Infant Emotional Capital Practices as Voice in Research and Pedagogy

Infants’ sophisticated social capacities from birth lay foundations for evocative emotional communication in the first year of life. Their capacities, however, are often underestimated and undervalued. This can leave infants “lost in translation” with their right to quality pedagogy, and their participation in it, compromised. This chapter presents research (The research presented in this chapter was conducted with the support of funding from the Jean Denton Memorial Scholarship in early childhood education. It will be referred to from now on as the research, the study, or the project) about infants’ powerful emotional communication, actions, and interactions, conceived of as emotional capital practices. It argues that better understanding infants’ emotional capital practices can help reconcile misinterpretation of very young children by focusing on their observable practices. The project documented infants’ emotional capital practices and engaged educators in critical reflective practice about them. The ethnographic research was conducted in an early years’ learning setting in regional Australia and generated data from photographic and video footage, field notes, and participatory group meetings. The project used the theory of practice architectures to code infants’ practices with educators and then drew on developmental literature to further analyse data. Findings include that infant emotional capital practices consisted of bundles of evocative sayings, doings, and relatings, focused around both positive and negative emotional expressions, and the purposeful recreation of everyday social and emotional behaviour and communication.