By Barbara Henderson, Lisa Goddard, and Megina Baker, Voices Executive Editors
Toddler teachers make consequential pedagogical decisions within moments that some adults may barely notice and others may misunderstand entirely. One teacher pauses beside a preverbal child holding a pinwheel in the wind. Another stands back as children race around a classroom, pushing chairs with scarves tucked under the legs. Guided play invites these moments of decision making, as teachers decide how to respond, what to protect, what to encourage, when to intervene, and what possibilities might emerge if the moment continues.
These two pedagogical narratives by Amie A. Perry and by Liz Braddock first appeared in the 2025 Voices of Practitioners collection. Our invitation to teacher researchers was to explore empathy and belonging in early childhood settings. In selecting these two narratives, we were drawn to making visible the complex pedagogical decisions of toddler teachers during ordinary moments of classroom life.
As editors of this content, we are especially attentive to publishing teacher research that centers the work of educators who teach infants and toddlers because these educators are the least well-represented in the teacher research literature. Teaching very young children unfolds through gesture, movement, emotion, repetition, silence, sensory exploration, and fleeting interactions. Such moments carry profound meaning, requiring toddler teachers to interpret children’s embodied communication, study social dynamics, assess risk, and shape environments.
The pedagogical narratives that follow reveal how teacher research can grow from emotionally charged classroom moments that invite educators to reconsider what they think they know about children, teaching, and belonging. Amie A. Perry’s moment with a toddler is intimate and made of many small gestures. Liz Braddock’s interaction takes place in a classroom filled with movement, negotiation, uncertainty, and noise. Yet both narratives turn on a similar pedagogical question: What becomes possible when teachers use their expertise and hold on to their pedagogical goals, remaining curious about what children are saying, instead of moving immediately toward answers, correction, or control?
Braddock’s and Perry’s stories also illuminate the emotional life of teaching very young children. Both educators focus on how they experience uncertainty, delight, protectiveness, wonder, and vulnerability. In pedagogical narratives, feeling is integral to the inquiry as teachers examine assumptions, reconsider practices, and ultimately transform how they understand children’s competence, communication, and participation in community life.
Reflective transformation sits at the heart of teacher research. Perry and Braddock study their practice by analyzing interactions over time to question beliefs about behavior, learning, materials, participation, and classroom order. Together, these pedagogical narratives invite us to look more carefully at the everyday life of toddler settings and at the educators who support guided play with thoughtfulness, courage, and care. In these pedagogical narratives, empathy and belonging do not emerge accidentally. Instead, teachers cultivate them through observation, reflection, restraint, risk taking, relationship, and intentional pedagogical choices.
Copyright © 2026 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. See Permissions and Reprints online at NAEYC.org/resources/permissions.