Cultural-historical study of crises in child role adjustment during transition to school within a bi-cultural context

ABSTRACT

There is a consensusthat the crises children encounter during the transition period might impact negatively on children’s learning and development. However, from cultural-historical perspective, qualitative leap in development can hardly be achieved without crises. This paper, drawing upon cultural-historical theory as the framework and by using ‘role adjustment’ as the unit of analysis, discusses what the crisis means for children’s learning and development. Through a case study of two second generation Chinese Australian children’s role adjustmentin school transition, this paper finds that the crises provide both potentials and dangers depending on how the crises are managed within the child’s social situation of development. It argues against the advocates for making children’s transition seamless, as it is important to utilize the developmental potentials of crises instead of eliminating them. It also enriches the cultural-historical studies by exploring not only the developmental aspect but also the dark side of the crises.

KEYWORDS:

• Crises
• children
• role adjustment
• transition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Children behaved wrongly would be given a crying face.

2 Children considered the researcher as a teacher because class teacher introduced her to children as a teacher.

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by the Philosophy and Social Science Fund of Education Department of Jiangsu Province [Grant number 2018SJA0431] and Nanjing Xiaozhuang University Research Grant [Grant number 2018NXY32].

Notes on contributors

Junqian Ma

Dr. Junqian Ma is a lecturer of school of teacher education at Nanjing Xiaozhuang University, China. She was awarded the doctorate degree from Monash University in 2017. Before starting PhD, She worked in a primary school in China as a class teacher and a Chinese language teacher. Her area of interest are children’s transition to school, child development, cultural-historical theory and bi-cultural context.

Marie Hammer

Dr. Marie Hammer is currently a lecturer in Early Childhood Education at Monash University where she has taken a number of leadership roles including Early Childhood Course Leader for 5 years. She has a range of research interests including the professionalism of the Early Childhood field and pedagogical and curriculum approaches.

Nikolai Veresov

Dr. Nikolai Veresov is an Associate Professor of the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia. He got his first PhD degree in Moscow in 1990 and started his academic career in Murmansk (Russia) as a senior lecturer (1991–1993) and the Head of Department of Early Childhood (1993–1997). The second PhD was obtained in University of Oulu (Finland) in 1998. From 1999 to 2011 he was affiliated to Kajaani Teacher Training Department (Finland) as a Senior Researcher and the Scientific Director of the international projects. His area of interest are development in early years, cultural-historical theory and research methodology.