Post on 01-May-2023
"A Day in the Life": An International Study of Two-Year-Old
Girls and Their Families
Julia Gilleni, Catherine Ann Cameronii, Giuliana Pintoiii, Beatrice Accorti Gamannossiiii,
Susan Youngiv and Roger Hancockv.
i Lancaster University, UK ii University of British Columbia, University of New Brunswick and University of Victoria,
Canada iii University of Florence, Italy iv Exeter University, UK v Open University, UK
Paper presented at American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting:
Understanding complex ecologies in a changing world, Denver. April 30 – May 5
Abstract
This paper presents a synthesis of findings from an international project studying the
moment-by-moment mutual adaptation of two-year-old girls and their families engaged in
everyday activities (Gillen & Cameron, 2010). This sociocultural study has involved a
multidisciplinary team studying seven children in family settings in Canada, Italy, Peru,
Thailand, Turkey, UK and USA. We sought to identify diverse ways of thriving, through an
interpretive methodology with the videoing of a 'day in the life' of each child and her
interactions with the environment, including caregivers, at the core. Our methodology
involved dialogues with the families and between researchers. In this presentation we
demonstrate findings from the Italian day, to illustrate activities that we have observed
common to all settings. We do this through the presentation of three vignettes selected to
illustrate our interpretive approach, our investigations into what might be considered
innovative developmental domains such as musicality and which lead us towards an
interactional perspective on multimodality. Our glimpses into the children’s domestic
worlds support a generally bidirectional view of socialisation (Pontecorvo, Fasulo, &
Sterponi, 2001), as children and adults reciprocally co-construct their lives. Close
examination of (relatively) naturalistic data has assisted the analysis of this element of the
ecocultural framework within which these children and adults mutually adapt their diverse
needs and intentions.
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Purpose
This paper presents a synthesis of findings from an ongoing international project studying
the everyday living and learning of two-year-old girls in family settings. This sociocultural
study has involved a multidisciplinary team studying seven children in family contexts in
Canada, Italy, Peru, Thailand, Turkey, UK and USA. Seeking to work against deficit-based
understandings of development, we sought to develop a microgenetic methodology
appropriate to the study of thriving children learning through everyday play and
participation in family practices. With the videoing of a day in the life of children at the core,
supplemented by other evidence including field notes and interviews, our team of
researchers examined the children's interactions with their environment, including
caregivers. Common themes were identified for activities in which a multiplicity of
intentions and clearly identifiable elements of cultural knowledge were drawn upon as the
children pursued their interests.
Theoretical framework
Our primary aim in our ecocultural investigation of culture in the lives of two-year-old girls
in their family settings was to identify diverse ways of thriving through study of the early
home lives of ‘strong’ children in seven home contexts across the globe. We sought to avoid
a comparative approach, but rather to explore the affordances of rich empirical data for
dialogic and iterative practices, thinking about the meaning-making processes of all
involved – children and adults.
Nsamenang (1992) suggested applying an ecocultural framework to developmental studies.
He drew on Pence's (1998, p. xii) assertion that this is 'far more conceptual than
methodological, more a call to thoughtful, systematic awareness'. Studying the relationships
between researcher and researched, is not a question of accessing transparent ‘realities’ but
rather that of negotiating new meanings. Working together as participants from different
countries and from origins in multiple disciplines: early years education and
psycholinguistics, literacy research, developmental and health psychology, we evolved not a
list of specific research questions, but rather broad areas of enquiry. We sought to explore
specific aspects of cultural activities seen by participants (parents, local and distal
researchers) as constructive to strong and healthy growth. We decided to do this not by pre-
identifying the domains of activity we were going to study, e.g., play and relationships with
parents but to use a more inductive approach arising from an examination of video data to
examine what seemed significant to the children in their lives. So, for example, musicality,
although not an obvious and expected theme at first, did in fact emerge as a theme that we
have explored (Young & Gillen, 2007).
