This exciting new book brings fresh knowledge of affective pedagogies in early childhood education and care. The book draws on cultural-historical theory in alignment with visual methodologies to elucidate infant-toddlers’ affective pedagogies through analysis of case examples. The book reveals contemporary pedagogical practices in the infant-toddler space like mealtimes, nappy change and play. These pedagogical practices show the highly specialised nature of working with infant-toddlers such as the affective relations between educators and infant-toddlers, affective dialogue, affective engagement, and the creation of affective spaces. The value of collaboration is highlighted through creating an affective space for educators to become aware, reflect and position themselves as effective and affective educators. The book introduces innovative methodological tools such as images and collective drawings for collaborative reflection.

The editors of this book have brought together contributors from many parts of the world. As such, the book offers a truly diverse, international flavour reflecting a broad range of research on babies and toddlers. Examining examples from both Eastern and Western cultures, the book’s overarching focus is on relationships, yielding a coherence beneficial to early childhood researchers and educators alike. Employing visual methodologies to help bring the chapters to life, the varied research studies presented concern babies’ and toddlers’ relationships and cultural contexts. Taken together, they offer a unique opportunity to conceptualise the use of a wholeness approach for studying babies and toddlers – our youngest citizens.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the process of building healthy early social and emotional relationships with infants from a developmental perspective. The book synthesizes current research on the contextual influences of attachment, family relationships, and caregiving practices on social-emotional development. Chapters examine the processes of socioemotional development—particularly in relationships with parents, other family members, and peers—and identify areas for promoting healthy attachments and resilience, improving caregiving skills, and intervening in traumatic and stressful situations. Chapters also present empirically-supported intervention and prevention programs focused on building early relationships from birth through three years of age. The book concludes with future directions for supporting infant mental health and its vital importance as a component of research, clinical and educational practice, and child and family policy. Topics featured in this book include: The effect of prenatal and neonatal attachment on social and emotional development. The impact of primary relationships and early experiences in toddlerhood. Toddler autonomy and peer awareness in the context of families and child care. Supporting early social and emotional relationships through The Legacy for ChildrenTM Intervention. How to build early relationship programming across various cultures. Building Early Social and Emotional Relationships with Infants and Toddlers is a must-have reference for researchers, clinicians and professionals, and graduate students in the fields of infant mental health, developmental psychology, pediatrics, public health, family studies, and early childhood education.

Learn how to create and nurture communities of care for diverse children, families, and practitioners through responsive practice. In this text, the social and emotional worlds of babies and toddlers, their peers, and their caregivers come to life in the everyday moments of infant-toddler care and education. The authors show infants and toddlers as active, agentic, and intentional social partners from the start of life, highlighting their unique capacities for social engagement with both adults and peers. Interwoven within each chapter’s narrative are insights culled from extensive observations, teacher interviews, and video analyses. Part I emphasizes play, peer friendships, and humor as essential elements of infant learning, illustrated throughout with anecdotes of praxis in early care and education settings. Building on these aspects of babies’ ways of being in group care, Part II examines the complex roles of infant-toddler professionals and the critical importance of supportive and caring environments. Readers will explore the elements needed for in-depth and specialized professional preparation, including overarching principles of relationship-based practice. Book Features: Illuminates particular and understudied ways that infants and toddlers actively contribute to their own social learning and development. Shares how teachers learn to engage with and nurture infants’ and toddlers’ social capacities and experiences within child care settings.Uses anecdotes and vignettes from the authors’ research and practice with infants, toddlers, and caregivers to bring their experiences to life.Discusses themes that are important and unique for infancy and toddlerhood, such as play, friendships, humor, and professional love.Presents a unique set of chapters that reveal infants’ and toddlers’ perspectives, while also considering the caregiver’s actions within a responsive care framework.

This book conceptualizes the ‘lived spaces’ of infant and toddler early education and care settings by bringing together international authors researching within diverse theoretical frameworks. It highlights diverse ways of understanding the experiences of very young children by exposing the ways that the authors are grappling with the unknown. The work explores broadly the construct and meanings of ‘lived spaces’ as relational spaces, interactional spaces, transitional spaces, curriculum spaces or pedagogical spaces operating within the social, physical and temporal environment of infant-toddler education settings. The book invites interchange between and among diverse theories and approaches and through this build new understanding of infants’ and toddlers’ experiences and interactions in early education and care settings. It also considers the implications of this work for policy and practice in infant and toddler education and care.

Taking as its starting point that young children learn and develop in a network of relationships, this book emphasises that each relationship has its own specific features, functions and learning/teaching affordances (Thompson, 2005).

Interpreting the voices of under three year olds is central to early childhood education. Yet entering into their life-worlds is fraught with challenges and unrealised possibilities. This ground-breaking book generates a dialogue about the multiple ways researchers have exploited a range of methods for approaching, accessing, understanding and interpreting infant voice. Each chapter explores the kinds of ethical considerations and dilemmas that may arise in this process. The book itself represents a chorus of international voices (researchers, children, teachers and parents), all adding to a discussion about various circumstances, dilemmas and possibilities involved in doing research with our youngest. This book is an essential read for researchers and teachers alike who seek to 'listen' and 'see' very young children with fresh ears and eyes.