Responding to children’s answers: questions embedded in the social context of early childhood education

Abstract

This article presents analysis of question–answer sequences during problem inquiry between a teacher and two children in an early childhood crèche in New Zealand. Conversation analysis is used to reveal which questions the teacher asks, how children answer the questions, and the teacher’s responses to the child’s answers. Although adults’ ‘effective’ questions were identified and promoted in the REPEY study much less attention has been given to how adults respond to children’s answers. It is imperative to investigate the sequences of talk which follow a question in order to establish how teaching and learning is co-constructed in context, one utterance at a time and as a joint project between teacher and child. The findings suggest that task problems and emotional problems are treated in a similar way during problem inquiry, highlighting the complexity of interactions when teachers are providing both emotional care and educational support for young children.

Keywords:

• early childhood education
• question–answer sequences
• teacher–child interactions
• New Zealand early childhood curriculum
• emotional and educational support
• pedagogy

Acknowledgments

Thanks are offered to the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative for funding this research, and to the teachers and children of Campus Crèche, without whom this research would not have been possible. The author would also like to thank the Brisbane transcript analysis group (TAG) for providing feedback on her presentation of the data and findings, and to Professor Margaret Carr for reviewing and advising on a first draft of this article. Thanks also go to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this article.