Abstract
[V]irtually all intelligible action is born, sustained, and/or extinguished within the ongoing process of relationship … there is no isolated self or fully private experience. Rather, we exist in a world of co-constitution. We are always already emerging from relationship; we cannot step out of relationship; even in our most private moments we are never alone. (Gergen, 2009: xv)
In many countries, early childhood curriculum documents place ‘relationships’ at the core of learning and teaching. Early childhood pedagogies are thus increasingly informed by convincing evidence, from a variety of disciplinary sources and theoretical perspectives, that learning is socially situated and mediated through interpersonal relatedness. Infant-toddler research and professional literature has similarly been framed around the significance of relationships. Drawing from psychological research in particular, the focus has largely rested on environments, policies and practices that provide infants and toddlers with stable and secure attachments to their caregivers in the absence of their families (Degotardi and Pearson, 2009; Page, 2015; Slater, 2007; White, Peter and Redder, 2015). This body of work responds to the increasing presence of infants and toddlers in educational institutions which were traditionally oriented to their older peers. At issue in the present positioning of infant and toddler pedagogy seems to be the extent to which there are specialist requirements for a younger age group with consideration to the developmental and the sociocultural concerns which frame their development and learning.
It is therefore not surprising that, until recently, studies of relationships in infant-toddler pedagogy have tended to focus on the establishment of secure and stable attachments as the nexus of effective learning for the very young. Such an emphasis has been enshrined in internationally sanctioned key quality criteria for early childhood education services – ratios, group size and adult qualifications (Dalli et al., 2011) – with an understanding that positive educator–child attachments are constructed and maintained when these structural dynamics are in place. It is here that the formation of relationships takes centre stage on the assumption that, if positive, these relationships will provide the foundation for learning and development (National Scientific Council, 2004). More recently, however, an emphasis on relational dynamics has pursued the fundamental idea that individuals’ active participation in, and contribution to, different types and qualities of interpersonal relationships shapes their learning and development. These developments signal a need for revised conceptualisations concerning the intersectionality between relationships, as pedagogies, and very young children, as learners. When determined through a series of teacher–child and child–peer pedagogical acts, various relationship dynamics not only establish trust, warmth and reciprocity (Dalli and White, 2015; Page and Elfer, 2013), but also ultimately foster group socialisation, belonging and collaborative participatory learning (Degotardi and Pearson, 2014). If, as we strongly argue, such acts lie at the heart of effective pedagogies for this age group, more attention needs to be directed towards understanding the intricacies of these relational encounters.
There is increasing recognition that infants and toddlers who attend early childhood education and care settings now live and learn in a complex relationship-rich world, comprising relationships with and between each other, educators, parents and the community (Degotardi and Pearson, 2014; Lewis, 2005; Page, 2014). It is tempting to claim that relationships impact learning and development, or that pedagogies support or constrain the development of relationships. However, these relatively simple portrayals of influence paths suggest that relationships are in some way external to, or separate from, individuals and their actions. Kenneth Gergen’s (2009: xv) words at the beginning of this editorial challenge this view by emphasising the ubiquitous presence of relationships. Relationships exist within – defining selfhood through first-hand experience and participation in interactions with others. Relationships exist without – surrounding individuals and situating them within a complex web of connections between personal, community and sociopolitical forces. And relationships also exist between – in the form of negotiated and shared meaning which is formed through dialogic processes. These varied ways of conceptualising relationships are not new, and are evident in a number of perspectives, including developmental theories, sociocultural accounts, critical and postmodern approaches, and more. However, until recently, they have been largely absent from infant-toddler pedagogical literature.