Endeavouring to take an ecocultural approach to research has value for us in our
sociohistorical perspective, as it is evocative of the complex, networked and dynamic
activities we think of as cultural. ‘Culture’ as many have observed has become far extended
in different disciplines so that it can be difficult to pin it down. Cole (1997, p. 250) proposes
that any simple correlation of culture as a uniform ensemble of ‘shared beliefs, values,
symbols, tools’ in what he refers to as a ‘configurational’ approach is flawed but suggests:
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‚There is no doubt that culture is patterned, but there is also no doubt that it is far
from uniform and that its patterning is experienced in local, face-to-face interactions
that are locally constrained<‛
This notion of patterning as opposed for example to contrasts and comparisons that are
measured according to one particular ‘norm’ is extremely useful, and our methods are
designed to enable us to investigate the details of these ‘local, face-to-face interactions’ and
some of the ways in which we might explore some of the ‘local constraints’. Video is an
extremely useful tool for picking up not only the minutiae of spoken dialogue, but also that
of bodily alignment, attention directing and other embodied communicative actions that
could be missed by an observer.
Methods and data sources
Our approach is interpretive in the sense that we make use of multiple routes to reaching
understandings and seek to approach and understand the perspectives of research
participants, rather than thinking of ourselves as ‘objective’ outsiders. Gaskins (1999: 27)
encapsulates the two principle prongs of our approach:
"The process of development can be understood only by < a dual research agenda.
First, one must study children engaged in their daily activities to observe the unit of
child-in-activity-in-context that represents the locus of the developmental process.
Second, one must also study the cultural belief systems and institutions that are
responsible for consistency in the everyday contexts of behavior experienced by
children."
Our approach, further developing that of Tobin, Wu and Davidson (1989), documents the
daily rounds of young children in context, and inspects those contextualized activities from
a variety of both professional and personal perspectives. Colleagues indigenous to the
child’s home background as well as those from different cultural backgrounds; colleagues
from a range of different disciplines and locations observe footage of the child’s day; and
family members review and comment on segments of the day. In each country we followed a
five-phase protocol (Gillen, Cameron, Tapanya, Pinto, Hancock, Young, & Accorti
Gamannossi, 2007).
1. Locating research participants
Colleagues from different countries designed the initial protocols and located an appropriate
family, with an apparently thriving two and a half year old girl, willing to engage in the
project.
2. Pre-filming: family preparation
Two researchers visited the family to establish initial rapport and collect basic demographic,
health and lifestyle information through a semi-structured interview. The project aims,
extents of commitment, constraints on confidentiality and participants’ rights, were fully
discussed with the families. There was also a one-hour session of filming to accustom the
child and her interactants at least slightly to the experience of being in the presence of a
video camera-person and field-note taker for an entire waking day.
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3. Day in the Life first iterative filming
The two researchers arrived at the family home soon after the child woke and stayed for as
much of the day as possible. Videoing was stopped while the child was asleep or engaged in
bathroom activities. At least six hours of film was obtained in each location. The researcher
present who was not videoing, quietly observed, making notes on a spreadsheet on a
clipboard, identifying the times the child changed her activity or location and people present
at the scene. S/he also wrote explanatory notes about other activities or features of the
environment that could support later analysis of the video material.
4. Selection of focal interchanges
Day in the Life videos were collected and perused individually and then together by two
distal project investigators. The focus on real time viewing and reviewing by the
investigators who are from two different countries and disciplines, afforded a sense of
attunement with each local day. Working together the principal investigators edited a half
hour compilation video of approximately six five-minute clips that in collaboration they
considered displayed a variety of the activities and kinds of interactions the child had
engaged in over the day, and which appeared to tap in on the family’s striving to support
the healthy development of their child.
5. Second iterative stage
After scrutinizing the compilation video, the local investigators returned to the target family
with the tape. They filmed an interview during which the participants together watched the
compilation video, pausing between sections for reflexive discussions. Families in each
context responded with reactions to the selection of video data in ways that often enhanced
or reoriented the researchers’ provisional understandings. The families demonstrably
enjoyed their participation. The meeting afterwards was welcome and of course the
participants appreciated their gift of the compilation tape.
We then had as data the video of the whole day and associated field notes, records of the
initial interview and field plans. In this paper we choose to illustrate our methodology and
discuss some findings from the Italian day.
