Infant and toddler pedagogy is one of those terms that can sound abstract until you start to sit with what it actually means in practice. At its simplest, it’s the thinking and values that underpin how we care for and educate children in the first three years of life. But in reality, it shapes everything – how we set up environments, how we approach a nappy change, how we respond when a baby is working hard to roll over, how we think about what learning actually looks like before a child has words.
I’ve spent fifteen years working with infants, toddlers, and the educators who care for them across Australian early childhood settings. As a RIE® Associate, infant and toddler pedagogy is at the core of my practice.
Working with infants and toddlers requires a particular kind of knowledge. Many early childhood approaches were originally developed for older children and later adapted for under-threes. Magda Gerber’s Educaring® approach and the work of Dr Emmi Pikler are different. They were developed from the ground up, grounded in long-term observation and research with children from birth to three. They offer something that feels increasingly important in our sector: a pedagogy that belongs to infants and toddlers in their own right.
Our image of the infant matters
One of the ideas I keep returning to in my work is this: the way we see infants shapes the way we care for them.
If we see infants as passive – as dependent beings who need things done to them and for them – we’re likely to move quickly, take over, and prioritise efficiency. But when we begin to see infants as capable, communicating people who are already actively engaged in their own development, something shifts. We slow down. We observe more carefully. We begin to work with the child and prioritise connection.
From birth, infants are observing, experimenting, communicating, and making sense of the world. They are not waiting to be taught. The RIE principles that guide the Educaring approach ask us to slow down, observe carefully, and trust in infants’ competence. This leads to a different question – not “how do we teach infants?” but “how do we build relationships and create environments that support their learning?”
That shift in question is the shift in pedagogy.
Care is the curriculum
Both the Australian Early Years Learning Framework V2.0 and New Zealand’s Te Whāriki recognise this explicitly, framing everyday routines as opportunities for learning and emphasising that the curriculum for infants and toddlers encompasses all the experiences, interactions, and relationships of the day.
The Educaring approach reminds us that infants and toddlers learn primarily through relationships, everyday routines, movement, and play. And this leads to one of the most important ideas in infant and toddler pedagogy: care is the curriculum.
This isn’t a metaphor. It’s a recognition that the moments making up the largest part of an infant’s day (nappy changes, feeding, dressing, settling) are not interruptions to learning. They are where learning is happening. During these moments, infants are experiencing communication, connection, and relationship. They are learning about their bodies, how to trust, how to feel safe, and how to be with another person.
Respectful caregiving asks us to think carefully about how we approach these moments. Think about a nappy change approached in two different ways. In one, an educator lifts a baby without warning, changes the nappy efficiently while talking to a colleague, and places the baby back down. In the other, the educator comes into the baby’s field of vision, says “Your nappy needs changing, I’m going to pick you up now,” waits for the baby to register this, and then lifts them carefully. On the change table, they talk the baby through each step, pause for responses, and say “I’m going to use a wipe now. It might feel a little cold” before doing so.
Same task. Same routine. Completely different experience for the baby – and completely different learning.
This is what respectful caregiving looks like in practice. Care becomes something we do with a child, not to them. And in those moments, we’re showing trust: trust in the infant’s ability to participate, respond, and communicate.
Relationships first
At the centre of all of this is relationships.
When we place relationships at the heart of everything we do, we practice relational pedagogy and create the conditions infants need to feel safe enough to engage with their environment and learning.
This is why consistency matters so much in under-two settings, and why both the National Quality Standard Quality Area 5 and Te Whāriki’s Principles recognise warm, responsive relationships as foundational to children’s sense of wellbeing and learning. An infant who has a key educator who knows them well – who can read their cues, anticipate their needs, and respond with warmth and predictability – is an infant who feels secure enough to explore, take risks, and grow. The way we interact with infants in the small moments of every day shapes how they experience themselves, their relationships, and the world around them.
Trusting infants in movement and play
The Piklerian and Educaring approaches ask us to extend this same trust into how we think about movement and play.
Dr Pikler’s research shows us something that can feel counterintuitive: when we allow infants to develop movement at their own pace – without placing them into positions they can’t reach themselves – they develop not just physically, but in their sense of themselves as capable. Balance, coordination, persistence. The infant who rolls over on their own terms has learned something far beyond how to roll over.
For play, the same principle holds. Infant play is self-initiated and deeply focused. When we see an infant repeating the same action over and over, that’s not boredom. That’s practice. That’s mastery in progress. Our role is to protect that space – not fill it.
Keep exploring
Earlier this year I hosted a Storypark webinar exploring these ideas – an introduction to infant and toddler pedagogy for educators working with children from birth to three. We looked at the Educaring approach and Pikler’s work, thought about what it means to see infants as capable and active participants, and explored what respectful caregiving looks like in the real moments of a day.
If these ideas have sparked something for you, here are a few ways to keep going:
Watch the recording. The full webinar is freely available. It’s worth watching with your team and talking through what comes up. Watch here
Download Nurturing Foundations. This free ebook explores infant and toddler pedagogy in depth, with practical guidance and reflective questions you can bring back to your setting. Download here
Join the next webinar. The next session in this series – Freedom to Move in Infant & Toddler Spaces – is coming on Thursday, 21 May Register here
A question to sit with
What becomes possible when we truly see infants as capable from birth?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Nellie Hodda is a RIE® Associate, early childhood teacher, ITANA board member, and member of the Storypark pedagogy team. She works as an independent consultant and facilitator, specialising in infant and toddler pedagogy and respectful caregiving.
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