Ameliorating Infant Distress During Early Transitions to Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC): Teacher Practices Over Time and Place

Despite widespread agreement that infants' emotional well-being is contingent on adult practices, little is known about what these “look like” in ECEC contexts. Given the heightened emotional demands placed on infants during early transitions, this study set out to understand the practices of ECEC teachers to ameliorate infant distress in ECEC settings. Researchers across five countries generated coded observation data, video data and interview data over a twelve-month period concerning ten infant transitions from home into ECEC. Dialogic meta-ethnography, utilising quantitative sequential analysis in tandem with inductive qualitative analysis, was employed to examine the presence, events, probabilities and combinations of teacher practices across countries and their relationship to changes in infant emotional states from distress to non-distress. Findings highlight the selective practices deployed by ECEC teachers in and over time in their attempts to ameliorate infant distress according to infant age, phase/stage of their transition and teacher responsibilities. Teachers utilised pick up/place on lap practices most often in the first 7 months of transition, despite it being less likely to reduce distress than an invitation to play or an offering of food/bottle. Certain combinations of practices were more likely at different phases of transition, irrespective of age, while interpersonal strategies were more nuanced. Overall findings highlight the nuanced nature of ameliorating practices across the first year of transition to ECEC, and the need for teachers to adjust their responses to distressed infants accordingly.