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Abstract
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!
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Author biographies
Bridgette Redder is an emerging researcher and teacher who is presently enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Waikato. Her doctoral thesis employs a Bakhtinian dialogic approach to self-study and explores her answerability with infants as a source of research. Bridgette is committed to research and making changes to policy, theory and practice that will benefit all learners. Bridgette has research interests in subjectivity, morality, answerability, language, communication, relationships and early years pedagogy.
E Jayne White has a long-standing interest in education, with particular emphasis on early years pedagogy, spanning over 30 years as a teacher and researcher. Jayne’s work focuses on the complex processes and practices of meaning-making. At the heart of her practice lies a strong emphasis on dialogic pedagogy and the ways in which teachers can best engage within complex learning relationships, focusing on the earliest years for infant learners. Jayne has written extensively in the field, including her sole-authored book Introducing Dialogic Pedagogy: Provocations for the Early Years (Routledge, 2015). She co-edits the Springer series Policy and Pedagogy for Birth-to-Three-Year-Olds. As director of the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research’s Video Lab and co-editor of the Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy, Jayne maintains a strong emphasis on visual methodologies as a source of ‘seeing’ in educational studies.
