Understanding infants: characteristics of early childhood practitioners' interpretations of infants and their behaviours

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published online 1 August 2014Journal of Early Childhood ResearchBelinda Davis and Sheila Degotardi

childhood settingsEducators' understandings of, and support for, infant peer relationships in early

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Educators’ understandings of, and support for, infant peer relationships in early childhood settings

Belinda Davis and Sheila DegotardiMacquarie University, Australia

AbstractThis research adopted a qualitative methodology to investigate the reported beliefs and pedagogical practices relating to infant peer relationships held by three early childhood infant educators. Thematic analysis was used to derive commonalties and differences that reflected these educators’ views and practices about children’s early peer relationships. Results indicate in-depth understandings about children’s capacities that did not, however, appear to be translated into their reported practice. This research has implications for planning and programming experiences designed for social interactions, along with the significant role of the early childhood educator in recognising and fostering young children’s early peer relationships.

Keywordschild care, early childhood education, early childhood pedagogy, educator perspectives, infants, peer relationships

In this article, we present the perspectives of three infant educators in regard to how they under-stood and facilitated the developing social capabilities and peer relationships of infants in their programmes. Children’s early peer relationships are a significant predictor of later social and emo-tional competence and academic success in school (Campbell et al., 2000; Hanish et al., 2007; Howes et al., 1994, 1998; Tremblay et al., 2004). Human relationships comprise multiple dimen-sions including reciprocity, mutuality, social interactions, similarities, expectations, preferences and cooperation which result in notions of friendships and popularity (Hartup and Abecassis, 2002). Yet Hinde (1992) explains that human relationships are formed over time as individuals engage in social exchanges with others over the course of a history of shared interactions and activ-ity. This draws attention to the origins of peer relationships in early childhood and in particular to accounts that children’s peer relationships begin in the first year of life and stem from

Corresponding author:Belinda Davis, Institute of Early Childhood, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia. Email: [email protected]

538600 ECR0010.1177/1476718X14538600Journal of Early Childhood ResearchDavis and Degotardiresearch-article2014

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2 Journal of Early Childhood Research

social competencies which develop as they spend time with other children of similar ages in group contexts (Campbell et al., 2000; Hay et al., 2004). Any explanation of peer relationship develop-ment therefore needs to consider the contributions of infants in terms of their social capacities and behaviours (Vandell and Mueller, 1980).

Early social competencies

For some decades, research has shown that infants are able to engage socially with their peers. Infants begin to look at their peers and participate in mutual gaze at 2 months, engage in social touching by 3 months and direct smiles and vocalisations at peers by 6 months (Vandell and Mueller, 1980). With age, interactions become more responsive to the other, involving the giving and taking of objects and imitative behaviours (Eckerman et al., 1979; Sommerville et al., 2008) and, as they begin to crawl, infants approach, follow and reach for each other (Vandell and Mueller, 1980). By their first birthday, their developing awareness of others’ emotions, attention and com-municative gestures allows them to participate in referential actions and interactions including pointing, joint attention and social referencing (Striano and Rochat, 1999).

While individual social capabilities are undoubtedly important, peer relationships involve ele-ments of reciprocity as well as mutual affect, intention and understandings (Hinde, 1992). Selby and Bradley’s (2003) observation of infant-only triads provides a valuable illustration of these ele-ments. These infants used vocalisations to attract the attention of a peer, mirrored each other’s utterances and stretched their feet to touch each other in an apparent effort to sustain the interac-tion. Similarly, Brownwell et al. (2006) found that from 12 months of age, infants pointed towards something or held up a toy to show a peer, illustrating that they can initiate and respond to peer communication.

Fostering peer relationships

While much of the research on peer relationships has concentrated on preschool or school-age children, evidence exists to suggest that such relationships emerge much earlier. Howes and Phillipsen (1992) drew on their observations that toddlers interact differently with familiar and non-familiar peers to suggest that group culture in childcare centres can become structured by embedded friendships. The quality of these friendships is discussed by Shin (2010), who describes how two infant peers showed strong and mutual play preferences, positive affect and a caring attitude towards one another. Lokken (2009) also describes how toddlers involve them-selves in the construction of games and rituals during which they communicate with their peers using their bodies, movements and objects. Together, these studies suggest that toddler play styles, motivations and social competencies all contribute towards peer culture and friendships in the group context.

