Thinking time: Producing time and toddler’s time to think in ECEC

Abstract

Toddlers contribute to early childhood education and care (ECEC) environments in unique ways in contrast to older children and adults. In this article, we explore early childhood teachers’ stories about toddlers, thinking, and time. We follow a moment with a toddler’s story told with his fingers, and discuss it through teachers’ stories. Our focus is on what ideas about toddlers, time, and thinking these stories produce, and how these ideas affect toddler’s possibilities to contribute to daily life in ECEC. We use Barad’s concepts spacetimematter and temporal diffraction; and Haraway’s concept Capitalocene and storying, to explore toddlers thinking and time in ECEC. We argue that the dominant concept of time in the Capitalocene can produce thoughtlessness, connected to children and children’s opportunities to participate. Through a process of “storying,” we hope to generate more and maybe different knowledge about toddlers, thinking, and time.

Young children as citizens: Learning from practice in the early childhood setting

“…This respects the competence and capability of young children to make choices and express their views, which are listened, respected and acted on by adults. Here the actions of practitioners align with Moxnes and Aslanian's (2022) findings that adult's engagement with toddler's thinking time opens up new possibilities for relationships in the early childhood setting but also disrupts assumptions about how children might choose to organise their time.…”

“…By developing an 'unhurried presence'(p. 33) in the early childhood setting adults were able to realise caring values and in turn provide opportunities for children to exercise citizenship. Similarly, Moxnes and Aslanian's (2022) study in Kindergartens in Norway, considered how young children's ability to enact agency is affected by their teachers' perceptions of toddler's thinking. They found that 'toddler's thinking inspired moments of diffraction and deep thinking '(p. 285) in the Kindergarten that disrupted habitual beliefs in early childhood practice about time, its link to efficiency and assumptions of linear thinking.…”

“…Pedagogy should take into account General Comment Number 7 (UNComRC, 2005), which provides guidance on implementing child rights in early childhood. Recent research by Puroila et al (2018), Moxnes and Aslanian (2022) and Clarke (2023) provides new possibilities for pedagogy within early childhood. For example, Moxnes and Aslanian (2022) emphasise the important task for adults to engage with toddlers' thinking time and the opportunities this provides to challenge assumptions about how adults work together with very young children.…”