Implicating teachers in infant–peer relationships: Teacher answerability through alteric acts

Abstract

While academic attention is now being paid to infant–peer relationships in early childhood education and care settings and the role of teachers in these interactions, research is inclined to emphasise the importance of shared understanding as a feature in infant–peer relationships. As such, little research attention has been given to the alteric potential of the teacher when she or he engages in infant–peer relationships. This article draws on a dialogic analysis of infants in a New Zealand early childhood education and care setting to argue that infant relationships with their peers can be radically altered by the presence and participation of teachers. The results highlight the pivotal role of the teacher as a connecting figure within and between infant–peer experiences – one that has the potential to significantly impact on the nature of relationships between infants and peers. The study highlights the alteric potential for teachers within infant–peer dialogues, and the significance of these engagements accordingly, and concludes by suggesting that teachers are fully implicated in infant–peer relationships, since the dialogic space posits that there is no alibi!

Introduction

The peer group is a significant feature of the relational worlds now experienced by infants in early childhood education and care (ECEC) contexts. Over a decade ago, Selby and Bradley (2003) published research highlighting the crucial role of peers in infant groups when adults were not physically present. In their study of babies aged between six and ten months, Selby and Bradley’s observations of infant and peer triadic interactions found that infant–peer group interactions involved reciprocity, joint attention, mutual intention, affect and mutual understandings – important aspects of intersubjectivity. Selby and Bradley’s study showed that infants within the same intersubjective space were able to enter into relationships that indicated awareness of more than one other at the same time. They reported that infants gained an understanding of the world by interacting with their peers in a group situation, or by observing their peers’ interactions with other peers or teachers. More recently, Musatti et al. (2017) have raised concern over what quality looks like in relation to very young children’s ECEC socialisation experiences. They argue that a lack of research still exists into very young children’s everyday social experiences with peers in ECEC contexts. As such, what is known surrounding ‘the implications for children’s well-being, learning and social inclusion’ remains limited (Musatti et al., 2017: 84).

Recent research continues to recognise the significance of intersubjective experiences as vital to infants building relationships with peers (e.g. Dalli et al., 2011; Degotardi and Pearson, 2014; Mathers et al., 2014). Yet, little attention has been paid to the alteric potential of the teacher’s engagement in infant–peer relationships (Williams et al., 2010). Drawing on Bakhtin (1986), the notion of alterity is defined by Junefelt (2011: 160) as the ‘heterogeneity of different perspectives and different voices’ – it may be understood as an ‘evil twin’ to the concept of intersubjectivity. Alterity, like intersubjectivity, implies a creative act, but in the case of alterity it is judged by its difference rather than shared understanding. According to Gardiner (1996), people are formed through the relation of alterity between self and other. As such, meaning is generated out of the dialogue in the place of in-betweenness of interactions that have the potential to alter future encounters. As White (2016: 2) suggests: ‘For Bakhtin the significance of meaning is not only found in its shared understanding (intersubjective potential) but also in its potential to disrupt interpretation’ – its alteric potential. Bakhtin’s notion of alterity (otherness, difference) therefore rejects the possibility of a perfect convergence of understanding by participants in dialogue and shifts the lens to focus on the inevitability of difference. Such difference lies at the heart of alteric potential and its relationship to answerability.

Consideration of the possibilities for infant–peer relational experiences offered through alterity is a neglected area of infant pedagogical research. It is to this dialogic space that the investigation which follows is oriented, in consideration of the role of the teacher in supporting peer relationships in ECEC contexts through means that are alteric.

The role of teachers in infant–peer relationships in ECEC

Claims which suggest that the teacher is a central feature of infant–peer relationships are evident in recent research that orients towards the significance of intersubjective experiences as a feature of infant relational experiences with peers (Davis and Degotardi, 2015; Redder, 2014; Williams et al., 2010). As such, most of the literature on teacher engagement in infant–peer relationships has focused on the view that the role of the teacher is to guide or scaffold infants in their interactions with peers. In addition, much of the research surrounding the teacher’s involvement in or understanding of infant relations with peers highlights the teacher’s presence in relation to the resolution of conflict (Davis and Degotardi, 2015), distracting infants away from their peers, enforcing social rules (Williams et al., 2010) or concerns with infant safety (McGaha et al., 2011). In view of teachers being implicated in early years relationships, Musatti et al. (2017) request more clarity surrounding very young children’s social experiences with peers in ECEC contexts in order to better understand how teachers can support and sustain peer interactions, shared meanings and socialisation challenges. This study advocates for an approach that contributes to Musatti et al.’s (2017) call, but with a focus on alterity and the learning that is found in moments when there is tension, thinking is not shared or dialogue takes a different turn.

