Listening to Children's Advice about Starting School and School Age Care

Sue Dockett, Johanna Einarsdottir, Bob Perry, Sue Dockett, Johanna Einarsdottir, Bob Perry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780815352426
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351139380
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Reflecting the importance of drawing on children's perspectives to shape professional practice, this book offers a nuanced approach to understanding the aims, implications and practicalities of accessing and incorporating children's perspectives in pedagogial practices relating to transitions. Listening to Children's Advice about Starting School and School Age Care:

• emphasises the importance of listening to and respecting children's perspectives at the time of their transitions to school and school age care;
• shares children's perspectives of the transition to school and school age care in ways that are both authentic and provocative;
• explores implications for practice as a consequence of children's input;
• provokes a deep level of critical reflection and practice/policy development that is informed by a dialogue between research and practice.

Chapters report research conducted in seven different countries to highlight approaches that acknowledge and respect children's input, and use this as a basis for critical reflection on practice, with a view to improving the children's transition experiences. Using examples of practice and offering practical and theoretical insights, the book illustrates the multiplicity of children's perspectives, and prompts educators to reflect on and critique practice.

This book will be invaluable reading for researchers, students, educators and practitioners involved in young children's transitions to school and school-age care.

1

Children’s perspectives of transition to school

Exploring possibilities

Johanna Einarsdottir, Sue Dockett and Bob Perry

Introduction

The transition from preschool to primary school is an important milestone in children’s lives that can have implications for their future education and well-being. For many children, this already complex transition occurs at the same time as children make the transition to school age care. These transitions involve many stakeholders including children, families, preschool educators, school educators, school age care educators and other community members. While there are transition to school programmes in many communities, most of these are planned by adults, often with little input from the children at the centre of the transition. It is relatively rare for these transition programmes to incorporate school age care. This book emphasises the importance of listening to and respecting children’s perspectives in order to understand how children experience both horizontal and vertical transitions as they start school. The chapters report research from early childhood settings in seven different countries that highlight the importance of children’s perspectives and their implications for developing supportive and effective transitions. The reports of actual practice situate children’s perspectives in real-life early-childhood, school and school age care settings while, at the same time, highlighting issues, contexts and approach that will provoke critical reflection and facilitate informed professional praxis.

Background

In the late 1990s Sue and Bob submitted an application to the institutional ethics review board of their Australian university, seeking approval for a project that aimed to investigate children’s perspectives of their transition to school. It involved providing a digital camera (the only one available to the researchers at the time) and inviting children to photograph and discuss things that were important for them – and for new children starting school – as they guided researchers around the school environment. While approval for the project was provided, the initial reaction of the committee was to question the demands such a project placed on the children involved, particularly the use of (what was then) an expensive and technical piece of equipment (the camera). At around the same time, Johanna had started to explore children’s accounts of their transition experiences in Iceland. This built on Nordic democratic pedagogic traditions (Broström, 1999, 2001; Eide and Winger, 1994) and reflected a burgeoning international interest (e.g. Corsaro and Molinari 2000; Dunlop 2003; Griebel and Niesel, 2002; Peters 2000; Pramling and Williams-Graneld 1993) in seeking to understand children’s expectations of school and their experiences as they moved from home or preschool settings to this new environment. The publications that grew out of these projects (e.g. Dockett and Perry 1999, 2002, 2005; Einarsdottir 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2010; Perry and Dockett 2011; Perry, Dockett and Tracey 1998) drew us together and we have had many opportunities to collaborate, both on projects and in the critical review of our respective work (e.g. Dockett, Einarsdottir and Perry 2009, 2012, 2017; Einarsdottir, Dockett and Perry 2009; Einarsdottir, Perry and Dockett 2008).

Much has changed since these early investigations of children’s perspectives of their transition to school experiences. There is now a wealth of studies acknowledging the importance of listening to children that explore not only children’s expectations of school (Eskelä-Haapanen, Lerkkanen, Rasku-Puttonen and Poikkeus 2017; Heagle, Timmons, Hargreaves and Pelletier 2017; Sandberg 2017) and their transitions experiences (White and Sharp 2007), but also their experiences of stress during transitions (Wong 2015), the importance of “belonging” at school (Joerdens 2014; Peters 2010), the influence of community contexts on transitions experiences (O’Rourke, O’Farrelly, Booth and Doyle 2017), curriculum responses that support children’s active participation in transitions (Loizou 2018), and children’s perspectives on continuity and discontinuity (Babić 2017). These studies have been accompanied by more nuanced approaches to examining not only why it is important to consider children’s perspectives, but also the purposes and outcomes of doing so: we have moved from asking questions about whether it is possible to access young children’s perspectives of transitions to problematising how such research is undertaken, as well as the rationales for, and outcomes and implications of, the research.

