Pathways to Belonging in Transition to school – A Danish Case Study

Background and Objectives
There is a strong tradition of close collaboration between institutions of early childhood education and public schools in a Danish context and transition to school is an implicit part of early childhood education legislation. In other words, ensuring a good transition to school and thus a good school start is quintessential in Denmark and has substantial political and pedagogical focus. In an international perspective, transition to school from early childhood education in Denmark is characterized by a high degree of equity. Previous research indicate that schooling, and a good school start, is a significant factor in relation to reducing inequity (Wood, Levinson, Postlethwaite & Black, 2011; Vinnerljung, Berlin & Hjern, 2010; Tideman, Vinnerljung, Hintze & Isaksson, 2011). In a substantial systematic review regarding transition to school, Peters (2010) show that a good start to students’ school life entails pivotal implications for their further learning and well-being during their school trajectories. A Danish study from 2019 shows, that a majority of students are experiencing a good transition to school and a good school start. However, 11,6% experience a low sense of school well-being (Pedersen et al., 2019). Based on a case study in a municipality in northern Denmark, where early childhood institutions and schools have worked with elements of the resilience framework (Hart et al., 2016), the paper will critically discuss both how we, with novel methodology, can study the notion of belongingness in relation to school transition and school start, how didactical and pedagogical work with elements from the resilience framework can foster children’s senses of belonging to school communities and how the notion of sense of belonging can be understood as a phenomenon imbedded in complex educational systems.

Main Perspectives
Based on empirical data and analyses from an ongoing case study in a Danish municipality, the paper will discuss conceptual and methodological potentials and challenges in relation to creating knowledge on school beginners’ sense of belonging, which is a rather complex field of research where the base of knowledge is substantial and still evolving (Baumeister & Robson, 2021; Ben-Arieh et al., 2014; Holstein et al., 2021; Ma, 2003 and Vandenbussche and De Schauwers, 2018). However, in relation to the phenomenon of transition to school and the notion of good school start the field seems rather undescribed. The data, in the presented and discussed case study, consist of video observations and ethnographic field notes from three workshops with 73 school beginners. The paper will moreover address a novel approach to participatory data production with and by children (Karlsson, 2020) where a teddy bear elicitation workshop was applied. Finally, the paper will address and discuss how the notion of sense of belonging, in relation to the notion of school start, can be understood when investigating inclusive education in complex education systems through the application of the Complex Educational Systems Analysis Cube (CESA3) (Schuelka and Engsig, 2020).