Knowing when to engage in infant–peer exchange is challenging (Goodfellow, 2014) but vital in light of the potential for the teacher’s proximity to impact on infant–peer dialogue (Recchia and Dvorakova, 2012; White and Redder, 2015). According to Davis and Degotardi (2015), an understanding of which teaching strategies can be employed in order to intentionally support peer relationship formation within ECEC contexts should be considered if, as Wittmer (2008) asserts, adults have the potential to shape children’s learning about the self and others. The responses of the teachers in Davis and Degotardi’s (2015) study in relation to intentional teaching were constrained by their capacity to articulate how they supported the social competence of infants or their relationships with peers. Moreover, they emphasised strategies for separating infants rather than bringing them together. Similar views were determined by Goodfellow (2014), in alignment with Murray (2014), who points out that there is limited knowledge in relation to infant–peer social experiences. According to Goodfellow, it is through lived experiences with others that infants learn strategies which they will draw on to participate in the wider social worlds of life. Therefore, responsibility is with teachers to ensure that ECEC spaces are ‘relational and respectful contexts in which infants, as developing human beings, can thrive’ (Goodfellow, 2014: 209).

This article adds to the existing research base surrounding teacher engagement in infant–peer relationships by bringing the notion of answerability (Bakhtin, 1993) to the fore in order to understand the everyday encounters that take place for infants with their peers, and the associated role of the teacher alongside her or his alteric potential. When the ECEC context is explored from this perspective, the teacher is implicated within infant–peer relationships. This is important because answerability morally obligates the teacher for her or his responses in whatever she or he does. Being implicated in infant–peer relationships means the teacher is responsible for her or his choices of response in ways that consider the unique aspects of each infant–peer relational encounter they engage in – being implicated means a commitment to one’s unique responsibility. As such, the study employed dialogic methodology to investigate the nature of dialogic experience for infants in an ECEC context, with a particular focus on infant, peer and teacher dialogues.

Answerability: A methodological route

For Bakhtin (1993), being in the world with others involves social encounters that place extreme importance on a moral and ethical obligation to carry responsibility towards relationships – what Bakhtin called ‘answerability’. Bakhtin emphasised the importance of responsibility, understood as ‘answering to and answering for the other “without alibis”’ (Ponzio, 2008: 292). The notion of my ‘non-alibi-in-Being’ is central to Bakhtin’s (1993) concept of answerability because it implicates people as responsible for how they act, respond and participate in all aspects of life, regardless of what comes their way (Holquist, 2002). My ‘non-alibi-in-Being’ affirms and acknowledges ‘the uniqueness of my participation in Being’ (Bakhtin, 1993: 41). For Bakhtin (1990), how people perceive and relate to one another in social encounters will depend on their unique place in the world and what they can see from this vantage point that others cannot.

Bakhtin emphasised the importance of responses that are formed in relation to and with others (Hicks, 2000), and their capacity to alter subsequent experiences. From a Bakhtinian perspective, every act is answerable, and individuals are answerable for any response given to others through (co-)authoring. It is through the authoring of others that the potential exists for teachers and infants to influence and alter one another’s lives. When applied to teacher practice with infants, answerability implicates the teacher as responsible for any and all decisions she or he makes in direct and indirect encounters with others, and their implications in practice. Bakhtin (1993) emphasised the importance of these everyday decisions actualised in concrete acts – what he termed ‘answerable acts’. The answerable act is answerable in the sense that an individual takes full responsibility or ownership for their response and the way they ‘intone it with both his or her own meanings and those compelled by the other’ (Hicks, 2000: 230). It is Bakhtin’s emphasis on people’s answerability in encounters with other subjectivities that offered a route to the current investigation, which sets out to understand how teachers are implicated through their engagement in the dialogue that takes place between infants and their peers in the event-of-Being.

