Infant Educators’ Use of Pedagogical Questioning: Relationships With the Context of Interaction and Educators’ Qualifications

Abstract

Research Findings: This study investigated the prevalence of pedagogical questions posed by 27 early childhood educators as they interacted with infants in each of two different contexts: book-focused interactions and educator-mediated play. The pedagogical questions expressed by educators to infants during ten-minute naturally-occurring interactions were coded as confirm (yes/no), specify (what, who, where, when) or explain (why, how) questions on the basis that these types of questions present infants with different opportunities to use their developing communication skills to provide information to others. We then sought to determine associations between question use, activity context and educators' qualification levels. Results revealed that explain questions were used very rarely, while confirm and specify questions were more frequent, comprising 7.60% and 8.32% respectively of messages that were expressed by educators to the infants in their care. A 2 (activity context) x 2 (qualification level) mixed factorial MANOVA, supplemented with post-hoc qualitative analyses, demonstrated that, in specific activity contexts, degree qualified early childhood teachers used pedagogical questioning in ways which differed from their less-qualified counterparts. Practice or policy: The findings provide much needed data on how educator questioning is used with children under two, how questioning affords context-specific language learning opportunities for infants in ECEC centres, and how educator qualifications may be implicated in these opportunities.

Jesus’ Questions in the Gospel of Matthew: Promoting Critical Thinking Skills

“…Jesus knew the power of questions. Questioning can encourage listeners to share their thoughts with others and thus open up ideas for reflection and negotiation (Degotardi et al, 2018), while listeners can produce deeper meaning rather than just being a passive teaching recipient (Efruan et al, 2020). Pedagogical questioning both effectively transmits knowledge and fosters exploration and further learning (Yu et al, 2018).…”

Infant Educators’ Reported Conceptions of, and Approaches to, Infant Language Development: How do They Relate to Educator Qualification Level?

“…As found in similar studies, educators varied widely in the amount of information they offered in response to each question, with some providing brief responses, while others were much more elaborate (Berthelson and Brownlee 2007;Degotardi et al 2018b). On average, the interviews lasted for 9.32 minutes, with a range from four to 24 minutes.…”

“…There now exists a strong evidence base that the overall quality of early childhood education programs is supported by the presence of specialised early-childhood-qualified educators (Manning, Wong, Fleming, and Garvis 2019). While much of this evidence has focused on programs for preschool-aged children (Whitebrook 2003), evidence is growing to show that qualification level is also an important factor when explaining differences in the quality of infant educators' thinking and practice (Berthelsen and Brownlee 2007;Brownlee and Berthelsen 2006;Burchinal et al 2002;Degotardi 2010;Degotardi, Torr, and Han 2018b). We therefore examine association between educators' qualification level and their conceptions or approaches.…”

“…This study found that bachelor-qualified educators would be more likely than their less qualified counterparts to hold a more sophisticated and infant-centred knowledge base about infant language development. Despite inconsistent findings of relationships between educators' qualification level and the quality of educator-child interactions in infant-toddler and preschool classrooms (Degotardi and Sweller 2012;Early et al 2007;Manlove et al 2008;Manning et al 2019;NICHD 2002;Whitebrook 2003), recent studies have found qualification-related difference in the quality of language learning environments in infant-toddler programs (Degotardi et al 2018b, Degotardi, Torr, andNguyen 2016;Han 2019, Norris 2014). These recent studies and the findings from the current study suggest that the presence of well-qualified infant educators is important in the domain of developing very young children's language.…”

Literature review on early childhood education and care for children under the age of 3

“…Regarding the specific domains of process quality, some of the studies demonstrate that educators' preservice education may be particularly determinant for the language-learning environment provided for infants (King et al, 2016[103]), namely the level of clarity and reasoning involved in educators' talk (Degotardi, Han and Torr, 2018 [104]; Hu et al, 2019 [105]). Similarly, Barros et al (2018[37]) found that having a qualified lead educator was associated with higher quality in the domains of Facilitated Exploration, i.e.…”