Howes (1996) suggests that opportunities arise for the promotion of peer relationships when children have regular experiences with other children with whom they are sufficiently acquainted. As infants attending early childhood centres are usually in small groups with similar-aged peers, childcare infant programmes provide valuable opportunities for regular interaction and extensive contact with a stable group of peers (Katz, 2004). Early childhood environments can thus be con-sidered as a ‘developmental niche’ (Super and Harkness, 1986) or socio-cultural context which supports and guides children’s development. While an important aspect of this ‘niche’ consists of environmental conditions, Super and Harkness (1986) argue that it is equally important to con-sider the psychology, or understandings, of the caregiver and their child-rearing and educational



Davis and Degotardi 3

practices. This framework leads us to consider how these elements may interplay to support and influence the relationships that develop in context.

In educational settings, Super and Harkness’ (1997) psychology of the caregiver may be con-ceptualised as the ‘image of the child’, which captures how educators view and acknowledge dif-ferent child behaviours and capabilities. While literature on the image of the child has focussed on the implications of images such as the ‘innocent’ child or ‘miniature adult’ (Sorin, 2005; Woodrow, 1999), little research exists to depict early childhood educators’ image of the ‘social’ or ‘relational’ infant. Rubin et al. (1999) argue that infants’ social abilities have long been underestimated. This view is reflected in Howes and Toyan (1999) who report that the teachers in their study believed young children to engage only in solitary and parallel play, and to be incapable of sharing or form-ing friendships. Such views reflect an image of the infant as a solitary and egocentric player (Parten, 1932; Piaget, 1962) and suggest that educators’ may be overlooking the socially capable infant that is present in more contemporary research findings.

Super and Harkness (1997) argue that caregiving and teaching practices are underpinned by the psychology of the caregiver. This suggests that educators’ understandings impact the opportunities that they provide for infants to engage in peer relationships as educators draw on their images and understandings to promote or constrain infants’ emerging social relationships. There currently exists little research about how educators in early childhood settings address, encourage or support peer relationships among infants. Wittmer (2008) provides general strategies, including responding sensitively and listening, using positive affect and affect mirroring and being emotionally availa-ble, on the assumption that infants and toddlers will learn to generalise such sociability and model-ling in their interactions with peers. Although these strategies are important, they do not address infants’ capabilities and interactions with their peers, nor do they inform early childhood educators’ about how to support such interactions. Shin (2010), however, illustrates how one caregiver actively encouraged joint play by drawing one infant’s attention to her preferred peer and encour-aging shared engagement. She also explains, though, that the caregiver’s misreading of infants’ intentions plus a rigid application of classroom rules regarding the use of materials hindered peer interactions. Her case-study findings highlight the significance of caregivers’ pedagogical deci-sion-making in regard to fostering peer relationships and thus warrant further investigations of the thinking that underlies the acknowledgement and promotion of peer social capabilities in infant programmes.

This study therefore addressed the following two research questions:

1. What understandings do early childhood educators express about infant social capabilities and peer relationships?

2. How do early childhood educators state that they provide for and facilitate infant social competence and peer relationships?

Method

This research adopted a multiple interpretive case-study design chosen because of its potential to increase knowledge by offering rich description or explanation (Andrade, 2009; Yin, 2009). By studying small numbers of participants, such case studies provide detailed information about the ways that individuals ‘understand, account for, take action and otherwise manage their day-to-day situations’ (Miles and Huberman, 1994: 7). Interviews are regarded as a critical component for qualitative case studies (Wengraff, 2001; Yin, 2009) and this design permitted a cross-case analysis which enabled views to be contrasted and compared (Miles and Huberman, 1994).




Participants and recruitment

Three participants were recruited through purposive sampling with two common selection requirements:

1. The participant was the room leader who worked with 0–2-year-old children.2. The participant held a formal tertiary qualification in early childhood, such as a Diploma in

Children’s Services or Bachelor of Teaching/Education.

