Most children starting primary school in Australia do so after attending early childhood education and participating in a transition to school programme. While this has become the expected pathway, it is not the one followed by all children and their families. In this article, we describe visible transitions as those that are known, understood and…

While many remote places in Queensland, Australia have access to schools, very few have provision for preschool education. Recent efforts to change this have included the development of a kindergarten program delivered through the local school. An impact assessment undertaken in 2017 involved visiting 30 remote sites offering the program. Analysis…

Participatory, rights-based methodologies in childhood studies have explored conditions that realise children's rights to participation. One avenue of investigation has been to explore assent procedures that respect children's rights to make informed decisions about participation. Less attention has been directed towards the ways in which children…

This paper explores memories of children in the upper years of primary school about their transition into the first year of school and the ways in which this transition impacted on their ongoing relationship with primary school. The insights shared by eleven Year four and five students (aged 10-11 years; five boys and six girls) in an Australian…

The "Let's Count" Community Professional Pilot 2019 took place in six sites across three states (New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia). The aim of the pilot program was to implement the "Let's Count" face-to-face program for the first time with a group of people who work with young children and their families but who…

Over the last 20 years, the authors have utilised Bronfenbrenner's ecological and bioecological models as a basis for their work investigating children's transition to school, including the place of mathematics learning in this transition. The later bioecological model gave increased emphasis to the role of the individual within contexts, the…

Changing perspectives of children and recognition of the importance of researching with, rather than on, children, have contributed to a great deal of interest in participatory research methods. While many participatory methods have been developed to incorporate visual elements, uncertainty remains about the role and purpose of the image within…

While a great deal of research has focused on children's experiences as they start school, less attention has been directed to their experiences--and those of their families and educators--as they start school age care. This paper draws from a recent research project investigating practices that promote positive transitions to school and school…

Policymakers, researchers and educators around the world have acknowledged the importance of children's transition to school, both as a significant life event and as a factor in future engagement with education. As a result, much attention has been directed towards researching transition experiences, developing policies to support positive…

This article reports on methodological issues in the study of autobiographical narratives about transition to school within a life course approach. The data consist of 89 Australian participants' recollections of starting school between 1928 and 1995. These narratives are considered as life reviews and part of the story of "continuing…

Much is known about preschool children's mathematics learning and the role of play in that learning. Many early childhood educators are quite adept at observing and documenting the mathematics learning of the children in their settings. These teachers "notice" the children's mathematics but they are not the only ones to…

In 2012, the government of South Australia responded to Federal agreements aimed at universal access to preschool education for children in the year before starting formal schooling by introducing a trial designed to "integrate" preschool children into first year of school programmes in rural and remote areas of the state. This paper…

This paper addresses data arising from initial discussion with school principals concerning the implementation of a doctoral project at their schools. The doctoral project involved the prep teacher working with the preschool teacher to support children's numeracy practices as they made the transition to school. The findings presented in this paper…

Participatory approaches to engaging in research with young children place a great deal of emphasis on children's rights to choose whether or not they wish to be involved. A number of recent studies have reported a range of strategies both to inform children of their research rights and to establish options for checking children's understanding of…

This paper details and compares the discernible trends observed in a wide-ranging review of the recent starting school literature in Australia and beyond. More than half of the research reviewed considers children's readiness for school. This research is critiqued through a three-way view of readiness: child readiness, school readiness and support…