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This chapter approaches the topic of how adults talk to children in early childhood education settings from the perspective of socialisation, conceptualized as a dual process of learning language and institutional/cultural norms. Focusing on episodes in which teachers mediate in children’s peer conflict, it identifies two discursive practices that have been widely observed in various societies: (1) directives on what to say to peers (e.g., “Can you say, I’m sorry?”) and (2) replaying the talk of a third-party peer (e.g., “She’s asking you to lend it to her”). It is argued that these practices are important for encouraging children to use and respond to talk as social action (e.g., to apologize, to comply with another’s request), and to use talk to display affective stance (i.e. feelings, emotions, and attitudes). In addition to an analysis of interaction at the micro level, the chapter discusses the institutional and cultural norms that are potentially being socialized through these two practices. Finally, suggestions are made for pedagogy.
The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of what we know about young children’s peer conflict in early childhood educational settings and how teachers can support children to develop skills in conflict resolution. This chapter begins with a review of the types of disputes in the early years, how children respond to opposition from other children and a discussion of learning opportunities in the practices of negotiation and compromise. The discussion also shows that teacher intervention is either solicited by children when they are stuck in a repetitive stalemate or instigated by the teacher when disputes escalate. Data extracts illustrate how intervention can be managed productively, where teachers guide children to identify and implement solutions. The analysis shows that intervention is most effective when the teacher monitors and encourages the uptake of solutions proposed by the children themselves. Finally, this chapter outlines implications for practice in early childhood education, in supporting children to resolve disputes.
Stimulating emergent literacy is one of the main goals of early childhood education. In order to accomplish this, the orientation to different aspects of literacy can be integrated into classroom interaction, as is shown in Chapter 10 of this Handbook. We demonstrate how early childhood educators can use children’s spontaneous attention to written text as a base for meaningful interaction by explicating their own acts of literacy and by talking with children whenever they read and write themselves. We also demonstrate how attention to literacy can be incorporated into shared reading interactions, by orienting the children to the structure of a story, the role of a book title and their understanding of the story. In addition, early childhood educators may organize meaningful activities in which children discuss literacy issues in peer interaction, while trying to write and to construct texts together. Illustrated by everyday examples, this chapter stresses the importance of eliciting meaningful teacher-child interaction and peer interaction around written text.
This chapter provides an overview of how the Handbook contributes to a deeper understanding of teaching and learning interactions in early childhood education. To begin, we highlight the skillful work of teachers in their interactions with young children and the centrality of these interactions to learning and development. We then explain how research in conversation analysis serves as a professional learning resource for early childhood teachers, given the transparency and accessibility of the method and the illustrations of practice provided by transcripts of interactions in early learning environments. We also provide a brief overview of the wealth of studies in conversation analysis in early childhood and consider what this body of research contributes to our understanding of pedagogy. Finally, an overview of each chapter in this Handbook shows how recordings of teachers talking with children can reveal the distinct mechanisms of high-quality interactions and how these elements can be incorporated into everyday pedagogical practice in early childhood environments.
This chapter examines how creativity supports learning in early childhood educational settings. The chapter begins with a brief overview of research on creativity in early childhood education, highlighting frameworks that tend to the creative potential everyday classroom interactions have on learning. The data presented in this chapter is from a play-based activity that took place in a mixed-age classroom of children aged six to eight years old. Children in the study dramatically pretended to play as marine creatures to learn about the interdependent relationships in marine ecosystems. Conversation analysis was used to examine how children creatively used playful and dramatic talk to develop and communicate scientific ideas in discourse. Findings also illustrate how teachers can support and sustain children’s creative work in playful, inventive, and meaningful ways. The chapter concludes with recommendations for practitioners who seek to implement and develop creative learning in their classrooms.
The distinct style of human communication develops gradually during a child’s life course. Researchers have reported that caregivers often try to involve young children in culturally and historically developed interaction patterns. Together with colleagues, I conducted a longitudinal study of Japanese caregiver (mainly parents and siblings) – child (0 to 5 years old) interactions naturally occurring at home, focusing on the developmental transition whereby children’s responses become behavioural patterns that meet caregivers’ expectations. The topics of study included managing attention in child pointing and the caregiver’s response, generating morality while caregivers issue directives (i.e. making their children do something), and caregivers’ strategies for eliciting storytelling from toddlers. Based on these findings, I argue that family interactions provide the foundation for children’s language socialization. Moreover, I explore possible ways that caregivers and nursery or preschool teachers can establish a link between family life and educational settings for children in their care. The recommended practices are summarized as (1) caregivers should communicate to teachers about their child’s recent behavioural accomplishments (e.g. pointing); (2) caregivers and teachers should share a list of directives they have used and the child’s responses to them, and so on.
Early childhood educators are faced daily with supporting young children’s learning in educational environments that include digital technologies. This chapter first discusses what is currently known about young children’s use of digital technologies from health and educational perspectives. Specifically, this chapter shows how young children’s digital technology use in early childhood classrooms is influenced by a range of factors, such as access to digital technology and educator beliefs about the benefits of technology, and how to integrate digital technology in ways that align with early childhood pedagogy. Next, this chapter shows how educators and children engage with digital technologies through employing interactional practices that support inquiry-based learning, problem solving, and conceptual engagement, including digital and critical literacy skills. In this way, it highlights how teacher pedagogy-in-use makes possible children’s rich engagement with digital technologies. Finally, this chapter shows how these understandings are be applied by educators in their own practices.
