February 13, 2025
Dr Caroline Guard joined the Supporting Early Minds team for a webinar in January 2025 to share her research on the experience of babies in group-based early childhood settings. This refers to childminder and nursery settings and how babies are able to have agency of voice in environments outside of the family home.
This notion of ‘agency of voice’ might sound surprising when speaking about children at so young an age but through the webinar, Dr Guard was able to explain the ways in which babies’ voices can still be put at the centre of the care they receive outside of the home. The UN Convention of the Rights of the Child state that all children are entitled to express themselves and have their voices heard. They are also entitled to rich, loving relationships and access to play as well as early childhood programmes which are developmentally appropriate.
Dr Guard explains that early childcare settings offer care for babies from three months old and there has been a lack of research about the experiences of very young babies in these settings. She emphasises that this research does not come from a place of accusation around early years practices which she notes has a dedicated and passionately committed workforce but rather than from a desire to understand where babies and children are positioned as stakeholders.
A growing body of evidence affirms the significance of early childhood education on a child’s life. It can offer opportunities for effective partnerships between family settings and other agencies. There is also evidence that group-based childcare settings have a real role to play in terms of developing strong relationships between babies and other babies, between babies and adults and also allows for a positive learning space for babies to explore the world in a new way.
Dr Caroline Guard explained the context for her research in that the Children’s Rights Alliance for England completed a report in 2022 which highlighted that England was lagging behind other parts of the United Kingdom in taking forward children’s rights obligations. She also argued that babies’ rights were particularly ignored. She also cited Peter Ross’ concerns that the over-regulation of early childhood services and curriculums has reduced the democratic potential for very young children.
She explained that there is a gap between what the research is showing and what is presenting in the workforce knowledge within early childhood education settings. She stated that this can be due to the quality of qualifications that people are able to access and also that professional development opportunities has been stagnating for some settings and is limited in some areas. This can mean fewer opportunities for professionals to engage in spaces for reflection on their work with the children.
Positively, there is now government investment in nursery places for children now from nine months old. However, conversely, Dr Guard pondered who that was for and whether the baby’s voice was being centralised in the new initiatives.
Dr Guard stated that voice is positioned as agency but babies are only really empowered to use that voice through the responses that they receive from others so voice and agency and very closely intertwined. Simply having a voice does not automatically give you agency. Voices need to be seen and valued and appreciated and acted upon by those who love and care for children.
The focus of Dr Guard’s research has been on hearing babies’ voices within patterns of baby-educator interactions in nursery provision. This formed the focus of her PhD project funded by the Froebel Trust between 2018 and 2022. She was motivated by her own concerns from having worked in the sector around this marginalisation and the potential invisibility of the babies’ own contributions.
The project had two field sites, with six months in each setting. She had six focus babies along with parents and seven educators. It was ethnographic in terms of its methodology and supported by a visual methodology which meant that Guard brought in the use of videos to capture the everydayness of babies’ interactions in the nursery.
Whilst the study does not aim to represent all babies and all settings, it does have useful findings. It indicates that there is still substantial work to centralise how baby’s voice contributions are really valued not just within the sector but also beyond.
Caroline Guard cited the work of Degotardi and Han which positions babies as knowers whose voices are reliant upon the sensitive perception of educators and how educators attribute meaning to those cues. She also referred to Dr Penny Lawrence’s work which calls for further recognition of how adults’ and children’s voices are integral to each other.
Caroline Guard shared her research questions within the project:
She reflected on the difficulties around how to conceptualise voice, reflecting on whether one can ever capture the true voice of a very young child which is often without words, but instead defined by body movements, gestures and facial expressions. Dr Guard described infancy as a period of time which we should value and recognise that the voice materialises in an active way in childhood so voice in this study is positioned as a thread of connection socially and culturally positioned in relationships. The babies’ voices are intentional and motive-driven. Their voices are organised and still have a distinct narrative.
She met with the babies’ families at the start of the study to learn more about them and how they presented at home. There was a mix of visual and written detailed observations of the babies in the setting and those videos were then used with educators and staff to learn and look at how voices were materialising and manifesting within the everyday places of early childhood settings.
Dr Guard developed a cycle for staff members to start their viewing by looking at things which were lighter or more positive in terms of observing interactions between themselves and the babies. They would then look at the situations where it was more challenging to see voice, or where it might be less visual. It was sometimes challenging for the staff to see these clips and so Dr Guard spent time reflecting on emotions and how to empower the staff further.
One educator expressed to Dr Guard that this was an important dialogic space which they felt moved them out of that rational and sometimes clinical environment dealing with regulations and authoritative voices. While moving through this cycle, some staff members found themselves challenging their assumptions around organisation and prioritising instead spending time with the babies.
While the study does contain some rich and strong moments of connection and sustained interaction – with the emphasis on sustained – Dr Guard highligted that these sustained interactions between adult and baby where both were aligned and responsive to each other only took place when the educators were emotionally and physically present with the children over recurrent periods of time.
The babies’ confidence in their voice, the feeling that they were being seen and valued, was seen to stabilise in these moments. Having these moments of close connection with their special adults was very, very important to them.
However, achieving that kind of care-giving takes time and investment. It takes educator knowledge and support and increased training not only for educators but also managers and business owners. The reality is that for some babies their time on a 1:1 or their time in terms of sustained interaction with educators is very infrequent and often the last priority after organisation and tidying up.
The reality across the six months that Dr Guard was in both of the settings was that the babies spent quite a lot of time on their own without consistent or close interaction from adults. It seemed normalised practice to see educators struggle to balance the needs of three or more babies leading to very fragmented interactions.