To date, very little attention has been granted to answerability in ECEC studies. One exception is noted in research by De Vocht (2015) which foregrounded the notion of answerability, exploring the interaction between teachers and young children aged between three and a half and five in an early years setting. De Vocht’s thesis primarily focused on teacher–child dialogues, but insights were provided into peer relationships. As De Vocht concluded, the teacher is deeply implicated in and with the other in the answerable act. By applying answerability to teacher practice, the teacher is able to recognise and respond to the many ways her or his acts give form to and make more meaningful the infant’s relationship with her or his peers. Answerability therefore offered a dialogic route to the present investigation by providing a means of beginning to understand the alteric potential of the teacher in infant–peer relationships in the ECEC context. The central research question that frames this article therefore asks: In what ways are teachers implicated in infant–peer relationships?

Participants

The research which formed the basis for this investigation took place in a high-quality New Zealand ECEC centre that catered for children under two years of age. The main participants included a four-month-old male infant, a ten-month-old female infant and two female teachers. Both of the key teachers, Rachel and Lynette, were experienced, qualified and fully registered educators. Given the emphasis on relationships for this investigation, a key teacher (as one who has special responsibility for each infant) was seen as an important characteristic for this context. Both infants, Lola and Harrison, attended the centre on a full-time basis, and each had a different key teacher, who had been their consistent caregiver since their arrival in the centre shortly after birth. All of the other infant peers were also included in the research project, who ranged in age from 2 to 18 months. It cannot be overstated how important the small infant group size, a quality feature of this ECEC context with a limit of 10 infants or less in the centre at any one time, was in supporting the kinds of interactions that took place and formed the basis of this investigation.

Method

Video recording of infant social experiences in the centre captured 180 minutes of footage over a period of three days. This provided a central means of investigating infant–peer interactions and the teachers’ engagement within everyday events. Re-probing interviews between the two teachers and the second author were also used to obtain the teachers’ perspectives surrounding the ‘contextual information necessary to grasp the meaning of social events and their relationship to pedagogy’ (White et al., 2015: 164). The interview data was generated out of an invitation for the teachers to select pedagogical events that they considered to be of significance. Transcripts of the teachers’ re-probing interviews, together with the video footage, were entered into a video-analysis software program called Studiocode (Vosaic, n.d.) for further fine-grained analysis.

Analysis

By employing Studiocode, it was possible to analyse the complexity of the video-recorded data. Since the primary focus of this study was how the teacher was implicated in infant and peer relationships, analysis focused on events where teachers engaged in the social exchange between infant and peer/s in the event itself, and their understandings concerning the significance of these responses in its aftermath as answerable acts. These events were coded in consideration of the alteric potential of the teacher as the unit of analysis. Applying alteric potential as the unit of analysis provided a means of considering the implications of teachers’ engagement in infant and peer relationships as answerable acts by illuminating the teacher’s potential to alter the infant–peer relational experience through dialogue. As such, codes were generated out of interactive events that were altered in some way through teacher engagement (or disengagement). Instead of looking for moments of agreement, as is often the case in sociocultural research, the researchers coded for differences. These were accessed through the video recordings and in tandem with the teacher interviews about the pedagogical significance of these events.

Findings

The study found that the teachers were implicated through their engagement in infant–peer relationships in three central ways:

1. The teacher’s potential to provoke dialogue through alterity, which promoted the relational experience for infant and peer (Vignette 1).

2. The teacher’s potential to alter dialogue, which restrained the infant–peer relational experience (Vignette 2).

3. The teacher’s potential to provoke and sustain dialogue in fleeting moments, which connected the infant and peer (Vignette 3).

In the sections that follow, three vignettes are presented which demonstrate the teachers’ answerability through their potential to alter the dialogue within infant–peer relationships, in tandem with teacher interviews.

