Teaching and Learning with Infants and Toddlers

Maguire-Fong has updated her groundbreaking book designed to assist pre- and inservice professionals working with infants and their families.

In the short span of three years, infants learn to move with confidence and grace, to converse with ease, to investigate and solve problems, and to help others in need—building an exquisite foundation for all learning that follows. Each chapter of this updated edition draws from research and real-life infant care settings to provide valuable insights into how to design an infant care program, plan curriculum, assess learning, and work with families.

This popular resource is inspired by the philosophy of early childhood education developed in the schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy; from the work of Magda Gerber and Emmi Pikler; and from the many dedicated researchers intent on figuring out how infants make meaning.

Book Features:

• Explicit examples that illustrate how to teach in ways that respect how infants learn.
• A new in-depth section describing how to plan curriculum by observing, documenting, and interpreting infants’ play and interactions.
• A newly illustrated section that describes how play spaces, daily care routines, and everyday conversations and interactions can be transformed into contexts for learning that fully support infants’ amazing capacity to learn.
• Examples of curriculum planning and assessment that align well with state and national performance standards and curriculum frameworks.

Mary Jane Maguire-Fong is professor emerita of early childhood education at American River College in Sacramento, California, and co-author of Infant Development from Conception to Age 3: What Babies Ask of Us.

“Through a compelling synthesis of neuroscience and developmental research, Teaching and Learning with Infants and Toddlers illuminates the active role infants and toddlers play in their learning. Drawing on major approaches in early childhood pedagogy and care, Mary Jane Maguire-Fong provides vivid examples of infants and toddlers in action while describing the complementary, essential role of the teacher in observing, documenting, and reflecting on their learning. This wonderful book invites us to deepen our understanding and respect for infants and toddlers and to teach and learn together with them.”
—Peter L. Mangione, director, Center for Child & Family Studies, WestEd

“Maguire-Fong masterfully synthesizes the past half-century’s explosion of Euro-American research on how infants think and learn, and from it distills clear, simple, and inspiring guidance for early child educators—and everyone who cares about babies—on the environments, experiences, and relationships they need to understand themselves and our world.”
—Joshua D. Sparrow, executive director, Brazelton Touchpoints Center, Boston Children’s Hospital

Praise for the First Edition!

“From its clear explanation of the developing brain of a baby to its enlightened presentation on the art of reflective childcare, I see how many times I will use this work as a resource.”
—From the Foreword by J. Ronald Lally, codirector, Center for Child and Family Studies, WestEd

“Mary Jane Maguire-Fong explores deeply the connections among state-of-the-art science on young children's development, public policies affecting families, and best practice in the care and education of very young children. Teaching and Learning with Infants and Toddlers is filled with so many great ideas, evocative illustrations, and practical considerations—all knit together in an almost lyrical narrative style. A wonderful, necessary read for anyone interested in supporting our youngest children.”
—Ross A. Thompson, Distinguished Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis

“Here is everything you ever wanted to know about very young children as ‘born researchers’ —how they engage with the world so new to them and invite us to play with them in shared meaning-making. This book explores every aspect of early development and invites us to learn with the children, as we order time and space to respond to their curiosity.”
—Elizabeth Jones, faculty emerita, Pacific Oaks College

“Students of early childhood need to have all these important thoughts in their heads and be so familiar with this work that the respectful care they give babies becomes natural, letting life simply flow. Parents as well will benefit in knowing that to ‘be’ with their child is what matters most, especially when life seems so stressful."
—Bev Bos, author, speaker, and director and teacher at the Roseville Community Preschool in Roseville, CA

Contents

Foreword to the First Edition J. Ronald Lally

Prologue to the First Edition T. Berry Brazelton

Preface

Part I. How Infants Learn

1. Infants as Active Meaning-Makers
Infants Are Born Researchers
Infants as Subjects, Not Objects
A Triangle of Relationships from Research to Practice: Education Begins in Infancy

2. Relationships Shape the Developing Brain
Sequence of Brain Development
Experience Wires the Brain
Neurons and How They Work
Brain Plasticity: Benefit and Risk
The Social Brain
From Research to Practice: Building Strong Brains

3. Knowledge from the Infant’s Point of View
Three Types of Knowledge
Learning Within Three Contexts
From Research to Practice: Naming Knowledge in Infancy—Foundations for Learning

4. Policies That Support Relationships
Primary Care
Continuity of Care
Small Group Size
Culturally Respectful Care
From Research to Practice: Reflective Supervision

PART II. OBSERVING, DOCUMENTING, AND INTERPRETING TO SUPPORT INFANT LEARNING

5. Observing: Where Teaching and Learning Begin
Observing, Documenting, and Interpreting
Documentation that Supports Curriculum Planning
Documentation to Assess Learning
Documentation to Engage Families
From Research to Practice: Re-visioning Curriculum

6. First Feelings
Attachment
How Babies Respond to Stress
Proposing Possibilities for Learning
From Research to Practice: Infant Mental Health

7. Sense of Self and Other
Born Looking for Us
Holding Others in Mind
The Withdrawn Infant
Caring and Cooperating
Proposing Possibilities for Learning
From Research to Practice: Shared Silent Stories

8. Taking Action: Motor Development
Rising Up: Rotating, Sitting, Standing
Moving Out: Locomotion
Grasping
Perceptual and Motor Challenges
Proposing Possibilities for Learning
From Research to Practice: Where Babies Find Themselves

9. Thinking: Cognitive Development
Infants Investigate
Infants Build Concepts
Proposing Possibilities for Learning
From Research to Practice: How Do We Know They Are Learning?

10. Communicating: Language Development
Babies Seek Patterns in Language
How the Brain Organizes Language
Language Learning: A Shared Social Experience
The Emergence of Speech
Proposing Possibilities for Learning
From Research to Practice: Literacy Begins in Infancy

Part III. Contexts for learning

11. Play Spaces: Contexts for Wonder and Learning
Play Spaces with Distinct Identity
Familiarity and Surprise
Seclusion
Pathways To, Not Through, The Play
Outdoors as a Learning Environment
Safety, Sanitation, and Comfort

12. Care Routines: Contexts for Joy and Learning
Welcoming, Peaceful Spaces for Care
Care That Invites Participation
Meals as Invitation to Participate
Diapering as Invitation to Participate
Napping as Invitation to Participate

13. Conversation and Interaction: Contexts for Learning
Respectful Guidance
Acknowledge Feelings or Intent
Clear Limits: Convey the House Rules
Frame a Limited Choice
Temperament: A Goodness of Fit
Touchpoints
Difficult Behavior: A Child Seeking Safety

14. Who Cares for Babies?
Access to Quality Infant Care
Documentation as Tool for Advocacy

Afterword to the First Edition Ed Tronick

References

Index

About the Author