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Learning in the Social Environment: Cameos From Two Children's Experience of Starting Childcare

SUMMARY This paper presents case study data about what two under three-year-old children learnt on entry into the social environment of their first childcare centre. The data are part of a qualitative study of starting childcare, carried out in 5 different childcare centres in New Zealand. This study xplored this event from the perspective of mothers, teachers and children. The analysis in this paper is based on fieldnotes and video records of the children s experiences gathered during the children s orientation visits to their childcare centre, and for six weeks after they started attending without a home adult. The paper argues that children's peer interactions were a powerful mechanism through which the new children learnt about life in the childcare centre. This included learning about rules of interaction in the group setting, rules about physical aggression and learning how to take one s place in the existing peer group. In addition, there was evidence that the social context of the childcare centre was implicated in the children s learning about the physical elements of the centre environment. The early childhood teacher s role in this learning is also discussed.