Underpinning much of the research exploring children’s perspectives of transitions is a commitment to engage with children in meaningful, relevant investigations of the things that matter for them, and to use this as the basis for improving their experiences. As well as demonstrating the principles of sound research, the studies reported across the chapters encourage critique, innovation and exploration of the practical implications of researching children’s perspectives about transition to school. Just as we, the editors, have each benefitted from opportunities to be critically reflective, each of the authors contributing to this book reflects critically on children’s experiences and expectations as they make the transition to school and/or school age care, and seeks to provoke the same reflection among educators, researchers and policymakers. In their adherence to critical reflection as the means of advancing practice, their focus on participatory, ethically sound and collaborative research, each of the authors reflects the principles of praxeological enquiry (Pascal and Bertram 2012).

Explorations of children’s perspectives of transition bring together two bodies of research: children’s perspectives and transition. An overview of each of these fields is provided below, followed by an overview of the structure of the book.

Children’s perspectives

In recent decades, a growing body of research has incorporated children’s perspectives of their experiences and expectations around matters that affect them. This is reflective of a theoretical and conceptual shift in how children and childhood are viewed that started to emerge in the last decades of the twentieth century. These new ideas were coming mainly from sociology and emphasised the interdependency of children’s voices and the sociocultural context in which they live and develop (Graue and Walsh 1998; Qvortrup 1994). The multidisciplinary field of childhood studies focuses on children as members of many social settings where their strengths and competencies to influence their surroundings actively is emphasised. Thus, children are seen as contributing members of society, experts on their own lives, and holding opinions that should be heard and considered. Childhood is viewed as a social construction, contingent upon culture, time and context (James and Prout 1990; Jenks 2004), and researchers talk about research with children instead of research on children. Moreover, an emphasis is placed on learning from children as well as about children.

Alongside the ideology of childhood studies, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (United Nations 1989) contributed to the incorporation of children’s perspectives into research. The convention acknowledged respect for children’s views and their rights to express their opinions freely on all matters affecting them, and it promoted consideration of their right to have those opinions taken seriously. Additionally, the convention raised awareness of the agency of children and their place in society. Upon its ratification, children’s rights and citizenship became an international concern. The convention established an important foundation for children’s rights to participate in research, although it does not specifically mention research (Alderson 2012). The convention also discussed children’s rights for protection and care by adults to ensure their well-being. A later addition to the convention, General Comment No. 7 (United Nations 2005), draws attention especially to the rights of children younger than eight years old. Thus, both the children’s rights movement and childhood studies share intersecting interests and visions in which children’s status as human beings and their place in society are reconsidered (Alanen 2011; Quennerstedt and Quennerstedt 2014). These ideas conceptualise children as relational beings and embrace concepts such as children’s active participation and their competence to exercise their rights and agency.

The development of childhood studies and the children’s rights movement in the past few decades have highlighted the importance of incorporating and respecting children’s perspectives in research as well as in everyday life. Researchers and practitioners have met these commitments by adopting authentic and creative strategies to involve children in research and in decisions and actions that affect them. A range of participatory research methods have been utilised to enable children to communicate about their lives in diverse ways in non-threatening contexts. These include communicating with children in pairs or groups, inviting children to use drawing to represent their life-worlds, and using cameras and photographs as a basis for conversations with children (Clark and Moss 2001; Dockett, Einarsdottir and Perry 2017; Einarsdottir, Dockett and Perry 2009).

Lundy (2007) has proposed a model for the implementation of Article 12 of the UNCRC, which gives children the right to have their views given due weight in all matters affecting them. The model consists of four features: (a) space: children must be given the opportunity to express a view; (b) voice: children must be facilitated to express their views; (c) audience: their views must be listened to; and (d) influence: the view must be acted upon, as appropriate. The chapters in the book reflect these features and demonstrate how children are afforded opportunities to express their views as well as some ways in which their views are listened to and acted upon. For example, Ólafsdóttir and Einarsdottir (Chapter 6), describe how children’s advice was pursued by using the Project Approach and how their views were reacted to and allowed to guide the transition process. Other chapters provide recommendations for practice as a consequence of listening to children. For example, Broström (Chapter 7) suggests that both preschools and primary schools design a play-based curriculum and Ackesjö (Chapter 4) recommends that instead of only focusing on the adjustment to school, educators should also prepare children to leave and separate from preschool.