While attachment concepts continue to hold sway in infant-toddler pedagogies, recent studies – often undertaken by researchers who have explicit experience in infant-toddler education contexts – have begun to identify a variety of alternative theoretical approaches that broaden current understandings of the specific nature of interpersonal relatedness in settings outside of the home. This research theorises relationships in a range of ways, and thus directs attention to different types and functions of relationships. In doing so, the work is constructing a broad and intricate view of the nature and pedagogical significance of relationships for these very young children in out-of-home contexts. The complexity of the multifaceted relationships experienced by infants and toddlers in their early years settings continues to challenge and inform contemporary international debates. Some of these debates focus on features of relational encounters between teachers, infants/toddlers and their peers, seeking to understand their efficacies for learning and development (e.g. Degotardi et al., 2013; Elfer and Page, 2015; Lee et al., 2016; Shin, 2012), while others challenge the very core of these relationships, calling for reconceptualisation of the notion itself through philosophical interrogation (e.g. Cheeseman, 2017; Mitchelmore et al., 2017; White, Redder and Peter, 2015). Some achieve both and, in so doing, invite us to think again – to disturb our ways of knowing and to use an alternative set of lenses to think differently about the nature of relationships in this unique educational locale. It is to these debates that we invited scholars to contribute in the special issue that follows.
This special issue, titled (Re)conceptualising Relationships in Infant-Toddler Pedagogy, is therefore intentionally provocative. We make no claim that the theoretical and philosophical approaches that frame the articles in this issue present new or radical ways of theorising about relationships and interpersonal connectedness. Nor do we suggest that they, in themselves, constitute the fullest expression of contemporary possibilities that exist for (re)conceptualisation in relation to pedagogy. They do, however, represent a broadening of scope and focus in terms of how relational pedagogies in early childhood infant-toddler research might be thought of, as well as understood, interpreted and enacted in the early childhood space. Collectively, the contributions to this special issue reflect what Bronfenbrenner described as interrelationships of microsystems and macrosystems of people, space and time (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 1998). Examining relationships between young children and educators, among the children themselves, between individuals and their community, and between the infant-toddler room and the world beyond provides much scope for conceptualising the multiplicities of relationships that are brought to the fore as new possibilities for understanding and enacting relational pedagogies are presented.
The first article in this special issue places intentionality and agency at the very centre of infants’ relationships with others. Andi Salamon, Jennifer Sumsion and Linda Harrison apply Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic capital to the ways that infants use their social-emotional competence, thus posing the idea that infants bring emotional capital to their interactions with others. In particular, the authors focus on how infants actively deploy their emotional communicative resources during their relatedness with others. Infants, it is proposed, use both their skills and expectations to shape and direct their interactions with others in order to satisfy their intentions. The article presents data derived from a case study of seven infants in an Australian early childhood setting. One infant, Sophie, is selected for the analysis on the basis that she frequently shared her sophisticated emotional communication resources with those around her. Unique to this article is the authors’ original use of practice architecture to gain a rich and multiperspectival understanding of Sophie’s emotional capital. Sophie and her educators’ embodied sayings, doings and relatings are described and analysed in order to present an image of rich and varied interactions and resultant learning opportunities that are co-constructed between two or more individuals. The authors describe this co-construction as a ‘delicate balance of dependence and independence between infants and educators’, thus drawing attention to the mutual and ongoing negotiations that take place during interactions with even very young children.
Maria Cooper also deals with the concept of agency in her article. Her focus is on teacher agency and intentionality in terms of the ways that they enact policy requirements, and show how assessment and relational pedagogies can be united, rather than viewed as separate processes. Emotionality lies at the centre of Maria’s article, in which she acknowledges the importance of, and challenges posed by, emotional labour in infant-toddler teachers’ work. Maria locates her article within the landscape of New Zealand early childhood policy discourses to analyse their impact on teachers’ opportunities to enact relational pedagogies with infants and toddlers. She acknowledges that teachers’ emotions are an undeniable aspect of their relational work with children and, on this basis, argues that effective pedagogical work requires teachers to accept and manage strong emotional feelings and their impact on learners. Since, as Maria shows, certain policy requirements bring those feelings to the fore, she raises the idea that assessment expectations and practices are a potential source of emotional tension. Assessment, she suggests, should be understood as a ‘dynamic process situated within teacher–child, teacher–family and teacher–teacher interactions’, and thus is best regarded as a means to establish a strong relationship network. Maria reports on a transformation in the nature of these teachers’ emotional labour that was brought about when they reframed their assessment practices in accordance with their subjectivities. As a consequence, the teachers reported not only more emotional satisfaction in their new assessment practices, but also increased opportunities to document and foster relationships among themselves, the children and their families.