All participants were female and proficient in English, but varied in their level of qualification and professional experience (see Table 1). Services listed on the University database of practicum sites were telephoned to seek initial interest and information was faxed to interested centres. After a follow-up phone call, the first author visited the centre to meet with the participant, discuss the research method in more detail, obtain written consent and negotiate days and times for the data collection visits.

General procedure and data generation

Each participant was visited once a week over a period of 4 weeks. The visits occurred in the morn-ing of the same day each week for each service and lasted 3 hours. Different data collection proce-dures were employed on different visits. These techniques are summarised in Table 2, and explained in more detail below.

Visit 1 involved a semi-structured interview to develop an initial account of each participant’s views about peer social capabilities and relationships. This interview involved 10 questions based on current peer relationship literature that were designed to elicit understandings of and provisions for infants’ peer relationships (see Appendix 1). Probe questions, such as ‘Can you tell me more about that?’ and ‘So how were they interacting?’ were flexibly used to further clarify or obtain additional information from participants’ responses (Johnson and Christensen, 2008).

During visits 1 to 3, video data of approximately 90 minutes were collected of the social behav-iours and peer interactions of particular infants as they engaged in play and routine activities. These infants were identified by the participants in the semi-structured interview as having formed peer relationships, and the footage captured their interactions with both peers and staff in the room. These infants had attended the centre for 10 months, and during this time were with the same group of peers and the same educators. Extracts from the video-recording were used in visits 2 to 4 during which participants were asked to view and comment on selected excerpts of these infants’ social interactions and behaviours taken on the previous visit. This video-stimulus technique has been used in previous studies on peer relationships as it provides the opportunity for educators to com-ment on what they see occurring within a personally relevant framework (Albers et al., 2007; Brownwell et al., 2006; Degotardi and Davis, 2008; Deynoot-Schaub and Risken-Walraven, 2008; Licht et al., 2008; Williams et al., 2007). Each participant was shown several 3-minute edited video

Table 1. Pseudonyms, qualifications and professional experience of the three participants.

Name Qualification Institution Experience

Jane Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood) University 8 yearsKaren Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood) University 18 yearsLisa Diploma in Children’s Services TAFE college 3 years




excerpts chosen to demonstrate different ways that captured the children’s social behaviours and interactions. Participants were asked to provide interpretations of what they saw occurring as follows:

I am going to show you some video footage that I took of … As I show it to you, I would like you to tell me about what you can see happening with these children’s peer relationships. I would also like to know why you believe this was occurring. If you want me to stop the video at any stage, please let me know. I am going to audio record your responses. Are you ready to begin?

Over the course of 3 weeks, a total number of 37 video excerpts were shown: Jane, 11; Lisa, 13; and Karen, 13. Each interview was digitally audio-recorded to enable full transcription for analysis and participants were informed that they could stop the recording at any stage of the interview.

Ethical considerations

All research in children’s contexts require a careful consideration of ethical issues associated with consent and intrusion (Degotardi, 2008). In this project, participation of children and staff was voluntary. Written consent to video-record was obtained from the parents of all the children attend-ing the service on the nominated day and all the educators working in the room, and it was explained that consent could be withdrawn without the need to provide a reason. It was acknowledged that the educator may feel uncomfortable by the videoing and express a desire not to be recorded. If the educator or infant became in any way distressed or upset, filming would be stopped immediately and would only resume with permission from the educator. Before any recording occurred, the educators were asked for suggestions about where to place the camera depending on the schedules, routines and planned activities, to ensure that the first author was aware of the arrangements for that time frame.

All the video footage and audio recordings were stored on a password-protected computer and in locked filing cabinets at the university. All identifiable material was removed and files were re-labelled using an identification code.

Data analysis

The data analysis was informed by processes of thematic analysis – a foundational analytical method designed to identify, represent and report thematic patterns that occur within the data (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Data were transcribed, read and initial codes were then generated that reflected recognition of social capabilities or the presence or absence of interpersonal relation-ships. Examples included references to looking at peers, smiling, verbal and non-verbal communi-cation, playing together with same peer and references to specific teaching strategies and techniques. The inductive codes that emerged from the participant’s responses to the semi-structured interview questions were then compared with responses to the video-stimulus interview. This was done to

Table 2. Summary of data generation techniques employed during the different visits.

