Children’s Four Big Ideas for their Early School Adjustment

Written by Beth Barker

January saw the publication of a new piece of research from two members of the pPOD team, Christine O’Farrelly (PEDAL, University of Cambridge) and Beth Barker (Imperial College London), in collaboration with Ailbhe Booth, from University College Dublin, and Mimi Tatlow-Golden, from The Open University.

The Children’s Thoughts about School Study (CTSS) aimed to examine children’s own priorities for their educational experiences, in an effort to enrich the knowledge we already have about preparing children for the best start in school. The CTSS was part of the Preparing for Life (PFL) evaluation, which tested the effectiveness of an intensive parenting programme in promoting the school readiness of children living in a socioeconomically disadvantaged community. Few studies before this have attempted to incorporate what is meaningful to children themselves, when developing programmes that aim to improve children’s school readiness.

In the CTSS we spoke to 4- and 5-year-olds from Dublin, Ireland and asked them to: 

Children's answers formed four big ideas about what matters for a good start in school: 

• Feeling able and enthusiastic for school 
• Knowing how to navigate peer interactions
• Having supportive environments with opportunities to play 
• Strong links between school and family

You can find out more about the children’s key priorities in the two-minute video below. These priorities are important for those interested in promoting children’s early experiences and outcomes, particularly as they add to the ideas adults already think about when measuring school readiness. 

The full paper can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088520061830149