The making of transitions from kindergarten to school: a case from Denmark

The aim of this project is to explore how children and professionals 'do transition’. The project is carried out in continuation of former research projects that have examined the importance of children’s fellowship (Stanek. 2013) and the cooperation between the professionals (Hàøjholt, 2001) during the transition between kindergarten and school. Theoretically the project is inspired by the institutional ethnography (Smith, 2005, 2006), the sociology of childhood (James, Jenks & Prout, 1998), and the pedagogical anthropology (Gullàøv et.al., 2017; Löfgren & Ehn, 2006). Methodically the project is based on an ethnographic fieldwork (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1995) based on participatory observations, interviews with professionals (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2015), and interviews with children. (Kampmann, 2017). The project has been carried out with an ambition to treat the children’s statements confidentially and to make sure that the children did not feel any pressure to join interviews or conversations with my as researcher. The conference presentation will stress to show how the transition is entangled within norms, expectations and understandings of children, childhood, and school-readiness and how children navigate and create strategies to handle both the professional’s expectations and their own agendas. By extension, the implications for the children’s possibilities to become 'appropriate’ pupils, will be discussed, in relation to the 'transition-work in and between kindergarten and school and it will be shown how these possibilities vary within the group of children.