Mosaic of care: Preschool children’s caring expressions and enactments

Abstract

Children engage in a multitude of reciprocal relationships of care within Early Childhood Care and Education settings; they act as both care-receivers and care-givers. In order to better understand the ways in which children construct care (i.e. as they receive it and provide it to others), this study investigated how 15 three- to five-year-olds expressed, enacted, and then subsequently described and explained their experiences of care in one preschool classroom in the Midwestern United States. Data were captured using the Mosaic approach and included observations, photographs, videos, child conferences, and book-making. Analysis of the data revealed that children constructed care in five ways: to minimize the discomfort or pain of others, support relationships, promote positive emotion, enhance healthy and safe habits, and ensure the longevity and sustainability of their shared resources. Interpretations and implications of the mosaic of care generated in the site are discussed.

Keywords

care caregiving Mosaic approach participatory research methods

Introduction

Children witness and participate in a multitude of caring interactions in which they act as both care-receivers and care-givers. Through the care they receive, they learn to care for themselves, others, and our world (Quigley and Hall, 2016). As they engage in care-giving and care-receiving, children develop prosocial skills such as empathy, compassion, sharing, and helpfulness (Denham and Brown, 2010; Hyson and Taylor, 2011) as well as skills connected to enhanced academic readiness (Bierman et al., 2009). Care is a significant component of children’s everyday lives; yet, their subjective perceptions of the care they receive and their own expressions and enactments of care as competent members of the caregiving community are overlooked in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) scholarship. Granted, investigations into children’s subjective experiences is a burgeoning field in childhood research (Freeman and Mathison, 2009; Merewether and Fleet, 2014), their subjective experiences as care-givers, in their own right, are largely absent from care-related research. The study reported in this article addresses this gap in understanding by examining how 15 preschoolers in one US preschool classroom expressed, enacted, and explained their experiences of care.

In contrast to a traditional goal- or future-oriented perspective, the contemporary child is considered in terms of both being and becoming, making the immediacy of a child’s current experiences both relevant and important to who she or he is and who she or he will become (Qvortrop, 2004; Uprichard, 2008). In this view, the contemporary child is also an influential participant in social institutions and communities (Christensen and James, 2000), who is a citizen on local, national, and global scales (Lansdown, 2005; MacNaughton et al., 2007). Taken together, contemporary children are active citizens, who are capable of constructing meaning of their immediate subjective experience, leading to the purpose of this study: to capture and understand subjective experiences of care.

Guided by this purpose, and an ethical commitment to seek, listen to, and authentically represent children’s thoughts, perceptions, and interests, I privileged children’s constructions of care through their own voices. Thus, the research questions guiding this study were as follows: How do young children explain the enactments and expressions of care observed and captured in their preschool classroom, and What does examination of this subjective experience reveal about young children’s constructions of care?

Notions of care

High-quality ECCE settings are sites of nurturance and learning. Through the nurturing relationships children participate in, they are also learning about how it feels to be cared for and what it means to care for others. Socio-cultural theory (Vygotsky, 1941 [1997]) suggests that learning is a social process, therefore, as children engage in caregiving relationships and environments (i.e. ECCE programs), they are learning about care. This means children’s understanding of care affects their ability to enact care, which in turn affects the nature of their caring relationships both inside and outside of ECCE settings.

In this study, care is conceptualized as a practice that—at a minimum—directly helps individuals meet their basic needs and capabilities while sustaining and supporting their well-being (Engster, 2005; Held, 2006; Noddings, 2013; Tronto, 1993). Foundational to this conceptualization is the notion that care is a practice (action-based) that is enacted and expressed through relations inside and outside of the self (Engster, 2005; Mayeroff, 1971; Ruddick, 1989). This approach to defining care maintains Gilligan’s (1982) and Noddings’ (2013) core notion of relatedness by stating that care aims to directly meet the other’s needs. In other words, the act of care is situated in an interaction that requires shared, relational understanding. In addition, in this view, care is focused not only on basic needs, but also on capabilities, or the freedoms, or agency, one has to act on opportunities or potential (Buzzelli, 2015) that allows individuals to “choose the lives they value” (Sen, 1992: 81). For the purpose of this study, a practice-based conception of care was a starting point to be expanded upon by the participants as they shared their experiences of caring and being cared for by others.

