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The call by policymakers, education stakeholders, and families for children to enter school ‘ready’ has led to numerous empirical studies that seek to identify how children and their families are or are not prepared for school. In the United States, this empirical work tends to identify particular children and their families ‘at-risk’ for school success and often seeks out ways to intervene so that such risks are addressed. Absent from this work is an understanding of how families conceptualise school readiness, and how those understandings influence their conceptions of whether or not their own children are ready for school. Such work could assist educators and other school personnel in supporting families and their children as they enter their programmes. This article examines this issue by presenting findings from a qualitative metasynthesis of studies that investigated how families conceptualised school readiness. Analysing, synthesising, and interpreting their conceptions of school readiness offers the chance to consider how early childhood stakeholders can be ready for families as they enter their programmes as well as support their efforts in readying their children for school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As school readiness continues to gain prominence on political agendas across the globe, policymakers have also implemented reforms that demand improved student performance. While these demands for improved student achievement have been shown to impact teachers in numerous ways, little is known about how such policies affect their understanding of school readiness. This is significant because how teachers conceptualize school readiness impacts their teaching and their relationships with children. This article examines this issue by presenting findings from a qualitative metasynthesis of peer-reviewed studies that examined how U.S. teachers conceptualized school readiness prior to and after the implementation of NCLB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]