Children’s Transitions in Everyday Life and Institutions

Description

Written by a team of international contributors and featuring case studies from a range of educational settings in Australia, Denmark, Spain, Sweden and the USA, this edited book is the first in the field of early childhood and youth studies to draw on Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory to give insights into transitions in childhood, what they are and how they are differently experienced. Transitions are explored holistically so the chapters not only focus on the person transitioning but also the institutions which the person is transitioning from and to, with a focus on schools and daycare. The contributors look at how societal values and policies impact these transitions and comparisons are drawn between international settings. The book includes chapters on expatriate families, immigrant children, home-school transitions, the role of play and communities. Through interviews, case studies and the analysis of empirical material from fieldwork, Children’s Transitions in Everyday Life and Institutions reflects on the best ways to engage children so that they may emerge as competent actors in their new settings and transition well. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements 1. Children’s Transitions in Everyday Life and Institutions: New Conceptions and Understandings of Transitions Part 1: Societal Trajectories: Children’s Life Courses 2. Play and Life Competences as Core in Transition from Kindergarten to School: Tension Between Values in Early Childhood Education 3. Becoming a Schoolchild: A Positive Developmental Crisis 4. Children from Expatriate Families Moving Countries and Entering School Mid-semester: New Entrants Transitioning into Established Practices 5. Transitioning from Play to Learning: Playfulness as a Resource in Children’s Transition 6. Negotiating the Demands and Motives in Primary School Transitions Part 2: Transition Between Daily Practices and Everyday Activity Settings 7. Children’s Everyday Transitions: Children’s Engagements across Life Contexts 8. ‘A Darwinist at Our Dinner Table?’: Discursive Transitions Between School and Home 9. Children and Teachers Transitioning in Playworlds: The Contradictions Between Real Relations and Play Relations as a Source of Children’s Development 10. Transition Between Child-initiated Imaginative Play and Teacher-initiated Activity: An Analysis of Children’s Motives and Teachers’ Pedagogical Demands in a Preschool Context 11. Moral Imagining Through Transitions Within, Between and From Imaginative Play: Changing Demands as Developmental Opportunities Index