Caring expressions and enactments

Children express themselves through multiple forms of representation and expression, such as verbalized speech, gestures, drawings, sculpture, role-playing, and movement (Clark and Moss, 2011). Therefore, it was necessary to recognize the multiple ways young children might express and enact care. The term “expression” is operationalized broadly such that an expression is an outward communication, representation, or performance of one’s internal affective state. Care expressions may include verbal and non-verbal expressions, such as facial cues, empathetic phrases (e.g. “Can I help?”), body positioning, vocal tone, giving (e.g. providing an object, giving a hug), pointing, sharing, and listening. A care enactment is the process through which a trait, behavior, or response is acted out through a social context. Caring enactments represent the broader process of care, such that a care enactment includes multiple back-and-forth interactions. Care enactments require attentiveness (i.e. empathetic perspective-taking), responsiveness (i.e. prosocial expressions), competence, and sensitivity (i.e. motivation to act). In this sense, a care enactment comprises multiple caring expressions, which may emerge within a caring relationship.

Caring, competent young children

For the purpose of the study, care was further conceptualized as comprising five elements: connectedness, attentiveness, responsiveness, competence, and sensitivity. Each of the five elements are reviewed below in relation to findings from early childhood education and child development research.

Connectedness and attentiveness

ECCE settings are sites for children to practice care and participate in supportive caring communities (Hyson and Taylor, 2011). Feeling connected to other caring individuals in ECCE settings helps children develop secure relationships within the classroom community (Chin, 2014; Shonkoff and Phillips, 2000). In these settings, children act as receivers and givers of care within a web of interdependent relations in which they engage and learn to be attentive and show connectedness through empathetic responses to the caring needs of others. Recent findings have demonstrated children’s ability to respond through empathetic perspective-taking (Cigala et al., 2015; Eisenberg et al., 2007; Williamson et al., 2013), which shifts previous perceptions away from notions of young children as ego-centric and incapable of recognizing another person’s perspective.

Responsiveness

Responding to the perceived needs of another is demonstrated through prosocial behaviors. Prosocial acts serve to assist or benefit another (Eisenberg, 1982) and include behaviors like helping, sharing, and comforting (Paulus and Moore, 2012). Young children’s prosocial behaviors mature as their cognitive and affective skills develop, particularly in relation to social understanding and empathy (Hoffman, 2000; Paulus, 2014). Recent evidence reveals even very young children have demonstrated unprompted helping behaviors (Kawakami and Takai-Kawakami, 2015). For example, 14-month-old infants in a study by Warneken and Tomasello (2009) helped an in-need adult by intervening only when assistance was actually needed showing a nuanced understanding of perceived need. These findings were supported in a qualitative study conducted by McMullen et al. (2009) showing that children as young as 11 months old have the capacity to act in purposeful prosocial ways in childcare.

Competence

Care is an intellectual and emotional act, where one is both intellectually aware of the complexity of care and simultaneously emotionally empathetic toward the other (Goldstein, 1998; Mayeroff, 1971). Warneken and Tomasello (2009) demonstrated that children learn prosocial behaviors through a socio-affiliative process whereby social interactions in the child’s environment promote other-oriented behaviors. Contrary to early Piagetian notions of egocentrism, as demonstrated by Hepach et al.’s (2017) study with 18-month-old toddlers, young children are motivated to help others even when their helping behavior was not witnessed by an adult.

Sensitivity

Sensitivity encompasses the openness and willingness to care; it uncovers the moral and emotional dimensions of care (Engster, 2005). Denham and Brown (2010), for instance, used the term “relationship skills” to describe children’s sensitivity to others, which includes initiating and maintaining conversation, cooperating, listening, taking turns, seeking help, and “addressing the needs of all via negotiation” (p. 657).

The study

The purpose of this phenomenological inquiry was to describe young children’s constructions of care as both care-givers and care-receivers by capturing their expressions, enactments, and interpretations of care as they occurred in an ECCE preschool setting. In the context of this study, I recognized that young children bring many care experiences with them to the ECCE setting; they first experience care in their families and they enter structured, pre-existing care environments (i.e. ECCE settings) in which they become important co-constructors in caring relationships within those spaces (Freeman and Mathison, 2009).

