Toddlers’ social experiences and learning related behaviour in early childcare: a video-based observational study

ABSTRACT

Social dimensions of the caregiving environment, like secure relationships to caregivers and high interactional classroom quality, are seen to directly or indirectly stimulate children’s learning and development. However, little is known about the underlying processes, specifically with regard to the role of peers. To fill this gap we videotaped 130 children (12–36 months, 56 female) in 35 German childcare centres during morning free play and collected data on the amount of social participation with caregivers and peers as well as on individual child characteristics, attachment status and global interaction quality. These informations were used to predict learning related behaviour during the observation period. We found high interindividual variance in social participation and the activation of learning potential in play and exploratory behaviour. Both global interaction quality and direct participation in social interaction with caregivers and peers proved to be relevant for learning related behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• Toddlers
• early childcare
• social participation
• learning potential
• interaction quality
• AQS
• ITERS-R

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Maxi König, Paul König and Jule Wallau for their work in the development of the data coding manual and collecting the data, Holger Weßels and Jens Kaiser-Kratzmann for discussing statistical issues with us, and Alexa Banker for proofreading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Extensive coding manuals were developed including variable descriptions, operationalisations, demarcation criteria and ‘anchor examples’ drawn from the videos.

2 Since the aim in the main project was to capture the pedagogical quality in a more general way, not only focusing on interaction quality, we chose to apply the ITERS-R German version KRIPS-R instead of the CLASS instrument. For this paper we used a subset of items that are closely related to quality of interaction.

3 Interpretation of R² (Cohen, 1988, p. 412ff.): weak effect |R²| = .02; medium / moderate effect |R²| = .13; strong effect |R²| = .26.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institut für Angewandte Forschung Berlin (IFAF; Institute for Applied Science Berlin).

Notes on contributors

Susanne Viernickel

Susanne Viernickel is a full professor at the University of Leipzig and head of the Early Childhood Education lab and the faculties Research & Teaching Early Childcare Centre unit. Her research focuses on quality and professionalization in the early childcare sector from an eco-systemic perspective. Currently she works on the topic of child well-being.

Marie Martin

Marie Martin works as research assistant at the University of Leipzig in the Early Childhood Education lab. Current focus of her research is child well-being. Other research interests include social-emotional development of toddlers and quality of attachment and interaction in pedagogical settings.