Visit 1 Visit 2 Visit 3 Visit 4

Initial interview Collection of video-recorded data of infant social interactions Video-stimulus interviews using extracts of video recordings




strengthen and add depth to the emerging patterns by providing examples of similar and diverse perspectives within each code. The codes were further informed by revisiting literature on early peer relationships and examining these statements with reference to the infants’ social and com-municative capabilities (Brownwell and Brown, 1992; Eckerman et al., 1979; Liszkowski, 2005; Vandell and Wilson, 1987), socially coordinated behaviours (Brownwell et al., 2006; Lokken, 2009) and shared understandings (Deynoot-Schaub and Risken-Walraven, 2006; Williams et al., 2007).

Once the initial coding was complete, both authors scrutinised the codes to decide how they might form main themes and sub-themes (Braun and Clarke, 2006). The process of constant com-parative reviewing of the data and further reading of peer relationship literature permitted a clearer delineation of the thematic content and lead to the refining and naming of each category (Strauss and Corbin, 1998).

Findings and discussion

Educators’ understandings of children’s social engagement with peers

The first aim of this study was to determine the educators’ understandings about infant social capacities and peer relationships. Three main themes emerged.

The significance of watching peers. The first theme involved recognition that the act of watching peers was regarded as a necessary foundation for relationship formation. At the simplest level, watching was interpreted as an interest, on the part of the infant, in other children. As Lisa (L2:6:13) stated, ‘They watch each other a lot and what they’re doing’, similar to the sentiment expressed by Jane (J2:1:15) who described how ‘Daniel then sat down on my lap and was watching what Nigel was doing’.

The recognition by the educators reflects the view that watching should be regarded as a corner-stone of infants’ developing understanding of, and relationships with, others (Degotardi, 2011; Eckerman et al., 1979; Vandell and Mueller, 1980; Wang and Baillargeon, 2006). Purposeful watching is more than simple interest or curiosity; it is the means whereby infants learn about their social world from direct observation of other people (Wittmer, 2008). In this study, the educators repeatedly noted the presence of the infants and toddlers watching their peers in order to learn about the activities of others. For example, Lisa (L2:1:22) described Anna thus:

She watches the other children a lot to learn how to do things and what is appropriate and how to go about carrying out tasks.

Watching was therefore regarded as a means to become part of shared activity. As Jane (J4:2:9) commented,

We have Nigel and Bada and Kim at the table and they’ve got these little magnetic cars and they’re pushing them back and forward on the table. Earlier in the day, Adam and Charlie had been doing this with the smaller trucks at the round table and making lots of noises with the cars listening to the sounds the wheels made on the table so this experience possibly happened as a result of these guys seeing what they had done earlier in the morning and then when we come inside seeing that those cars were available to them and getting in and trying to experience that for themselves.

Jane (J4:3:35) discussed the importance of watching as a means of gaining entry into group play through imitation, claiming that the infants in her group ‘often watch each other throughout the




experience and will imitate what someone else’s doing’. Here Jane recognises that imitation involves more than just reproducing another person’s movements or expressions (Meltzoff and Moore, 1994), explaining that imitative learning reflected purposeful attempts to seek peer atten-tion and share a social connection with those peers:

At one point in the lunch on this day, Robert was making lots of sounds and Scott who was sitting at one of the tables was watching what he was doing and was echoing back little sounds at him so that they were sort of having their own little mini conversation between themselves so Robert felt a bit more part of the group during that time. (J4:4:27)

Watching and imitation thus was understood as allowing the infants and toddlers to create shared understandings which are crucial to building relationships with peers. These coordinated interac-tions comprise a sense of intersubjectivity, or shared understandings (Trevarthen and Aitken, 2001). As Selby and Bradley (2003) argue, infants gain a sense of ‘us’ from watching one another. Karen (K3:1:17) reflected this view when she said that

there is no language-like verbal language coming across but they don’t need that they just looking at each other they do all these little things like banging the table and ah when Adam was right next to the door waiting for um Tim he just the eye contact was like ‘Come on let’s go inside no one is looking’.

This non-verbal communication was seen by Lisa (L2:6:25) as evidence that peers were getting to know one another, which ultimately contributed to reciprocal play:

It’s interesting to watch them ’cause they have this understanding of what they’re going to do with absolutely no words at all.

