A Case Study Investigating the Contribution of Home Play-Based Mother-Infant Education Programme to Infant Social Development

The importance of early childhood education is becoming more and more recognised day by day. This awareness raises consciousness of the need to provide quality education for infants at home. In this study, it was aimed to follow the developments in the infant's socialisation within the scope of a mother-infant education programme carried out by a baby who is approaching one year of age and who has started to make sense of his environment and his mother. Single case study design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. The participant group of the study included an infant whose social development in the 11th and 12th months was followed. In the research, the development of the baby in the said months was observed and the course of development was tried to be determined. The researcher encouraged the infant to play social developmental games for 6 weeks. In collecting the data of the study, a checklist for monitoring the social development of the infant, which was created based on the achievements in the Ministry of National Education's education programme for 0-36-month-old infants, and non-structured observation were used. Content analysis technique was used to analyse the data. At the end of the study, it was determined that the mother-infant education programme contributed to the socialisation of the infant and enabled the infant to acquire the outcomes in the education programme. It was also concluded that the mother-infant education programme raised awareness of the mother about the development of the baby. Various suggestions were made within the scope of the results obtained in the research.