The emphasis on inclusion of diverse learners presents challenges to early-years teachers, particularly those whose understandings have been framed by notions of school readiness and of special education for children with disabilities. This mixed-method study of children and teachers in early-years classes across three school sites in Australia…

The focus of this study was to prospectively investigate the effect of aggressive behavior and of classroom behavioral context, as measured in the fall of 1st grade, on the timing of 1st school removal across Grades 1-7 in a sample of predominately urban minority youths from Baltimore, Maryland. Using a multilevel discrete-time survival framework,…

In this conceptual article, we integrate existing literature on early school transitions, ecological systems theory, and student-teacher relationships to propose a framework for investigating the transition to school for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A review of the literature suggests that the quality of early student-teacher…

Children's social interactions with their peers influence their psychosocial adjustment; consequently, the relationship between class-wide peer liking, same-gender peer liking, and school adjustment was explored in two age groups. Peer liking was analysed using the social relations model (SRM). In Study 1, 205 children (103 female and 102 male,…

In this study, 85 maltreated foster children and 56 nonmaltreated community children (M age = 3-6 years) were assessed across kindergarten and first grade to examine the hypothesis that inhibitory control and caregiver involvement mediate associations between a history of maltreatment and foster placement and early school adjustment. Specifically,…

In the current study, the authors tested the hypothesis that the relationship between early behavior problems and later academic and social outcomes is mediated by children's evidence of strengths during the transition to school. A locally representative and predominantly African American sample of 162 Head Start children was assessed at the end…

New experiences, challenges, and opportunities inherent in biographical transitions are expected to foster the psychosocial development of individuals. Our study investigated, first, developmental gains in children's language competence, social support seeking, and self control following the transitions to kindergarten and school; second, whether…

Three models of the prospective relations between child maladjustment and peer victimization are examined: (a) internalizing results directly from victimization, (b) internalizing leads to victimization, and (c) physical aggression fuels retaliatory victimization that leads to increases in internalizing over time. Data came from assessments of…

This longitudinal study evaluated the impact of dyadic and classroom-level teacher-child relationship quality in first grade on children's psychosocial and academic adjustment in first (N = 3,784), second (N = 3,666), and third (N = 3,582) grade, controlling for several child features, namely, child demographics and children's initial levels of…

This study investigated the extent to which learning readiness, prior-to-school experiences, and child and family characteristics influence children's literacy and numeracy achievement across the first year of primary school. A sample of 104 kindergarten children was recruited from 16 classrooms and followed from the beginning to the end of their…

This study examined children's peer information processing as an explanatory mechanism underlying the association between their insecure representations of interparental and parent-child relationships and school adjustment in a sample of 210 first graders. Consistent with emotional security theory (P. T. Davies & E. M. Cummings, 1994), results…

The studies in this volume explore a number of issues in education today. One paper reveals what actually motivates teachers to develop their career, another, how to teach primary teachers to talk about visual art. Children's artworks were explored in one article to see how they relate to their adjustment to school. In another, a case study was…

Controlled Drawing Observation (CDO) was developed by Tove Krogh and it has been used in Denmark, Finland and Estonia for assessing a child's readiness for school. CDO is a group test, it gives information about a child's functioning in an educational setting and it serves as a starting point for later individual assessment. The goal of the study…

We examined gender differences in the first-grade transition, exploring child and classroom contributions to self-control and achievement in a rural sample. Teachers (n = 36) reported on children's (n = 172) initial adjustment difficulty and end-of-year self-control. Observed classroom organization and teacher-reported classroom chaos measured…

Researchers have made convincing arguments for the benefits of a smooth transition to school. The passage through this significant social change may have a lasting influence on children's progress. For example, social, emotional and academic difficulties in the early years of schooling have been shown to persist through school and into…