Pedagogical practices for the infant-toddler’s first day of transition from home care to early childhood education and care

This study explores educators’ pedagogical practices for and with infant-toddlers who transition from home care to early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Finland, particularly how educators construct transition pedagogy in interactions. Adopting a spatial-relational theoretical approach, the study examines pedagogy as shaped in the relations among educators, newcomers, other children, and the ECEC space. The video-recorded observational data features five infant-toddlers’ first days in five different ECEC settings. The results reveal three pedagogical practices: sheltering, flexible, and structured. While the study shows that transition pedagogy focuses on newcomers’ needs and initiatives, educators are simultaneously required to balance these with other professional demands and the ECEC structure, producing tensions in their possibilities to orient pedagogical practices towards newcomers.