På väg in i skolan: Om villkor för olika barns delaktighet och skriftspråkslärande.

The purpose of this study is to explore different children’s encounter with the school from a child perspective. Thus the purpose is to elaborate the understanding of how different children meet the school in the form of participation and learning conditions, including conditions for learning written language in particular. The study put forward three research questions: 1) What characterises the practice met by children in the transition from daycare facility to pre-school class and later in the transition from pre-school class to the first year of primary school? 2) What characterises teachers’ didactic and special needs attitudes and strategies in their meeting with the children’s different backgrounds, experiences and needs? 3) What characterises different children’s encounter with the practices of the school, based on their narratives and actions?

The results show that the pre-school class is a good first step towards starting school. Both the narratives from children and teachers are positive towards the gentle start at school in the form of pre-school class. The daycare facility’s endeavours to establish social confidence and a tightly-knit group seem to have an impact on the children in their transition from daycare to school. The children appear well-prepared and secure in the school’s surroundings. The study partly shows that it can be challenging for children to experience two types of transition to school in which they experience changes in activities, relationships and roles. With regard to didactics, collaboration between daycare facility and school is not good. The study shows that direct transition between daycare facility and first year of primary school results in a didactic break in the children’s reading and writing process. This is seen in that the work initiated in the pre-school class is not continued in the first year of primary school. There is no connection and continuity between reading and writing activities at the daycare facility and the school. Furthermore, the study shows that there is no common forum for early childhood educators and teachers in which they can develop a common foundation together for didactics work. This may have negative consequences for the children’s learning process as the learning process is either interrupted or stopped completely.

The study consists of participating observations and interviews as sources of primary data collection as well as document analyses. Data was collected at nine different schools in one Swedish municipality. The empirical material consists of interviews with nine early childhood educators for children with special needs from nine schools as well as case studies completed at two of the nine schools. At each of these schools, children from one class were followed from daycare to their first year of primary school. The children were observed from the last period of daycare and up to the first year at primary school.

Sandberg, G. (2012). På väg in i skolan: Om villkor för olika barns delaktighet och skriftspråkslärande. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia didactica Upsaliensia 6.