Interpretive phenomenology, as opposed to descriptive phenomenology, is grounded in the notion that the interpretation and understanding of one’s experiences are inevitably contextualized within the individual’s “being-in-the-world” (Heidegger, 1927 [1962]). “Being-in-the-world” emphasizes the contextual, or subjective, nature of experience, to include our pre-understandings, background, and intersections with language, relationships, socio-cultural, and political circumstances (Finlay, 2012; Laverty, 2003). In this study, I recognized that the participant’s experiences were embedded in the context of their ECCE classroom. Furthermore, my position as researcher was less about “finding” and objectively reporting children’s actions and statements related to care; rather I engaged in intersubjective meaning-making of care with the participant.

Context and participants

This study was conducted at a university-affiliated early childhood center, the University Child Care (UCC)¹ program, and included 15 of 17 three- to five-year-old children present in the Sunflower room whose families agreed on their behalf to participate. The UCC, located in a Midwestern town, has received the state’s top rating in its Quality Rating Improvement System (QRIS) and is nationally accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). UCC was purposefully selected because of its care-focused ethos and center-wide, care-focused guidelines that include (1) take care of our friends (others), (2) take care of our ourselves, and (3) take care of our materials. These three guidelines explicitly guide the conduct of all children and adults in the program and implicitly establishes a care-focused community. For the purpose of this study, it was important to examine the phenomenon of how children interpret and make meaning of their care-giving and care-receiving within an optimal care environment, one in which care is part of the culture, caring habits are scaffolded, and care-ful behaviors are the norm; the underlying assumption was that children in such a space would be the most reliable informants of the phenomenon.

The UCC’s Sunflower room is a multi-age classroom led by two co-lead teachers, Savannah and Umi. Both teachers hold graduate degrees in early childhood education and have been co-teaching together in the Sunflower room for over 13 years. They implement a thematic, play-based curriculum that includes uninterrupted segments of indoor and outdoor, child-directed free play, as well as short structured whole-group activities.

The 15 children participating in this study included eight females, six males, and one gender-fluid child, five of whom were 3-years-old, seven who were 4-years-old, and three who were 5-years-old. Among them, seven were native English speakers, and the others were multilingual, representing six different home languages.

Data sources

The Mosaic approach (Clark and Moss, 2011) guided data collection, chosen for its ethical commitment to researching with children, as opposed to research on children. The approach positions children as competent social participants who are co-constructors in the process of meaning-making (Clark, 2005). Across a period of 6 weeks, I spent 3 days per week (3 hours per visit) in the Sunflower room gathering data, a total of approximately 54 hours. The data sources involved in this study merged both visual modes (observation, photo/video documentation, child-generated artifacts like artwork and books) and verbal/voice modes (child conferences and informal conversations) to capture a diversity of children’s enactments and expressions of care. Each data source holds equal weight in how it represents children’s construction of care.

Observations and informal conversations

I served as a participant observer (Johnson and Christensen, 2008) in this study. The co-lead teachers introduced me to the class as a “scientist” (a term the participants had previously studied in a curriculum theme), and children were encouraged to ask me questions at any time. Observations, which focused on contextual information and care-related enactments and expressions, were conducted during each site visit and recorded in an observation journal. Notes gathered through observation provided entry points for informal conversations with the children (Dunn, 2005).

Photographs, video, and audio recordings

A camera with dual photo and video capabilities mounted on a mini, flexible tripod was used to document care-in-action moments at morning snack, morning meeting, and unstructured, free play time. Morning snack allowed me to see the entire group involved in self-care (e.g. washing hands, pouring own milk, eating healthy food) and social interactions (e.g. conversations about food preference, joking with one another, making play plans for later). Following morning meeting was an hour of free, unstructured play. During this time, the video-camera was positioned and moved as necessary to capture multiple play interactions. The Sunflower classroom had several daily invitations for play, which included the dramatic play area (a kitchen and elevated loft), sand or water table, small group table activities (e.g. writing letters, practicing counting, reading and writing books), large block play, and a classroom library.

Child conferences

Similar to focus group interviewing, child conferences are short semi-structured interviews that seek to minimize the asymmetrical power relations of interviewer-interviewee dynamics (Clark, 2005). A photo elicitation approach, called photo-talks (Serriere, 2010) was used in eight conferences (two to four children per conference) to engage participants in thinking about what care meant to them. Thirty images were selected from among hundreds of photographs and still-images captured from videos; images were printed at high resolution, full-color on 8.5 × 11-inch photo paper and placed in plastic sheet protectors. This allowed children to handle the images and manipulate them as they wished.

