.g. Degotardi and Pearson 2014;Lawrence 2012;Meade et al 2012) with a position emerging that children in this age group have different ways of establishing relationships and internalising experience (Oliveira-Formoshino and Araújo 2014; White et al 2014). There is also a growing trend to observe child/child relationships (Greve 2009).…”

“…Elfer (2006) strongly favours attachment theory; White et al (2014) focus on teacher infant social dialogue; Oliveira-Formoshino and Araújo (2014) emphasise diversity and democratic pedagogy-inparticipation and others employ differing kinds of socio/cultural theory (e.g. Meade et al 2012).…”