The significance of toys. While some infant play literature has indicated that the presence of toys and other objects can actually decrease infants’ social interactions with significant others (Jacobson, 1981; Vandell and Mueller, 1980), the educators expressed the view that a shared interest in objects and play materials often brought children together. Lisa (L2:6:19) stated that ‘They’re very happy to be in the same play space and playing with the same toys-with cars, blocks’ and Jane (J1:1:25) recognised that object-mediated social connections begin in the infants’ first year of life:

We have a few at the moment who are sort of between about 4 and 8 months and they’ve shown a lot of interest in mirror play … so developing their relationships while watching what another peer next to them at the mirror is doing as well.

Lisa (L2:6:22) recognised the significance of object play as a means to promote parallel play expe-riences for these young children (Parten, 1932):

Look Fred’s come back with the car. It’s almost so he can imitate and play with Hayley – not necessarily there’s no communication of I’ve got a car, you need a car, but he’s watched her drive the cars along so he’s gone to get a car so he can participate in the same play.

The significance of play. Frequent reference to play suggested that these educators acknowledged the importance of this activity context for the development of social interactions and relationships. Lisa (L1:2:27) stated that ‘I’m a strong believer in play-based curriculum and I think that’s the interactions that you get from that’. More specifically, Jane (J1:3:9) argued that




They learn how to not only play with each other but how they start to develop more of a social understanding of what’s ok and what’s not ok through playing and developing their peer relationships.

These educators interview responses indicated an awareness of these young children’s desire to enter group play, as Karen (K2:2:22) commented,

They like to be with each other and even though there is (sic) no words coming out from none of them there’s still all this eye contact, all this body language that is helping to sort of have a relationship for this particular experience.

Children were identified as leaders, who drew other children into social play:

Adam and Charlie sort of seem to be the leaders of the group. Usually they’ll start something and Nigel, Shannon and Kate who are also a little bit older will watch what’s happening and then will sometimes join in on the play. (Jane, J2:3:13)

While such comments emphasised the infants’ social strengths, other comments attributed limita-tions to their ability to successfully enter group play:

Helen wants to be part of that but is still having issues trying to initiate the play with Dora and knowing how to interact and how to begin the play that is in a socially appropriate way. (Lisa, L4:2:7)

Such comments indicated that the educators recognised that group entry skills are important aspects of peer relationships (Honig and Thompson, 1994; Howes and Matheson, 1992). They also suggest a view that infants and toddlers both receive and require support and assistance from a more com-petent peer or adult to enable successful entry to the play.

Educators’ provisioning for children’s developing social competence and peer relationships

The second aim of this study was to determine educator’s reported provisions for and facilitation of infant social interactions and peer relationships. Three themes emerged.

The importance of educator involvement in extending social play. There was clear evidence that the early childhood educators viewed the importance of their role in extending the children’s interac-tions and social play. In ways similar to those reported by Shin (2010), Jane (J3:3:29) described how becoming involved in children’s social play helped her to ‘extend it and continue it on for the children’. Lisa (L2:6:1) expressed the benefit of this active role as follows:

With the teacher being involved in the play and questioning and extending their play and their language it made it a lot more social and a lot more interactive with the children all cooking together.

While the educators recognised and acknowledged infants’ attempts to communicate their needs and wants through seeking adult assistance, there often seemed to be conditions attached to that involvement:

Hayley’s very nicely and politely asking for the paints … She gets praise for sharing which I think is important because she needs that constant reassurance that that’s the right thing to do. (Karen, K3:2:17)




Other infant attempts to communicate were sometimes observed in a negative way, without further reflection or consideration of children’s language abilities. In an extreme case, Karen (K2:3:11) commented on how Tahlia would scream to communicate with educators, noting,

Tahlia’s using one of her weapons – she’s sort of trying to get the Carers’ attention for help.

These comments suggest that negative intentions could sometimes be attributed to infants’ use of social capabilities (Feldman and Reznick, 1996), and that educators felt that it was important for the infant to use adult-defined, socially appropriate ways to both seek and receive attention and assistance from the educators.

