Utterance chains: A dialogic route to speculative thinking-with toddlers in the Chthulucene

Abstract

Sustained shared thinking dialogues which focus on teacher talk with preschool learners have long been considered an important route to learning progression. Toddlers, however, seldom engage in dialogues through talk alone, and their encounters are often fleeting. As a consequence, they are often positioned on the periphery of learning dialogues that are granted primacy in the Capitalocene, because they must first acquire adult forms of communication and their meanings before thought becomes possible. Viewed from a dialogic standpoint, however, toddlers offer important clues to co-constituted meaning-making through subtle, fleeting, embodied and interconnected language acts. When stitched together across time and space and in speculative, apperceptive, contemplation of their strategic orientation, these seemingly random utterances can act as a source of shared thinking through interanimating chains of thought that implicate teachers as well as toddlers. In the paper that follows, utterance chains are brought to life through curated video and dialogue with Aotearoa New Zealand teachers who, sought to ‘think with’ toddlers in ECE settings. Paying attention to interconnecting links in meaning across language acts over time and space, utterance chains invoked apperceptive engagement with language and thought. These discoveries invite teachers to expand communicative repertoires to ‘think with’ young learners as optimistic encounters of ‘making-with’ bestowals in and for the Chthulucene.