Sheila Degotardi
Biographic Data
| ID | 994849 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sheila Degotardi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sheila |
| FAMILY NAME | Degotardi |
| SIGNATURE | DEGOTARDI S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Macquarie University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2066-2223 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Conceptualising Multilingual Infants’ Language Learning in Ecec Through a New Ecobehavioural Model
As the number of multilingual children attending early childhood settings continues to grow, there has been an increasing focus on how to support their language learning experiences in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. This article proposes an ecobehavioural model for supporting multilingual infants’ language development in ECEC settings, which is inspired by and builds on Vygotsky’s cultural–historical approach, Bronfenbrenner’…
The impact of Covid-19 on the delivery of preservice teacher education
From ‘what’ to ‘why’
Children's ability to ask questions is a critical learning tool; allowing them to seek information from others in order to construct and refine their concepts and understandings. While family-based studies demonstrate that children are effective questioners by pre-school age, few studies have investigated children's question use in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. This longitudinal study followed 27 children from 30 to 42 month…
Beyond the Dyad
Conversations with caregivers scaffold infant language development. The importance of conversational turn‐taking is widely demonstrated in dyadic interactions, particularly in home environments. Less is understood about the dynamics of conversational turns in polyadic classroom environments where educators are responsible for facilitating conversations with multiple young conversational partners. This study used a microanalytical approach to exam…
What Factors are Associated with Young Children’s Language Learning Environment? A Systematic Review of Language Environment Analysis (Lena) Measures
Spatial language production in Chinese preschoolers
A dynamic systems examination of the impact of peers on educator–infant synchrony within joint attention interactions in an early childhood room
Joint attention is a crucial component of quality practice in infant–toddler early childhood education. Joint attention defines a social interaction in which infant and caregiver coordinate attention to engage with an object of interest. Mutual responsiveness within coordinated and creative joint action supports language and cognitive development. However, most joint attention research involves mother–infant dyads in laboratory playrooms or home …
Translanguaging practices in infant rooms
Many bilingual infants attend early childhood education centres (ECEC) with their monolingual peers. However, recent evidence reveals that bilingual infants vocalise significantly less than monolingual infants in ECEC settings (Zheng et al. 2023) [Effects of Multilingualism on Australian Infants' Language Environments in Early Childhood Education Centers. Infant Behavior and Development, 70, 101799.], suggesting that educators may need to provide…
A Corpus-Based Study of Spatial Frames of References in Early Child Mandarin Chinese
This study examines the developmental pattern of spatial frames of reference (FoRs) in Chinese preschoolers using the naturalistic data elicited from the Beijing Early Childhood Mandarin Corpus. Altogether, 2837 static spatial sentences were identified from the corpus, and 785 of them used FoRs; thus, they were analysed using the seven-class FoRs coding system developed from the literature review. The results indicated that: (1) six classes were …
Early spatial language development and education
Early spatial language plays an important role in facilitating cognition and thoughts thus deserves empirical studies. This scoping review aims to synthesis the empirical evidence to identify the key topics, major findings, and research gaps regarding early spatial language development and education. The search has identified 19 studies published in the international peer-reviewed journals during 2000–2021, converging into three common topics: th…
A dynamic systems approach to joint attention in an infant-toddler early childhood centre
Family language policy and bilingual parenting in monolingual Beijing
This study explored the family language policy, parental beliefs, and bilingual parenting in Beijing, a typical monolingual society. Stratified random sampling was conducted to recruit 192 parents of Chinese preschoolers (ages 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, and 5.5 years). They were surveyed with the Home Language Environment and Practices (HLEP) developed for this study. The statistical results indicated that: (1) the majority of Beijing families (90.1%) did no…
Supporting multilingual development in early childhood education
Motion events in early child Mandarin
Quality of educator-infant conversational interactions among infants experiencing varying quantity of linguistic input
Evidence suggests that the quantity of linguistic input experienced by infants in early childhood centres relates to the quality of educator-infant interactions. However, little is known about the linguistic properties of mutually responsive educator-infant interactions. This study uses sequence analyses to identify patterns of educator-infant three-turn conversations, and examine whether these patterns are related to the quantity of educator wor…
Infantologies. An Epat collective writing project
