Written communication with families during the transition from childcare to school: how documents construct and position children, professionals, and parents

ABSTRACT

This article explores how documents play a role in shaping perceptions of children, professionals, and parents during the transition from childcare to kindergarten in Québec. Positioning analysis was used to explore governmentality, documentality, and interobjectivity in the communication agendas and child assessment documents of seven children. Results revealed that communication agendas constructed different images of the ideal child, professional, and parent in childcare and in school. Assessment documents in both settings categorise children as either ‘doing well’ or ‘at-risk’, position professionals as experts, and parents as playing a supportive and often passive role with regard to their children’s education.

KEYWORDS:

• Communication documents
• transition to school
• written communication in early childhood education
• child assessment
• relationships with families
• early childhood education and care
• kindergarten

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the members of EECERA’s special interest group on working with families who helped with the literature review.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Joanne S. Lehrer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3290-8027

Notes

1 I adapted Bamberg’s (1997) questions to apply the strategy to the analysis of documents.

2 All of the children attended kindergarten in French, although one child attended a French-immersion programme in an English-language school board.

3 In this class, messages were transferred in a plastic sleeve placed in a binder that went back and forth each day.

4 See Lehrer, Bigras, and Laurin (2017).

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Fonds société et culture Québec and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.