Provoking dialogue through alterity

Characteristic of sustained infant–peer interactions was the teachers’ capacity to open up dialogic spaces for infant–peer negotiation, confrontation and exploration of language by recognising the potential for learning accessed through alteric experiences. Altering the dialogue in this way implicated the teacher as a partner in the dialogue. Vignette 1 demonstrates how the teacher’s physical presence made it possible for the interaction between Lola and Harrison to take place. Rachel’s body and its positioning acted as a support for Lola to engage with her peer in an intersubjective experience, evidenced by language that was initially shared and the joint attention of both infants in relation to the artefacts and one another. The artefacts appeared to be both a source of intersubjectivity and a source of alterity, as Rachel encouraged ‘connection’ through language that recognised the alteric potential of the situation: ‘Look! He’s going to fight for it’.

For Rachel, being implicated in this event meant becoming a partner in the dialogue by sustaining the dialogic space in ways that recognised each partner’s voice by listening to their different perspectives and valuing the agency of infant and peer. This was evident in the way Rachel watched Lola and Harrison initially engage in an interaction as they established connection through their mutual gaze, which led to a moment of alterity. It was in this moment of confrontation, when both Lola and Harrison wanted to play with the same object, that Rachel entered the dialogue. As a partner in dialogue, Rachel was able to participate in ways that provoked dialogue and promoted the infant–peer relationship by using language that was familiar to them and by offering different artefacts as they negotiated the dialogue, as demonstrated in the following vignette.

Vignette 1

Lola makes sounds as she reaches for Harrison’s wooden toy. Harrison responds by holding the wooden toy tightly. Leaning forward, the teacher initially engages by using similar sounds, and then utters to Lola: ‘Are you interested in what he’s got?’ ‘Awww, awww’ sounds the teacher. In a playful tone, the teacher says: ‘Look! He’s going to fight for it’. Harrison drops the wooden toy. Moving closer, the teacher passes Harrison a small bird object and asks if he would ‘like that’. In an attempt to take the bird object from Harrison, Lola moves her hand toward it, then pauses and picks up the bigger wooden toy initially dropped by Harrison. Lola moves her body toward Harrison, who tightly holds the bird object and drops the bigger wooden toy beside him. Harrison and Lola mutually gaze at one another as they make sounds. The teacher smiles and passes Lola a blue ball, which Lola offers to Harrison; he drops the bird object, reaches for the blue ball, but lets go of it in his efforts to hold onto it. Lola reaches for the ball and, when it is in her grasp, she rolls the ball toward Harrison; together they each hold one side of the ball, manoeuvring it upwards and onto Harrison’s upper body – where he successfully holds onto it. Lola reaches for the bird object on Harrison’s chest, picks it up and holds onto it. (Redder, 2014)

In this example, the teacher’s capacity to alter dialogue by provocation served as a connecting feature in the infant–peer relational experience. This finding highlights the importance of the teacher as a partner in dialogue as opposed to an observer of infant–peer dialogue. Here, the teacher was not just a ‘bridge’ to connect infants with peers, as in Recchia and Dvorakova’s (2012: 193) study, or a mediator of conflict, as Davis and Degotardi (2015) found. Rather, she was an active partner in the dialogue, which meant that she was able to relate to the infants in ways that did not isolate them from one another. Conversely, they experienced a social encounter that embraced the creative potential generated through dialogue that is open to different and opposing points of view. When both Harrison and Lola wanted the same toy, the teacher did not direct the dialogue. Instead, she acknowledged that there was possibly an element of tension – ‘Look! He’s going to fight for it’ – and then gave Harrison and Lola ‘time’ to respond on their own terms as agents of their own learning. When Lola was successful in gaining possession of the toy, the teacher responded to Harrison by offering him another object. The teacher’s interpretation of Harrison and Lola’s toy-possession disagreement, and the manner in which she addressed it, did not restrain the interaction. Instead, this moment of alterity sustained a dialogic space; this promoted new possibilities for Harrison and Lola to negotiate the direction of the dialogue and their learning. Evidence of this was visible in Lola’s strategic use of language to collaborate and then ‘trade’ with Harrison. Building on studies which recognise the importance of intersubjectivity in the formation of infant and peer relationships (e.g. Selby and Bradley, 2003), the present findings celebrate alterity as an important aspect for infants in building relationships with peers.

