Continuity and discontinuity in education: example of transition from preschool to school

This article reconsiders multiple perspectives about continuity and discontinuity of early childhood education. Theoretical starting points, childhood policies and research of continuity and discontinuity exemplified through transition to school, are promising in rethinking and creating productive practices of childhood in different sociocultural contexts of childhood from the perspective of children and adults. The focus is on the compromise-approach in interpreting children's agency, their experiences, continuity and discontinuity in the context of transition and in researching transition from the children's perspective. The presupposed reliability and value of children's views have been empirically examined through research on children's perspectives about preschool and school. The theoretical frame of the research is sociocultural theory of development, viewing childhood as a sociocultural construction and children as capable and active beings and becomings. Research results confirmed children's agency, evident in their awareness of social alignment with adult (parents, preschool teachers and teachers) expectations and practices. Insight into children's views of preschool and school is one way of understanding the reality of childhood and life transitions as a precondition of creating an environment in which children and adults, through reciprocal interactions, achieve mutual accommodations in a continuous process of being and becoming.