Adopting a Life-Span Perspective on the First School Transition

Abstract

This article discusses the implications of life-span developmental theory for the design and implementation of an intervention into the first school transition, beginning with organized prekindergarten and ending with fifth grade. Orville Gilbert Brim's contributions to the life-span perspective are highlighted with regard to his own scholarship and his generative contributions to the field as a foundation leader. These include his formative writings about socialization after the childhood years and on the life course as shaped by continuity and change. His development of the life-span intervention cube as a framework for conceptualizing policy-inspired efforts to alter life trajectories sets the stage for a discussion of the first school transition. The example of the School Reform and Beyond project is then described as a strategy that embeds and extends the themes highlighted by Brim's work on socialization, change and continuity, and intervention.

ACKNOWLEDGeMENT

We gratefully acknowledge the lasting and deep influence that Bert Brim has had on our individual and shared intellectual lives. This includes his role in introducing us at a meeting of the SSRC held in 1985 to explore possibilities for a synthesis of child development and life-span perspectives on the course of human development. Two decades of evolving conversations have led us to the ideas and activities summarized in this chapter. It captures where we stand today, but surely not where our thinking will lead tomorrow. In addition, we readily credit the creativity of our co-leaders of School Reform and Beyond (SRB) project, including Lawrence Aber, Kenneth Burnley, Robin Jacob, Stephanie Jones, Daniel Keating, Frederick Morrison, Daphna Oyserman, and Cybele Raver. SRB is the evidence-based result of this team's inspired vision for a novel life-span intervention into the first school transition. We also thank L. Collier Hyams, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art, Music, and Theater at Georgetown University, for his assistance with the figures.