Care in teaching has been widely investigated; however, little research has sought secondary pre-service teachers' understandings of caring and their potential responsibility to care for students. Accordingly, semi-structured interviews were employed with four focus groups, involving 12 (2 male and 10 female) participants. Data were analysed within a qualitative paradigm using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and inter-rater reliability. Five overlapping themes were identified, and although many tensions around the ambiguities of establishing appropriate boundaries to care were shown, caring was deemed central by the participants to being effective teachers. Overall, pre-service secondary teachers agreed that neither pedagogy nor discipline strategy would be effective without care. Training implications and suggestions for future research conclude this paper.