Altering dialogue by restraining

The teachers were answerable not only for the decisions they made to sustain dialogue, but also in their judgements to engage by restraining dialogue that was taking place between infants relating to their peers. The teachers highlighted the tension between wanting infants to engage with their peers and not wanting them to engage when there was a concern that engagement could result in potential harm to the infant. At these times, the teachers were implicated by altering the dialogue in a way that prevented the continuation of the infant–peer dialogue that was unfolding, as evidenced in the following vignette.

Vignette 2

Lola moves her body toward Harrison; they gaze at one another. Harrison responds by reaching toward Lola. This event unfolds as Lola employs her body to move across the floor toward Harrison. Reaching toward Harrison with her left arm, making sounds as they gaze, Lola moves closer to Harrison. Responding by reaching with his right arm, Harrison continues to gaze at Lola. Reaching with her right arm, Lola is closer still to Harrison. This synchronous pattern of engagement with their arms continues until Harrison and Lola are in very close proximity to each other. Harrison responds to Lola by clasping his hands together, moving them toward his mouth as he makes sounds. Lola responds by moving her whole body forward, reaching with her arm extended, continuing to share their gaze, they move their arms and bodies in synchrony one more time until they finally connect. The teacher sits close by, holding another peer, and watches Harrison and Lola. Just as Lola extends her arm and touches Harrison, the teacher engages by positioning her body between Harrison and Lola, separating the two. ‘He’s worried about you’, says the teacher, as she rolls Lola to the side, rubbing the stomachs of both Harrison and Lola. Harrison responds by moving his arms and legs very quickly and his head from side to side, crying. The teacher picks him up, sits him on her knee, facing Lola. ‘Do you want to have a look?’ asks the teacher as Lola rolls closer to Harrison. Lola and Harrison gaze at each other. ‘Yubba, yubba’, says Lola; she then turns away to play with a basket of toys, her back to the teacher and Harrison, and moves her head from side to side. (Redder, 2014)

This vignette highlights the complex and challenging role for teachers in deciding when and how to engage during infant–peer relations. The infants’ intentions to connect with each other are evidenced in their use of gaze, reaching for one another and vocalisations. However, Vignette 2 shows that when the peer touched the infant, this resulted in the teacher responding by altering the dialogue. In Lynette’s words: ‘I’m aware that Lola is interested in Harrison, but her hands can be a little bit rough. So I’m close enough to intervene, to stop her from hurting him’ (White and Redder, 2015: 10).

The teacher’s decision to separate the infants is evidence of her obligation to respond to Harrison in a way that protects him from harm, as Lynette explained in her re-probing interview: ‘he totally trusts me as an adult to keep him safe’. This vignette also demonstrates how Lynette is giving form and meaning to Lola’s experience by teaching ‘her to be gentle’ (Lynette’s words). In Vignette 2, Lynette rolled Lola onto her back and then rubbed both infants’ stomachs before picking Harrison up. This finding is in line with claims by McGaha et al. (2011), who highlighted the anxiety of the teachers in their study surrounding infants’ interactions with their peers because of the uncertainty concerning infants’ safety with peers. It further implies that, like the teachers in Davis and Degotardi’s (2015) and Williams et al.’s (2010) studies, teachers often employ strategies which separate infants from peers to avoid potential harm or conflict. The present findings extend on these studies by suggesting that attention be focused on the alteric acts of teachers in order to gain insight into the learning that occurs for infants when their exploration of one another is restrained.

Later, when the teacher was not physically present in the infant–peer relationship, another event was observed which involved Lola relating to Harrison through touch. Although the teacher was not physically present in the dialogue, Lola’s response to Harrison when she saw another teacher watching nearby was to move away from Harrison, turn her back and move her head from side to side. From an alteric standpoint, this act represents the teacher’s potential to alter the orientation of the dialogue later in time, even though she was not physically present. This event is significant because it highlights the form-shaping potential of the teacher to alter Lola’s thinking in relation to how she should engage with Harrison, as evidenced in Lola’s response to move away.