Infantologies is a collective writing project designed to express and\nsummarise important ideas, approaches and forms of advocacy in a\nshort and condensed method, in order to present a network of diverse\nthemes, arguments and evidence concerning infants.This is a collective\nwriting project invited fifteen scholars to participate by writing 500\nwords with maximum of 5 references in a short period of time (normally\na couple of weeks). It is a…
This is a Learning Opportunity”
Recent research indicates that museums hold great potential for children’s engagement and learning. To date, most research has either focused on school-aged children or young children’s independent learning engagement and, as a result, little research has investigated how museum spaces may foster and enhance the interactive learning of families with prior-to-school-age children. The current study sought to investigate which features of museum spa…
What it is all about
Play gives young children opportunities to develop language and relationships. Friendships and the topics children choose for play can influence the nature of that play, but little is known about how friendship and topic choice impinge on topic maintenance. Topic maintenance is an important conversational skill, without which children can struggle to build relationships and access the type of extended talk which facilitates their language and con…
Educators’ understandings of, and support for, infant peer relationships in early childhood settings
This research adopted a qualitative methodology to investigate the reported beliefs and pedagogical practices relating to infant peer relationships held by three early childhood infant educators. Thematic analysis was used to derive commonalties and differences that reflected these educators’ views and practices about children’s early peer relationships. Results indicate in-depth understandings about children’s capacities that did not, however, a…
The language of friendship
This article presents findings of a pilot project for a study investigating the language of preschool-aged peers, with particular attention to differences in genre that were evident in the dyadic play of children who self-identified as being ‘very best friends’ as opposed to ‘just a little bit’ friends. Participants were three 5-year-old boys in a preparatory class in regional Queensland, Australia. Friendship nominations were derived from a frie…
Mind-mindedness in infant child-care
He's got a mind of his own”
Infantologies. An Epat collective writing project
Infantologies is a collective writing project designed to express and\nsummarise important ideas, approaches and forms of advocacy in a\nshort and condensed method, in order to present a network of diverse\nthemes, arguments and evidence concerning infants.This is a collective\nwriting project invited fifteen scholars to participate by writing 500\nwords with maximum of 5 references in a short period of time (normally\na couple of weeks). It is a…
Mind-mindedness in infant child-care
Motion events in early child Mandarin
Educators’ understandings of, and support for, infant peer relationships in early childhood settings
This research adopted a qualitative methodology to investigate the reported beliefs and pedagogical practices relating to infant peer relationships held by three early childhood infant educators. Thematic analysis was used to derive commonalties and differences that reflected these educators’ views and practices about children’s early peer relationships. Results indicate in-depth understandings about children’s capacities that did not, however, a…
He's got a mind of his own”
He's got a mind of his own”
Mind-mindedness in infant child-care
The language of friendship
This article presents findings of a pilot project for a study investigating the language of preschool-aged peers, with particular attention to differences in genre that were evident in the dyadic play of children who self-identified as being ‘very best friends’ as opposed to ‘just a little bit’ friends. Participants were three 5-year-old boys in a preparatory class in regional Queensland, Australia. Friendship nominations were derived from a frie…
Educators’ understandings of, and support for, infant peer relationships in early childhood settings
This research adopted a qualitative methodology to investigate the reported beliefs and pedagogical practices relating to infant peer relationships held by three early childhood infant educators. Thematic analysis was used to derive commonalties and differences that reflected these educators’ views and practices about children’s early peer relationships. Results indicate in-depth understandings about children’s capacities that did not, however, a…
What it is all about
Play gives young children opportunities to develop language and relationships. Friendships and the topics children choose for play can influence the nature of that play, but little is known about how friendship and topic choice impinge on topic maintenance. Topic maintenance is an important conversational skill, without which children can struggle to build relationships and access the type of extended talk which facilitates their language and con…
This is a Learning Opportunity”
Recent research indicates that museums hold great potential for children’s engagement and learning. To date, most research has either focused on school-aged children or young children’s independent learning engagement and, as a result, little research has investigated how museum spaces may foster and enhance the interactive learning of families with prior-to-school-age children. The current study sought to investigate which features of museum spa…
Quality of educator-infant conversational interactions among infants experiencing varying quantity of linguistic input
