Members of the Early Childhood Teaching and Research Group at the University of Roehampton have been using Work Discussion with groups of nursery leaders and practitioners in many different parts of England over a good ten years. The evaluation funded by the Froebel Trust focused mainly on the first group, as that was a much more frequent use of Work Discussion. In an application to the Froebel Trust for the research grant, the authors had been very careful to specify that the team facilitating the Work Discussion groups would be kept completely separate from the team undertaking the research. Similarly, Sue Robson, who managed the evaluation of the children's progress during the year the Work Discussion group ran, did so without sharing any of her observations with the people running the Work Discussion groups.

Making sensitive pedagogic relationships in the nursery is a deeply human activity evoking joy and satisfaction, but stress and uncertainty too. From an international perspective, strong local reflective spaces are required if early childhood provision is to be culturally and context responsive, counter-balancing globalising pressure to standardise provision. Further, nursery practitioners are entitled to a formal space where their subjective experience of the work, its demands and dilemma, can be expressed and understood.This paper is about ‘Work Discussion’ (WD) as such a reflective space. Professional reflection is now included in early years policy frameworks internationally for the reasons above. WD, distinctive in including explicit attention to emotion in pedagogy, is one model of a reflective space.This paper arises from a longitudinal evaluation of WD in nursery funded by the Froebel Trust. The methodology of the evaluation and the positive findings of impact for children have already been published. The aim of this paper is to theorise WD, drawing on the work of Wilfried Bion, a psychoanalyst and theorist of thinking in groups. Empirical data if offered to illustrate the explanatory power of Bion’s theory including what may be discussed openly and what is avoided in pedagogic reflection.

The education and care of infants and toddlers involve both an individual and collective ongoing commitment towards their rights and, relatedly, towards the rights of the professionals who accompany and support children’s everyday experiences. This Special Issue (SI) is dedicated to educators who undertake this relevant, specialised and emotional endeavour. Specifically, this issue focuses on initial and continuing professional preparation and support for those working with infants and toddlers, as well as on systems and processes that support and develop their daily practices. In constructing this SI, we have been helped enormously by the scholarly assessments of progress in researching pedagogy with infants and toddlers set out in four prior SIs published in the last twelve years. The first of these was organised by Sylvie Rayna and Ferre Laevers (Rayna and Laevers 2011) with the title ‘Understanding children from 0 to 3 years of age and its implications for education. What’s new on the babies’ side? Origins and evolution’. The authors acknowledged that a focus on children from birth to three meant working with the most dominated people (infants, toddlers, practitioners and mothers) and underlined the need for a process of empowerment and emancipation of the birth-3 field. Furthermore, the possibilities brought about by research initiatives were stressed, with articles contributing to the debate around rigorous research tools and ethical positions in this sector. The special issue presented a collection of articles that brought powerful evidence and insights into an agentic image of the child, the centrality of interactions and relationships, the relevance of practitioners’ professional qualifications and accompaniment, and the critical role of infant–toddler pedagogy. In 2012, the SI ‘Professional Issues in Work with Babies and Toddlers’ was published in this Journal. The editorial by Pamela Oberhuemer (2012) acknowledged the diversity in theoretical frameworks, research foci and research methodologies across the SI. The articles in this SI focused predominantly on studies carried out in continuing professional education, stressing core processes such as collegial dialogue, critical professional reflection among professionals, relationship-building between children and caregivers, systematic documentation and analysis of children’s experiences, as well as co-constructive and participatory approaches to supporting professional development and everyday practices with infants and toddlers. Susan Recchia and Minsun Shin (Recchia and Shin 2016) guest edited the SI ‘Preparing early childhood teachers for infant care and education’ that added to the previous contributions in arguing for deliberate, specialised and meaningful preparation of teachers for working with infants, toddlers and their families. Despite the diversity across the articles in this SI, the authors identified common themes, such as the lack of adequate preparation in early childhood teacher education, the need for integrating more EARLY YEARS 2023, VOL. 43, NO. 3, 443–454 https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2023.2240668

