Engaging children in activities and in verbal interactions: a typology of the strategies by early-childhood professionals in child-care centers

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This paper addresses the strategies developed by infant-toddler educators in daycare centres inorder to engage children in verbal interactions.According to an interactionist framework, involvement in various activities provide children withthe communicative and linguistic experience that is necessary for their language acquisition and itsusages (Bruner, 1983; François, 1990; Veneziano, 2005). In childcare centres, not all childrenparticipate in the same way in the different interactions. One of the challenges for professionals isto succeed in integrating every child into these activities and, thus, allowing her to benefit from thisexperience for her language acquisition (Dickinson & Porche, 2011; Rhyner et al., 2012). This goalis all the more crucial when we consider early communicational and linguistic disparities amongchildren and their repercussions, later, in literacy and school learning skills (Rescorla & Dale,2013).Our study was conducted on a corpus of video data of professional-children interactions (50 hours)in four childcare centres. Children were aged from 0;4 to 3. Professionals had different educationalbackgrounds and skill training. The analysis focused on those sequences where one or severalchildren stayed in the background with respect to an ongoing activity. These sequences werecategorized according to the interactional frame (dyadic or polyadic), the type of the activity(whether involving discourse or not) and the linguistic-practices entailed (e.g. description of theworld, language and/or task scaffolding, involving the child).The interactional moves aiming to facilitate those children’s involvement into the activity wereanalyzed according to their modality (verbal, non verbal, bimodal) and their functions (e.g.invitation, questioning, explanation, phatic moves, demonstration, attention getter, back channeland the crossing of pragmatic cues). The outcome of these strategies in terms of children’sparticipation was also assessed. These analyses lead to the definition of a typology of the strategiesdeveloped by the early-childhood professionals.The discussion will focus on the role and impact of these linguistic practices on children’sparticipation in verbal interactions with adults and with other children. The results of this studywill also be discussed for their applied implications since it aims to offer professionals elements ofreflection on their own practices and representations (Davis & Torr, 2016).DICKINSON, D. K. & PORCHE, M. V. (2011): Relation Between Language Experiences in PreschoolClassrooms and Children's Kindergarten and Fourth-Grade Language and Reading Abilities. ChildDevelopment, 82-3. 870-886.FRANÇOIS, F. (1990): Dialogue, jeux de langage et espace discursif. In : FRANÇOIS, F. Lacommunication inégale. Heurs et malheurs de l'interaction verbale, Neuchâtel : Delachaux etNiestlé, 33-112.RESCORLA L.A., & DALE, P. (2013): Late Talkers: Language Development, Interventions, andOutcomes, Baltimore : Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.RHYNER, P.M., GUENTHER, K.L., & al. (2013): Child caregivers’ contingent responsivenessbehaviors during interactions with toddlers within three daycare contexts. CommunicationDisorders Quarterly, 34-4, 232-241.VENEZIANO, E. (2005): Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisition: Whenboth caregivers and children matter. In : BOKUS, B. Studies in the psychology of child language.Essays in honor of Grace Whales Shugar, Warsaw : Matrix, p. 47-69.