Research: The Sensory Nursery
A three-year research residency in a Manchester nursery school and children's centre investigating the world of two-year-olds in a nursery class.
Research project
Project summary
- September 2016 to August 2019
The Sensory Nursery was a research-residency at Martenscroft Nursery School and Children’s Centre in inner Manchester.
This longitudinal project addresses a research gap in understanding the lively worlds of two-year-olds in nursery classes.
It highlights unique ways that very young children learn through sensory-motor intra-action with the environment, as well as with each other and their significant adults.
Its findings critically engage in debates around school-readiness. They highlight the tensions that arise when early years practitioners must strike a balance between early intervention and the imperative to create nurturing and supportive spaces for relationship building with families.
This innovative ‘slow’, researcher-residency model has resulted in new forms of parental engagement, where the researcher worked alongside parents as co-researchers.
Slow-motion video became a significant tool that had the capacity to attend to often overlooked dynamic and sensed aspects of children’s learning. Slow-motion film-clips emerged as a rich source of data that could inform thinking about early years pedagogies, both in theory and practice.
Quote about the research
Working alongside and with children means that, as researchers and practitioners, we might pay greater attention to attuning ourselves with the small things, things that seem inconsequential through a majoritarian lens of developmental progress.
Research outputs
Research outputs
Academic papers
- MacRae, C. and Jones, L. (2020) A philosophical reflection on the “Leuven Scale” and young children’s expressions of involvement, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
- MacRae, C. (2020) Tactful hands and vibrant mattering in the sand tray, Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 20(1), 90–110
- MacRae, C. (2019) The Red Blanket: A dance of animacy , Global Studies of Childhood
- MacRae, C. (2019) Grace Taking Form, Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy, 4(1), 151-166.
Other resources
- Co-written with Parents form the Martenscroft Research Collective (2019) Making meaningful connections: Parents as co-researchers Nursery World
- MacRae, C. (2019) The Red Blanket: sensing difference in body play. Online research briefing for the 2019 annual conference of The Association of Professional Development for the Early Years.
Manchester Met researchers
Research team
Lead researcher
Collaborating with:
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parents and staff of Martenscroft Nursery School and Children’s Centre, Manchester
Funding
With funding from
Strategic Opportunities Fund
Contacts
Contact us
For general enquiries about the Education and Social Research Institute’s children and childhood group, you can contact research group lead Prof Rachel Holmes.