In education settings for very young children, both theoretically and empirically, adults’ institutional role and pedagogical practice in relation to children’s play is traditionally tied to education and caring, such as maintaining classroom order or providing emotional availability and con?ict resolution. Most of these institutional roles are positioned outside the actual play frame. Thus, detailed empirical descriptions of the adult as an equal co-player in a multi-party peer context are scarce. This chapter examines play in adult-child interaction. The role of the adult in initiating and maintaining playful encounters with very young children in a multi-party context is of particular interest. The pedagogical contribution of the chapter is to facilitate early childhood education practitioners’ use of playful encounters in relation to emotional education. Three empirical extracts reveal how adult conduct can shape opportunities for multi-party, emotionally heightened playful encounters in toddler classrooms. Overall, the chapter shows how conversation analysis can encourage dialogue with theory and practice by providing a more detailed picture of practices that are described in professional stocks of interactional knowledge such as curricula and frameworks in early childhood education.
Emotional regulation is one of the skills children develop in early childhood, and norms of social and emotional behaviour are explicitly taught and implicitly embedded in early childhood curricula. This chapter discusses emotion socialization processes in preschool settings. It outlines how various emotions (sadness, laughter, empathy, compassion and others) are displayed and interpreted in social interaction by using language and embodied resources. The chapter provides examples of how emotion socialization is configured by teachers and children in early childhood education in various countries worldwide.
Early years teaching programs at undergraduate level introduce student teachers to sociocultural theorists such as Vygotsky, Bruner and Rogoff. Situating teaching techniques within these theoretical perspectives encourages student teachers to work with children within the metaphor of a ‘zone of proximal development’ (Vygotsky) to ‘scaffold’ (Bruner) children from one level of knowledge to the next through ‘guided participation’ (Rogoff). Understanding pedagogical interaction as a social and collaborative event between teacher and child is fundamental, but these metaphors can be challenging – particularly for pre-service teachers – in the practical implementation of early years curricula frameworks. Excerpts of real-life everyday interactions between teachers and young children explored using conversation analysis can demonstrate what the role of the early years teacher might look like when participating in a ‘zone of proximal development’ with children. The skilful ways in which teachers ‘scaffold’ learning with children through ‘guided participation’ in verbal and non-verbal turn taking will then be demonstrated. Through this exploration, the chapter brings together contemporary socio-cultural approaches to early years teaching and ethnomethodology’s concern with the practical achievement of participation to explain how participation frameworks provide a useful lens for understanding pedagogical interaction between children and teachers.
Research evidence in early childhood education and care underscores the importance of high-quality interactions between children and educators – be they teachers, childcare workers, parents or family members – for improving children’s outcomes. We know that rich conversations can support and extend children’s interests through language and attuned feedback, essential for children’s learning and development. The introductory chapter explained that while the importance of high-quality interactions is widely acknowledged in early childhood education, how this can be achieved deserves more attention. Every chapter in this book details particular types of talk between children, their peers and educators, where all authors use conversation analysis to achieve this goal. The aim of this chapter is to introduce and explain the fundamentals of the methodology of conversation analysis and how conversation analysis is ‘done’ so that readers can engage with the analysis and findings in the chapters that follow. We also draw attention to the usefulness of a conversation analysis approach in ECEC research and practice.
Communicating effectively with children is fundamental to educational practice. As children spend a significant amount of time in education settings, there is increasing pressure on educators to promote positive mental health and wellbeing, participate in prevention of mental ill health, and work with children diagnosed with existing mental health conditions. However, communicating about mental health, wellbeing, and emotional regulation with children, and generally supporting those with need, can be a challenge. Educators need a communication toolkit to help them build their confidence and competencies in engaging in sensitive and critically important conversations. To develop this toolkit, we spotlight the communication practices used by mental health practitioners in clinical settings, translating key messages for educators. In this chapter we show how question design is instrumental for engagement, and detail ways to manage the complex endeavour of asking children about emotions, feelings, and wellbeing. The data illustrate some of the discursive techniques used by adults when communicating with children about mental health and wellbeing, illustrating examples of good practice for educators. To demonstrate this, we utilize excerpts of data from the assessments data and translate clinical practice into educational knowledge.
This chapter starts with an overview of the research on young children’s storytelling both in the home and in preschool settings. It will then turn the reader’s attention to research concerned with the interactions of children aged from 1 year 11 months to 3 years in the home, collected in Australia. It aims to illustrate how storytelling in story book reading and in recounts is achieved and changes over time. The chapter ends with a discussion about practical implications for teachers.
In this chapter, we review some of the most commonly invoked educational challenges of working with children who are bilingual or multilingual and point to their moorings in a normative, strictly monolingual perspective – a monolingual bias. We then move on to present an alternative, and radically social, understanding of childhood multilingualism firmly based in the growing body of CA-oriented studies of bi- and multilingual interaction in early childhood education settings. Drawing on data from different educational contexts, we examine the manifold ways that participants make use of language alternation, showing how the availability of more than one language can be used productively, as a resource that supports learning. We round off the chapter by highlighting some implications for educators who work with multilingual children. Although the extracts provided in the text are taken from settings where both teacher and children share more than one language, the affordances we discuss will be of relevance to educators who do not have access to children’s first language.