Elinor Goldschmied (1910–2009) dedicated her long life to the professional development of practitioners working with babies and children under three. Two of her major contributions to practice are the Treasure Basket and Heuristic play, where plentiful collections of objects offered to children in carefully prepared places so that they could choose to explore in their own way. Elinor believed that sensory experiences stimulated neural networks, memory, knowledge and reasoning, an understanding well ahead of her time. From 1929 to 1932, she trained as a teacher at the Froebel Institute, later qualifying as a psychiatric social worker at the London School of Economics. She moved with her husband to Italy, where, in the early 1950s, she came into contact with nurseries provided by nuns. Despite good physical care, Elinor was deeply distressed by the institutional refusal to allow emotional closeness between the children and their carers, and the consequences of this for both groups. This led to her advocating that each child needed to develop an emotional attachment to a named practitioner known as a Key Person. Elinor's personality, early childhood, life experience and Froebelian training are closely intertwined, and the chapter will seek to explore this interplay.

Researchers have developed three different ways of thinking about and researching babies' development from birth, indeed before birth, through the first three years. The first of these is developmental psychology and the contribution of attachment theory and the concept of intersubjectivity. The second has been psychoanalytic theory and its understanding of the extremes of babies' emotions, from intense rage to blissful contentment. A central idea is that of 'emotional containment', as the interaction through which babies, as they develop through early childhood, gradually are able to integrate and manage their emotions. The third is the neuroscience, with its focus on the crucial role of human interaction in brain development through the processes of synaptic generation and pruning. Frederich Froebel recognised the intellectual, emotional and physical demands of caring for young children and sought to support mothers and other carers through education and training including the resources and materials, which he produced for kindergarten and home contexts.

For many people, the word "nursery" may be understood as meaning "nursery school", an educational provision for 3- and 4-year-olds. However, in the United Kingdom, in much of Western Europe, and in North America different kinds of nurseries have developed historically for different reasons, with different access criteria, different staffing, and different ways of working. Much research has pointed to the importance for children of experiencing attachment interactions in nursery. There have been two developing lines of critical commentary, one about the practice and one about the principle of young children's attachments to staff in nursery. The first concerns the demands on nursery practitioners of children's attachments to them in nursery. The second concerns the "opportunity costs" of nursery attachments that is, the view that giving priority to children's attachments to nursery staff leads to the importance of children's close relationships with friends and in groups being overlooked.

In this paper, we argue for the past and continuing relevance of Work Discussion, as a model of professional reflection for nursery practitioners, which is attentive to emotional experience in work relationships.The development of Work Discussion in English nurseries is described with illustrations, from a psychoanalytic perspective, of aspects of the processes of discussion and their underlying dynamics; and we also explore the introduction of Work Discussion to the training regimen of early years' teachers.Finally, the paper summarises the key findings arising from an evaluation of Work Discussion sessions, with nursery practitioners working with vulnerable two-year -olds, held at weekly intervals for a year, and facilitated jointly by early years' care and education specialists together with child psychotherapists.

Isabel Menzies Lyth spoke of applying the concept of social defence systems to an "enormous variety" of situations, and these included day nurseries. The original work took the form of detailed case studies of London day nurseries between 1970 and 1979, commissioned by the government and starting with a study of four local authority and three private nurseries. These gave rise to an action-research study to develop an improved model of day care. This chapter reviews the social context of nurseries fifty years ago and the experiences of children and staff. It then describes how nurseries have changed since Menzies Lyth's first research and discusses the different sources of stress now evident and the anxieties they provoke. Finally, the chapter considers the relational dimensions of nursery policy and practice and how the workforce could be better valued and better supported to be more effective.

