Norms about the parents in transitions and children’s agency

Part of the symposium: The struggle about agency and children’s perspectives

This paper aims to analyze the transition for children from daycare institutions to school in a Danish context. In pedagogical research about the transition is shown, how parents and children are subject to various norms. Both parents and children are expected to show specific sets of sociality. The sociality which children must demonstrate to the school is an interactive process, where understandings of norms and relationships are pieced together. This is not referring to a classic, pedagogical concept of socialization of someone (e.g. children). Instead, it´s a concept about the forms of sociality through which both adults and children are required to exhibit and construct themselves. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork in one daycare institution and one school. I take a close, analytical look at the micro-social processes and norms in transitions in children's lives. I shed light on how the transition process reflects norms for both parents and children, and how the children act themselves. I analyze the children´s encounters with the school´s library, and how norms about `the school parent´ and `the school child´ are (re)told through stories. In my fieldwork, I worked with both informed consent and situated ethics. I shed light on how the children are expected not only to socialize and prepare themselves for the school setting but also to prepare their parents for this agenda. This opens up new ways to rethink the transition and children´s agency in such practices.