Faculty of Education Competitive Grants

Project Title: Attachment from the perspective of the early childhood practiitioner

Chief Investigator: Dr Sharne Rolfe

Funded by: Faculty of Education Competitive Grants

Project Summary: The quailty of early childhood attachment relationships has a significant impact on the social-emotional functioning and psychological wellbeing of children. Most children today experience multiple attachments with parents, extended family and early childhood professionals. Attachment relationships in the early childhood setting have important impacts on children's development. But research-based understandings are limited by a narrow conceptualisation of these relationships as the same child-parent attachments relationships, when in fact relationship contexts and inter-personal dymanics are very different. This study marks the first attempt to rethink the nature of these relationships, starting from the experience of early childhood practitioners themselves.