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Studying relationships in infant/toddler play, using visual narrative methodology to identify transitory moments, supports our current research on babies and toddlers. We use Vygotsky's theorisation of play to understand children's affective and intellectual aspirations in play. The theoretical discussion, using cultural-historical concepts, argues for identification of transitory moments as turning points for learning. Through examining transitory moments in screen-capture snapshots from video, researchers illustrate the actual worlds of infant/toddler play where personal and collective meaning, and affect and resolution, are created and located. Our study of infant/toddler relationships in play reveals several transitory moments reflecting imaginative thought in action: agentic imagination. A case example from Long Day Care brings visual narrative together with a dialogue commentary to provide meaning of the playful circumstances in which babies' and toddlers' "affective incentives" (Vygotsky, this issue, p. 9) are realised and resolved in imaginary situations. This paper addresses a gap existing in pedagogical awareness of what transitory moments in play can mean for infant/toddler learning and development in early childhood education.

The focus of this study is to investigate early childhood students' discourses of play-based curriculum. In this paper we focus on how students made implicit and explicit links to the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF). Twenty-six early childhood students had volunteered their de-identified play and pedagogy assignments. We analysed their assignments and selected quotes that focused on their role as educators and related to the VEYLDF. We theorized the concept of conceptual reciprocity as students' understanding of their role in being sensitive and reciprocal with children and families. Our findings indicated that early childhood pre-service students shared a common language as they transitioned to professional practice. This concept links strongly to students and VEYLDF perspectives of pedagogical educators being effective and affectively relating to children. The study shows how pre-service students understand discourses that are in line with the VEYLDF and the National Quality (NQ) reform agenda where professionals must know how to communicate and interact with other cultures and show responsive engagement with children, families and wider society.

Evidence was gathered from an Australian long day care project 'Educators of babies and toddlers; developing a culture of critical reflection'. A cultural-historical theoretical approach was sensitively interwoven with visual methodology. The innovative combination of visual methodology and cultural-historical theory involved the creation of three Collaborative Forums. The Collaborative Forums aimed for participants to collectively unravel their pedagogical knowledge. The visual methodology involved research tools such as video observations, images, collaborative drawings and group interview transcripts. The research tools of mapping promises and collaborative drawing provided opportunity to imagine and map educators' pedagogical practices. The act of collaborative drawing was an improvised and imagined activity that strengthened understanding of the multiplicity of educators' promises. The collaborative drawing elicited discussion that created an expansive collective agenda. Collaborative drawing offered an innovative research tool with ongoing capacity to generate expertise for imagining ideal practices for infant-toddler research. The findings suggest that collaborative drawing with educators is a creative and imaginative tool for expanding the infant-toddler research agenda.

This article examines how an educator develops a drama pedagogy through the course of her dramatic interactions with three toddlers. A cultural-historical approach was used to explore the concepts of dramatic interactions and dimensions of drama pedagogy. Visual research methodology involved video observations and a reflective interview with the educator. A case example uses an everyday moment that took place in an Australian childcare centre. This is discussed to show how drama pedagogy unfolds to support toddlers' learning and development. The case example occurs in a special space known as the neighbourhood space. A drama pedagogy has been conceptualised through three dimensions: a space that has dramatic qualities, interactions and narratives. These foster an inquiry stance in toddlers. It is argued that drama pedagogy is an intentional pedagogical approach to engage toddlers in the neighbourhood space. This article gives focus to an educator who embraces a dramatic conversation style we call dialogue commentary.

The study's purpose was to discover student understanding of play-based curriculum. Traditionally, play has been misunderstood in pedagogical terms, and was widely interpreted in our study. The Early Years Learning Framework suggests educator guidance in sustaining play is essential for learning and development. As teacher educators, we wanted to reflect on Play and Pedagogy (A new fourth year unit) that expected students to create a conceptual play model for use in practice. Twenty-six students volunteered de-identified assignments. From these, common conceptual elements were identified. We selected quotes from student's work to support identified concepts and entered a methodology of dialogue commentary to enrich analysis. Students focused discussion on adult's pedagogical approach linking play to pedagogy through varied interpretations of the concept of sustained shared thinking. We found student conceptualisations of play-based curriculum addressed complexities of their role as beginning early childhood educators in new ways. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

Early childhood research has long established that drawing is a central, and important activity for young children. Less common are investigations into the drawing activity of adults involved in early childhood. A team of adult early childhood researchers, with differing exposures and familiarities with drawing, experimented with intergenerational collaborative drawing with colleagues, students, family members and others, to explore the effectiveness of drawing as a research process and as an arts-based methodology. This testing prompted critical thinking into how drawing might facilitate research that involves young children, to operate in more communicable ways, and how research-focused drawings might occur in reference to a research project.

