What is so funny about children? Laughter in parent–practitioner interaction

Abstract

The article studies parent–practitioner interaction in Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC). It focuses on a new kind of collaboration practice and studies meetings at which parents and practitioners draw up an individual educational plan for the child. The functions of laughter in connection with the description of the child in these meetings are examined, as well as the positioning of the interlocutors in the laughter episodes. A discourse analytic approach is used. The results show that laughter can serve several functions in the parent–practitioner meetings: for example, it may be used as a means to negotiate interactional tensions, to mark delicate issues, and to allay parental concerns. The findings suggest that the parent–practitioner collaboration in the Finnish ECEC planning context may constitute a special kind of institutional encounter with a quite unconstrained atmosphere and with fairly symmetrical relationships between the parties. They also imply new demands on the practitioners’ professional skills in interaction.

Keywords:

• parent–practitioner interaction
• early childhood education
• laughter

Acknowledgments

This research has been funded by the Academy of Finland (SA 116272).