A further role discussed by the educators was that of mediating disputes between the children. When referring to themselves and their colleagues, they described how their involvement in chil-dren’s play was largely prompted by a perceived need to resolve a conflict:

The only time staff really became involved in that play was if there was an altercation which happened with Karen and Nigel and again with Nigel and Zoran but during the majority of that experience staff were more in an observational role not really getting involved in the children’s play. (Jane, J3:4:22)

Such responses seem to imply a view that children’s social capabilities develop through experience with peers but with minimal adult intervention as they recognised them as present without the educators planning to promote peer social interactions.

Intentional versus spontaneous teaching

Perhaps as a reflection of this passive teaching role, the mention of any formal planning for social interactions and relationships was generally absent from the interviews. Only Jane (J3:4:34) spoke directly about setting up experiences to link with current group objectives for children’s social skills, again, with the focus on developing morally based social understandings:

The objective I have for the children at the moment is to work on their sharing and turn-taking skills, so we’ve been doing more things as a larger group at the moment to try and get the children to acknowledge each other a bit more and respect each other’s space and what each other’s doing and start to share some of the materials more with each other.

More often, the educators’ comments suggest that they focussed heavily on spontaneous experiences:

We do a lot of spontaneous activities, I mean like things just come out of the blue and as long as the kids enjoy it then we just go and do it. (Karen, K4: 2:23)

Provisioning for ‘enough’

One aspect of planning that did attract frequent mention related to the provisioning of the envi-ronment with materials. Possibly reflecting the previously discussed views about conflict resolu-tion and socially acceptable behaviour, the educators often talked about how they needed to provide ‘enough’ toys and materials so that the infants did not argue or fight. Jane (J1:3:38), for example stated, ‘I always try to make sure that there’s enough of everything out to try and avoid conflict situations arising but they often do anyway’ and Lisa (L4:1:9) said, ‘At this point in time




there are five children in the room so we need to get five different things to push around to stop the conflicts’.

Such responses suggest that the educators were primarily concerned about avoiding situations that required children to be competing in the same space and therefore provided more toys and objects in their play to reduce children’s potential frustration. It was interesting to note that while so many of their other responses acknowledged the presence of positive social interactions, the pedagogical comments focussed on avoiding negative social situations. While conflicts and other social interactions have been argued to provide a rich context for the development of social under-standing, extending opportunities to infants to develop an awareness of the needs and perspectives of others (Dunn, 1988), provisioning for ‘enough’ may keep children apart and consequently limit social opportunities for the children. These reported practices reflect a more individual, solitary notion of the child and his or her learning rather than providing a means to support children through social experiences which help to produce peer relationships.

Conclusion and implications for practice

Accordingly, the first aim of this study was to explore the understandings that early childhood educators held about infant social capabilities and peer relationships. The findings suggest that these three early childhood educators recognised a comprehensive range of infant abilities to engage in social interactions with peers and form peer relationships with others who attended on the same days over a period of time. Their reported understandings reflected an informed under-standing of the comprehensive array of infant social capabilities that is presented in contemporary infant peer literature.

The second aim of the study addressed how early childhood educators stated that they provided for and facilitated infant social competence and peer relationships. Consistent with contemporary notions of early childhood curriculum, the educators held strong views of the importance of play and spontaneous experiences (Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, 2009). Their responses, however, lacked any strong references to intentional teaching and their most frequently reported strategies may keep children apart rather than bring them together. From their reported practice, it would appear that some aspects of these educators’ pedagogical under-standings reflect a deficit view of children, which concentrates on perceived limitations rather than on the relationship-forming potential play of this age group.

These findings have important implications for educators working with infants. Planning and programming for infants’ social play leads to opportunities for more engagement with peers and for the development of further social and emotional understandings. In Australia, the importance of planned, intentional teaching is reflected in the Early Years Learning Framework, which spe-cifically acknowledges the need for intentional teaching that is ‘purposeful and thoughtful’ (Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, 2009: 7). Intentional teaching extends to the deliberate use of strategies such as ‘modelling and demonstrating, open question-ing, speculating, explaining, engaging in shared thinking and problem solving to extend chil-dren’s thinking and learning’ (Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, 2009: 15; see also Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2008). The intentional provisioning of the learning environment should consider the positioning of equipment, children and staff to encourage social interactions between children of mixed abilities in small groups. The absence of references to the planned physical environments and the frequent mention of passive, rather than intentional teach-ing suggests a need for early childhood educators to think more deeply and creatively about meet-ing the infant’s social needs by taking a more proactive and strength-based approach to fostering peer relationships.




