Little is known about the quality and charac￾teristics of the language used by childcare staff when in￾teracting with infants in non-parental group care settings.
This qualitative study analysed the manner in which staff
used language when interacting with ten children aged be￾tween 9 and 20 months in four different long day care
centres in Sydney, Australia. Each infant was audiorecorded
for one whole day using a small recording device attached
to her/his clothing, which captured all the language spoken
directly to, or in their presence of, the infant. The infants
and staff were simultaneously videorecorded as they went
about their everyday activities, to provide additional con￾textual information. Using systemic functional linguistics as
the theoretical underpinning, the study found that staff
members tended to talk to more than one child at a time,
limiting their potential to engage in the types of sustained
conversations with individual children that have been
shown to promote language development. Staff also tended
to use language primarily to manage children’s behaviour
and provide physical care, rather than using language to
encourage children to use their own developing language to
represent their experiences in a variety of contexts. The
findings have implications for group size, early childhood
teacher education and inservice professional development.

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Perpustakaan FITK Pusat

Tersedia

• Educator Talk in Long Day Care Nurseries: How Context Shapes Meaning

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