Before each conference, I selected three to four photographs based upon who was participating in that session, from the collection of 30 and prepared probing questions as prompts for each image, such as, “Tell me what’s happening in this picture” or “Why is she or he doing [name behavior]?” My questions were flexible and responded to children’ communications in a conversational manner in which verbal and non-verbal responses (e.g. gesturing, pointing, performing, or play acting) were encouraged.

Book-making

A photo book using the elicitation images from the conferences was created (see Figure 1). Each page of the book included an image and a caption: “We take care of [ourselves/friends/things] by doing [behavior].” The book was donated to the classroom and served as a member-checking tool. Another book-making project emerged from the site; the participants, with the help of their co-lead teachers, made a reflection book that was gifted to me (see Figure 2). Each participant contributed a page with a drawing and a message (either written by the participant or as dictated to a teacher).

Figure 1.

Sample page from photo book made for participants by the researcher.

Figure 2.

Sample child-generated reflection letter (caption written by teacher, narrated by child).

Data analysis

Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) served as the primary data analysis approach. Although it is not widely used in research with children, it was selected for its ability to frame and examine subjective experiences, or sense-making, within an individual’s lifeworld (Larkin et al., 2006). Transcripts from video and audio recordings, visual artifacts (i.e. photographs, child-generated art, and reflection book), and observation notes were examined, and followed by a cyclic process of looking for, conferring, and questioning care experiences as they converged and diverged across the texts (Smith et al., 2009). Emergent themes of children’s experiences of care were abstracted and searched connections across those categories were used to produce super-ordinate themes. All data were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using MaxQDA12, a qualitative data analysis software.

As I handled the original, primary source data, I retained an open phenomenological attitude, which Finlay (2008) depicted as a dialectical dance. Thus, in searching for the meaning embedded in the sources, I simultaneously checked and embraced my own pre-understandings. The resulting findings represent a co-constructed narrative of both my voice as researcher and analyst with child participant voice as expert of their own lifeworld.

Findings

The IPA data analysis process revealed five ways in which children constructed care: to minimize the discomfort or pain of others, support relationships, promote positive emotion, enhance healthy and safe habits, and ensure the longevity and sustainability of their shared resources. Given that the research questions focused on children’s constructions of care, the child’s voice was foregrounded in the data analysis process, while the teacher’s voice was backgrounded.

Minimize discomfort or pain

Observation notes, photographs, videos, and child conferences captured the participants enacting care for others when they perceived another person was in pain or experiencing discomfort. A typical example occurred one morning while the children finished snack, Pedra (4 years old (y.o.) approached Umi (co-lead teacher) and shared that her father was going away on a business trip and that he would be gone for 2 days. Peter (4 y.o.), overhearing the conversation, interjected, “You must miss him! We should make a card.” Umi, following Peter’s (4 y.o.) idea, agreed that a card might help Pedra (4 y.o.) feel better about missing her father while he was gone. In this short interaction, Peter (4 y.o.) empathized with Pedra’s (4 y.o.) feelings by recognizing the feeling of missing someone and that a card might help alleviate some of her sadness and discomfort. Peter (4 y.o.) expressed care for Pedra (4 y.o.) by validating her feelings (“you must really miss him”) and by suggesting a physical representation of care (the card) would help her feel comforted.

Care was also expressed and enacted through make believe or imaginary play scenarios, where pain and discomfort were imagined. In one particular play scenario captured through photographs, Griffin (5 y.o.), Ben (3 y.o.), Elaine (3 y.o.), and Moti (4 y.o.) played as firefighters and doctors. As the play shifted from putting out fires on the classroom’s loft structure, the group began exchanging roles of “playing dead” and being revived by the doctor. Figure 3 depicts a moment of care-in-action showing Griffin (5 y.o.) cradling the head of his “dead” friend Moti (4 y.o.). While comforting his hurt friend, Griffin (5 y.o.) said, “I’m the only one who knows how to heal. I can heal.” Shortly thereafter, Moti (4 y.o.) begins coming to life as if waking from a long slumber.

Figure 3.

Griffin (5 y.o.) comforts an injured firefighter.

In this care expression, Griffin (5 y.o.) uses physical actions to comfort his friend as shown in pulling Moti’s (4 y.o.) body close to him in a hug-like embrace. Griffin (5 y.o.) employs comforting words (I can heal) to relieve the discomfort of his friend. Interestingly, following the play, I showed Griffin (5 y.o.) the image and unprompted, he said, “We’re just playing dead. Just for pretend.” This statement could be interpreted as protection for himself in making it clear this is allowable play, or it could be interpreted as care for the audience of this play. In assuring the witness of the death scene that it was “just for pretend,” Griffin (5 y.o.) is possibly relieving my discomfort in seeing a classmate in pain.

