Proximity with under two-year-olds in early childhood education: a silent pedagogical encounter

Using mixed methods to analyse the experience of a 4-month-old and a 10-month-old infant in a high-quality New Zealand education and care setting, this paper utilises dialogic methodology to foreground the importance of key teacher proximity to infant relationships with adults, peers and artefacts in a group context. Quantitative findings highlight the different types of language initiations and responses that take place for infants when their key teachers (and other teachers) are in close proximity, and when they are not. These are supported by vignettes drawn from infant, key teacher and researcher visual fields of video footage, which highlight the impact of teacher proximity for infants in intersubjective relationships that are underpinned by strong attachment. Taken together, these findings convey a silent form of pedagogy which, when considered in tandem with other forms of communication, is of extreme relevance for infant engagement in early childhood education groups.

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