This article reports on a self-study of teacher educators involved in a preservice teacher unit on literacy. In this study the teacher educators provided the preservice teachers with digital oral feedback about their final unit of work. Rather than marking written work as individual lecturers, we collaboratively read each assignment and recorded a sound file of our conversation. We constructed our collaborative marking of each assignment as a "cultural gift" to our own professional learning. We found that we were providing more in-depth feedback on the assessment criteria for each assignment than we would have with written feedback prepared individually. We also uncovered tensions in relation to our preferred modalities associated with the digital marking.

How can we better understand childhood learning in its historical development? How do institutions (including family) influence and shape what is possible in early childhood? As part of a wider study in an Australian community pre-school, this paper focuses on how cultural-historical methodology can be used to understand institutional influences over time. Returning to an original workplace pre-school site as a field researcher challenged thinking about apparently invisible influences of historical development. Framing this study are Hedegaard's learning and development through participation in institutional practices model, and Vyqotsky's cultural-historical theory. This paper uses case study data from one family for building a methodological dialectic in order to theorize practices and thereby illustrate the concept of historical childhood development. (Contains 1 figure and 3 tables.)

This article is based on the findings of a study which examined the literacy and numeracy pathways for a group of 65 children in the year prior to school entry in Victoria, Australia. The article will discuss key features of the home and community pathways for literacy and numeracy development and learning which were identified in the study. In discussing these findings, the contrastive features between the informal and formal early childhood education pathways are highlighted. As a result of our analysis, the notion of crossing boundaries is advocated as a process for making visible and negotiating between the different literacy and numeracy practices and events in the learning communities of home and early childhood institutions.

Evidence was gathered from an Australian long day care project 'Educators of babies and toddlers; developing a culture of critical reflection'. A cultural-historical theoretical approach was sensitively interwoven with visual methodology. The innovative combination of visual methodology and cultural-historical theory involved the creation of three Collaborative Forums. The Collaborative Forums aimed for participants to collectively unravel their pedagogical knowledge. The visual methodology involved research tools such as video observations, images, collaborative drawings and group interview transcripts. The research tools of mapping promises and collaborative drawing provided opportunity to imagine and map educators' pedagogical practices. The act of collaborative drawing was an improvised and imagined activity that strengthened understanding of the multiplicity of educators' promises. The collaborative drawing elicited discussion that created an expansive collective agenda. Collaborative drawing offered an innovative research tool with ongoing capacity to generate expertise for imagining ideal practices for infant-toddler research. The findings suggest that collaborative drawing with educators is a creative and imaginative tool for expanding the infant-toddler research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is backgrounded by researchers using of visual methodology for naturalistic research to document young children's learning. Recent interest in the speed and immediacy of mobile phone video capture leads to new opportunities in educational research. This small study aims to find if mobile phone video is an appropriate research tool for the capture of fleeting moments of learning, in toddler initiated play. Inspired by participation in an ethically approved pilot project: 'Studying Babies and Toddlers: Cultural Worlds and Transitory Relationships', the study uses a cultural-historical Theoretical approach to analyse mobile phone video data of one toddler's pontaneous play activity. It is argued that greater attention be paid by educators to transitory moments of toddler play in relation to their pedagogical significance. A fortuitous moment of toddler initiated symbolic play activity is video captured on mobile phone and used for discussion. Drawing on Vygotsky's concepts of the social genesis of higher mental functions and perezhivanie, the toddler's initiated symbolic play activity is analysed. Analysis is supported by visual methodology, where video image data are linked with transcript to create a narrative of the moment of toddler's initated play. Data are found to exemplify the ontogenesis of higher mental functions being culturally mediated and supported in the toddler's symbolic play activity. Futhermore, findings show how tactile and visual qualities of a cultural object attract a toddler's sensory responses, which in turn, activate the creative moment of symbolic play. The toddler's momentary playful action captured on mobile phone video, sheds light on how symbolic activity reflects thinking processes to offer insight into how toddler (Luci) can, in a passing moment, imbue a cultural object with new symbolic meaning. Findings imply that using mobile phone video for later review, makes it possible for educators to pay more immediate attention to toddler's activity in frequently overlooked transitory moments of play. Potentially, the ubiquitous mobile phone can help educators discover the pedagogical significance of a toddler's smallest moment of symbolic activity, and in practice, offer ethical and caring extension to support their learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EVIDENCE FROM A LARGER project Studying babies and toddlers: Cultural worlds and transitory relationships in Australian long day care settings is gathered. We argue that toddlers co-construct collective knowledge through expressive play activities with peers and educators. We analyse how educators enter play, taking the toddlers' perspective to develop collective knowledge. We investigate how toddlers creatively produce knowledge through educators' awareness of their play spaces, aiming to find the different ways they affectively participate in processes of producing knowledge. Vygotsky's cultural-historical concepts of the social situation of development and play form the research foundation. Using visual narrative methodology and reflective dialogue to explore toddlers' everyday play activity, one play episode of an educator entering shared collective play with toddlers is analysed. We find educators' involvement and peer interaction significant for learning and social production of collective knowledge in toddlers' play spaces. Responding to toddlers' active expressions by entering play develops collective knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]