Abstract:
A successful transition from home into an educational setting is critical to a young child's learning. For some infants and their parents this transition can be traumatic. How can enculturation into an early childhood centre best be achieved? The primary care system of assigning a staff member to each child is implicitly recognised by many teachers as effective for ongoing development and learning. These ideas about primary care have remained unchallenged and under-theorised with reference to research. This paper provides current evidence to show that there is confusion about such understandings in New Zealand, and argues that the notion of primary care should be critically examined in order that teachers with infants can theorise their practice and develop a research-based infant pedagogy.