Abstract

Transitions across the home environment, early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings and compulsory school education (CSE) mark significant changes in the life of children and their families and communities. Positive experiences of transition between educational levels can be a critical factor for children’s future success and development, while negative experiences can have lasting challenges leading to poorer educational performance, especially for more disadvantaged children. Adopting a more unified approach to caring and learning (educare) across educational settings in order to sustain continuity of children’s experiences over time, can significantly improve children’s educational achievement and socio-emotional development. In turn promoting inter-institutional professional learning communities of ECEC and primary school staff as well as involving parents in the transition process are considered to be key factors in ensuring successful transitions. Taking these crucial elements into account, practitioners and researchers from four different countries have collaborated in a transnational action-research study (START/Erasmus +) in order to foster warm and inclusive transitions across the early years. In line with the European Commission priorities, the general objectives of the project were: • to ensure a good start in education for all children, by enhancing the quality of ECEC and by ensuring that the benefits of ECEC are carried through to statutory school/ education levels; • to support teachers and ECEC staff to adopt new methods and tools for dealing with complex classroom realities and diversified groups of learners. More specifically, four pilot projects in four different countries (Sl, It, UK, Be) were established to develop warm and inclusive transitional practices with specific attention to children and families who face complex family situations (e.g. socio-economic disadvantage) and are at ‘risk of social exclusion’ (e.g. Roma, children with migrant background, refugee children, children with special educational needs). These innovative practices were enabled by setting up inter-institutional professional learning communities of ECEC, primary school staff and/or other local stakeholders. By engaging in action research supported by researchers, ECEC and primary school staff explored new pedagogical approaches and educational methodologies that supported children and families in facing successful transition processes.