E. Jayne White

‘Seeing’ the Toddler: Voices or Voiceless?

Is ‘seeing’ believing? What comprises the focus of seeing, how is it seen and who decides what is to be privileged in doing so? Such is the dilemma facing all observational investigations since what can be ‘seen’ is always impaired or enhanced by what each person brings to their gaze—be it frameworks or ideologies that limit or create potential. How much more challenging is such seeing when the subject of our gaze is an infant or toddler who speaks a distinct corporeal language that has long been forgotten by the adult, and who draws from a sociocultural domain that is only partially glimpsed by the early childhood teacher or researcher? In this chapter I expand on the idea of ‘seeing’ as a dialogic endeavour—thus calling for an exploration of voice that goes beyond singular monologic parameters, into the polyphonic terrain of speculation, uncertainty and reflexivity. Taking this approach, I argue that there is potential to re-vision the very young child as a competent yet vulnerable communicator of and with many voices, one who is capable of conveying complex meaning through genres that strategically orient them towards or away from intersubjective harmony.

Cry, Baby, Cry: A Dialogic Response to Emotion.

This article challenges traditional approaches to emotion as a discreet biological or dialectic process in the early years. In doing so the proposition is made that emotion is an answerable social act of meaning-making and self-hood. Inspired by Bakhtinian philosophy, which resists separating emotion from cognition or the individual from their social milieu, the dialogic interplay that takes place between an 18-month-old infant, adults, and peers in a New Zealand Education and Care setting is explored from an emotional volitional standpoint. Drawing on eleven hours of polyphonic split-screen video footage taken from the visual perspective of the infant and those around her, language acts and their interpretive aftermath are presented as intersubjective and alteric (i.e., altering) communicative acts. Taken together they recaste infant emotionality as a highly strategic socially oriented process of embodied performance through selective employment of genres that “speak” to the adult. The article argues that such a renewed appreciation of infant emotion has potential for understanding very young children as strategically acting upon as well as responding to the environment that surrounds them. As such there is potential to view emotional acts as answerable performance, with revealing implications for those who share in infant experience.

A Bakhtinian Homecoming: Operationalizing Dialogism in the Context of an Early Childhood Education Centre in Wellington, New Zealand.

Dialogic research, building on the dialogic philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin, is fundamentally concerned with the social, discursive nature of language. This article describes an application of dialogic research methods in a pilot study conducted in an Education and Care setting in Wellington, New Zealand focusing on an 18-month-old toddler and his teacher. The purpose of this exploratory study was to ‘operationalize’ dialogic research within this early childhood education context, in preparation for a larger investigation. Approaching the field through this dialogic research method offered an alternative means of investigating the acts of a toddler through genre (as the framework of analysis) and utterance (as the unit of analysis). This article argues for dialogic research as a method which enables toddler and teacher ‘voices’ to authentically inter-animate and contribute accordingly to the research process, thus promoting hermeneutic complexity rather than scientific truth.

Summary: Lessons Learnt and Future Provocations

This book has showcased a wide range of research projects, and their philosophical considerations and methodological foundations. The potential of each to contribute to a greater understanding of infant and toddler voice has been foregrounded throughout. Along the way, each author has offered significant provocation regarding the nature of voice, its location and associated ability to contribute to such understanding through research. As such, the authors have signalled that a “listening” approach to voice is insufficient in research with very young children because it privileges verbal forms of communication as the primary means of understanding experience and seldom takes into account the elusive nature of hermeneutic endeavour. Throughout this book and in varying ways they have extended the notion of “voice” to embrace wider subjectivities and ways of knowing, being and becoming through the strategic employment of a range of philosophical lenses. In doing so, the authors respond to Lewis’s (2010) call for more explicit and transparent research regarding voice, and for greater attention to the reflexive encounter of researchers in this regard. We therefore conclude this book with an expanded view of “voice”—as plural, corporeal, dialogic, visual and aural; and as an intersubjective research quest with our youngest that is in constant flux.

When the footlights are off: a Bakhtinian interrogation of play as postupok

Taking a dialogic approach, this paper examines play from the point of view of the players desire to act upon and through others. As an act-deed (postupok), play is considered as a way of relating to others as well as a means of co-creating and representing subjectivities. With Bakhtins inspiration, play is seen as an act of agency and of becoming. It generates creative events taking place at the boundaries between several simultaneous intersecting worlds in play (‘chronotopes’). We look at how the play acts offer unique means of engaging with others that other social acts do not. Central to our view is the notion that play resides on the boundaries between imaginative and real worlds that exist on the outside of the performative realm, in private, dialogic spaces where ‘the footlights are off’. Here players are dialogically oriented to each other, rather than to an audience. As such the paper makes the claim that play, first and foremost, belongs to the players.

The ‘Work of the Eye’ in Infant Research: A Visual Encounter

‘Give way to the work of the eye that contemplates the need for performance and creativity in a particular place and at a particular time’. (Bakhtin, Speech genres and other late essays (Emerson C, Holquist M, ed, McGee V, Trans.). University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986), p. 38)

Global Crisis: Local reality?: An international analysis of ‘crisis’ in the early years

Abstract In a recent keynote speech Paul Standish noted ‘there is agreement in judgments. But how the response to those judgments is realised is always cultural’ (paper presented to PESA Conference, Taiwan, 2012, p. 2). Making judgments about what constitutes ‘crisis’ for children is not necessarily agreed universally, though clearly there are some commonalities across many countries, as evident in United Nations on the Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCROC) agreements. This article examines the local rhetoric and reality of ‘crisis’ for children in countries across the world. What constitutes a crisis for children, and how this plays out in the contexts of nine countries is explored by the authors based on the insights of each countries’ (OMEP) (www.omep.org.gu.se) Chapter representatives. Policies will be juxtaposed with provision based on the experiences of OMEP members reporting from their various contexts. Taken together they provide a contextualised perspective on ‘crisis’ and its relationship to a non-absolutist foundation to children’s rights. The article concludes that what constitutes crisis from a global perspective warrants consideration in the context of local reality—in this locale the concept of every child as having access to ‘rights’ is far from realisation.

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

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!

First-year practicum experiences for preservice early childhood education teachers working with birth-to-3-year-olds: An Australasian experience

ABSTRACT This article reports on a project, “Collaboration of Universities Pedagogies of Infants’ and Toddlers’ Development—‘down under’ (CUPID),” in which the practicum experiences of 1st-year preservice initial teacher education (ITE) students at five universities across Australia and New Zealand (NZ) engaging in early childhood education (ECE) teacher programs were evaluated as part of a larger longitudinal project. The results from year 1 of their qualification experiences highlight the diverse and complex approaches to practicum experiences, ranging from specialized events with birth-to-3-year-olds to generic practicum with a wider age group. The implications of the practicum experience, in its many iterations, are explored in terms of the treatment of infant and toddler pedagogy as a specialization, and as an integrated component of the curriculum. While an assumption appears to exist that infant and toddler specialization is optimum, the early results of this study, at end of year 1 of the qualification, suggest that associated practicum experiences are not consistently offered to 1st-year students in this domain nor is a pedagogy specialism for this age group promoted. This article speculates on the reasons why this phenomenon occurs, the limitations and potentialities such a view upholds, and the implications for teachers in their work with birth-to-3-year-olds in the current policy context of both countries.

Interpreting Metaphoric Acts

The concept of dialogism, as put forward in Bakhtinian philosophy, positions metaphoricity as “an activity of the entire human being, from head to foot” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 313). This theory views the act of communication as a two-way creative exchange and meta-language, and metaphor is seen as existing in a state of constant “becoming” within interpretive encounter.