Developing a pedagogy focused on interactions – East Sussex County Council’s collaborative research project ‘Interacting with Babies’ (0–18m): An outline of research, interactions and impact on practice

Laura Piper, Early Years Advisor, East Sussex County Council, UK This project aimed to improve practice and introduce research and professional reflection in 36 baby rooms over two years. Each setting had a practitioner lead, with 146 practitioners and 600 babies involved in total. The practitioner leads undertook small-scale research on their self-chosen aspects of interactions and then shared this in action learning sets (network meetings). The network meetings meant that practitioners reviewed all the different aspects of interactions described below, through each other’s focus questions. Each focus was formed using a variety of tools – observation by East Sussex (ESCC) leads and practitioner self-evaluation (developed by ESCC leads from their own research), alongside practitioners’ own observations. The practitioner leads overwhelmingly fed back the finding that time to step back, observe and analyse led to better understanding of babies’ communication and practitioners