Abstract
Children’s first words are eagerly anticipated and celebrated by their parents and others in their lives. Their first words reflect the context in which children live, words that are heard frequently, and things that may be important to children. There is some evidence to suggest that young children’s language development varies by situational context and in direct response to what is spoken to them by their parents. In this chapter, we explore the possibility that children’s first words may also provide insights into important aspects of their lived spaces in early childhood education and care settings. We asked parents and teachers to complete the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures (MCDI) (Fenson et al. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: User’s guide and technical manual (2nd edn). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing, 2007), a standardised checklist to determine the vocabulary that is understood and spoken by young children. Then we compared parents’ and educators’ responses for a group of ten infants attending infant-toddler education and care settings, and provided a case study of one child attending family day care. The children’s early vocabularies and gestures provided insights into common or important aspects of their lives, provided additional insights into relations with different interactional partners in different contexts, and facilitated some understanding of what life is like in child care for infants.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Three children were not included: the first child’s mother was her educator, so could not have two MCDI forms completed, the second child’s parent did not complete the MCDI, and the third was < 12 months old.
- 2.
The age range of the children in the current study goes beyond the standardised age range of this version for the MCDI; however, this was considered to be acceptable since the MCDI was not being used as a standardised measure.
- 3.
References
Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workforce Relations [DEEWR]. (2011). Education and care services national regulations, Canberra. Retrieved from http://www.deewr.gov.au/Earlychildhood/Policy_Agenda/Documents/EducationandCareServicesNationalRegulations.pdf
Bradley, B., Sumsion, J., Stratigos, T., & Elwick, S. (2012). Baby events: Assembling descriptions of infants in care. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 13(2), 141–153.
Bruner, J. (1983). Child’s talk. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Degotardi, S., Torr, J., & Cross, T. (2008). He’s got a mind of his own: A framework for determining mothers’ beliefs about their infants’ minds. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23(2), 259–271.
Elwick, S., Bradley, B., & Sumsion, J. (2014). Infants as others: Uncertainties, difficulties and (im)possibilities in researching infants’ lives. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 27(2), 196–213.
Fenson, L., Marchman, V. A., Thal, D., Dale, P., Reznick, J. S., & Bates, E. (2007). The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: User’s guide and technical manual (2nd ed.). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.
Fuchs, T. (2007). Psychotherapy of the lived space: A phenomenological and ecological concept. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 61(4), 423–439.
Goodfellow, J., Elwick, S., Stratigos, T., Sumsion, J., Press, F., Harrison, L., McLeod, S., & Bradley, B. (2011). Infants’ lives in childcare: Crafting research evidence. The First Years Nga Tau Tuatahi Journal of Infant Toddler Education, 13(2), 43–48.
Hart, B. (1991). Input frequency and children’s first words. First Language, 11(32), 289–300.
Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1992). How should frequency in input be measured? First Language, 12(36), 233–244.
Katz, L. (1998). The context of teacher-child relationships. In C. P. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children (pp. 27–45). Greenwich: Ablex.
Law, J., & Roy, P. (2008). Parental report of infant language skills: A review of the development and application of the communicative development inventories. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 13(4), 198–206.
MARCS Auditory Laboratories. (2004). Australian English developmental vocabulary. Sydney: MARCS Auditory Laboratories, University of Sydney.
Meins, E., & Fernyhough, C. (1999). Linguistic acquisitional style and mentalising development: The role of maternal mind-mindedness. Cognitive Development, 14(3), 363–380.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). London: Routledge.
Press, F., Bradley, B., Goodfellow, J., Harrison, L. J., McLeod, S., Sumsion, J., Elwick, S., & Stratigos, T. (2012). Listening to infants about what life is like in childcare: A mosaic approach. In S. Roulstone & S. McLeod (Eds.), Listening to children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (pp. 241–250). London: J & R Press.
Reilly, S., Bavin, E. L., Bretherton, L., Conway, L., Eadie, P., Cini, E., Prior, M., Ukoumunne, O. C., & Wake, M. (2009). The early language in Victoria Study (ELVS): A prospective, longitudinal study of communication skills and expressive vocabulary development at 8, 12 and 24 months. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 11(5), 344–357.
Sabbagh, M. A., & Callanan, M. A. (1998). Metarepresentation in action: 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds’ developing theories of mind in parent-child conversations. Developmental Psychology, 34(3), 491–502.
Snow, C. (1984). Parent-child interaction and the development of communicative ability. In R. Schiefelbusch & J. Picker (Eds.), The acquisition of communicative competence (pp. 69–108). Baltimore: University Park Press.
Sumsion, J., & Goodfellow, J. (2012). ‘Looking’ and ‘listening-in’: A methodological approach to generating insights into infants’ experiences of early childhood education and care settings. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 20(3), 313–327.
Sumsion, J., Harrison, L., Press, F., McLeod, S., Goodfellow, J., & Bradley, B. (2011). Researching infants’ experiences of early childhood education and care. In D. Harcourt, B. Perry, & T. Waller (Eds.), Researching young children’s perspectives: Debating the ethics and dilemmas of educational research with children (pp. 113–127). Oxon: Routledge.
Tomasello, M., & Mervis, C. B. (1994). The instrument is great, but measuring comprehension is still a problem. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(5), 174–179.
Vagh, S. B., Pan, B. A., & Mancilla-Martinez, J. (2009). Measuring growth in bilingual and monolingual children’s English productive vocabulary development: The utility of combining parent and teacher report. Child Development, 80(5), 1545–1563.
Acknowledgments
The research reported in this chapter was supported by Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (LP0883913) and Industry Partners, Family Day Care Australia and KU Children’s Services. We acknowledge Sandra Cheeseman and Belinda Davis for their insights regarding the long day care MCDI data, Sheila Degotardi and Claire Vallotton for their constructive review of an earlier version of this chapter, and Hannah Wilkin for providing data entry assistance.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McLeod, S., Elwick, S., Stratigos, T. (2014). What Infants Talk About: Comparing Parents’ and Educators’ Insights. In: Harrison, L., Sumsion, J. (eds) Lived Spaces of Infant-Toddler Education and Care. International perspectives on early childhood education and development, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8838-0_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8838-0_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-8837-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-8838-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawEducation (R0)