A Day in the Life: Beatrice in Italy
In order to demonstrate our approach and the development of our understandings, we will
organise this section of the paper through three vignettes. That is, we will endeavour to
present through present-tense writing and a single still image 'grabbed' from the video a few
short moments in the day. In each case, we will then as it were refocus our methodological
lens in order to illustrate some salient factors relating to our research perspective and
findings.
Vignette 1: the beginning of Beatrice's day, illuminating methodology
It is a hot day in Italy and Beatrice has already been to the park with her father Claudio and
returned home. In the living room of the compact city apartment, Claudio is blowing
bubbles, which Beatrice jumps about excitedly, trying to catch.
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She suddenly sees a large ball in the corner of the living room and takes it, alternately
bouncing, throwing and kicking it. Each time it only goes a short way and then has to be
retrieved from under a piece of furniture. One such is a computer on a desk, clearly an adult
'office' taking up a small area of the hall adjacent to the living room; another is a toy 'kitchen'
which takes up a substantial portion of the living room rug.
In fact, of course, the apparent transparency of this brief descriptive account, seemingly so
naively evident, is a construct from the process of research. Beatrice's excited movements
are all the time in close proximity to the two researchers, Pinto and Accorti Gamannossi,
Italian developmental psychologists who have spent years working and living in or near this
city. Beatrice cannot help but engage them in her enthusiasm; they try hard to respond
warmly but quietly as they are seeking not to play with her but to record her actions
through videos and field notes during this day. It will be spent in this apartment that
although it might be deemed constrained to some observers, has a wealth of opportunities
for activities that interest Beatrice. Shortly, her mother will return home from working in her
active profession and the remainder of the day will be played out among the family of three.
The careful preparation and enjoyment of midday meals will constitute some highlights.
The research team will seek to understand the day through processes of iterative discussion
with distant researchers in the project team and, as well, through discussions a few months
later when the compilation video is discussed with the family. Also salient to the extended
analysis processes is the discussion in the interview before the day. Pinto and Accorti
Gamannossi had decided to advance as an initial translation of 'strong child' as 'bambino in
gamba' - which might in turn be back translated as 'a child standing on her own two feet').
During the interview the parents identified thriving health, the ability to act on her own
initiative, self confidence and security as valued priorities. They said they believed that
parents’ presence, modeling and sharing life experiences provided security over time, and
were fundamental. They said that 'when it is possible it is very important to do things all
three [two parents and child] together.... Surely we can’t give her the best directions, but
nevertheless we think we are able to give her our good principles and this is a good starting
point.' Both parents thought that personal disposition and character were important as an
attribute, and that Beatrice had ' a very strong character.'
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Lucia and Claudio also felt that relationships with others were very significant as building
blocks in a thriving child, and they created opportunities for their daughter to meet and
spend time with others. They noted that Beatrice exhibited an 'evolution' after she started
attending nursery school in this respect, and that they had consciously decided that she go
to day care instead of being taken care of at home, as this experience afforded her
opportunities to build up relationships. Her mother also added that there must be a balance
between a child’s needs and parents’ needs. Understanding these goals for their own child
assists the interpretation of their interactions, although it is important not to seek any over-
simplified causal connection when considering any specific data: in this respect the Italian
parents were wise in suggesting to us: "the attributes of a hardy child do not come with
'recipes'."
Vignette 2: Lap game, illuminating musicality
This episode occurred after Beatrice had taken a midday nap and was transitioning from a
drowsy state to being more alert. Kneeling on her mother, Lucia's lap in the kitchen, facing
her and holding both her mother's hands, she rocks to and fro in a strong, duple meter.
Lucia picks up the same strong rocking rhythm and its tempo exactly in a rhythmical chant –
'tira, molla e lascia andar!'. Each word has an accent on the first syllable; a rhythmic
characteristic of the Italian language, and this synchronises with and etches the accented,
two-beat rocking movement. Each short rhythmic motif arrives at a point of climax when
Lucia pretends to let go when Beatrice is leaning backwards, as if she might tip backwards
and fall. The third, fourth and fifth repetitions extend the pattern by an extra rocking
movement and each repetition increases in intensity with longer pauses before and after the
pretend moment of dropping. Lucia ratchets up the emotional intensity of the moments
when she might drop her by vocalising mock shudders of fear. Beatrice is secure that her
mother will not drop her, but they both play with and enjoy this moment of risk and thrill.