Continuing on from Maria’s argument that relational pedagogies with infants and toddlers place many emotional demands on the educators who enact them, Jools Page examines another strong emotional feature of relationship-based pedagogies. In this third article, she interrogates how a current climate or wariness about child sexual assault is impacting on educators’ enactment of intimate and loving relationships with the infants and toddlers in their programs. Jools draws on constructs from attachment theory to argue for the importance of consistent and intimate affectionate relationships for children’s current and long-term well-being, but makes the claim that the ‘moral panic’ resulting from recent child abuse convictions means ‘that young children are at risk of being denied the opportunity to become closely attached to their key person’. Such a context, she argues, requires educators to engage in self-conscious and informed pedagogies which move beyond relatively intuitive and innate notions of care. Jools extends Noddings’ ‘ethic of care’ theory to propose that relationships in infant-toddler settings should reflect a form of professional love, which embodies educators’ ability and willingness to engage with relational pedagogies on both an emotional and intellectual level. She presents rich qualitative data derived from a larger project that examined educators’ perspectives on professional love to show how educators were committed to the importance of intimate caring relationships. However, her data also raises concerning questions about how these educators’ current sociopolitical context is causing ongoing confusions and tension which undermined their confidence in their ability to implement these relational practices. The article concludes with an urgent call for a program of training and guidance for the early years workforce which tackles the knotty issues of love, intimacy and care in professional caregiving roles with young children.
Bente Ulla’s article sees a departure from a focus on the adult–infant encounter in conceptualising relational pedagogies through a post-structuralist analysis of sleep. Bente challenges us to reconsider when and how relational pedagogies are implemented in infant-toddler rooms by inviting us to conceptualise sleep as an inherently relational issue. Using Foucault’s concept of ‘heterotopia’, Bente suggests that sleep involves a complexity of interacting social, political and material forces in which sleep is never private, and the sleeper is never independent of those forces. While prevalent ideas about sleep conceptualise it as ‘time out’ or ‘downtime’ from wakeful classroom experiences, this article proposes that the processes of falling asleep and waking are ‘temporary shifts’ which do not isolate the child from their awake world. Instead, Bente suggests that sleep and wakefulness represent ‘a mix of speed and slowness in an ongoing becoming of tempo and energy’, where sleep is entangled within a relational field of human and non-human forces in which contradictions about existence and consciousness come into play. Instead of seeing sleep as a break from the productiveness of wakeful experience, Bente concludes that ‘sleep should be read as part of kindergarteners’ relational field – a field of speed and slowness of becoming, beyond the human subject’. Relational pedagogies, she concludes, involve relationships and relatedness that extend beyond the direct human sphere, but ultimately deeply impact the rhythms of human experience.
In the final two articles, the authors explicitly tackle the role of the educator in the establishment and collaborative construction of shared meanings with infants and toddlers. Both articles espouse the significance of dialogic encounters as fundamental to relationship-based pedagogies, albeit in different ways. Sheila Degotardi draws on social-experiential and social-cognitive theoretical approaches to address the question: What does it mean to learn through relationships during infancy? She identifies the contemporary concept of sustained shared thinking (Siraj-Blatchford, 2009) as a means for collaborative knowledge construction, but questions whether this concept, as currently defined, can be applied effectively to infant-toddler pedagogies. Sheila proposes that educator–infant joint attention could comprise a missing link in the current theoretical conceptualisation of sustained shared thinking, by virtue of its dialogic potential for collaborative knowledge construction, as well as its role in fostering language and communicative competence. Using data drawn from a study of the qualities of the language environment in Australian infant-toddler rooms, she presents an analysis of qualitatively different forms of educator–infant joint attention that occurred in this context. Using this analysis, Sheila builds a theoretical model to explain the role of joint attention in the collaborative construction of knowledge in mid to late infancy, and uses this model to conclude that the significance of ‘sustained reciprocal interactions around topics of mutual interest cannot be overlooked when conceptualising learning through relationships for infants and toddlers’.
