The importance of children experiencing a successful transition to school is well established in research literature. Central to this is including the children themselves in the conversation about their learning and ensuring they develop a sense of fit and belonging to their new school environment. The findings shared in this paper sit within a…

This paper considers the pedagogical collaborations between early childhood teachers in kindergarten (4 years) and the first year of school (5 years) in one Australian State. We report on a year-long project that brought these early childhood teachers together as we asked them to design STEM learning ecologies that would not only support new…

Children's transition to school has been widely investigated, but most studies do not clearly define its starting point. By drawing on the cultural-historical concept of the social situation of development, and selecting 'role adjustment' as the unit of analysis, this paper seeks to clearly define the starting point of children's transition to…

Among the many impacts of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, one of the most dramatic was the immediate closure of in-person schooling in March/April 2020 when parents were faced with much greater responsibility in supporting their children's learning. Despite this, few studies have examined parents' own perspectives of this experience.…

There is a consensus that the crises children encounter during the transition period might impact negatively on children's learning and development. However, from cultural-historical perspective, qualitative leap in development can hardly be achieved without crises. This paper, drawing upon cultural-historical theory as the framework and by using…

In Australia and many other countries, the provision of the healthiest possible start in life for all children has been a priority for government. Evidence to support the importance of the early years for future development has accumulated over the past two decades [1]. Patterns of childhood development predict health, wellbeing, learning and…

Children have long been "objects of inquiry", that is, research has been "done" on children. Research into starting school is but one example, where children have been observed, tested and assessed at various points, as a means of evaluating their adjustment to the school environment. The Starting School Research Project aims…