The literature concerning participatory research with children has identified several challenges and ethical issues. Inequalities of power between children and adult researchers and the possibility that children may do and say what an authority figure asks them to has been well documented (Dockett, Einarsdottir and Perry 2009; Horgan 2016). Closely connected to this are questions about how to seek children’s assent in research and ensure that they understand that they can opt out of the study (Dockett, Einarsdottir and Perry 2012; Dockett, Perry and Kearney 2013). Another challenge is how to reach out to diverse groups of children in order to represent the multiplicity of their voices, since children’s experiences and perspectives are likely to vary considerably (Einarsdottir and Egilsson 2016; Tisdall 2012,). Children’s rights to privacy and whether it is in the children’s best interest for adults to discover details about their lives is an issue that has been raised (Broström 2006) as has children’s rights to protection and confidentiality. Contradictions that can arise when adults step into children’s worlds and attempt to speak on their behalf have also been discussed since the construction of the child in research is influenced by the researcher’s theoretical perspective, including the methodology, methods, and philosophical underpinnings of the study (Dockett, Einarsdottir and Perry 2011). These are some of the issues the chapter authors grapple with as they report their studies. For example, Lago (Chapter 5) explores the varied transitions experiences of children who “deviate” from the “normal pattern”, Büker and Höke (Chapter 9) caution against the idealisation of children and Stanek (Chapter 2) reminds us that adult interpretations of children’s perspectives permeate many of our actions.

Recently scholars have discussed the need to broaden the field of childhood studies, connect to other research fields, and focus on important issues of contemporary societies. Spyrou (2017, 433), for instance, claims that childhood studies now need to move beyond and “reconnect with the wider world of scholarship and, in so doing, engage with real-life emerging concerns which escape the narrow confines of a ‘child-centred’ field of study”.

This book connects the fields of childhood studies and transition. The focus of enquiry is on children’s life-worlds, specifically how they experience transitions in early-childhood education, an issue that is highly relevant for children, families and societies at large. The chapters in the book emphasise the importance of listening to and respecting children’s perspectives at the time of their transition to school. Recognising this as a critical life juncture, the chapters report research from early-childhood settings that highlight the importance of children’s perspectives and their implications for developing supportive and effective transitions.

Transitions

There are many ways to define educational transitions (for an overview, see Dockett, Griebel and Perry 2017). The broad definition of transition underpinning much current research refers to transitions as times when individuals “change their role in their community’s structure” (Rogoff 2003, 150). This definition highlights the processes that connect individuals and their social and cultural contexts and acknowledges the interactions between and among each of these throughout the life course. The role of relationships and transitions processes that reflect both continuity and change are other key elements of this definition. The same emphases are evident across the chapters in this book, as researchers utilise the theoretical frameworks of children’s rights (Broström, Chapter 7), symbolic interactionism (Lago, Chapter 5), social constructivism (Jadue-Roa, Chapter 3; Ólafsdóttir and Einarsdottir, Chapter 6), Communities of Practice (Stanek, Chapter 2, Pálsdóttir, Chapter 8) and ecological theory (Formosinho and Formosinho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• About the Contributors and Editors
• Foreword: Introduction to the EECERA book series
• 1. Children’s perspectives of transition to school: Exploring possibilities
• 2. Communities of children in the transition from kindergarten to school
• 3. Children’s agency in transition experiences: Understanding possibilities and challenges
• 4. Transitions as a two-way window: Separation and adjustment in transition through the eyes of children starting school
• 5. Different transitions: Children’s different experiences of the transition to school
• 6. Following children’s advice on transitions from preschool to primary school
• 7. Children’s views on their learning in preschool and school: Reflections and influence on practice
• 8. Connecting school and leisure-time centre: Children as brokers
• 9. Children’s voices as a bridge between educators in kindergarten and teachers in primary school: Potential of children’s perspectives to support professional development
• 10. Children’s voices about transition processes: Strategic adaptation and civic resilience
• 11. From research to practice: Continuing the conversation
• Index