‘Seeing’ the Toddler: Voices or Voiceless?

Abstract

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.

Commentary to E. Jayne White: ‘Seeing’ the Toddler: Voices or Voiceless?

• Gunvor Løkken 

1. Faculty of Humaniora and Educational Science, Vestfold University College, Vestfold, Norway

   Gunvor Løkken

Starting out reading this chapter, I spent some time puzzling over its title. What does it say? Of course ‘seeing the toddler’ means literally seeing the toddler and by that, what we believe we see from what comprises the focus of our seeing. What can be seen is always impaired by what each person brings to their gaze, as E. Jayne White puts it.

I ended up with the understanding of the second part of the title—‘voices or voiceless’—to be about whether what is brought to our gaze in observation is given voice to or not. Rather than the monologue of the scientist, E. Jayne White calls for polyphonic voices here, like those of speculation, uncertainty and reflexivity. She believes such polyphony will enhance the very young child envisioned with many voices.

This is the stance of Bakhtin’s dialogism, beautifully described as giving way to the work of the eye that contemplates the need for performance and creativity in a particular place and at a particular time. It is all about the essential surplus of seeing that an author offers her subject. This authorial surplus refers to interpretative activity that considers both what can be seen and the meaning bestowed or imbued into it by others who participate through the central dialogic tenets of thought and action. Within the broader domain of utterance, ‘voice’ can include any sound, gesture, movement or word that has the potential to be recognized by others in social exchange. Therefore, ‘voice’ is a plural and expanded concept.

‘Methodology—who needs it?’ is the provoking question in the title of Martyn Hammersley’s recent book (2011), in which Freud is cited as follows: ‘Methodologists remind me of people who clean their glasses so thoroughly that they never have time to look through them’ (p. 17). In our dedication to different ways of giving voice to children who are too young to express themselves in verbal language, many of us have dug deep into philosophical writing and methodology to legitimize our stance of inquiry. I think this is reflected in the chapters of this book indeed.

Jayne has dug deep into Bakhtin’s dialogism. Although she spends quite some time ‘cleaning the glasses’ of Bakhtin’s methodology, she has had time to look through them also. The polyphony of her observational study ensured that the toddlers themselves contributed authentically to the research process, in addition to the points of view of the other three dialogic partners involved, namely the teacher, the parents and herself. Through polyphonic video and re-probing interview, she analysed the genre of the many participants as the means by which an individual can orient meaning to another through the selection of relevant form and content in utterance. Working closely with one toddler—Zoe—through re-probing interviews which drew on the polyphonic footage, White’s study, in my opinion, has generated an analysis of amazingly high degree of general interest. Her thorough cleaning of the Bakhtinian glasses has contributed to this level of generalisation, I think.

White’s brave choice to focus on one child, combined with advanced technology, is impressive. A visual means of capturing Zoe’s language acts was achieved through a small hat-cam attached to the teacher’s head (on a hat that was attached to a backpack with a video camera inside), another small hat-cam on Zoe’s head (on a headband that was remotely connected to a video camera elsewhere) and a third pan-camera held by the researcher. To me this is avant garde collection of empirical material. In this light, my own experience following seven toddlers around with a handheld camera 16 years ago now seems 160 years ago. Technologically advanced is also the combining of individual videos in a time-synchronized split-screen representation that was offered to each participant for analysis.

Impressive as well is the use of software providing a means of bringing to bear three different coding sets on the split-screen polyphonic footage. Doing this, Jayne was able to code what was seen, by whom and the nature of dialogue during the interpretations against specific pieces of footage. Not only did this approach enable detailed and complex analysis, she says, it also provided a means of visiting and revisiting the footage from multiple standpoints. By that she was practicing and methodising Bakhtinian dialogism, indeed. This is innovative inquiry with very young children.

However, when her claim is that her ability to see anything at all was interdependent on the dialogue she shared with the parent, teacher and toddler herself, I think she downplays the researcher role too much. Although she relied on their insights to influence her own, the voice of her own insight certainly should be spoken out louder. This is what she does in her comment to the fact that Zoe, who seemed to become increasingly and astutely aware of her central location in the gazes of the others, provided remarkable insights through the research process. Much to Jayne’s surprise, these insights occurred as much in the interpretive aftermath of the videoed acts as in initial viewing of the acts themselves. In other words, insight occurred through the voice of her own insight, as I see it.

The author claims that little emphasis has been placed on those genres the toddler brings to bear on social experience as dialogic exchange. Given my Norwegian cultural background, I suggest that Zoe’s performance with dolls, as described thoroughly and vividly by White, can be argued as aspiring to an original toddler version of ‘A doll’s house’. (I think Ibsen would have loved it.)

I find that through her description of Zoe’s performance with dolls, Jayne shows that she, as the researcher, managed to maintain a dual focus on the acts of the toddler and the interpretations of those around her. Utterance, as the unit of analysis, provided a way of accessing both, she concludes. Such analysis considers the toddler as authored and authoring—in other words, as a research subject and collaborator in her own right. Dialogic methodology when employed to ‘see’ the very young child demonstrates that she can never be understood in isolation from others and their interpretive stance.

As discussed by Jayne, there will be those with concerns about the practice of putting a camera on the head of a very young child. Some will argue against the singling out of one small child in a group (or the other children who acted as pilot participants or back-up). If Zoe did not wish to wear the hat-cam, filming would cease, the author says. If her parents, teacher or researcher felt that her engagement with the project was negatively impacting on Zoe in any way, the project would have ended.

This I do trust, having read White’s chapter.

Reference

• Hammersley, M. (2011). Methodology—Who needs it? London, England: Sage.