Abstract
Teacher intervention in children’s disputes most commonly features cessation strategies, despite evidence showing the value of modelling problem-solving behaviours. Existing research has categorized strategies used by teachers in early childhood settings, but in this article we aim to illustrate how these practices are realized. Using the method of conversation analysis, we are able to show how children respond to different interventions, and in particular, how successful modelling of problem solving can be achieved with 4-year-old children. The extracts in this article make a case for the close study of teacher–child interactions and demonstrate how educators can support children to resolve their own disputes.
Introduction
In early childhood practice, there seems to be a prevailing notion that conflict between children is to be avoided and brought to an end as quickly as possible. Unarguably, this is the case in the event of harm or distress (i.e. distinguishing aggression from constructive conflict – see Perlman et al., 2007); but given that conflict between preschool-aged children is predominantly based on discussion of competing ideas or desires (see Danby and Theobald, 2012), teachers could re-frame intervention in verbal disputes as an opportunity to support problem solving, enabling children to arrive at a workable compromise. In this article, we detail examples from early childhood settings that illuminate practices that support children in resolving disputes.
Conflict plays a central role in ‘virtually every major theory of human development’ (Shantz, 1987: 283; Shantz and Hartup, 1992). Conflict is a natural phenomenon (Chen et al., 2001), and healthy social, cognitive and psychological development requires it as long as the conflict is managed constructively (Stevahn et al., 2000). First experiences of conflict are usually with siblings (Perlman et al., 2007) and are ‘inevitable’ in a busy, early childhood setting where social interaction is encouraged (DeVries and Zan, 1994: 79).
Piaget conceptualized conflict as a natural phenomenon and a developmental mechanism: by obliging a child to reflect on the reasons for his or her desire to have something or do something, the child’s egocentrism is reduced (Chen and French, 2008; Kohlberg and Lickona, 1987; Shantz, 1987). By seeing that other people have different opinions, children begin to recognize that the perceptions of others may differ from their own (DeVries and Zan, 1994). The teacher’s role is to assist children with perspective taking and to understand the impact of their actions on one another (Goncu and Cannella, 1996). This collaborative activity between children and teachers to navigate a reasonable outcome serves as an opportunity for sustained shared thinking (see Siraj and Asani, 2015).
There is also a substantial body of research which has shown that peer interactions, particularly those within conflict situations, provide important opportunities for children’s social, cognitive and moral development (e.g. Baumgartner and Strayer, 2008; Chen et al., 2001; Church, 2009b; Cobb-Moore et al., 2008; Evans, 2002; Green and Cillessen, 2008; Hay and Ross, 1982; Shantz, 1987). Effective peer dispute resolution requires children to express their individual needs and goals, and to recognize that their peers’ needs and goals differ from their own (DeVries and Zan, 1994; Green and Cillessen, 2008). Engagement in this process provides opportunities for the development of agency and autonomy (DeVries and Zan, 1994; Mashford-Scott and Church, 2011; Mullin, 2007), and the social skills that enable ongoing positive relations with peers. However, the question of how teachers promote children’s autonomy in their day-to-day interactions with other children is one that deserves further attention. That is, we need more detailed understanding of what teachers actually say and do within the early childhood environment that is effective in promoting children’s progression towards these outcomes.
Existing research does, however, provide evidence of types of intervention that may prove more or less productive in supporting the development of children’s own skills in managing peer disputes. For example, interventions or strategies that impose solutions, such as those characterized as ‘cessation’ or ‘coercive’ (e.g. directing, commanding), are reported to be most common, yet least productive in supporting children’s development (Chen et al., 2001; DeVries and Zan, 1994; Nucci and Weber, 1995). However, interventions or strategies that take into account children’s perspectives and serve to assist the development of particular skills, dispositions, understandings or efficacy beliefs, such as those characterized as ‘mediation’ and ‘cooperative’ (e.g. questioning and explaining), are shown to be productive – that is, the success of these strategies becomes evident in the children’s resumption of cooperative play (Church, 2009a; DeVries and Zan, 1994; Nucci and Weber, 1995).
In terms of a practical guide for productive or constructive methods of intervention, DeVries and Zan (1994) suggest that the teacher follow these three principles: (1) hold a general attitude of calm towards the conflict, (2) recognize that the conflict belongs to the children and encourage them to take ownership and (3) believe in and facilitate children to solve their own conflicts. Similarly, Macfarlane and Cartmel (2008) propose an intervention practice framework for promoting children’s agency, where interactions and relationships, belongingness, rights and responsibilities, and choice are interdependent (see Mashford-Scott and Church, 2011). These approaches establish a ‘culture of collaborative learning’ (Nicolopoulou and Cole, 1993), in which adults act as facilitators and rules are ratified by all – thereby children’s active role in their own learning is centralized.
