Teaching and Learning with Infants and Toddlers

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.

• 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 Infants 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• The Withdrawn Infant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