Dr Guard emphasised that this was not the fault of the educators themselves who were clearly passionate about their work with the children but clearly the issues were bigger than the individual. The barriers to sustained interaction are organisational, relating to systems and policy and often literally not having enough staff.
One of the findings that also emerged through Guard’s work was that in terms of planning for the baby rooms or in conversations around children’s care and education, the babies were actually seen as no different to the pre-schoolers which raises questions. Babies were frequently left to occupy themselves and receive very little individualised or sustained interactions. Interactions when they happened were often transient and fragmented which means that they sometimes started and then left and were not gone back to or sustained, an important feature for child development.
Interestingly, children who perhaps only attended one or two days a week had less time with educators and were less confident to draw in the adults or to find their voice so relationships took longer to establish. It was possible that they only received one to one care during nappy changes. It also meant that they were frequently missed and quieter within the group of babies.
Dr Guard shared the Five distinct modes of voice which she subtitles a chain of connection and communication. No matter the age or stage of development of the children, each baby observed went through this stage and these phases and dimensions even if it was quick.
Slowing down the videos really helped to identify these moments. For example, the older children who were able to move also engaged external objects as a catalyst. One boy would always pick up other children’s flasks and move them around the room and hand them to an educator.
What was distinct for all children was that if they went through the first four dimensions and there was no response from an adult or very minimal response because they were perhaps occupied with other children or doing other things, it always moved into a cry or sporadic vocalisation. If they were immobile or in bouncy chairs, they would cry for long periods until the adult responded. The older children would display shouting or screaming. These responses were then positioned by the staff as annoying and challenging. These are important findings for us to start thinking and staff education and also when we think around how unique voice can be for babies.
Voice is enriched by spending sustained time with adults. Babies’ social confidence and regulation stabilised in close connection with special adults, for sustained and repeated encounters over time. The voice chain of communication was very inter-connected and there emerged moments of humour and playfulness but only when these adults invested time and were emotionally and physically present.
While this may not appear ground-breaking, it is an important reflection for early years educators that children’s voice becomes clearer and more distinct when the child has a sense of belonging when with these adults. Building familiar patterns of communication was essential for the children in developing a sense of trust and bonding and also that sense of belonging reassuring them that they were absolutely part of this baby room community.
Some of the ways in which the children attempt establish their voice could be frustrating and challenging for the staff members. One child was observed trying to get attention from her key person who was cuddling another child. When she does not receive it, she strikes the other child over the head. This leads to a rupture and then she does receive the one to one attention she wants. Another child was observed to become noisier and less cooperative when the room became louder. During one observation, the room staff could not get him to sit down to eat his snack. He finally did so when a staff member sat with him directly. This was noted as him wanting connection in a stressful environment from a fear of being forgotten.
The reflections from the educators acknowledged that the under-current of stress was a key factor in many baby rooms and settings in England.
“It’s good we have a team, otherwise it’s carnage. Sometimes we have 5 screaming babies and only a few staff. One child might cry when you put them down and then one staff member might be doing nappies and one still clearing up from lunch, it’s really, really hard. But you just have to get through it, and deal with it. That’s just the way it is.“
Moving out of the room to reflect using video footage allowed them some more positive realisations as they noticed how important they were to the children. One of the staff members made the following observation:
“You don’t realise what an impact we are having on them, unit you watch it back … I add value to their day, with cuddles and smiles and I am 100% making a difference to him there.”
The study therefore was vital not just in terms of positioning voice for babies but also for educators too in highlighting how they can see voice as unique and distinct. It takes time to learn about each child and to understand who they are and how they communicate. Time is needed to slow down and stop to be with the babies in these connective interactions.
Dr Guard reported that educators felt that they lacked permission to be with the babies and to just stop and slow down to embrace these sustained interactions. They felt that they were not shown to be busy enough in that respect. A key recommendation in early years pedagogy moving forward would be to emphasise the time needed to slow and down and connect with the babies in these connective interactions that they need.
We know in neuroscience the importance of relationships in terms of brain development. The questions raised in this study are around the systems that are in place and whether they are ready and optimising the opportunity for babies’ voices to demonstrated and whether their participatory rights are centralised. While adult ratios are favourable in comparison to Europe, it still elevates stress and expects educators to share attention across a number of different babies. It leads to both educator and baby feeling ‘not good enough’.
Dr Guard emphasised again the passion and the commitment of the early years staff who care deeply for the children. While new childcare funding is coming in, Dr Guard queries whether it will lead to the right support in place for babies’ voices. Will it ensure the promotion of babies’ rights as citizens? Will it lead to their voices being valued and respected not just in early childhood but also beyond? We need to consider the long-term implications for their developmental outcomes if their needs are overshadowed by political or other cultural forces.
Links:
Guard, C. (2023). ‘It’s the little bits that you have enabled me to see’. Reconceptualising the voices of babies using the video interaction dialogue model with early years educators. Early Years, 43(3), 606–625. https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2023.2190498
Guard, C. (2023) Hearing the voices of babies in baby-educator interactions in Early Childhood Settings. PhD Thesis, University of Roehampton. Available online: Hearing the voices of babies in baby-educator interactions in Early Childhood Settings – University of Roehampton Research Explorer
Thinking about Babies: a Froebelian Approach (Froebel Trust)
You can watch the webinar in full on the Supporting Early Minds website.
Or, to find out more about infant mental health and book a place on an upcoming Supporting Early Minds webinar visit: Webinars – Supporting Early Minds (mhid.org.uk)