Support relationships

The participants in this classroom employed the practice of care to extend and support relationships. In one instance, while on a trip to a nearby meadow, Moti (4 y.o.) found a large, fallen tree branch and wished to bring it back to the UCC’s outdoor play space. He pulled and tugged at the branch dragging it slowly across the ground. Realizing the branch was too large for one person to carry, Moti (4 y.o.) sought the help of others, he shouted a chant of “More help! More help! More help!” Others near him answered the call. I documented the process of the group carrying the branch back to the center (roughly a quarter mile) through photograph and video (Figure 4). In order to understand why others expressed care for Moti (4 y.o.) and his wishes, I asked a group of participants about the image in a child conference.

Researcher:

Do you want to look at another picture? I shift a photo in front of Pedra (4 y.o.), Mya (4 y.o.), and Isabel (3 y.o.)

Pedra (4 y.o.):

We’re in the meadow!

Mya (4 y.o.):

Bringing a stick. A big stick!

Researcher:

Why are there so many people carrying this stick?

Pedra (4 y.o.):

Because Moti (4 y.o.) wanted to bring it to our playground.

Researcher:

I remember that day; you guys carried it all the way back. So why are all the other people helping him?

Pedra (4 y.o.):

Because he could get it.

Isabel (3 y.o.):

Yeah, to pick it up.

Figure 4.

Children carry a large branch back to the center’s outdoor play space.

The participants explained that Moti (4 y.o.) was given help so that he could achieve the goal of bringing the stick back to the center. Isabel (3 y.o.) noted that the stick was too large for one child to carry, so others, recognizing Moti’s (4 y.o.) wishes, joined in to help their friend.

Care enactments aimed to sustain relationships were captured when two, or multiple, friends were present like shown above, and in instances when one’s friend was absent. For instance, while helping clean up the art table, I picked up a piece of colored scrap paper the size of a paper clip and asked participant Yu Na (4 y.o.), “Where should I put this?” Yu Na (4 y.o.) looked in my palm and said, “That’s part of someone’s artwork, so we need to keep it.” She took it from my hand and chaperoned it to the drying rack placing it on a piece of artwork. From across the room she stated, “It goes here.” It seemed Yu Na (4 y.o.) had placed the scrap on the first art piece she saw, yet, her care enactment perhaps originated from a sense of appreciation for another’s purposefulness and effort put into his or her art. In this example, the expression of care did not have a known other, or end point, rather, it appeared Yu Na (4 y.o.) expressed care to an unknown member of her classroom community.

Promote positive emotion

A key aspect of this study was to explore children’s subjective meaning-making around care experiences, therefore, the multiple data sources were examined to uncover the ways in which children represent their care experiences. One way in which the participants explained the personal meaning of their care experiences as care-givers and care-receivers was through feelings of satisfaction. Take for instance Everitt’s (5 y.o.) encounter with a child in the classroom that was next door to the Sunflower room. Figure 4 shows Everitt (5 y.o.) leaning into the window making eye contact with a toddler on the other side. What is not shown in this photograph is that the toddler was smiling and laughing while banging on the window looking at Everitt (5 y.o.).

Researcher:

Hands Everitt a photo of him looking into the next classroom.

Everitt (5 y.o.):

I’m looking at the baby! I’m looking at the baby! He-he-he. That’s the baby!

Researcher:

What’s happening in this [photo]?

Everitt (5 y.o.):

I think she was looking at me.

Researcher:

She was looking at you. Can you tell me a story about that? What’s happening?

Everitt (5 y.o.):

She looking at me. Sometimes she, or he, they are doing something.

Researcher:

So do you check on her—when she’s in the window?

Everitt (5 y.o.):

Yeah.

Researcher:

How?

Everitt (5 y.o.):

I check on lots of babies.

Researcher:

Oh you do? Why do you check on babies?

Everitt (5 y.o.):

[Pauses] Because I really, really—I like babies.

Through our conversation, Everitt (5 y.o.) indicates that he “checks on” the babies in the neighboring classroom because he likes babies and that he finds them interesting. In stating that he “checks on lots of babies” he is saying that he expresses care for babies by ensuring that they are content, and that this act of “checking on” them makes him happy (Figure 5).

