This study addresses the support and responsiveness towards children's agency within early childhood education and care (ECEC) in the context of collaborative storytelling. We analyze activities in which ECEC teachers together with pairs of children (re)tell a story that they know from a book. Like in any social activity, the matter theoretically referred to as ‘agency’ is actualized. In the case of storytelling, this is a matter that could be formulated in terms of ‘authoring’ and ‘what story’ or ‘whose story’ is (to be) told. Adopting a sociocultural/dialogical perspective, we analyze the interaction in these triads, paying particular attention to shifts in the authoring of stories and in manifestations of stancetaking. The empirical data were gathered from two internationally profiled preschools in Sweden, involving 10 children aged 4–5 years who engage in multiple languages. The results clarify the continuous negotiation of agency in the activities. The results are discussed in terms of methodology and the importance of studying agency in a manner that captures it as dynamic, changing and evolving, rather than as reified possession, is emphasized.
Guiding small groups working on mathematical tasks is challenging for teachers. In this study, we investigated whether using a tool that helps teachers scaffold small student groups during mathematical discussions (the SGS Tool) leads to more and qualitatively better mathematical discussions. The participants were eight teachers and 272 seventh-grade students drawn from two schools. Five teachers used the tool (SGS condition), while three did not (control condition). SGS teachers gave relatively more support than control teachers. SGS teachers also took various steps of the SGS Tool, whereas the control teachers mostly gave content support. Significantly more and qualitatively better mathematical discussions occurred in the SGS condition. We provide a qualitative illustration of two contrasting teacher–small-group interactions (one in the control condition and one in the SGS condition), followed by an analysis of the interaction processes associated with one student group in each class during one lesson.
In a moment in which society frequently legitimizes the narrative that young children are “goal-oriented”, “competent” and “agents”, this paper denaturalizes this core value through empirical examples of how agency is enacted in family practices in which parents and siblings animate infant “speech” (voicing), fortifying the child's active family membership. The paper draws from a multimodal, longitudinal, ethnographic study examining the language socialization of infants in Spanish middle-class families from Madrid. In dialogue with a relational approach to agency, voicing is analyzed to showcase how the social construction of babies' agency dynamically changes in different positions (e. g. between competence and vulnerability) and in different verbal and no-verbal attunements between babies and family members. As we consider the interactional and verbal routine of voicing, we also move to a more vaguely defined terrain of undervalued dimensions, such as infant vocalizations and other forms of multimodal and embodied communicative practices, as they co-occur in socio-material ensembles.