An Exploration of Love in the Practice of Infant and Toddler Teachers
Creators: name: Hughes, Rachel
Publisher: name: Australian Catholic University
Year: 2024
Subjects: Love
Early Childhood Teachers
Flourishing
Infants and Toddlers
Nussbaum

description: This doctoral thesis reports a qualitative study that aimed to contribute to the existing body of empirical research related to love in early childhood teachers’ teaching practice, with a specific focus on teaching practice with infants and toddlers. This study, which was conducted in an Aotearoa New Zealand context, also attempted to build theory about love as a legitimate and integral facet of teachers’ teaching practice in order for infants and toddlers to flourish. In this study, I used an ethnographic methodology to gather empirical data through fieldwork observations of the research participants’ teaching practice, together with semi-structured interviews, to address the research question: In what ways do early childhood teachers understand and demonstrate love in their teaching practice with infants and toddlers?
Nussbaum’s (2001) cognitive-evaluative theory of the emotions provided this study’s theoretical framework. Nussbaum’s theory draws on the Aristotelian concept of eudaimonia, which refers to the quality of a person’s life, to posit that the emotions aim towards a person’s flourishing. It is only a person’s virtuous actions, together with their mutual relationships of friendship, personal love, or civic love, in which the object of a person’s emotion is loved for their own good, that can be considered as integral to a person’s eudaimonia (Nussbaum). Nussbaum proposes that experiences of the emotions are cognitively-laden, intellectual acts.
Moreover, from an Aristotelian perspective, civic love both underpins and nourishes the flourishing of society at large (Nussbaum, 1990). If to be civic reflects the actions of someone concerned about their community, then in the context of this study, I argue that love in early childhood teachers’ teaching practice is a civic love that aims towards the flourishing of the infants and toddlers for whom teachers are responsible.
From my inductive and deductive analysis of data gathered from the research participants, I have found they collectively understand and demonstrate civic love in their teaching practice in the following ways: through restorative actions, and appropriate physical interactions; the provision of a safe, stimulating, and nurturing learning environment; a motivation to foster children’s flourishing; and authentic, intentional, responsive, attuned, trusting, supportive, and respectful relationships with the children for whom they are responsible, and with those children’s parents and whānau. Accordingly, I argue that a loving early childhood teacher will represent the characteristics of civic love in their teaching practice.
These findings are supported by salient literature from educational, psychological, neuroscientific, and paediatric perspectives, which emphasise the importance of infants’ and toddlers’ experiencing dependable, loving, responsive caregiver-child relationships in the first 1000 days of their lives if they are to flourish. However, while findings about the relationship between love and the flourishing of infants and toddlers are available to be drawn upon by the Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education community, I have also found that contemporary early childhood education discourse lacks coherence about love in teachers’ teaching practice. I argue this is problematic for teachers wanting both guidance about, and legitimisation of, love as an integral facet of their teaching practice. 
To address this problem, I extrapolated Nussbaum’s (2001) cognitive-evaluative theory of the emotions into early childhood teachers’ teaching practice, as follows: A loving early childhood teacher understands that a goal of their teaching practice is to foster children’s flourishing. Based on this goal, a loving early childhood teacher makes an ongoing series of cognitive evaluations about the children for whom they are responsible. Based on their cognitive evaluations, a loving early childhood teacher makes decisions about appropriate actions to take in their teaching practice. Based on their cognitive decision-making, a loving early childhood teacher demonstrates civic love though their teaching practice in a manner consistent with the flourishing of those children. Accordingly, I argue that Nussbaum’s cognitive-evaluative theory of the emotions is a robust foundation upon which early childhood teachers can credibly engage in discourse about love as a legitimate and integral facet of their teaching practice.