When day-care professionals values for transition do not align with demands from school Mariane Hedegaard

An intervention project to support daycare professionals’ development of new concepts about children’s transition to school The question was: How to solve oposition between demands from school practice and day-care professional values and conceptions for preparing children’s transition to school?

Societal trajectory personal life course Inspired by Vygotsky (1998) and Elder (1998) the aim was to use a wholeness approach to human development where both individual history as life course and societal history as material conditions and values for development were taken into consideration.

Society Person Cultural tradition demands Cultural tradition demands Daycare practice Home Practice School Practice Motives Competences Cultural tradition demands Value positions

A basic conception Societal demands for one type of practice, influence the institutional practice in related institutions that dominate children’s life course In this case school practice influence kindergarten practice by demans of preparing children to classroom activities

The Ministry of Education in Denmark announced in 2012 that a change in the Danish school practice will be promoted. The Ministry introduced ideas for a New Nordic School This event started our project How the tension between values coming from school practice will influence day-care pedagogical practice.

Objective of intervention In Danish day-care children are seen as agents in their own learning activity and play and imagination are seen as important for children’s acquisition of life competencies relevant for transition to school and in life outside school. The aim was then to create a practice developing study where the new demands could possibly be meet without losing the aspects central in the pedagogy they appreciated

An intevention study lasting two years with monthly meatings (16 meatings, 3 conferences) To study this analysis of how values, in the form of what matters for the involved practioners in day-care, were followed though an intervention study where the ideals of the practioners were confronted with observation of their practice

Practice developing research: with four intertwined aspects Researcher and day-care professional’s discussion sessions each lasted two hours and had three main parts: – discussions of the observations from the education perspective – from the children’s perspective – planning how to cooperate with school personnel Participant observation of day-care practice with focus on the pedagogue’s activities with the children. – Respectively 12 observations in 2 kindergarten (24 observations all-together of 4 hours). – Each observation resulted in approximately a 20 pages protocol. Observation of children’s transcending to school practice, and after school programs Muncipality conferences

The interventions took place through meetings with kindergarten professionals from two institutions a) The senior researcher formulated goals for each meeting; b) Observation-protocols of daily practice from kindergartens and school and after school programs were used as focus for discussion of the actual educational practices and possibility for its development – at each discussion meeting new observations from each of the two kindergartens or from the after- school program or the school were send in advance to all participants;

Results Different periods in the process of practice development The meetings can be divided into periods relating to different sub-goals dominating the discussion of children’s transition from kindergarten to school a) goal formation and formulation of central pedagogical ideas; b) focusing on different activities in the process of formulating coherent conceptual understanding of transition (a core-model); c) evaluation of the conceptual understanding for changing practice

Focusing on different activities ( meeting) This period characterised the main body of our meetings, where central intervention and changes took place Introduction of the observation as a media for self- reflection (3.,4, an 5. meeting) Planning contact to the municipality and the first contact (6. and7. meeting) Discussing observation from school practice: the After- school program, and class zero (8., 9. and 10. meeting) and how this influenced reflection about own practice (10. meeting) Planning of conferences and formulating central ideas of own practice ( and 13. meeting)

Efforts/contributions “What we do” Indicators “What we measures on” Principles “What we aim at” General concepts The pedagogues look at children as a resource for choosing pedagogical activities Children have a voice They have room to express their feelings Children shows curiosity, they associate and immerse themselves, ask questions and provide solutions. The children demonstrate that they can take others positions Children should be able to show their feeling and creative thinking Life compete ncies The pedagogues dare to set the play free The pedagogues follows the children’s trail and values children’s contribution and ideas The pedagogues do not feel that they need to control everything Children can plan and get through with a play They can create imagination through play. They work through experiences and relate to what happens in their life through play Children get possibilities to express themselves through play Play The pedagogues recognize, support and document children’s experience acquired in one arena so they can be used in another arena The pedagogues participate active in children’s collective activities and support them to solve conflict situations Play and learning are ranked aside in transition from kindergarten to school Children contribute to a distinct children’s culture that recreated through children’s interaction Children will experience continuity from kindergarten to school Continuit y