The significance of practitioners' emotions in nursery interactions is evident in vivid accounts from widely different socio-cultural contexts. Work Discussion (WD) is a model of professional reflection distinctive in its attention to emotion in work interactions. Psychoanalytic conceptions, particularly the notion of the defended subject, underpin WD. Enabling participants in WD to discuss subjective work experience in an open way is thus subtle and sensitive. Research has not addressed how the impact of different models of professional reflection may be evaluated. Can WD, with its explicit attention to the emotions evoked at work, strengthen practitioners' engagement with children and families? This paper critically discusses the complex methodological issues in evaluating the impact of WD on nursery practitioners, children and parents in the nursery. The challenge is to combine the intense subjectivity of WD with an evaluation that is rigorous and objective. Later papers will illustrate data analysis and report findings.

Nursery experience is now common for young children and their families. Questions of quality have focussed mainly on safety and early learning. The roles of subtle emotional processes in daily pedagogic interactions have received surprisingly little attention. This paper discusses the Tavistock Observation Method (TOM), a naturalistic method of observation underpinned by psychoanalytic conceptions and in which emotional experience is an integral part of observation narratives. The paper reports on a detailed evaluation of the use of an adapted version of TOM in nurseries in England and the contribution it can make to empirical exploration of emotional processes. A concurrent sister study will report on the use of A-TOM in Australia.

In the third part of this series marking Early Education and Nursery World’s tenth decades, Dr Peter Elfer explains why the job of raising the status of, and investment in, caring for the under-twos is not over

Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), the pioneering educator of the nineteenth century (see Chapter 3), had a deep understanding of the creative nature of young children. This is illustrated by his description of a baby’s expression of emotion. He saw ‘the first smile’ as a marker of being human and sociable (entering into communication):the first smile, which instantly distinguishes the young human being from any other creature . . . It shows that the child has reached the stage where he is becoming conscious and aware of himself. It is an essentially human characteristic . . . it is the way in which the child, while as yet without any means of expression, first enters into communication with other minds. The first smile is therefore the expression of an independent human mind.

The last 30 years have seen a significant increase in babies attending nursery, with corresponding questions about the aims and organisation of practice. Research broadly agrees on the importance of emotionally consistent, sensitive and responsive interactions between staff and babies. Policy objectives for nursery and expectations of parents and staff give rise to different and sometimes conflicting aims for such interactions; for example attachments to staff, peer interactions or early learning. Research shows marked variations of pedagogy aims and organisation with babies in nurseries in different national and cultural contexts. It also demonstrates variation between nurseries in similar contexts and between staff in their beliefs and values about work with babies. This paper reports on an exploratory study of the beliefs, aspirations and approaches of eight managers concerning pedagogy with babies in two similar English local authorities. These managers spoke of the importance of being responsive to the concerns and priorities of parents, whilst being sensitive to the demands of the work on their staff. The main finding was of the contradictions and confusions managers felt were inherent in the work, arising from both conflicting policy objectives and personal beliefs and aspirations; sometimes their own and sometimes those of individual staff and parents. Urban, Vandenbroeck, Van Laere, Lazzari, and Peeters' [(2012). Towards competent systems in early childhood education and care. Implications for policy and practice. European Journal of Education, 47(4), 508-526.] concept of the 'competent system' is used to recommend a grounded approach to the development of a more culturally, socially and individually responsive pedagogy with babies than appears to exist at present.

