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Making sensitive pedagogic relationships in the nursery is a deeply human activity evoking joy and satisfaction, but stress and uncertainty too. From an international perspective, strong local reflective spaces are required if early childhood provision is to be culturally and context responsive, counter-balancing globalising pressure to standardise provision. Further, nursery practitioners are entitled to a formal space where their subjective experience of the work, its demands and dilemma, can be expressed and understood. This paper is about 'Work Discussion' (WD) as such a reflective space. Professional reflection is now included in early years policy frameworks internationally for the reasons above. WD, distinctive in including explicit attention to emotion in pedagogy, is one model of a reflective space. This paper arises from a longitudinal evaluation of WD in nursery funded by the Froebel Trust. The methodology of the evaluation and the positive findings of impact for children have already been published. The aim of this paper is to theorise WD, drawing on the work of Wilfried Bion, a psychoanalyst and theorist of thinking in groups. Empirical data if offered to illustrate the explanatory power of Bion's theory including what may be discussed openly and what is avoided in pedagogic reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of practitioners’ emotions in nursery interactions is evident in vivid accounts from widely different socio-cultural contexts. Work Discussion (WD) is a model of professional reflection distinctive in its attention to emotion in work interactions. Psychoanalytic conceptions, particularly the notion of the defended subject, underpin WD. Enabling participants in WD to discuss subjective work experience in an open way is thus subtle and sensitive. Research has not addressed how the impact of different models of professional reflection may be evaluated. Can WD, with its explicit attention to the emotions evoked at work, strengthen practitioners’ engagement with children and families? This paper critically discusses the complex methodological issues in evaluating the impact of WD on nursery practitioners, children and parents in the nursery. The challenge is to combine the intense subjectivity of WD with an evaluation that is rigorous and objective. Later papers will illustrate data analysis and report findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nursery experience is now common for young children and their families. Questions of quality have focussed mainly on safety and early learning. The roles of subtle emotional processes in daily pedagogic interactions have received surprisingly little attention. This paper discusses the Tavistock Observation Method (TOM), a naturalistic method of observation underpinned by psychoanalytic conceptions and in which emotional experience is an integral part of observation narratives. The paper reports on a detailed evaluation of the use of an adapted version of TOM in nurseries in England and the contribution it can make to empirical exploration of emotional processes. A concurrent sister study will report on the use of A-TOM in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The importance of attention to children’s emotions has been emphasised widely in early care and education research and policy. Enabling such attention has been seen as achieved primarily through attachment interactions with nursery staff. However, there is increasing awareness that faciltiating such interactions in a way that is optimal for children depends in part on staff’s critical professional reflection about how these interactions are managed with children, with family members and between staff themselves. Such professional reflection is seen as needing to include attention to the emotional experience of staff as well as children. This paper reports on Work Discussion as a model of professional reflection that is attentive to emotional experience as it is evoked in professional work. Work Discussion and its theoretical underpinning, a psychoanalytic view of organisational ethos and interaction, is introduced and explained. The paper then reports on a Work Discussion group with nine nursery managers, the issues brought for discussion, the managers’ reports of their experience of the group, and the value of Work Discussion in helping them think about and manage interactions in their nurseries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nurseries play a major role in the lives of many families. This paper argues for the value of psychoanalytic methods of observation as a research tool to explore young children’s interactions and emotional experience in nurseries. The paper reviews what has been learned already about early development using such methods. The second part of the paper illustrates observation data gathered using psychoanalytic methods in nursery research, through the observations of an 18-month-old boy. It uses these data to show the potential of the method in accessing what young children communicate about their nursery experience and in exploring current questions of nursery policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite official endorsement of attachment principles in nursery work, these are often not translated into nursery practice. One possible reason for this is that staff training does not sufficiently address the personal implications and anxieties that children's attachments may entail for practitioners. Working from a psychoanalytic perspective on organisational functioning and group learning, this paper describes action research with a group of nursery heads who participated in a professional development programme designed specifically to explore emotional experience in professional work. The positive evaluations of the programme by heads and their staff are described including examples of experiential learning and of increased staff awareness about, and responsiveness to, the emotional experience of children. However, the research also concluded that sustained effectiveness of the model is likely to be dependent on an ongoing culture of attention to the emotional experience of nursery staff within nursery umbrella organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]