Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:41:48.277Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Conversation Analysis for Early Childhood Teachers

from Part I - Talk as Social Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2022

By
Amelia Church ,
Amanda Bateman  and
Susan Danby
Edited by
Amelia Church  and
Amanda Bateman
Amelia Church
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
Amanda Bateman
Affiliation:
Swansea University
Get access

Summary

Research evidence in early childhood education and care underscores the importance of high-quality interactions between children and educators – be they teachers, childcare workers, parents or family members – for improving children’s outcomes. We know that rich conversations can support and extend children’s interests through language and attuned feedback, essential for children’s learning and development. The introductory chapter explained that while the importance of high-quality interactions is widely acknowledged in early childhood education, how this can be achieved deserves more attention. Every chapter in this book details particular types of talk between children, their peers and educators, where all authors use conversation analysis to achieve this goal. The aim of this chapter is to introduce and explain the fundamentals of the methodology of conversation analysis and how conversation analysis is ‘done’ so that readers can engage with the analysis and findings in the chapters that follow. We also draw attention to the usefulness of a conversation analysis approach in ECEC research and practice.

Keywords

conversation analysisearly childhood educationlearning interactionsevidence-based practicetalking with children
Type
Chapter
Information
Talking with Children
A Handbook of Interaction in Early Childhood Education
 , pp. 21 - 37
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Antaki, C. (2011). Six kinds of applied conversation analysis. In Antaki, C. (ed.), Applied Conversation Analysis: Intervention and Change in Institutional Talk (pp. 1–4). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bateman, A. (2013). Responding to children’s answers: questions embedded in the social context of early childhood education. Early Years, 33(2), 275–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bateman, A. (2015). Conversation Analysis and Early Childhood Education: The Co-Production of Knowledge and Relationships. London: Ashgate/Routledge.Google Scholar
Bateman, A. (2017). Hearing children’s voices through a conversation analysis approach. International Journal of Early Years Education, 25(1), 1–16.Google Scholar
Bateman, A. (2021). Teacher responses to toddler crying in the New Zealand outdoor environment. Journal of Pragmatics, 175(2), 81–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bateman, A., and Church, A. (2017a). Children’s Knowledge-in-Interaction: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Singapore: Springer.Google Scholar
Bateman, A., and Church, A. (2017b). Children’s use of objects in an early years playground. European Early Childhood Education Research Association Journal, 25(1), 55–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bateman, A., Hohepa, M., and Bennett, T. (2017). Indigenizing outdoor play in New Zealand: a conversation analysis approach. In Waller, T., Arlemalm-Hagser, E., Sandseter, E. B. H., Lee-Hammond, L., Lekies, K., and Wyver, S. (eds.), SAGE Handbook of Outdoor Play and Learning (pp. 530–542). London: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Björk-Willén, P., and Cromdal, J. (2009). When education seeps into ‘free play’: how preschool children accomplish multilingual education. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(8), 555–577.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burdelski, M. (2020). Teacher compassionate touch in a Japanese preschool. Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.7146/si.v3i1.120248Google Scholar
Burdelski, M., and Howard, K. M. (2020). Language Socialization in Classrooms: Culture, Interaction and Language Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Carr, M., Lee, W., & Jones, C. (2004). An Introduction to Kei Tua o te Pae: He Whakamōhiotanga ki Kei Tua o te Pae (Book 1). Auckland: Learning Media.Google Scholar
Church, A., and Bateman, A. (2019). Methodology and professional development: CARM for early childhood education. Journal of Pragmatics, 143(1), 242–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Church, A., and Bateman, A. (2020). Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM) for teacher training. Teacher Development, 24(5), 652–668. https://doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2020.1820371Google Scholar
Clark, A. (2017). Listening to young children: A guide to understanding and using the mosaic approach, Third Edition. London: National Children’s Bureau.Google Scholar
Clark, A., and Moss, P. (2001). Listening to Young Children: The Mosaic Approach. London: National Children’s Bureau.Google Scholar
Clift, R. (2016). Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Corsaro, W. (2017). The Sociology of Childhood. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Danby, S. (2002). The communicative competence of young children. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 27(3), 25–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danby, S., and Baker, C. (1998). ‘What’s the problem?’ – Restoring social order in the preschool classroom. In Hutchby, I. and Moran-Ellis, J. (eds.), Children and Social Competence: Arenas of Action (pp. 157–186). London: Falmer Press.Google Scholar