The game increases to a pitch of excitement with squeals from Beatrice. At this point, Lucia
ceases the game, apparently suspecting that to continue it would be to spill in to over-
excitement. She winds down the activity and remains physically quite still and quiet,
diverting attention to Beatrice's hair clip.
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H. Papousek (1996) has previously identified the value of this kind of interaction, assisting
us to recognise in all the day instances in which musicality was evidently highly salient to
the lived experienced of children.
"<parents sensitively respond to changes in infant emotional/behavioural state and
modify singing or musical elements in their speech so as to either maintain quiet and
active waking states in infants or to facilitate transitions to sleep. Thus they reduce
the proportion of transitory infant states characterised by upset and a poor level of
integrative and communicative abilities" (H. Papousek, 1996, p. 50 see also M.
Papousek, 1996).
We use the concept of musicality in its widest sense to emphasise the richness and diversity
of ways in which contoured sounds and rhythms imbued the children's activities. Perhaps
not always having access to the linguistic codes at the time of first engaging with the data
brought us fresh awareness that the sharp distinction between 'speech' as sound and
'musical' vocalisation is a historically invented distinction and a relatively recent one at that
(Ingold, 2007). As our research developed and more translations were carried out we
certainly settled to a more conventional parsing of speech, but this served to enhance our
recognition through the project that young childhood is an intrinsically multimodal state of
being. We examined ways in which the children experience themselves shape and are
shaped by essentially musical events.
So, musicality for us includes not only song singing and listening and dancing to pre-
recorded music as the term more obviously implies, it also includes instances of rhythmic or
vocalised activity woven in to the ongoing days' events (Campbell, 1998; Young & Gillen,
2007). Some of these instances were substantial and easily noticeable; some were fleeting and
woven in to other activity to be almost imperceptible. We treat music as a perfectly ordinary
human activity, not one that is marginal or in any sense privileged. We thus avoid the
prototypical tendency of Western art music to treat music and musical practices as
something set apart, floating free of context.
Vignette 3: safe spaces for explorations
Finally, we saw Beatrice just above awakening from her nap cuddling in her mother’s lap,
rhythmically singing and clapping: mutual comfort-giving is exchanged. This interaction is
a launching pad for a subsequent session Beatrice has on the terrace, where she engages in
water play, toy washing and caring for ‘Coccolone’ her life sized baby doll.
She collects a red plastic chair and - partly pushing, partly carrying - moves it, unassisted, to
the terrace that adjoins the kitchen. Beatrice places this chair next to a low seat that is
already on the balcony. She then picks up Coccolone and places her on the red plastic chair.
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Beatrice sits next to the doll on a low seat. Smiling, she shuffles in her own low seat to
establish a suitable position and then pulls the red plastic chair and doll closer to her side as
though she is place-making.
Beatrice says ‘Nice to meet you’ and holds the doll’s hand. Lucia stimulates her play in the
background suggesting that Beatrice and her doll may need to have a nappy change.
Beatrice declines. Again Beatrice takes Coccolone’s hand and repeatedly kisses the doll’s
cheek. Realising that her own seat has moved a little away from the balcony railings, she
stands and pushes it back to locate and better secure it. Beatrice shows considerable
contentedness at being on the terrace with Coccolone, and great pleasure at managing her
play and equipping the space. Sometimes, she chuckles and rocks on her seat showing high
satisfaction with the way in which she has established herself in this safe space. Yi-Fu Tuan
writes: ‘< space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value' (Tuan,
1977, cited in Cresswell, 2004:8). Such place making, we would argue, enable rootedness
and attachment to the domestic spaces as to enhance emotional security (much as joint book
reading does [Cameron & Pinto, 2009]) within the child’s own home environment.
Conclusions
The accounts of Beatrice here as the other children in our project as a whole are not
concerned with universalising from particular instances, but in recognising and staying with
the specific, the small, the ordinary and day-to-day – all not necessarily easily noticed by
researchers. A reintegration of auditory, kinaesthetic and other sensory dimensions is part of
that commitment. It enables us to take other soundings of these children's lives and to go
beyond some of the immediate concerns of child studies. However, giving more prominence
to what might be relatively neglected senses is not about making a simple reversal of
importance. Our presentations here rest as much on visual information conveyed through
our video stills as in our verbal descriptions, combining we hope with the capacity to evoke
embodied experience. We are not attempting to displace the visual, but rather to point to the
crucial roles that sound, body rhythm, touch and placemaking contribute to the
development of understanding and healthy growth.
