A Child's Transition to School: A Phenomenological Study

• Author / Creator

  Makovichuk, Lee

• As a kindergarten teacher, I have witnessed many ways that children and parents experience the transition to school—seamlessly for those who seem to fit into classroom rhythms with ease and joy; anxiously and, at times, with resistance for those who have difficulty finding their place. As a parent, I helped my own children navigate changes to their daily routines when school began. I also adjusted the rhythms of our family life to integrate with the school schedule, coordinating our daily plans with school arrivals and departures and planning family holidays during school breaks. When the transition to school goes smoothly for first-time students, it is easy to overlook the changes they are experiencing, and when a transition is rife with difficulty, they are often approached as problems to be solved. For more than four decades, “problem” transitions have concerned parents, teachers, school administrators, policymakers, and educational researchers. The extent research conceptualizes the transition to school as “readiness,” prioritizing the cognitive, social, and interpersonal skills a child needs for school as well as the practices and strategies that teachers, parents, and communities can use to make schools ready for children. With so much effort spent looking for solutions, researchers miss the opportunity to delve deeply into the humanness in this life-changing event. The review of the relevant literature that I conducted as part of this study uncovers the opportunity for phenomenological query and reflective exploration regarding a child’s transition to school.Inspired by Max van Manen’s (2014) phenomenology of practice methodology, this doctoral study considers the experience of the transition to school for parents and teachers. A phenomenological approach is well-suited for exploring this extensively studied childhood transition because it seeks to understand the meaning structures of pre-reflected, lived experiences before theories conceptualize such events. Interviews with three teachers and nine families reveal embodied, relational, and spatial-temporal events of preparing, arriving, separating, and welcoming during the transition to school. Lived experiences become the basis for phenomenological and philosophical reflections.In three articles— A Child’s Transition to School: Review of the Relevant Literature, Phenomenology of the Parent-Child Goodbye and The Phenomenology of the Kindergarten Classroom—I use this rigorous and sophisticated research method to explore some of the possible meaning structures of a child’s transition to school. This dissertation reveals the co-constitutive nature of relationally intersubjective and generative human activities intentionally directed toward the child being in a classroom and becoming a student.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • education,
  • early education
  • phenomenology
  • transition to school

• Graduation date

  Spring 2023

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-aa69-ps52

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.