Supporting educators’ emotional work with infants and their families around transitions at the start of the day

ABSTRACT

This article describes the professional development program, Baby Playspace Learning (BPL), and evaluates its capacity to build close relationships between educators, parents, their infants and infant peers during the morning transitions in ECEC settings. Using a pre-post design, video recordings of 20 (10 pre and 10 post) morning transitions were collected across a 12-month period and analysed for developing closeness, by measuring the frequency of triangular interactions, educators’ use of relational language and physical availability (sitting down, being still and holding infants in a curled position to relax). All measures of closeness increased significantly post-test, indicating that BPL created more opportunities for building closeness between all parties. BPL can enhance educator professionalism by showing educators how to engage in practices that help them to realise close relationships in a group setting. This gives parents, infants and infant peers the experience of belonging to a secure base culture where closeness is valued.

KEYWORDS:

• Morning goodbye transitions
• professional reflection
• Professional Love
• group experiences
• triangular interactions

Acknowledgments

We would like to recognise the generosity of KU Children's Services, with whom we have collaborated in research for 20 years and thank the educators, families and children for inspiring our thinking and for enriching our understanding as we grow and develop as a community. We would also like to thank Gawaine Powell Davies and Professor Judith Cashmore for their guidance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. A 12- to 18-month university and/or TAFE course incorporating an approximate 240-hour practicum.

2. An entry level TAFE or course incorporating an approximate 120-hour practicum.

3. A three-year university degree with an approximate 400-hour practicum.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by KU Children’s Services, Sydney, Australia.