How do infants socialise in groups in long day care centres?

Research output: Other contribution to conferenceAbstractpeer-review

Abstract

Long day care provides opportunities for infants to develop the skills needed to participate in and contribute to group play with similar aged peers. Although researchers have described some of the ways that infants interact in groups, little is understood about how they develop socially in groups across the first two years of life.
Aim: To determine how infants communicate and interact with other same-age children in group settings.
Method: A mixed methods research design using the triad (a third infant interacting with an infant-peer dyad) as the unit of analysis was undertaken. Participants were 20 focus infants (aged 3 to 21 months), and four early childhood educators from two long day care centres in Sydney, Australia. A total of 564 videoed observations of infant triads and 18 educator interviews were collected over 19-months and analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods.
Results: Infants’ social communications towards the infant-peer dyad included looking, vocalising, touch, facial expressions, and simultaneous rhythmic interactions involving bodily movements, sound and shared emotion.
Conclusions: Infant-peer groups are open, flexible and dynamic systems consisting of fleeting group processes that involve infants changing social positions, breaking interactions between their peers, looking to educators, and taking pauses.
Implications for children and families: In long day care, your child is learning about the relationships between their peers, the intentions of their play, and how to enter and sustain peer group play.

Online presentation

Online presentationEarly Childhood Voices Conference 2022
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityBathurst
Period05/12/2209/12/22
OtherThe Early Childhood Voices Conference 2022 (ECV2022) is a multidisciplinary international conference providing a platform to share research about innovative methods, theories and partnerships with children, families and practitioners that supports social justice during early childhood and within the early childhood sector. ECV2022 was organised by the Charles Sturt University Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Group as an opportunity to present research in a virtual online space.

Researchers and post-graduate students were invited to submit abstracts to share their work on innovations to improve the lives of children, families and practitioners during early childhood (generally birth-8 years) and within the early childhood sector. Papers employing qualitative and/or quantitative methods, reviews (e.g., scoping and systematic reviews) and scholarly theoretical papers were welcomed. All abstracts were peer reviewed by the ECV2022 Scientific Committee and authors of accepted abstracts submitted online presentations.

ECV2022 is online and asynchronous. There is no registration fee and no fees to present or view the presentations due to Charles Sturt University’s motto “For the public good”. The conference was held from 5th to 9th December 2022. Presentations will remain online via YouTube. The presentations are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License to indicate that adaptations or commercial use of the presentations are not allowed.
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