Social purpose and pedagogy in the baby room of UK nurseries: exploring the what, how and why of working with 0-2 year olds

This article builds on conversations about the nature of a pedagogy specifically for babies, which are defined in this paper as 0–2 year olds. To do this, we explore articulations of social purpose and social pedagogy among 15 baby room educators working in UK nurseries. Our findings suggest four types of social purpose and four types of social pedagogy that inform what baby educators do, how they do it and why they do it. The baby educators in our study articulated their social purpose in terms of providing a secure foundation for childhood and adulthood; acting as a support system for parents; enabling healthy early development; and inspiring learning across the lifespan. Correspondingly, they identified their social pedagogy in terms of giving care and nurture to meet physical and emotional needs; cultivating parent partnerships; planning activities, interactions and resources around developmental goals; and creating provocations to stimulate learning based on individual interests. We hope that this typology helps to deepen our understanding of what baby educators experience and the pedagogies they enact day to day, as well as acting as a reflective tool for baby room educators to use to deepen their practice.

© The Author(s) 2024
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.