Abstract
There has been a great deal written recently about children starting school, particularly primary school. All of the stakeholders in these transitions to school have been considered, along with matters of readiness – for the child, family, educators, schools and communities; adjustment and adaptation; continuity and change in curricula and learning; and the opportunities, aspirations, expectations and entitlements encompassed in the transformation of roles involved. As the children move from their prior-to-school experiences – preschool, child care, home, other out-of-home care – to school, they experience many changes. One of these is often a change from a primarily play-based pedagogical approach in the prior-to-school setting to perhaps a more structured, even formal pedagogy in school. But what about the pedagogies of the transitions themselves? Children do not stop learning and teachers do not stop teaching as children are in the process of transition to school. There are pedagogies of transition employed. This book explores these pedagogies through the work of an international alliance of transitions to school researchers from five countries – Iceland, Scotland and Sweden (European) and Australia and New Zealand (Antipodean). This alliance is named Pedagogies of Educational Transitions – POET.
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Acknowledgements
In order for the POET project to function, funding was required. A large part of this funding, allowing exchange of European POET members, came from the Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme FP7, conducted by the European Commission. The funding for the New Zealand members, through the New Zealand-EU International Research Staff Exchange Scheme, was supported by government funding and administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand. A small amount of the funding for the Australian contingent was provided by Charles Sturt University. All of these funding sources are gratefully acknowledged. Individual research project funding from many sources will be acknowledged in the relevant chapters.
The editors would also like to acknowledge all of their POET colleagues who not only wrote chapters for this book but also helped in the reviewing of the manuscript and generally provided encouragement during the difficult times that inevitably occur in the editing of such a complex book. Thank you for providing the opportunity for us to bring your work together and showcase what we have achieved in POET over the last 4 years.
A special vote of gratitude goes to Professor Sue Dockett who not only led the writing of a number of the chapters in the book but also provided great support to the editors through her reviewing of all the chapters and provision of advice on structure and approach.
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A secret to sustainable and effective research activity in any field of work is for those more experienced to have a willingness to nurture those less experienced and then to put this into practice. At the heart of the POET alliance is the notion of mentoring less experienced colleagues. This notion is tangibly implemented within the context of POET through the promotion of collaboration between researchers at varying stages in their careers and consequently transmission of skills, knowledge and understanding.
In a number of ways, the editorship of this book exemplifies the underlying intention of the POET alliance to be a platform for mentoring. The first editor of this book, Nadine Ballam, is an early-career researcher. The willingness of more experienced researchers, Bob Perry and Anders Garpelin, to take on mentoring roles in this editorial team reflects, in action, precisely what was conceived in the initial planning of the POET collaboration. The existing partnership between these two experienced researchers has provided a safe, dependable foundation upon which someone less experienced can learn. This is significant and exemplifies that it is not only theoretical knowledge and understandings that are being transferred as part of the POET alliance but also the art of research and scholarship.
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Ballam, N., Perry, B., Garpelin, A. (2017). International Perspectives on the Pedagogies of Educational Transitions. In: Ballam, N., Perry, B., Garpelin, A. (eds) Pedagogies of Educational Transitions . International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43118-5_1
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