Altering infant–peer dialogue in a fleeting moment

At times, the teachers’ alteric potential was evident in the way they provoked dialogue by tuning into the infants’ language in order to establish a connection between infant and peer that may not have occurred had the teacher not engaged. Often, these moments were fleeting, which meant that dialogue was sustained for durations of less than 20 seconds. In the following vignette, Rachel’s alteric potential is evident in the way she provoked the opportunity for dialogue to occur by opening up dialogic space through which Harrison and Lola’s relationship could develop.

Vignette 3

Lola is sitting at the infants’ table exploring the leftover vegemite sandwich from her lunch. Sitting very close by is the teacher, who is holding Harrison on her knee – initially he is facing away from Lola. The teacher notices that Harrison has turned his head and is watching Lola, so she moves him to her other knee facing toward Lola. ‘Look, Lola’, says the teacher, ‘Harrison’. Lola turns toward Harrison; both infants gaze at each other. ‘Gaga galuugaluuglug’, says Lola, as the teacher gently touches Harrison’s hand. ‘Look, she’s talking to you’, verbalises the teacher as she gestures with her hand in a waving motion. Lola and Harrison respond by waving, gazing and making sounds. ‘Hiee, Hiii Harrison’, exclaims the teacher, waving her hand as Harrison and Lola continue to gaze at each other and wave their hands. (Redder, 2014)

Vignette 3 highlights not only the valuable social learning that took place between Lola and Harrison, but also how Rachel’s alteric act, inviting Lola into an interaction with Harrison, was a form of answerability, evidenced in the way she provoked an opportunity for the infants to participate with one another by responding to Harrison’s interest in his peer. Rachel was implicated by her decision to position Harrison on her other knee and draw Lola into a dialogue with him – altering what both infants had previously been engaged in.

The findings highlight the importance of paying attention to the ways teachers can alter interactions by provoking dialogue in moments that are not initially shared and often fleeting. The teachers in this study were aware of Harrison’s interest in watching peers in their words: ‘Harrison is watching again … much of Harrison’s time is spent watching … and how obviously how important that is for his learning’. Further, the findings illuminate how teachers are implicated in infant–peer relationships when they respond to infants’ language and social cues, which are often fleeting in nature, by altering dialogue between infant and peer. This is evidenced in the way Rachel gestures with her hand in a waving motion: both infants respond by waving and then continue to engage in this way. Provocations – for example, in the form of a wave – could be viewed as suggestions by teachers of alternative ways for infants to interact with peers. In relation to another infant–peer event, in which Lynette explained that Rachel was ‘modelling [for infants] the way of interacting with each other’, Lynette commented:

Well, I think it was suggested by Rachel for [the infant] to play in that way with the other children so … there is footage of [the infant] doing a similar thing with [her peer] without anyone being present, so perhaps these interactions are encouraged by the teacher initially. (Teacher re-probing interview)

Teacher engagement that is attuned to the social cues of infants in relationship with their peers has the potential to sustain infant–peer dialogue. As Davis and Degotardi (2015) found, watching was interpreted by the teachers in their study as interest on the part of the infant in other children and a way to gain entry into the group. The present study builds on these findings, illuminating how paying attention to Harrison watching Lola also provided a way for the teacher herself to establish and gain entry into dialogue with infant and peer in order to respond in ways that brought meaning to the infant–peer relationship. As a participant in the infant–peer dialogue, Rachel was able to fleetingly extend the relational experience for Lola and Harrison in ways that promoted their engagement, demonstrated in their use of language forms such as vocalisations, gaze and waving gestures. This supports Davis and Degotardi’s (2015) finding, which highlighted the importance of the teacher’s role to engage in infant–peer relationships in order to extend interactions. Altering the dialogue by using a waving-hand gesture in the way Rachel did in this example highlights the potential of fleeting moments to sustain relational experiences. In accordance with Mitchelmore et al. (2017), the present findings emphasise the rich potentiality for teaching and learning embedded within brief everyday moments of living that take place in relational experiences.