Figure 5.

Everitt (5 y.o.) “checks on” a toddler in the neighboring classroom.

Feelings of satisfaction or positive emotion around caring were also captured during the firefighter play scenario described in a previous section (see Figure 3). While providing care to the injured firefighter, Griffin (5 y.o.) said, “I’m the only one who knows how to heal. I can heal.” Photographs and observation notes indicated Griffin (5 y.o.) made this declaration to the play group as if to say only he could bring his friend back to life and that other helpers should step aside. It seemed this care enactment brought personal pride and fulfillment to Griffin (5 y.o.).

Enhance healthy and safe habits

Self-care habits like selecting and eating healthy foods, washing hands to reduce the spread of germs, and maintaining positive sleep routines were observed and discussed with the participants. These behaviors were supported through classroom routines and by the children themselves through reminders and authentic conversation about the consequences of neglecting self-care. For instance, while comparing colors on each other’s shirts, Sabina (4 y.o.) reached out to touch the pink on Lake’s (5 y.o.) shirt.

Sabina (4 y.o.):

And we both have pink! [using her finger to touch each pink spot on Lake’s shirt] Pink. Pink. Pink.

Lake (5 y.o.):

Sabina! You can’t touch people when it’s snack time because if you do you will get germs on them.

Photographs and videos captured participants practicing healthy hygiene habits while eating. In this example, Lake (5 y.o.) understood that germs were spread through touch and that meal time was a time when hygiene was important, which in effect demonstrated self-care.

Another frequent expression of self-care that emerged across the study was the concept of personal safety. During the child conferences, several children indicated that their classroom’s procedure of holding hands while leaving the center was important for maintaining their personal safety, a component of self-care. In one conference, Mya (4 y.o.), Pedra (4 y.o.), and Yu Na (4 y.o.) helped me understand why holding hands kept them safe.

Researcher:

Why do you hold hands when you go to the meadow?

Mya (4 y.o.):

So, because—so you don’t get lost.

Yu Na (4 y.o.):

Do you know—we also be in the line to not get lost.

Researcher:

You stay in line to not get lost?

Pedra (4 y.o.):

Yeah, but a few people got out of line.

Mya (4 y.o.):

And you won’t let go of hands and then walk somewhere else.

Mya (4 y.o.):

And then you need to remember your partner.

Researcher:

Okay, so when you come back together you can hold hands again?

The notion of “getting lost” came up in another conference in which both Lake (5 y.o.) and Tahir (3 y.o.) said they need to hold hands with buddies so they “do not get lost.” Hand holding and the buddy system is a common management practice used by ECCE educators, but through this interaction, it seems that the children see holding hands as a personal responsibility to themselves and to their partner. Taking care of yourself when leaving the classroom requires awareness of one’s surroundings to avoid, as Mya (4 y.o.) said, “walk[ing] somewhere else” away from the group.

Ensure longevity and sustainability of shared resources

The final way in which children constructed care in this classroom was through the preservation and care of shared resources and ideas. Several care practices captured were aimed toward inanimate objects (i.e. classroom materials) and ideas (i.e. sustainability) to ensure those resources would be available for future use. As is common in most ECCE settings, children participated in daily “cleanup” times before transitioning to a new activity or space. While reviewing the final photo book as a class, the participants discussed how they care for their things. Lara (4 y.o.) noted they “take care of our toys, so they don’t get stepped on,” and Yu Na (4 y.o.) added, “and take care of our stuff when we are all done.” Through routinized tidying and organizing practices, the participants explained that care for the classes’ materials and resources ensured availability for future use.

Not only were the participants concerned with the longevity of their classroom resources, they were also aware of more global sustainable practices such as avoidance of waste. For instance, while sitting at the art-making table during free play time, I noticed Jasmit (3 y.o.) and Pedra (4 y.o.) collecting scraps of paper out of a box by the art-making materials.

Researcher:

I see you getting pieces of paper out of that box. Why do you use scrap paper?

Jasmit (3 y.o.):

It cuts waste.

Pedra (4 y.o.):

Yeah, it has words on one side. It came out of a book. But we still write on it. It doesn’t matter—we don’t draw on the words.

