A longitudinal study of children's voices in regard to stress and coping during the transition to school

Abstract

This study explores (1) how parental and teacher scaffolding and children's coping strategies contribute to children's adjustment during the transition from preschool to school; and (2) how children's perception of stress and coping are constructed over time. The sample included 216 six-year-old children, their parents and teachers. The parents, teachers and children reported that many children encountered social stress and being incompetent at school, and most of the children used either direct problem-solving or seeking social support to cope with stress, but had not used emotion-focused coping strategies learnt at preschool. Compared with the parents’ and teachers’ responses, the children reported more incidences of social stress. Compared with the children's responses, more parents and teachers reported children being incompetent in learning or self-help skills at school. Implications of the study were discussed at the end of the article.

Keywords:

• coping with stress
• transition to school
• children's voices
• parental strategies
• teacher's strategies

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the reviewers for their critical comments, the participating children, parents and teachers for their cooperation. I would also wish to thank Chow Fu Yee, Li Ka Yan and Yip Lai Ying who had assisted with collecting data and data entry.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Mun Wong's research interests lie in young children's social and emotional well-being, including children's concept of distributive justice, how children cope with bullying, peer conflicts, learning, and sense of helplessness at school. Her recent longitudinal study examines parents', teachers' and children's role in helping children to cope with stress during the transition from preschool to school. Dr Wong is also the Project Leader of Zippy's Friends at School and at Home Project, an emotional education programme for children and parents in Hong Kong (2006–present). Dr Wong has been invited by the Education Youth Affairs Bureau in 2007–present to conduct inspections and provide consultancy work on the Integrated Evaluation of School (Kindergarten Sector) in Macau. In 2015, Dr Wong was invited to be one of the symposium panelists to present her research on distributive justice at the Asian Conference on Education, October 2015 in Kobe, Japan.

Additional information

Funding

I wish to thank the Hong Kong Institute of Education for providing a research grant for this study and the Hong Kong Bank Foundation for funding the Zippy's Friends Project in Hong Kong.