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On Saturday June 14th, we welcomed baby room educators and nursery managers from across Manchester to our fourth ‘Getting it right in the baby room’ conference. We were lucky enough to once again have two amazing speakers with us: Professor Sam Wass, who discussed the neuroscience of babies brains and how this can shape our day-to-day pedagogy, and Cassie Holland, who discussed the rhythm of the day in the baby room and how to slow down in our practice with babies. Our team was struck by the reflective nature of this group of delegates which thrummed throughout the day, adding an exciting undercurrent that demanded deep thinking about the work educators do in the baby room.

In this blogpost, we will share some of our key takeaways from the day:

• The importance of strong baby room teams has surfaced across our conferences, but we felt this idea coming out very strongly in Manchester. Each aspect of quality circled back to having a coordinated, experienced, and dynamic team. Working together was valued as foundational to quality in the baby room. ‘You’ve got to have a consistent approach and pedagogy for those children and make sure that you’ve got a team that are on board with that. Share your vision, making sure that you’re all in the same mindset and you all want the same things.’
• This group of delegates was passionate about having opportunities to learn from each other. They took networking very seriously, with one delegate saying, ‘I’m literally going around to every single one of you, and I’m nicking every single idea that you have in my book before I get home on the bus. We have to be more open about that, don’t we?’ They made the most of every moment together, asking questions about best practice and acting as a critical friend to each other to improve practice. 
• The baby room educators and nursery managers really took to heart how important it is to slow down in practice with babies. One delegate even committed to removing clocks from the room for one day so they could focus on their babies’ unique cues and follow their pace to see what natural rhythm unfolds. The delegates also felt the importance of having time to ask ‘why’ in their daily practice, allowing them to be reflective and intentional in their work.
• Following on from that point, our team loved how often we heard the delegates ask ‘why’ in Manchester. This group was really engaged with the data from the research and asked critical questions to get to the heart of the data. These participants struck us as the most questioning so far and were such an engaged group. Interestingly, the ‘why’ came out a lot in the focus groups as well, with baby room educators and nursery managers agreeing on the importance of intentionality: ‘Bringing it back to what that quality provision means and looks like, I’ve written down “knowing the why” because I think sometimes, particularly in a baby room, people don’t think they need a why or the why might be, well, we’re having a meal time because they need feeding. But like you say, knowing that quality interactions at meal time can have such a big impact on a child’s learning, development, and relationships. I think that’s what takes it from babysitting, which is a lot of the perception of early years from outsiders. It takes it from the level of care to education.’ 

We were delighted to spend the day with such a reflective and engaged group. In just two weeks, we’ll be heading down to Falmouth to keep the conversation going. Stay tuned for more of the project’s emerging ideas in our next blogpost!

Over to you!

What are your thoughts on our key takeaways so far?