Evidence suggests that the quantity of linguistic input experienced by infants in early childhood centres relates to the quality of educator-infant interactions. However, little is known about the linguistic properties of mutually responsive educator-infant interactions. This study uses sequence analyses to identify patterns of educator-infant three-turn conversations, and examine whether these patterns are related to the quantity of educator wor…
Infantologies. An Epat collective writing project
Infantologies is a collective writing project designed to express and\nsummarise important ideas, approaches and forms of advocacy in a\nshort and condensed method, in order to present a network of diverse\nthemes, arguments and evidence concerning infants.This is a collective\nwriting project invited fifteen scholars to participate by writing 500\nwords with maximum of 5 references in a short period of time (normally\na couple of weeks). It is a…
Supporting multilingual development in early childhood education
Motion events in early child Mandarin
Early spatial language development and education
Early spatial language plays an important role in facilitating cognition and thoughts thus deserves empirical studies. This scoping review aims to synthesis the empirical evidence to identify the key topics, major findings, and research gaps regarding early spatial language development and education. The search has identified 19 studies published in the international peer-reviewed journals during 2000–2021, converging into three common topics: th…
A dynamic systems approach to joint attention in an infant-toddler early childhood centre
Family language policy and bilingual parenting in monolingual Beijing
This study explored the family language policy, parental beliefs, and bilingual parenting in Beijing, a typical monolingual society. Stratified random sampling was conducted to recruit 192 parents of Chinese preschoolers (ages 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, and 5.5 years). They were surveyed with the Home Language Environment and Practices (HLEP) developed for this study. The statistical results indicated that: (1) the majority of Beijing families (90.1%) did no…
A dynamic systems examination of the impact of peers on educator–infant synchrony within joint attention interactions in an early childhood room
Joint attention is a crucial component of quality practice in infant–toddler early childhood education. Joint attention defines a social interaction in which infant and caregiver coordinate attention to engage with an object of interest. Mutual responsiveness within coordinated and creative joint action supports language and cognitive development. However, most joint attention research involves mother–infant dyads in laboratory playrooms or home …
Translanguaging practices in infant rooms
Many bilingual infants attend early childhood education centres (ECEC) with their monolingual peers. However, recent evidence reveals that bilingual infants vocalise significantly less than monolingual infants in ECEC settings (Zheng et al. 2023) [Effects of Multilingualism on Australian Infants' Language Environments in Early Childhood Education Centers. Infant Behavior and Development, 70, 101799.], suggesting that educators may need to provide…
A Corpus-Based Study of Spatial Frames of References in Early Child Mandarin Chinese
This study examines the developmental pattern of spatial frames of reference (FoRs) in Chinese preschoolers using the naturalistic data elicited from the Beijing Early Childhood Mandarin Corpus. Altogether, 2837 static spatial sentences were identified from the corpus, and 785 of them used FoRs; thus, they were analysed using the seven-class FoRs coding system developed from the literature review. The results indicated that: (1) six classes were …
From ‘what’ to ‘why’
Children's ability to ask questions is a critical learning tool; allowing them to seek information from others in order to construct and refine their concepts and understandings. While family-based studies demonstrate that children are effective questioners by pre-school age, few studies have investigated children's question use in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. This longitudinal study followed 27 children from 30 to 42 month…
Beyond the Dyad
Conversations with caregivers scaffold infant language development. The importance of conversational turn‐taking is widely demonstrated in dyadic interactions, particularly in home environments. Less is understood about the dynamics of conversational turns in polyadic classroom environments where educators are responsible for facilitating conversations with multiple young conversational partners. This study used a microanalytical approach to exam…
What Factors are Associated with Young Children’s Language Learning Environment? A Systematic Review of Language Environment Analysis (Lena) Measures
Spatial language production in Chinese preschoolers
Conceptualising Multilingual Infants’ Language Learning in Ecec Through a New Ecobehavioural Model
As the number of multilingual children attending early childhood settings continues to grow, there has been an increasing focus on how to support their language learning experiences in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. This article proposes an ecobehavioural model for supporting multilingual infants’ language development in ECEC settings, which is inspired by and builds on Vygotsky’s cultural–historical approach, Bronfenbrenner’…
The impact of Covid-19 on the delivery of preservice teacher education
Psychology (19 works) · Developmental psychology (17 works) · Early childhood education (8 works) · Linguistics (8 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (7 works) · Early childhood (7 works) · Language Development and Disorders (7 works) · Pedagogy (7 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (5 works) · Language development (5 works)