Later, after creating her collage piece, I heard Jasmit (3 y.o.) singing, “Recycling, recycling, recycling” as she carried her leftover scrap pieces back to the scrap box. By using scrap paper, they participated in the sustainable practice of reducing waste, which they indicated was a form of care for their environment.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to capture children’s subjective experiences of care. The findings of this study address this and expand current understandings of ECCE care relations by describing children’s constructions of care as it is expressed and enacted, as well as how they described and explained their experiences as care-givers and care-receivers. Evidence supporting the elements described earlier (i.e. being connected, attentive, responsive, competent, and sensitive care practices) were revealed in numerous ways.

The findings highlight that the participants felt a strong connection to one another, and they were capable of being attentive to the care needs expressed by others. Tronto (1993) described this quality as the ability to become passive in one’s own thought, “suspend[ing] one’s own goals, ambitions, plans for life, and concerns, in order to recognize and to be attentive to others” (p. 128). As the participants cared for one another, they engaged in empathetic perspective-taking, essentially displacing their own feelings to feel with the care recipient. This empathetic perspective-taking took form through their concerns for other’s discomfort or pain, attention to the cohesiveness of their friendships and community, as well as in their use of mental flexibility to comprehend hypothetical situations such as what it would feel like to be lost. As evidenced in the findings, these participants demonstrated nuanced attunement to others that led to responsive enactments of caring for others, self, and things. These findings confirm that children are capable of demonstrating emotion-sharing (Eisenberg et al., 2007; Williamson et al., 2013) as well as self-other awareness (Cigala et al., 2015) to meet the care needs of another.

Similarly, the findings demonstrate that the participants exhibited competent, sensitively responsive care acts. As the participants showed, the ability to feel with another individual is more than just an emotional state; it requires a degree of purposeful thought, of consciousness (Engster, 2005; Noddings, 2013). The participants enacted purposeful care through highly contextualized and individually shaped actions, such as publicly validating another’s feelings, connecting personal feelings of being excluded to demands for inclusion, and using sustainable practices to minimize wasteful use of resources. Caring is often described as being a back-and-forth of alternating rhythms of enacting care and evaluating the response and adjusting subsequent responses appropriately (Mayeroff, 1971). These alternating rhythms are moments in which the caregiver moves away from feeling with the other to interpret and determine an appropriate care response (Noddings, 2013). The participants in this study engaged in alternating rhythms of care by enacting prosocial behaviors aimed to respond to the perceived care needs of a recipient, which is consistent with findings from previous research (Hepach et al., 2017; McMullen et al., 2009).

Interestingly, the findings add to theoretical notions of care (Engster, 2005; Noddings, 2013) by showing that the participants included non-human others (i.e. objects, community ethos) as the recipients of their care, suggesting that the young children in this study included people and things as worthy of care. In examining their motivations to enact care, the participants exhibited a focus on maintaining their sense of community, the strength of their bonds within their classroom, and the quality of their learning materials. It is likely their emphasis on including things as important sites of care were scaffolded by the structure of the classroom, specifically the norms of social engagement (i.e. the third center-wide guideline to “take care of our materials”) and the purposeful scaffolding and modeling of care behaviors exhibited by the co-lead teachers. As evidenced by the findings, the participants enacted care in both unprompted and scaffolded ways, leading to a care-ful classroom.

Conclusion

Children and adults participate in interdependent care relations in ECCE settings, as care-givers and care-receivers. Although we know much about the care-giving experiences of adults, children’s experiences are a critical, missing component needed to complete the picture of what it means to care and be cared for in ECCE settings. The findings gathered from this study provide insights into how young children explain enactments and expressions of care in their preschool classroom. The participants’ subjective experiences of care, as captured through the multi-method data gathering approach, reveal an expanded understanding of young children’s constructions of care and what supports them in the ECCE setting. Recognizing that children are being and becoming individuals, who are learning what it means to care and be cared for, this study demonstrates that young children engage in capable, competent care practices.

As researcher, I took care in listening to what young children were communicating to me for it brought me closer to understanding young children’s experiences. In this article, I describe one approach for seeking, listening to, and representing children’s voice in relation to their subjective experiences of care; however, more research is needed to further illuminate the complexity of care relations in ECCE settings.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This research would not have been possible without the contributions of the children, families, and early childhood educators who participated in the research. Special thanks to Mary McMullen, Libba Willcox, Allie Weiss, Crystal Howell, and Jean Graves for their support and thoughtful feedback in preparing this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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