Uppeldi og menntun - 01.07.2006, Page 109

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the syllabus structures and accountability mechanisms can help, issues of tradition,
personal beliefs of educators, levels of trust and communication among educators
and parental ex­pectations will have a large effect on what actually happens in both
preschool and school settings, and, hence, what happens as children make the change
from one to another.
During the EECERa conference, the authors of this paper were fortunate to be able
to collaborate with the conference chair, Jóhanna Einarsdóttir, in the presentation of
a paper comparing transition to school practices of preschool and school educators
in Iceland and New South Wales, australia. The results showed many similarities
and differences between the two geographical contex­ts. Issues around continuity and
change were highlighted by the educators but there were some interesting caveats:
1. for the educators, continuity of curriculum and pedagogy were desirable
outcomes but it was almost always ‘the other setting’ that needed to change in
order to achieve continuity;
2. change was seen to be an inevitable consequence of and contex­t for transition
but this change was almost completely to be ex­perienced by the children making
the transition, and, to a much smaller ex­tent, their families; and
3. while educators felt it important for children to know what was going to happen
to them as they moved to school, they did not think that the children were
concerned about the change and, in fact, were looking forward to it.
Conclusion
young children ex­perience many transitions in the early years of their lives. all of
these transitions have varying degrees of continuity and change across the three
categories suggested by Fabian (2002). Many attempts have been made to smooth the
transitions through reducing the levels of discontinuity in the transitions, particular-
ly through curriculum and pedagogical approaches. These are to be applauded but
they are not nearly enough. young children tell us (Dockett & Perry, 2005) that in the
contex­t of their starting school, they need to know what is going to happen to them,
they need to know who will be working and playing with them – both adults and
children – and they need to be treated as capable people who will be listened to when
they have something to say. These children ex­pect change and are generally quite look-
ing forward to it. Sometimes, the efforts of adults to smooth the passage as much as
possible mean that the two settings involved in the change are boringly alike rather
than ex­citingly different. It is important that the adult penchant for continuity does not
destroy the children’s ex­citement about change. any change needs to be supported,
and early childhood educators certainly work towards such support.
The 16th annual Conference of the European Early Childhood Education Research
association provided many ex­amples of how early childhood educators from around
the world were working towards developing a balance between continuity and change
as young children meet the many changes in the early years. The conference was a
s­Ue doCkett, BoB Perry­