This article argues for a turn in early years policy towards more serious attention to the emotional dimensions of nursery organisation and practice. The article describes three developing bodies of research on emotion in nursery, each taking a different theoretical perspective. The central argument of the article is that these three bodies of research converge in their findings on the importance of staff feeling cared about and understood in enabling staff to more effective in thinking about and responding to the individual children with whom they work. The article illustrates how emotion might be taken more seriously through reference to a number of developing practical initiatives arising from these bodies of work. RESUMECet article plaide pour un changement des politiques de la petite enfance vers une prise en compte approfondie des dimensions emotionnelles de l'organisation et des pratiques dans les creches. L'article decrit trois types de recherches qui se developpent sur l'emotion dans les creches, partant de perspectives theoriques differentes. Le point central de cet article est que les conclusions de ces trois types de recherches convergent sur le fait qu'il faut que les professionnels se sentent valorise(e)s et compris(es) pour qu'il puissent reflechir et reagir plus effectivement aupres chaque enfant avec qui ils travaillent. Cet article illustre comment on pourrait prendre plus serieusement l'emotion en tenant compte d'un nombre d'initiatives concretes qui se preparent et qui emergent de ces travaux. ZUSAMMENFASSUNGDiese Arbeit pladiert fur eine Wende in der Krippen- und Kindergartenpolitik hin zu mehr Aufmerksamkeit gegenuber emotionalen Dimensionen in der Organisation und Praxis von Krippen- und Kindergartenwesen. Es werden drei Forschungsrichtungen herangezogen, welche sich mit Emotionen im Kindergartenwesen auseinandersetzen, wobei jede dieser Forschungsrichtungen jeweils eine unterschiedliche theoretische Perspektive einnimmt. Die Kernaussage dieses Artikels ist, dass die Ergebnisse dieser drei Forschungsrichtungen darin auseinandergehen, welche Bedeutung sie den Emotionen von MitarbeiterInnen zusprechen, insbesondere dem Gefuhl der MitarbeiterInnen, sich in ihrer Arbeit gut betreut und verstanden zu fuhlen. Dies wird durch die Befahigung vermittelt, sich umfangreicher mit den Kindern zu beschaftigen und besser auf die verschiedenen Individuen einzugehen. Au ss erdem wird illustriert, wie diese Emotionen ernster genommen werden konnen durch den Verweis auf verschiedene, sich entwickelnde Praxisinitiativen, welche sich aus diesen Forschungsrichtungen ableiten lassen. RESUMENEste trabajo aboga hacia un cambio en la normativa de la educacion preescolar con el fin de prestar mas atencion a los aspectos emocionales en la practica preescolar y en su organizacion. El trabajo describe tres corrientes de investigacion sobre las emociones en la etapa preescolar, cada una desde una perspectiva teorica distinta. El argumento central de este trabajo es que estas tres corrientes de investigacion coinciden en sus conclusiones con relacion a la importancia de que el personal se sienta cuidado y apoyado y que eso hace que a su vez sea mas pertinente para responder a las necesidades de los ninos con los que trabajan. Este trabajo ilustra como las emociones se deben considerar seriamente y hace referencia a ciertas iniciativas practicas, actualmente en desarrollo, que estan emergiendo de estas investigaciones.

Nursery WorldVol. 2015, No. 11 PracticeMixed feelingsPeter ElferPeter ElferSearch for more papers by this authorPeter ElferPublished Online:16 Jun 2015https://doi.org/10.12968/nuwa.2015.11.32AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail View articleAbstractEmotions play an important role in our nursery relationships – and child development. The University of Roehampton's Peter Elfer explains FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails 1 June 2015Volume 2015Issue 11ISSN (print): 0029-6422ISSN (online): 2059-9358 Metrics History Published online 16 June 2015 Published in print 1 June 2015 Information© MA Education LimitedPDF download

ABSTRACT In a single intensive nursery case study, using in depth interviews, group discussion and self completed daily diaries, this article reports on staff accounts of the emotional aspects of their interactions with young children. The findings show how much the staff achieved through their empathy for children and families and the establishment of warm, responsive and individual relationships. However, they also reveal how vulnerable these interactions were to discontinuity and disturbance and how much the work was based on an intuitive approach. There was little specification about nursery attachments in theoretical or practical terms to guide staff critical reflection and judgement about managing these close relationships. The findings also indicate the emotional demands on staff of sustaining such emotionally close interactions with very young children. The article concludes acknowledging the logistical and emotional complexity of facilitating consistent, accountable and reflective attachment interactions with young children. It highlights the importance of developing sophisticated management attention to the emotional experience of attachment based pedagogy so that feelings evoked in staff by attachment work can be better understood.