Existing research theorizes how teacher intervention in children’s disputes should be done, but by using conversation analysis (CA) in this article, as described below, we are able to illustrate how these practices are achieved on a turn-by-turn basis. Specifically, we are interested in how teachers respond to children’s requests for intervention to see how they orient to the perceived problem and how the teacher’s advice is taken up – or not – by children. CA allows us to pay close attention to the sequential organization of the talk (Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 2007; for introduction, see Sidnell, 2010) and examine how teacher intervention or support might be done. The method of CA has proved productive in a range of research concerned with the social lives of young children (e.g. Bateman, 2011; Bateman and Church, 2016; Butler, 2008; Gardner and Forrester, 2010; Goodwin, 1990) and more specifically in uncovering the processes of children’s disputes (e.g. Church, 2009b; Cobb-Moore et al., 2008; Cromdal, 2004; Danby and Theobald, 2012; Goodwin, 1990, 2006).
Method
The data presented in the article are transcripts of video-recorded observations of young children’s play in six early learning centres in Melbourne. The children were aged between 3 years, 9 months, and 5 years, 2 months, and all the children were attending a kindergarten programme for at least 12 hours (kindergarten programmes are led by degree-qualified early childcare educators) in centres that also provide long day care (see Tayler et al., 2013, for details about provision of early childhood education and care in Australia). The children participating in the study would begin school the following year; this kindergarten, preschool year provides an opportunity to observe how children manage peer interactions when closely supported by educators (i.e. higher teacher–child ratios in preschool programmes). Video recordings of observations were collected to enable repeated viewing and close transcription of the interactions. The video-recorded observations took place each morning for 3 hours, for three weeks in each of the six settings. Ongoing assent from the children, and teacher and parental consent were given for video-recorded observations and for excerpts of these observations to be made available for the purposes of teaching and research.
We need to avoid claims of ‘most’ interventions being carried out one way or another, despite evidence here of the efficacy of the practices, as the dataset (37 instances of teacher interventions in children’s disputes in total across the six settings) precludes substantive or summative claims. Observations were conducted over a restricted time period, and not all instances of teacher intervention are audible or observable in a busy early learning environment. What we can show, however, is the efficacy of teachers going about intervention one way or another, where efficacy is evident in how the children take up the teacher’s input or abandon attempts to resume play with the offender (see Church, 2009a). The data-driven analysis in CA allows the researcher to pay attention to the very features of the interaction that the speakers themselves orient to in the unfolding talk. Each turn at talk (including nonverbal moves) provides evidence of how the prior turn was heard or understood. The sequential nature of interaction allows us to see how the participants themselves are making sense of one another, for example, resistance (evident in extended pauses), reformulations (where the speaker may propose alternative next actions) and repair (where misunderstanding can be fixed). Rather than theorizing teacher talk, then, the methodology and method of CA allow us to pay close attention to what teachers and children actually do (see Sidnell, 2010, for a thorough introduction to the methodology and method of CA). Transcription conventions used in CA aim to capture how the talk is done, for example, pauses, emphasis and prosody (see Appendix A for details).
Findings
The data presented here illustrate two distinct approaches taken by two different teachers in response to children tussling over an object (i.e. the same kind of dispute): (Extract 1) imposing a solution and (Extract 2) supporting children’s problem solving. What we see in the transcripts is the limited efficacy of imposing a solution in the first extract, and how collaborative comprise becomes possible in the second extract when the teacher remains with the children and provides feedback on their complaints, suggestions and solutions. It is very important that we are not seeking to contrast these extracts as an evaluation of teacher practice; we all use some variation of Extract 1 in our work with children. We are using these two extracts in this article to show how (1) teacher intervention is frequently but not all that effectively done and (2) we might orient to children as central in proposing solutions to problems as they arise. The detail of the CA transcripts provides insights into how this might be done.
