What are the experiences of the two-year-olds in the emotional environment in early childhood education and care settings that offer funded places?

This study sought to explore the emotional environment of two-year-old Early Childhood Education and Care settings that provided funded provision. The extensive literature review drew upon social psychological theories and concepts such as the consciousness of emotions (Damasio, 1999), attachment theory (Kinreich et al., 2017), neuroscience (Tham et al., 2019) and good practice guidelines (Harrison et al., 2022). It was taken from a phenomenological (Sokolowski, 2000) and praxeological (Pascal and Bertram, 2012) methodological approach, deploying various styles of observations, document analysis and manager interviews to measure the emotional environment. The child-centred methodology is used to interpret the voiced beyond the voiced of the child (Spyrou, 2020). The main findings included emotional environments being complex and there was ambiguity within emotion, particularly the framing of love, affection and attachment. Moreover, it reinforced the importance of the emotional connection for children and the way children will seek emotional connection in everyday interactions. It offers original contributions, such as the most common emotional states seen in Early Childhood Education and Care settings and the complexities of these environments. The study made recommendations for practice and offers a free reflexive pack of information that settings can use to examine and reflect on their environments and/or own practices. It also recommended that changes are made to the inspection/quality benchmarks and qualifications framework to allow for practitioners and managers to consider the emotional environment in training, CPD and in quality processes.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

PhD

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Wolverhampton

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Hannan, Louise

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Pascal, Chris
• Bertram, Tony
• Williams-Brown, Zeta

• emotions
• environment
• ecology
• childhood
• early childhood
• early childhood education
• praxeology
• daycare

Licence

• https://wlv.openrepository.com/bitstreams/0cd0db7d-09f9-47c9-94d2-be0411f29562/download