TY - JOUR
T1 - Is infant belonging observable? A path through the maze
AU - Selby, Jane M.
AU - Bradley, Benjamin S.
AU - Sumsion, Jennifer
AU - Stapleton, Matthew
AU - Harrison, Linda J.
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - This article evaluates the concept of infant ‘belonging’, central to several national curricula for early childhood education and care. Here, the authors focus on Australia’s Early Years Learning Framework. Four different meanings attach to ‘belonging’ in the Early Years Learning Framework, the primary being sociopolitical. However, ‘a sense of belonging’ is also proposed as something that should be observable and demonstrable in infants and toddlers – such demonstration being held up as one of the keys to quality outcomes in early childhood education and care. The Early Years Learning Framework endows belonging with two contrasting meanings when applied to infants. The first, the authors call ‘marked belonging’, and it refers to the infant’s exclusion from or inclusion in defined groups of others. The second, the authors provisionally call ‘unmarked’ belonging. Differences between these two meanings of infant belonging are explored by describing two contrasting observational vignettes from video recordings of infants in early childhood education and care. The authors conclude that ‘belonging’ is not a helpful way to refer to, or empirically demonstrate, an infant’s mundane comfort or ‘unmarked’ agentive ease in shared early childhood education and care settings. A better way to conceptualise and research this would be through the prism of infants’ proven capacity to participate in groups.
AB - This article evaluates the concept of infant ‘belonging’, central to several national curricula for early childhood education and care. Here, the authors focus on Australia’s Early Years Learning Framework. Four different meanings attach to ‘belonging’ in the Early Years Learning Framework, the primary being sociopolitical. However, ‘a sense of belonging’ is also proposed as something that should be observable and demonstrable in infants and toddlers – such demonstration being held up as one of the keys to quality outcomes in early childhood education and care. The Early Years Learning Framework endows belonging with two contrasting meanings when applied to infants. The first, the authors call ‘marked belonging’, and it refers to the infant’s exclusion from or inclusion in defined groups of others. The second, the authors provisionally call ‘unmarked’ belonging. Differences between these two meanings of infant belonging are explored by describing two contrasting observational vignettes from video recordings of infants in early childhood education and care. The authors conclude that ‘belonging’ is not a helpful way to refer to, or empirically demonstrate, an infant’s mundane comfort or ‘unmarked’ agentive ease in shared early childhood education and care settings. A better way to conceptualise and research this would be through the prism of infants’ proven capacity to participate in groups.
KW - attachment
KW - belonging
KW - groupness
KW - infancy
KW - markedness
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85058078889&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP130100067
U2 - 10.1177/1463949118793330
DO - 10.1177/1463949118793330
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85058078889
SN - 1463-9491
VL - 19
SP - 404
EP - 416
JO - Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood
JF - Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood
IS - 4
ER -