Implications

This article makes a contribution to a deepened understanding of the complex area of research on infant and peer relationships in ECEC contexts by contributing to current knowledge in relation to teachers’ engagement in infant and peer relational experiences. Additionally, it gives an insight into the potential for the teacher to embrace alterity in infant–peer relational events as a powerful orienting feature that will influence future infant–peer relationships. It also illuminates how the teacher’s presence can restrain infant–peer dialogue by altering its direction through her or his engagement.

The results of the present study should be considered with caution due to the small number of participants involved. A subsequent implication is the need to take into account a cultural consideration for this study because of its single location. There are also implications for teachers’ role in terms of understanding the significance of their presence for infant–peer relationships. Small group size and high teacher–infant ratios were features of the centre in this study. In other settings with higher ratios and increased numbers of children, the role of the teacher in knowing when and how to engage in infant–peer relationships is potentially more complex and challenging.

Conclusion

Being implicated in infant–peer relationships means that teachers are answerable for their choices to respond in ways that consider the unique aspects of each infant–peer relational encounter they engage in. Based on the results of this study, teachers can be viewed as an implicating feature of infant–peer relationships. The teacher’s potential to provoke, sustain and restrain dialogue in infant–peer relationships through alteric means was a key feature of answerability because it revealed how the teacher was implicated through her responses to and for infants in relationship with their peers.

From a Bakhtinian perspective, people’s answerability means that they accept full responsibility for the unlimited choices they have at their disposal to act in every moment of living (Nollan, 2004). Infant and peer relationships were often promoted when teachers altered the direction of infants’ engagement, provoking social encounters that were, at times, fleeting in nature. Although brief, fleeting encounters sustained dialogue by establishing a connection between infant and peer that offered infants alternative ways to engage with one another. Importantly, the findings highlight how noticing and responding to even the smallest of acts can be a form of answerability which deeply implicates the teacher.

When the teachers sustained dialogue, they often related to infants and peers by participating with them as a partner in dialogue, as opposed to a mediator of dialogue. In Williams et al.’s (2010) research, teachers were viewed as the experts and infants as the novices in peer relations. This sits at odds with the current research, which highlights how teachers in their role as a partner in the dialogue were implicated by their potential to provoke opportunities for infants to assert both their alteric and intersubjective agency. The results of the analysis suggest that infant and peer relations are sustained when teachers recognise and understand the potential of dialogue that embraces alterity as a basis for intersubjectivity. Such findings offer potential to celebrate alterity as a key feature of teacher engagement in sustained infant–peer dialogue. In these events, provocation was a form of answerability employed by these teachers to promote opportunities for infants to assert their alteric and intersubjective agency. This finding supports claims by Dalli et al. (2011) that a dialogic approach to pedagogy and sensitive, responsive, attuned caregiving that recognises the significance of infant and peer contributions are vital for the sustainability of infant and peer relations. The data illuminates how paying attention to alteric acts for these teachers established, sustained and extended the relational experience for infants and peers through engagement which recognised the potential that difference in thinking brings to social encounters. The results of the present study suggest that embracing degrees of alterity in these types of co-endeavours offers potential to sustain and extend the dialogue and, ultimately, the relational experience for infant and peer. Answerability, therefore, recognises the potential that arises out of moments of tension and thinking that is not shared. Consequently, meaning is not only shaped through ways of interacting in the social space which are shared, but also through those encounters which are alteric in nature.

The analysis further suggests that when teachers were implicated in their capacity to restrain infant–peer relationships, this form of engagement had the potential to alter how infants related to peers in subsequent interactions. The findings suggest that the dialogic space of an ECEC environment is a place where what teachers pay attention to and how they are answerable to infants in their social encounters with peers may either sustain or restrain positive, responsive and reciprocal infant–peer relationships. This study makes visible the subjective nature of teaching and learning, in tandem with the challenges faced by teachers when being answerable in their everyday pedagogical decisions with infants and peers. By applying answerability, it is possible to make visible the ways teachers are an implicating feature of dialogue in infant and peer relationships, regardless of whether they are present or not, since the dialogic space posits that there is ‘no alibi’ (Bakhtin, 1993).