Danby, S., and Farrell, A. (2004). Accounting for young children’s competence in educational research: new perspectives on research ethics. Australian Educational Researcher, 31(3), 35–50.Google Scholar
Drew, P. (1997). ‘Open’ class repair initiators in response to sequential sources of troubles in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 28, 69–101.Google Scholar
Drew, P., and Heritage, J. (eds.). (1992). Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Edwards-Groves, C., and Davidson, C. (2017). Becoming a Meaning Maker: Talk and Interaction in the Dialogic Classroom. Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association Australia.Google Scholar
Enfield, N. J. (2017). How We Talk: The Inner Workings of Conversation. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, R., and Housley, W. (eds.). (2015). Advances in Membership Categorisation Analysis. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Gardner, R. (2012). Conversation analysis in the classroom context. In Sidnell, J. and Stivers, T. (eds.), The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (pp. 593–611). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardner, R. (2019). Classroom interaction research: the state of the art. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 52(3), 212–226.Google Scholar
Goodwin, C. (2017). Co-Operative Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hepburn, A., and Bolden, G. B. (2017). Transcribing for Social Research. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Heritage, J. (1984a) Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Heritage, J. (1984b) A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In Atkinson, J. M. and Heritage, J. (eds.), Structures of Social Action (pp. 299–347). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heritage, J., and Clayman, S. (2010). Talk in Action: Interactions, Identities, and Institutions. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoey, E. M., and Kendrick, K. H. (2017). Conversation analysis. In de Groot, A. M. B. and Hagoort, P. (eds.), Research Methods in Psycholinguistics: A Practical Guide (pp. 151–173). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Houen, S. Danby, S., Farrell, A., and Thorpe, K. (2016). ‘I wonder…’ formulations in teacher-child interactions. International Journal of Early Childhood, 48(3), 259–276.Google Scholar
Houen, S., Danby, S., Farrell, A., and Thorpe, K. (2019). Adopting an unknowing stance in teacher–child interactions through ‘I wonder…’ formulations. Classroom Discourse, 10(2), 151–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/19463014.2018.1518251CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, A., and Prout, A. (eds.). (1997). Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. London: Falmer Press.Google Scholar
Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In Lerner, G. H. (ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, (pp. 13–31). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keel, S. (2016). Socialization: Parent-Child Interaction in Everyday Life. New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendrick, K. H., Brown, P., Dingemanse, M., Floyd, S., Gipper, S., Hayano, K., Hoey, E., Hoymann, G., Manrique, E., Rossi, G., and Levinson, S. C. (2020). Sequence organization: a universal infrastructure for social action. Journal of Pragmatics, 168, 119–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kidwell, M. (2012). Interaction among children. In Sidnell, J. and Stivers, T. (eds.), The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, (pp. 511–532). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kitzinger, C. (2012). Repair. In Sidnell, J. and Stivers, T. (eds.), The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, (pp. 229–256). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Lee, Y-A. (2007). Third turn position in teacher talk: contingency and the work of teaching. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(6), 1204–1230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lester, N., and O’Reilly, M. (2019). Applied Conversation Analysis. Thousand Oaks, California, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
McHoul, A. W. (1978). The organization of turns at formal talk in the classroom. Language in Society, 7(2), 183–213.Google Scholar
Mason, J., and Watson, E. (2014). Researching children: research on, with, and by children. In Ben-Arieh, A., Casas, F., Frønes, I., and Korbin, J. (eds.), Handbook of Child Well-Being. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Mehan, H. (1979). Learning Lessons: Social Organisation in the Classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mondada, L. (2018). Multiple temporalities of language and body in interaction: challenges for transcribing multimodality, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 51(1), 85–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mori, J., and Zuengler, J. (2008). Conversation analysis and talk-in-interaction in classrooms. In Martin-Jones, M., de Mejia, A. M., and Hornberger, N. H. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education (2nd ed.,), vol. 3. London: Springer.Google Scholar
