We don’t necessarily be having to sit at a table, having a conference, to have a serious conversation: Learning with parents about talking with young children

This thesis explores adults’ conversation with young children in their homes and communities through collaborative research with parents and considers what can be learned, together, through the process. Inspired by concerns that focus on levels of children’s language development were associated with deficit perceptions of parents, the research takes a bioecological perspective. It therefore explores the nature and purposes of adults’ conversations with children and the conditions in which conversations may thrive or be hindered, including structures and processes beyond adults’ behaviours, beliefs or attitudes. The research design was a collective, instrumental case study, drawing on a purposive, largely convenience, sample of four parents to explore the conversational environment around three children aged between 3 and 5 years old. Data were collected using qualitative methods, including conversation logs compiled by the collaborating parents, which included written notes, audio and video recordings. Semi-structured interviews facilitated joint reflection on the conversation logs and specific episodes of conversation, chosen by the parents. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interviews and the conversation logs and specific episodes of conversation were chosen for further analysis, as critical incidents, to illuminate and crystalise the findings. Sustained, back and forth episodes of conversation, characterised by togetherness and displaying quality features associated with language growth were identified in each case, especially with the collaborating parents who were able to ‘tune in’ to their children’s communicative practices. Sustained conversations occurred where there was a ‘coming together’ of the conversational partners in a ‘third space’, enabled by conditions conceptualised as a delicate, shifting ecosystem, vulnerable to influences associated with ‘modern ways’. This thesis also contends that the collaborative process of joint focus on episodes of conversation in the home, with the child at the heart, provides insights into children’s communicative practices and individual funds of knowledge-based interests.