Infant embodied requests and teacher-practitioner offers during early childhood education mealtimes

Bateman, Amanda (2024) Infant embodied requests and teacher-practitioner offers during early childhood education mealtimes. Appetite, 200. p. 107539. ISSN 0195-6663

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Abstract

The importance of building healthy relationships with food in children's early years is of paramount importance. Building on prior work exploring the social and linguistic practices in infant eating interaction experiences, this research uses a multimodal conversation analysis approach to explore how mealtime interactions are managed as a co-constructed activity between infants (0–2 years) and early childhood teacher-practitioners. Here we will explore video data recorded during mealtimes in an early childhood setting in Mid-Wales, where infants orient to recruitments for assistance and teachers provide offers of help with food items throughout the data. Analysis demonstrates 1) infant recruitment of help through embodied ‘showing’ an item causing a problem in multimodal ways, initiating joint attention that mobilises an offer from an adult in the shape of ‘do you want me to X’ and 2) adult initiation of an offer of help in the shape of ‘would you like me to X’ that are not prompted by infants ‘showing’ an item. Such practices demonstrate infant social competence in recruiting assistance through multimodal resources, and adult's noticings that help is required and their initiation of provision of assistance. The detailed exploration into the ways in which mealtimes are a collaboratively achieved experience reveals how infants effectively contribute in resourceful ways, and how teacher-practitioner responses frame mealtimes as co-produced activities.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number:	10.1016/j.appet.2024.107539
Dates:	Date Event 3 June 2024 Accepted 4 June 2024 Published Online
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Infant mealtimes, Early childhood education, Teacher-child interactions, Embodied requests, Offers of assistance
Subjects:	CAH22 - education and teaching > CAH22-01 - education and teaching > CAH22-01-01 - education
Divisions:	Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences > College of Education and Social Work
Depositing User:	Gemma Tonks
Date Deposited:	16 Aug 2024 13:16
Last Modified:	16 Aug 2024 13:16
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/15697

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