Imposing a solution
In the following Extract 1, a typical dispute over ownership of an object (a vacuum cleaner) and invoking the rule of sharing is heard between Billy and Freddy. The teacher moves between the children and instructs how this sharing can be done:
Billy continues to repeat the rationale for his objection, in his attempts at pulling on the pipe that Freddy is holding (‘we have to share’ lines 1, 7, 9, 13). Freddy does not offer any additional information to his claims to the object other than ‘it’s mine’, so the basis of his statement of prior ownership is not made explicit. The teacher overhears the tussle between the two boys and positions herself between them. The teacher immediately aligns with Billy’s project (Stivers, 2008) of invoking the pervasive rule of sharing (‘sharing is exactly right’, line 18–-19). The teacher goes on to direct how this sharing will be achieved that each boy will be allotted 2 minutes with the vacuum cleaner pipe, as measured (adjudicated) by the teacher’s watch. The teacher produces a confirmation request (‘alright? is that okay Freddy?’, line 24), but neither boy explicitly agrees with this proposition. Notably, Billy is positioned as an offender in this confirmation check by the teacher, as only Freddy is named as having rights to agree to the imposed solution (line 24).
The striking feature of this sequence is the recipient design (Schegloff, 2007); that is, the teacher’s talk is ostensibly directed to each of the boys in turn (achieved by turning her eye gaze and body to each of the boys, and addressing them by name at particular points), but she does not respond to the boys’ input, nor does she pursue their lack of responses. For example, following the teacher’s turn-opening ‘how about’ (line 16), Freddy offers the complaint ‘Freddy’s not sharing it’ (line 20), which is subsequently put on hold by the teacher (‘hang on a minute’, line 21) to propose her own solution, ‘we give Freddy two more minutes and then I’m going to say “give it to Billy”’ (lines 21–24).
The explicit confirmation check ‘is that okay Freddy?’ (line 24) is not responded to by either of the boys. The teacher is looking at Freddy, but his gaze is directed to the pipe throughout. This process of the intervention is best summed up by the teacher herself: ‘I’m just telling Billy and Freddy what to do’ (lines 33–34). The imposed solution is not carried out by the teacher (and her watch), as her attention is requested by another child and she moves away from Billy and Freddy; nor does Freddy relinquish the object after any period of time – Billy has found something else to play with.
Supporting problem solving
The following example (Extract 2) illustrates an extended sequence in which the teacher provides a series of prompts for children to arrive at their own negotiated compromise of sharing resources (pipes for marbles in this case). The first instance of teacher intervention in this sequence consists of the teacher stating that the marbles belong to kinder rather than one boy in the group:
The teacher stipulates that it is not Jonathon’s purview to allocate marbles as they ‘belong’ to kinder and, as such, can be used by any of the children (lines 8–9). In effect, the teacher is negating Clarissa’s claim to the marbles, pointing out that the marbles are not Jonathon’s to give. The teacher moves away and the children continue to physically compete for possession of the pipes which they are using to siphon the marbles:
The teacher’s preliminary input was only heard in the early stages of the dispute, and after stipulating that the marbles belong to kinder and are therefore available to all the children, she leaves the area. This commentary has little effect on the ongoing dispute as Clarissa and Ollie continue to tussle over the pipe (lines 11–43). Ginny approaches the two children and immediately aligns with Clarissa (line 22), a stance ratified by Clarissa (‘yeah’, line 24). This practice of taking sides in multiparty disputes is very common in children’s arguments (e.g. Bateman, 2012; Goodwin, 1990, 2006). The dispute continues with a series of recycled turns by Clarissa and Ollie, with occasional input from Ginny:
This type of repetition, where each child simply restates the opposition but does not expand – that is, provide any reason for the opposition – does not lead to resolution (see Church, 2009a, 2009b). At this point, the teacher has returned to the area where children are and moves to take the pipe from Clarissa, and from the outset stipulates what needs to happen next (‘let’s have a conversation’, line 61):
Rather than telling Ollie what he needs to do to manage the situation, the teacher asks him, ‘what do you think you can do?’ (line 65). She affirms his response (‘ask’, line 66) and follows up with an explicit go-ahead (‘so go on’, line 69). The intentional teaching of this exchange is apparent in the teacher’s subsequent advice that Ollie needs to explain why he wants the pipe, so that Clarissa can make an informed response to his request for the object (‘do you want to explain to her that you made it? You need to tell her that information so she can make a decision’, lines 74–77). While providing a reason for objecting to another child’s action will not necessarily resolve the dispute, there is evidence that resolution is only possible if explanations are provided (see Church, 2009a). In this sequence, the teacher is supporting Ollie to provide the sort of information that is requisite to resolve disputes. But the intervention does not end there. The teacher goes on top to provide a meta-summary of why these types of explanations prove useful in managing interactions with other children:
After modelling a possible solution to the dispute over the pipe (i.e. for Ollie to explain that he made it in the first place), the teacher does not move away from the children but instead offers a series of suggestions to support the resumption of collaborative play. In response to Clarissa’s complaint ‘yeah but there’s no more of those yellow ones ‘ (line 112), the teacher points to additional, alternative (i.e. not straight but curved pipes) resources for pipe building (‘there is more’; lines 122, 126). The teacher ratifies Ollie’s suggestion (line 128) not only by commending the idea (‘that’s very good problem-solving’) but also by extending the possibility of collaborative play (‘why don’t you go and give it to the girls’, line 130).