Mukherji, P., and Albon, D. (2018). Research Methods in Early Childhood: An Introductory Guide. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Mushin, I., Gardner, R., and Gourlay, C. (2021). Effective Task Instructions in the First Year of Schooling: What Teachers and Children Do. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, E. (1979). Transcription as theory. In Ochs, E. and Schieffelin, B. (eds.), Developmental Pragmatics. New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In Atkinson, J. M. and Heritage, J. (eds.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, (pp. 57–101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, A., and Fehr, B. J. (1997). Conversation analysis: an approach to the study of social action as sense making practices. In van Dijk, T. A. (ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction. Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction (2nd ed., pp. 64–91). London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Psathas, G. (1995). Conversation Analysis: The Study of Talk-in-Interaction. London: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogoff, B. (2003). The Cultural Nature of Human Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1972). On the analyzability of stories by children. In Gumperz, J. J. and Hymes, D. (eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1984a). Notes on methodology. In Atkinson, J. M. and Heritage, J. (eds.), Structures of Social Action, (pp. 21–27). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1984b). On doing ‘being ordinary’. In Atkinson, J. M. and Heritage, J. (eds.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1995). Lectures on Conversation (vols. I and II). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., and Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696–735.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1968). Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist, 70(6), 1075–1095.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Analyzing single episodes of interaction: an exercise in conversation analysis. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50(2), 101–114.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1996). Confirming allusions: toward an empirical account of action. American Journal of Sociology, 102, 161–216.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A., and Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8, 289–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seedhouse, P. (2005). Conversation analysis as research methodology. In Richards, K. and Seedhouse, P. (eds.), Applying Conversation Analysis. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sidnell, J. (2010). Conversation Analysis: An Introduction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sidnell, J. (2012). Basic conversation analytic methods. In Sidnell, J. and Stivers, T. (eds.), The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, (pp. 77–99). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sidnell, J., and Stivers, T. (eds.). (2012). The Handbook of Conversation Analysis. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Siraj, I., Kingston, D., and Melhuish, E. (2015). Assessing Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care. Sustained Shared Thinking and Emotional Wellbeing (SSTEW) Scale for 2–5 Year-Olds Provision. London: UCL and IOE Press.Google Scholar
Stivers, T., and Robinson, J. (2006). A preference for progressivity in interaction. Language in Society, 35(3), 367–392.Google Scholar
Stokoe, E. (2013). The (in)authenticity of simulated talk: comparing role-played and actual interaction and the implications for communication training. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 46(2): 165–185.Google Scholar
Stokoe, E. (2014a). ‘The science of analysing conversations, second by second’. [Video]. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtOG5PK8xDA [last accessed 9 December 2021].Google Scholar
Stokoe, E. (2014b). The Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM): a method for training communication skills as an alternative to simulated role-play. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 47(3), 255–265.Google Scholar
Stokoe, E., Sikveland, R. (2017). The Conversation Analytic Role-play Method: simulation, endogenous impact and interactional nudges. In Fors, V., O’Dell, T., and Pink, S. (eds.), Theoretical Scholarship and Applied Practice, (pp. 73–96). Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
ten Have, P. (2007) Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide (2nd edition). London: Sage.Google Scholar
Theobald, M. (ed.). (2016). Friendship and Peer Culture in Multilingual Settings. Bingley: Emerald Publishing.Google Scholar
Theobald, M. (2019). UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: ‘Where are we at in recognising children’s rights in early childhood, three decades on …?’. International Journal of Early Childhood, 51(3), 251–257.Google Scholar
Theobald, M., and Danby, S. (2020). Children’s competence and wellbeing in sensitive research: when video-stimulated accounts lead to dispute. In Lamerichs, J., Danby, S., Bateman, A., and Ekberg, S. (eds.), Children and Mental Health Talk: Perspectives on Social Competence, (pp.137–166). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Waring, H. Z. (2015). Theorizing Pedagogical Interaction: Insights from Conversation Analysis. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wood, D. J., Bruner, J. S., and Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychiatry and Psychology, 17(2), 89–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1976.tb00381.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×