Conversation analytic role-play method (CARM) for early childhood teacher education

ABSTRACT

Here the authors explore everyday teaching strategies that work to implement early childhood curriculum frameworks, using published transcripts of video-recorded data of real-life teacher–child interactions in early childhood centres in Australia and New Zealand. The analysis uses a conversation analysis approach to reveal the sequences of action (talk and gesture) in the co-construction of pedagogical interactions. The authors illustrate how this approach builds on Elizabeth Stokoe’s Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM), helping guide early childhood teachers in their interactions with infants, toddlers and young children. They argue that emphasis on real rather than recalled events and close attention to the sequential organisation of talk are central to understanding teaching and learning in early childhood education. The importance of promoting skills and knowledge in the mechanisms of high-quality interactions – that can respond to different contexts, children and concepts for learning – is emphasised, rather than a prescriptive ‘best practice’ template.

KEYWORDS:

• Conversation Analysis in Early Childhood (CAiEC)
• Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM)
• early childhood teacher education
• high-quality learning interactions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Data collection for transcript excerpts was supported by a Collier Charitable Fund Grant, and the Young Learner’s Project in Melbourne Australia was supported by the Australian Scholarships Group and the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding scheme [project number LP0883437].

Notes on contributors

Amelia Church

Amelia Church is a Senior Lecturer in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, where she leads subjects in qualitative research methodologies and applied conversation analysis. Amelia holds a PhD in Linguistics from Monash University, published as Preference Organization and Peer Disputes: How Young Children Resolve Conflict (2009), in the Ashgate series ‘Directions in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis’. More recently, collaborations with other researchers have been published in Bateman and Church (eds) (2017) Children’s Knowledge-in-Interaction: Studies in Conversation Analysis (Springer). Her current research interests include communicative competence in early childhood, peer interaction and conversation analysis in institutional settings.

Amanda Bateman

Amanda Bateman is Programme Director of Early Childhood Studies at Swansea University School of Education, Wales, UK. She has many years of experience in early childhood education as a practitioner and as a lecturer at Waikato University, New Zealand, where she worked with early childhood teachers in research projects exploring pedagogical practice and curriculum implementation.