Toddler Sociality: Co-constructing the peer group through embodied interactions

Abstract

This PhD research project explores toddlers’ sociality and competence within peer interactions, focusing on their use of embodied strategies to actively participate and co-construct their peer group, create a sense of togetherness and form a ‘mutual we’. The research project was conducted in a toddler room in an early childhood education and care (ECEC) setting in Iceland and is an ethnomethodological (EM) study applying multimodal conversation analysis (CA) to examine these embodied strategies. The research offers an original contribution by challenging traditional views of toddlers as passive onlookers, demonstrating their active engagement and sophisticated social behaviours.The research project is structured around three sub-studies, each presented in a research article. The first article investigates the embodied strategies toddlers use to initiate interactions with their peers, highlighting the importance of gaze and touch as initiation strategies. The second article explores how toddlers use humour and environmental resources to initiate and sustain interactions within the peer group. The third article examines how toddlers use observation and imitation as a pre-opening in the co-construction of peer interactions. The study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on toddler social experiences within ECEC settings. The findings highlight their agency in shaping social relationships and peer culture. Overall, this thesis provides unique and valuable insights into the new and emerging area of toddler sociality, emphasising their active role in peer interactions and their ability to co-construct social relationships independent of adult interactional interventions.The data was collected over a 9-month period using participant observations through video recordings and field notes as the methods used. The interactions observed were transcribed according to recognised multimodal CA transcription conventions. The findings of this research underscore the value of multimodal CA as a methodological approach for studying toddlers’ interactions, providing detailed and nuanced insights into the embodied strategies toddlers use to navigate their social worlds. Ethnomethodology and multimodal conversation analysis therefore provide a robust theoretical and methodological framework for conducting this type of research and the findings of this study contribute to an original way of conceptualising toddler sociality and toddler social competence in ECEC.The findings have implications for policy and practice in early childhood education, advocating for a more nuanced understanding of toddler sociality and the importance of supporting peer interactions in ECEC settings. The findings also offer practical implications for early childhood teachers. Even though this study did not examine the role of the teachers in toddler peer interactions, by understanding the importance of embodied interactions and the sophisticated ways toddlers engage with their peers, it is my belief that teachers can better support and enhance toddler sociality and peer interactions by providing specific care and education in ECEC settings that offer support and opportunities for toddlers to interact and build a ‘mutual we’ with their peers.