Our fuller analyses from the Italian day, just a portion of which have been alluded to here of
course, identify patterns that we have observed common to all settings. We have observed
nurturant interactions such as gentle pats and touches, swinging and rocking and the
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locations in which the children create safe spaces to play in the settings. Likewise, we have
found various experiences with notational systems mediated by adults.
Children as ‘strategic actors’ (James and Prout, 1996: 47) are seen successfully to intermingle
their personal play interests with meeting the expectations of their carers. Our glimpses into
the children’s worlds support a generally bidirectional view of socialisation (Pontecorvo,
Fasulo, & Sterponi, 2001), as children and adults reciprocally co-construct their worlds in the
moment-by-moment development of activities as identified in Beatrice’s musical/rhythmical
and creating safe spaces as we have shown above. Close examination of (relatively)
naturalistic data has assisted the analysis of this element of the ecocultural framework
within which these children and adults mutually adapt their diverse needs and intentions.
We would suggest that although there is a considerable turn to multimodality in studies of
early childhood there is still potential for thinking theoretically about the relationship of
language with action (Scollon, 2001). Anning and Edwards (1999) proposed that
communication in early childhood is especially multimodal. Recently, considerable work
has been conducted in the discipline of applied linguistics (and education) concerned with
extending language-based approaches to communication into a greater consideration of
multimodality – see Jewitt, (2009a) for a synthesis. As many contributions to that edited
collection make plain, this new focus on multimodality draws upon work in disciplines
including anthropology, sociology and psychology of attention to non-verbal elements of
communication. Introducing the book's approach to multimodality, Jewitt (2009b, p. 1)
explains:
The starting point for multimodality is to extend the social interpretation of language
and its meanings to the whole range of representational and communicational modes
or semiotic resources for meaning making that are employed in a culture – such as
image, writing, gesture, gaze, speech, posture.
However, we would argue that this does seem to instantiate an individualised emphasis on
multimodality as if most essentially pertaining to the individual body. We intend in future
work to explore a more interactional focus on multimodality, drawing on our analyses of
data concerned with the interaction of the child with others and with the environment as
intrinsic to her developing understandings and communicative practices.
We venture to claim that this project makes a direct contribution to the overarching theme of
this year's AERA conference: "Understanding complex ecologies in a changing world." We
have demonstrated how the repertoires for action that these children develop in everyday
settings are intrinsically complex and ever shifting. Seeking to contribute to the emerging
field of "global-local childhood studies" (Fleer, Hedegaard & Tudge, 2009), we believe that
broader understandings of diversity can advance appreciation of the interactive impacts of
children and youth, context, material culture, and care givers in the acculturation of strong
children and thereby inform a developmental appreciation of the many paths to ‘growing
up well’ across ages across the globe.
Members of the project team have extended the project methodology into two further
current projects. The day in the life methodology has been adapted in a project studying
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resilient early adolescents in eight international locations (Cameron, Lau & Tapanya, 2009).
The teenagers' own perspectives are elicited far more directly, from being the sole
interactant with the researchers at the initial interviews, through complementary visual
methodologies to enhance the data collection on the day and subsequent iterative stages.
Young is leading a project MyPlace MyMusic exploring everyday music in the home among
seven-year-olds in diverse locations, again through adapting the day in the life methodology.
Elsewhere the project methodology is being adapted for use in research studies concerned
with the interactions between early years education practitioners and children in bilingual
settings (Cable, Drury & Robertson, 2009) and an international study on the experiences of
early years practitioners in seven different countries (Miller, Cable and Goodliff, 2009 report
on one setting involved). Concerns about globalization becoming synonymous with North
Americanization could be attenuated by projecting light on the positive contributions of
culturally sensitive studies of children in diverse settings that provide an appreciation of the
multiplicity of opportunities for the development of well being in its many manifestations.
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