In the final article, Bridgette Redder and E Jayne White take a different turn in conceptualising the pivotal role of the educator as a connecting dialogic partner in the important relationships that exist between infants and their peers. In this, they depart radically from the prevalent view of the educator’s role as a scaffolder or mediator of peer interactions to propose Bakhtin’s notion of ‘answerability’ as a moral reconceptualisation of educators’ intentional responses and accountabilities to infant–peer relational encounters. From this perspective, they argue that it is important to consider not only the shared moments that define relational encounters, but also the important alteric exchanges that take place in such spaces. Their analysis of teacher engagement with infants highlights the potential of the teacher to shut down or open up dialogues, arguing that ‘meaning is generated out of the dialogue in the place of in-between-ness of interactions that have the potential to alter future encounters’. Bridgette and Jayne present data from case studies of the social experience of two young infants in a New Zealand early childhood education context. Through an analysis of both alteric and intersubjective exchanges between infant peers and the teacher, they examine in detail the various ways teachers can be implicated in infant–peer social encounters. Their analysis illustrates a series of delicate in situ relationships that took place between infant peers, alongside the pedagogical orientation of the teachers. This article thus highlights the moral answerability of educators concerning their pedagogical choices which orient what takes place for infants and their peers. Through these choices, Bridgette and Jayne argue that teachers are fully implicated in the nature of infant–peer relationships within the dialogic space of an early childhood education context.
As a volume of work, this special issue therefore concurs with the idea that relational pedagogy is ‘about individuality and the collective consciousness that is shaped and transformed in time and place’ (Papatheodorou, 2008: 14). We would add to this conceptualisation that the many relationships that take place in infant-toddler early childhood education settings are much more complex than has typically been considered when diverse lenses are brought to bear on the subject. So, too, are the pedagogical implications – many of which have not yet been dealt with to their fullest extent. Through an examination of the nuances of different types, components and potentials of relationships, this issue reveals the many ways that individual agency, collective actions and outcomes emerge from relationships that are themselves underpinned by values, beliefs, emotion and morality. Relationships are thus represented as pedagogies, in contrast to the more common perspective of relationships being constructed through pedagogies.
Finally, each article in this special issue tackles pedagogical relationships with infants and toddlers in its own unique way, returning us to the proposition that the agenda we pose here is rich yet still embryonic. There is more to be discovered and, we would argue, debated in this regard, so we hope to provoke further discussions and reconceptualisations as a wider range of perspectives is contemplated. Gergen (2009, 247) proposes that “[a]s each lens brings a relational circle into visibility, so do our sensitivities and creative potentials expand. With each lens comes a potential to broaden the field in thinking about what it means to posit relationships as learning in contemporary early childhood education landscapes for the very young. With Gergen’s inspiration, we hope that this body of work will make inroads into extending the collective consciousness and encouraging new, innovative approaches to conceptualising relationships in infant-toddler pedagogy. This too, we suggest, requires a relational stance involving an openness to disturb, debate, embrace and include multiple relationship perspectives in infant-toddler research and professional practice in the years to come.
The colloquium for this special issue is written by Sibel Balci and Berat Ahi. It is titled ‘Mind the gap! Differences between parents’ childhood games and their children’s game preferences’. The issue concludes with a book review by Pam Jarvis at Leeds Trinity University. The book reviewed is Policy for Play: Responding to Children’s Forgotten Right (Policy Press, 2015), authored by Adrian Voce.