In our webinar, Professor Amanda Bateman from Birmingham City University explored how the study of the sequences of interaction that occur during shared inquiry in early childhood settings can demonstrate how teaching and learning are co-constructed — turn by turn — between teachers and children.
The key insights shared were:
Teacher-child interactions in early childhood education are extremely important for stretching children’s thinking, working theories, and learning dispositions, while also supporting children socially, emotionally, and culturally.
Conversation analysis is a tool for systematically examining the co-production of interactions by people. It involves filming interactions, often with supporting tools such as wireless microphones, and then the careful transcription of the interaction using specific conversation analysis transcription conventions. It is used to unpack the turn-by-turn machinery of everyday interactions, and in early childhood education demonstrates how learning occurs through the co-participation of children and teachers. It is a valuable tool for supporting teachers and kaiako to unpack their interactions with children and reflect on their own pedagogy. Conversation analysis research can take the form of a partnership between researchers and kaiako, where kaiako identify interactions that are of interest and aligned with their professional vision and professional interests, and are supported by researchers making transcriptions of these (conversation analysis is painstaking work and takes a lot of time and professional training).
Multimodal conversation analysis uses adapted transcription codes to capture all aspects of an interaction, including the subtle nuances of body language, gaze, and bodily positioning, which play a significant role in the organisation of social interactions. For example, multimodal conversation analysis has been used to show breastfeeding interactions between mothers and young infants, demonstrating the coproduction of the interaction between mother and baby (Bateman et al., 2024).
Conversation analysis can show how culture, values, and knowledge are co-constructed in everyday interactions. In everyday talk, children are brought into particular orientations of culture and knowledge, and the systematic transcription of interactions can give insight into how cultures and values, including children’s peer cultures, are constructed from within (Mitchell et al., 2026).
Conversation analysis research offers important insights into interactions that extend and challenge children’s thinking. For example, while it is often thought that questions are incredibly important for prompting thinking, at times questions (particularly too many!) can feel like interrogation. ‘Why?’ questions in particular can be very challenging, and may often be met with ‘I don’t know’ or ‘because’ and mark the end of the interaction. Seeing this transcribed in writing can help kaiako to recognise children’s responses to questioning and perhaps think about other ways of interacting or extending interests. For example, ‘I wonder’ statements might be used instead of questions. Because questions oblige children to reply, the intention to sustain talk with children and develop longer sequences of dialogue as part of ‘sustained shared thinking’ (Sylva, 2004) can lead kaiako to ask questions repeatedly. This can make sustained interaction very adult-centric and adult-directed or adult-managed (although children, in their role as co-producers of the interaction, can also shut down interaction too!). Smaller interactions can be as useful as well, and even a couple of turns of talk can stretch children’s thinking in that moment.
The use of conversation analysis can support kaiako awareness of their interactions with children, helping them understand what they do in practice and the impact that it has for interactions. Conversational analysis illuminates the ‘how’ of interaction, and supports teachers with noticing, recognising, and responding to what occurs in their interactions with children. For example, moments of overlap (where teachers and children talk at the same time as each other) can be particularly revealing of aspects such as the need for pausing to enable children to share ideas. Teachers also can use silence to think about other ways to express an interest in children’s thinking, drawing on ‘slow pedagogy’ (Clark, 2023) to develop deep thinking rather than rushing through more superficial and surface understandings. Conversation analysis might help kaiako to become aware of times and ways in which they might be inappropriately ‘hijacking’ (Davis & Peters, 2011) a child’s idea or working theory and imposing a direction other than that intended by the child. With detailed transcriptions of interactions, kaiako can examine how well they are following children’s contributions to conversation, and how much of a balance there is between adult interests and child interests.
Conversational analysis can also demonstrate the ways that children use questions to engage adults in conversation. This research explores different positionalities in interaction, such as when one interlocutor is positioned as Knowledge+ (knowledgeable, and can give the answer) or Knowledge- (less knowledgeable, seeking knowledge) (Heritage, 2012).
The immediate environment is a powerful resource for enabling authentic interactions. In conversation analysis, the immediate environment is described as offering ‘semiotic [meaning-making] resources’. An orientation to the immediate environment can support interaction and help kaiako avoid question-oriented conversations by promoting commenting, shared attention, and co-construction of meaning, and in particular, the kind of deep pedagogical engagement promoted in slow pedagogies. Conversation analysis, and its multimodal emphasis, also suggests that interactions need not only be verbal, but that interaction can also be physical, where teachers and children explore things together by acting upon them (pouring water, observing wildlife). Rich pedagogy is about much more than talk in isolation – multimodality including gesture, gaze direction, and emotion are also key to exploration, intersubjectivity, and positive learning experiences.
References and further reading
See Amanda’s website, co-produced with Amelia Church, here.
Also see information about Alison Clark’s work here, and a free interview with Sandy Houen here.
Lorenza Mondada’s website
Maryanne Theobald’s website
Bateman, A. (2013). Responding to children’s answers: questions embedded in the social context of early childhood education, Early Years: An International Research Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2013.800844
Bateman, A. (2025): Conversation analysis as a creative research methodology. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2025.248081
Bateman, A. & Katila, J. and Hofstetter, E. (2024). Exploring nurse responses to spontaneous breastfeeding episodes during routine infant health checks in Finland: A conversation analytic approach. Health Communication https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2024.2367349#abstract
Clark, A. (2023). Slow knowledge and the unhurried child: Time for slow pedagogies in early childhood education. Routledge.
Davis, K., & Peters, S. (2011). Moments of wonder, everyday events: Children’s working theories in action. TRLI. https://www.tlri.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/1088-Final-Report.pdf
Heritage, J. (2012). Epistemics in action: Action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(1), 1–29. https://10.1080/08351813.2012.646684
Mitchell, L., Kahuroa, R., Bateman, A., Cowie, B., Kamenarac, O., Khoo, E., McMillan, H., and Rameka, L. (2026).Explorations of Democracy, Belonging and Relationships with Land in Early Childhood Education: Perspectives from Aotearoa New Zealand. Routledge.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation, 50 (4), 696 – 735. https://doi.org/10.2307/412243
Sylva, K. (2004). Technical paper 12. The final report: Effective pre-school education. Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) Project. Department for Education and Skills (UK).