Discussion
Evident in these extracts is the importance of the continued presence of the teacher to scaffold the implementation of a solution. In Extract 1, the teacher moves away from the children and is no longer available to implement the solution she advised (i.e. of timing turns for each boy on her watch). Similarly, the children continue to argue about possession of marbles and pipes in Extract 2 after the teacher’s first intervention, where she leaves after clarifying general rights to the objects. It is only when she returns and remains with the children until they have enacted the solution to the dispute that the intervention serves as an opportunity to support children to resolve disputes.
Not only is the teacher’s sustained attention necessary for more productive forms of intervention. Enabling the children to propose the solution themselves, rather than imposing the what should or could happen next, provides for children to enact strategies that may prove useful in future disagreements (e.g. providing an explanation for the objection in place of simply re-stating opposition). The two extracts here were chosen to illustrate this point: while the teacher tells the children what to do in Extract 1, the teacher invites ideas from the children in Extract 2 (i.e. ‘what do you think you could do?’) and provides feedback on the efficacy of these propositions. We remind the reader that providing two extracts to contrast approaches is not a criticism of teaching practice in Extract 1; imposing a solution is common practice and heard across all six settings in this study. What we are emphasizing is that encouraging and facilitating children to manage the process provide not only learning opportunities for the children involved but also greater compliance with the negotiated resolution.
Although there is no room in this article to detail further evidence from the dataset, where teachers supported children to arrive at their own resolution of the dispute, this was invariably an extended and time-consuming process, requiring a sequence of eliciting children’s points of view and children’s own suggestions for viable resolution (seen elsewhere, for example, Evaldsson, 2016). Imposing a solution may be less time-intensive, but given that the solution (1) is not necessarily tied to the underlying cause of the dispute, (2) is unlikely to be embedded in the children’s ongoing play and (3) does not enable children to enact their own resolution of the issue, imposing solutions does not support children to extend competencies in managing peer disputes.
Concluding comments
Although only two examples of teacher intervention in children’s disputes are detailed in this article, they are representative of other practices of teacher intervention observed across six Melbourne early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. We can see that the process of effective intervention – supporting children to resolve their own disputes – is a locally achieved practice (see also Cekaite, 2012), where teachers take into account children’s viewpoints and suggest alternative formulations of the problem. That is, to provide effective support, teachers attend to the ongoing interaction, establish the underlying tensions that prompted the disputes and elicit suggestions from the children themselves as to how an amicable – or at least acceptable – outcome might be reached. The compromise may not be equal, but the important feature of resolving disputes is that both parties accept the outcome and are able to resume play (see Church, 2009a for further details of resolution co-constructed by 4-year-old children).
The value of these type of data and analysis is that we can see, on a turn-by-turn basis, what sense the children are making of the teacher’s advice. Children’s orientation to imposed solutions or supported problem solving is evident in what happens next; children are able to continue to play together when a mutually acceptable solution is reached. Video data prove inordinately valuable for both teacher training and professional development for early childhood educators. While teachers might understand the theory of effective practices, seeing what becomes possible in response to particular types of intervention proves most effective as a resource for developing professional strategies.
This study has demonstrated what can be achieved when teachers and children establish a ‘culture of collaborative learning’ (Nicolopoulou and Cole, 1993), in which teachers are facilitators and children are agents of their own learning. The analysis of the turn-by-turn structure of talk has demonstrated that children must actively ‘take up’ or accept opportunities presented to them. The teacher and the children, therefore, ultimately co-determine the effectiveness of teacher interventions or strategies employed.
Footnotes
Appendix 1
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding statement should read: This research was supported by a grant from the Collier Charitable Fund.