Chapter 1 Interactions in learning: Theoretical and empirical overview.- Chapter 2 A conceptual framework for early education: What micro-sociology can contribute to a theoretically and empirically well-founded didactic in early education.- Chapter 3 Sensitive responsiveness: An approach to the analysis and improvement of Teacher-Child-Interactions in early childhood settings.- Chapter 4 Children's use of objects in their storytelling.- Chapter 5 Young children's participation in a new language context: A synthesizing analysis for a holistic perspective.- Chapter 6 Shaping gender relations in early childhood education: Children's interactions and learning about gender.- Chapter 7 A dialogic approach to understanding infant interactions.- Chapter 8 Enhancing interactions: Understanding family pedagogy and funds of knowledge "on their turf".- Chapter 9 "That's not Fair!": Concepts of fairness in New Zealand and Japanese early childhood education.- Chapter 10 Strategies for teacher learning and development over child-adult interactions in ECE settings.- Chapter 11 The importance of professional knowledge for learning support in German ECEC settings.- Chapter 12 Learning about interactions and their role in learning in early childhood education: Lessons from research.
Claudia A. Hruska is a Professor of Early Childhood Development and Education. She has fundamental expertise in quantitative educational research, (neuro-)psychological and more recently, qualitative research methods. Her work extends across the subject areas of learning, language, development, and quality in early childhood education. She was in the core team NUBBEK (National Study of education and care), which conducted a nation-wide study on quality in home environments and early childhood educational settings in Germany from 2007 to 2013. She recently joined the Leipzig Research Center for Early Child Development.
Alexandra C. Gunn is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Dean of Teacher Education at the University of Otago College of Education. Formerly an early childhood teacher who worked with children from birth to school age and their families in not-for-profit early childhood education, Alex now researches, writes and teaches in initial teacher education and general education. Her interests include various aspects of inclusion, assessment, gender/sexualities, social justice, and teachers’ beliefs and practices. She co-edited Sexual Cultures in Aotearoa/New Zealand Education (2015) with the Otago University Press and Te Aotūroa Tātaki – Inclusive Early Childhood Education: Perspectives on social justice and equity from Aotearoa New Zealand (NZCER Press, 2012).
This book provides new insights into how interactions in early childhood education are being studied, and into what these studies’ findings mean for improving the quality of early childhood education. The editors examine the methods, ethics, practices, and questions arising from such close work with children, families and educators, and have brought together a collection that highlights interactions research and practical implications for early childhood education and research, with the ultimate aim of shaping quality practices.
Starting with an overview of interaction research and its pedagogical value in early childhood education the book subsequently introduces new interaction studies in early childhood from Europe and Australasia. Drawing from a range of perspectives and using different conceptual and methodological tools the contributors use their interactions research to comment collectively on process quality in early childhood education, and its relationship to the phenomenon of pedagogical interactions. The work as a whole bridges the gap between practice and research by addressing quality interactions for early learning (for practitioners) and providing researchers valuable information on methods for studying interactions within the everyday contexts of early childhood education.