Abstract
The Nordic research on toddlers has a strong tradition for microanalyses of adult-child relations in early childcare research. Within this tradition, it is well established that adults’ attentiveness towards children’s perspectives and what children experience here and now are a prerequisite for their well-being and learning. Inspired by this work, I and 85 toddler pedagogue and family childcare providers (practitioners) in a participatory action research project called ‘With the Child in the Centre’, investigated how increased attentiveness towards children’s perspectives can change children’s participation and being in pedagogical practice. Together, we challenged cultural habits and socially embedded relational patterns with the 0–3-year-old children in order to provide new opportunities for participation and relational being in toddler childcare. Based on a sociocultural perspective of learning as participation, the transformative ambition was to explore how practitioners develop generative processes of coactions with children. For one week the practitioners were invited to pay special attention to and engage more actively with a specific child believed to be in a troubling position. The practitioners’ reflections were reported in written narratives, which form the empirical grounding for this study. I found that the practitioners’ capacity to reflect the details of the present moment could be increased and that the practitioners’ increased attentiveness towards children’s perspectives provided more varied and engaged relations with the 0–3-year-old children in toddler childcare. The study shows how a more open and curious approach enables new understanding of children’s relational being, their intentions and meaning making. By changing their attentiveness and coaction with these children, the practitioners made new opportunities for participation available for the children in toddler childcare. The study also found that a pedagogical sense of presence is a prerequisite for the development of the practitioners’ attentiveness and inquisitive approach towards children and coaction.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Statistics Denmark, 19 % of the Danish children below the age of one attend a childcare, while 91 % of the children age 1–2 years attend a childcare. In Denmark there are two main categories of toddler childcare settings: (1) Nurseries for 0–2-year-old children (8.500 attending children in 2014). In many settings nurseries are integrated with preschools for 3–5-year-old children (63.000 children age 0–2 in 2014). In nurseries 58 % of the pedagogical staff has a degree in pedagogy. (2) Public family childcare where 41.000 children age 0–2 in 2014 attended childcare. A public family childcare is run by the municipal but takes place in a family home with a single adult and usually four children. A family child-care provider does not hold a degree in pedagogy. When both nursery pedagogues and family child-care provider are referred to, I use the term practitioner.
- 2.
‘With the Child in the Centre’ (Barnet i Centrum) is a 2-year participatory action research project that was carried out in collaboration with Assistant Professor Ole Henrik Hansen and Postdoc Anders Skriver Jensen under the leadership of Professor Stig Broström, all from DPU at Aarhus University. The project was financed by the 18 participating municipalities from Denmark and ended in December 2014. The article is based on a case study conducted among the 85 nursery pedagogue and family child-care providers who took part in the ‘Coaction and Learning’ laboratory, for which I was responsible. The action research was based on the following general research question: ‘How can the laboratory describe, analyse and develop the adult-child encounters and describe and analyse their importance for children’s participation, learning and becoming?’ The 85 participants were divided into three teams, and during the 2-year duration of the study, I met up with the teams 16 times per team for 5 h on each occasion, either at the Aarhus University campus in Emdrup or at VIA in Viborg. See Broström (2016) and Svinth (2016) for a description of the action research project.
- 3.
I mainly refer to practitioner as ‘her’ because of the high percentage of women in the field. Please do not see this as noninclusive of male practitioners.
- 4.
The child was in most cases selected due to the practitioner’s concern for its well-being and development, e.g. due to the child’s many conflicts with adults or other children.
- 5.
See Svinth (2016) for a more detailed description of the research design.
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Acknowledgement
A warm thanks to the participants in ‘Coaction and Learning’ for their engagement, attentiveness and lively reflections.
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Svinth, L. (2017). Increasing Pedagogical Attentiveness Towards Children’s Perspectives and Participation in Toddler Child Care. In: Ringsmose, C., Kragh-Müller, G. (eds) Nordic Social Pedagogical Approach to Early Years. International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42557-3_9
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