An important role of the early childhood educator is to guide infants as they develop ways of initiating and maintaining interactions with others (Wittmer, 2008). This importance was reflected in the way that these educators frequently made reference to the infants needing sup-port, especially after an altercation with another peer had ensued. As emerging behavioural pat-terns like aggression and withdrawal have been shown to increase the risk for peer rejection (Brownwell et al., 2006), it is of critical importance that early childhood educators recognise and plan to foster positive social capabilities rather than focussing on interventions after negative behaviour has been exhibited. Instead, educators in this study infrequently referred to their roles within the play and appeared to only intervene in children’s play when it became unsafe and conflict was occurring. This implies that there may be a need for more pre-service and continu-ing education through in-service programmes to support educators in their practice. Given the widespread acknowledgement of relationships in early childhood education, this is an important area that requires more attention.

Implications for future research

While this research contributes to the small body of research about infant peer relationships in early childhood settings, there are several limitations in this research which need to be acknowl-edged. First, the practices described in this article were reported by the educators themselves, so they may not accurately reflect their actual practice in the early childhood classroom. As the field of infant–toddler research remains under-represented in the early childhood field (Berthelsen, 2010), further research is needed to provide much needed information about how educators foster infant peer competence within their classroom.

Second, the inclusion of only three centres from relatively high socio-economic suburbs in Sydney, Australia, limits the extent to which these findings can be generalised to both national and international contexts. The participants represented a small homogenous sample and also readily provided consent, which may suggest that they were confident in their understandings and prac-tices. These aspects suggest that the participants are unlikely to be representative of other early childhood educators. An increasing focus on the significance of infant–toddler settings in many countries has highlighted many challenges that are faced by infant educators in terms of profes-sional status, qualifications and curriculum quality (e.g. Elfer, 2012; Powell and Goouch, 2012; Rockel, 2009). Future research is therefore needed to explore educator understandings and observed practices across diverse contexts and ways in which such professional issues may impact upon the complexity of teaching practices.

Despite these limitations, the study contributes to current knowledge of and deeper awareness of educator’s understandings and reported practices in relation to children’s early peer relation-ships. Although the educators strongly acknowledged infant social capabilities and peer relation-ships, their reported teaching practices did not always reflect the richness of their views. While it is regularly argued that caregivers’ beliefs underpin their practice (Brownlee and Berthelsen, 2006; Wilcox-Herzog, 2002), this research suggests that there can be inconsistencies between the early childhood educators’ beliefs and their actual practice. The findings imply that some qualified edu-cators who hold contemporary understandings of the child’s capabilities may still rely on more implicit and pervasive beliefs about infants when it comes to their actual practice in the classroom or that they may face contextual constraints (Olsen and Bruner, 1996; Spodek, 1988). This study highlights the importance of researching both early childhood educator views alongside their prac-tices to determine the circumstances when understandings and practices are congruent and those when they are not.




Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

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Appendix 1

Interview questions

1. I am interested in finding out about children’s peer interactions and relationships. Could you please give me an example of what you see as a peer interaction with children under 2 years of age?

2. Can you explain what you see as a peer relationship? 3. If a difference is noted in the explanations of these terms (peer interaction and peer relation-

ship), I will comment on this … Yes, that’s right, there is a difference, as relationships endure over time as children become more familiar with each other and relationships are more than social awareness and social interactions. If not, I will ask why they don’t believe this.

4. Do you think children in your room are capable of forming relationships with their peers? If so can you give me an example of a peer relationship between children in your room. If not, why?




5. At what age do you think children begin to form peer relationships? 6. What do you think that peer relationships mean to the children? 7. Please tell me about what you think children discover through interactions with other peers

and teachers. 8. What do you see as your role in supporting young children’s peer relationships? 9. Please tell me about how you plan the environment for the infants in your room.10. Is there anything else you might like to talk about in relation to the questions I have asked

you regarding peer relationships?



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Understanding infants: characteristics of early childhood practitioners' interpretations of infants and their behaviours