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This paper explores memories of children in the upper years of primary school about their transition into the first year of school and the ways in which this transition impacted on their ongoing relationship with primary school. The insights shared by eleven Year four and five students (aged 10-11 years; five boys and six girls) in an Australian primary school contribute to understandings of the strategies children develop and utilise in their educational transitions (transitions capital), not only in the transition to school but also in ongoing educational transitions throughout school. The older children reflected on their younger selves related to transitions expectations, and experiences and illustrated their strategies for self-management of change, positioning them as potential resources within transition programs. Despite this, the participants reported that their expertise and experience generally were not acknowledged, and they were often not invited to contribute to transition programs involving new school entrants.

Interpretation in cross-language qualitative research presents a range of methodological and ethical challenges. Among these are the interpreters' influence on data generation and interview power dynamics. Having translators review and/or produce an independent translation of recorded interview material for comparative purposes is regarded as one of the ways researchers can control for these challenges. However, there are other reasons why translations of interpreted materials are valuable. This paper explores these issues by reporting an interview focused on investigating the experiences of a non-Icelandic family as their child made the transition to an Icelandic preschool. In this case, the interpreter influenced data generation in a semi-structured interview; a situation that was only fully revealed in follow-up translation. The findings suggest that while the follow-up translation demonstrates discrepancies and the interpreter's tendency to modify both questions and responses during the interview, comparative analysis of the oral interpretation and translation of the interview text opens up new dimensions in the data that would otherwise have gone unnoticed by the researcher.

Participatory, rights-based methodologies in childhood studies have explored conditions that realise children's rights to participation. One avenue of investigation has been to explore assent procedures that respect children's rights to make informed decisions about participation. Less attention has been directed towards the ways in which children indicate their dissent. This paper highlights children's self-chosen ways to participate (or not) in a study that explored their perspectives of play in an Australian early childhood education setting. The study analysed the design of ethical spaces in research with children's expressions as departure points for their participatory experiences. This highlighted three concepts that characterised their choices: agency; privacy; and relationships. The outcomes informed the development of a framework of ethical research spaces, incorporating physical, creative and social-emotional spaces. How the concepts of agency, privacy and relationships are anchored in the three spaces is addressed.

While many remote places in Queensland, Australia have access to schools, very few have provision for preschool education. Recent efforts to change this have included the development of a kindergarten program delivered through the local school. An impact assessment undertaken in 2017 involved visiting 30 remote sites offering the program. Analysis of interview data indicated the importance of sense of place in the delivery of this program. Educators and family members were overwhelmingly supportive of the option of a kindergarten program in their sites, regarding it as an equity and social justice imperative to provide access to programs that seem to be taken-for-granted for children and families in urban and regional locations. The potential for the program to enhance social interactions and educational outcomes was highlighted, even when educators noted a range of challenges in the implementation of the program. Sense of place and the positioning of educators and families are explored in the paper.

The transition to school brings early childhood and school educators together in the common aim of promoting a positive start to school. This transition also highlights the boundaries and professional linkages that contribute to this aim. Conceptualising boundary spaces as sites of professional identity construction and negotiation, we explore professional linkages between early childhood education and care and school educators during transitions to school, using Abbott's linked ecologies framework. To do this, we examine data from two studies, exploring the proposition that collaboration -- in the forms of professional networks and transition statements (shared documentation) -- have the potential to act as linkages across the ecologies of early childhood education and care and school education. Our conclusions support this potential but note that the nature and impact of these linkages is variable. Further, we argue that contradictions and tensions in the perceived professional roles of educators are evident within these linkages.

Little is known about how supportive relationships and parent communities materialize, or fail to materialize, in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings characterized by family diversity. This paper explores parents' lived experiences of belonging and non-belonging through semi-structured interviews with 12 parents of children from diverse backgrounds in two preschools in Reykjavík, Iceland. The children of these parents were 5-6 years old and would make the transition to primary school in the next school year. Interviews focused on parents' experiences of their child's time at the preschool, relationships with peers, educators and other families and the forthcoming transition to primary school. Findings suggested varied parental attitudes. While some reported benefits from belonging to a preschool community, others preferred to keep their distance or actively retained boundaries between home and school spheres. For these latter parents, belonging was framed as a matter of choice, influenced by factors such as time and language. A nuanced understanding of time as both facilitating belonging and a limited resource to be managed emerged from the study. These perspectives have implications for how policymakers and educators might facilitate belonging but also the importance of respecting those parents who choose to remain 'outside' the preschool community.

Over the last 20 years, the authors have utilised Bronfenbrenner's ecological and bioecological models as a basis for their work investigating children's transition to school, including the place of mathematics learning in this transition. The later bioecological model gave increased emphasis to the role of the individual within contexts, the processes that characterised interactions within and across contexts (proximal processes), and the influence of time. This bioecological model outlined four elements--person, process, context and time--which, together, were described as influencing the development of individuals. While the mathematical learning of young children influences, and is influenced by, all four elements of the model, the critical role of proximal processes in this learning is highlighted in this paper. Our aim is to identify how the four elements of the bioecological model, particularly proximal processes, provide a framework to analyse the experiences of the adults--early childhood educators and parents--involved in an early childhood mathematics education intervention designed to promote engagement with mathematics in playful situations. Data are drawn from 35 early childhood educators and 37 parents over 2 consecutive years (2013, 2014) with generally different participants in each year.

The approaches to teaching and learning mathematics in Australian preschools and schools can be quite different. These differences arise from what can be termed different "cultures" within the prior-to-school and school settings. Even the first years of school can be characterized by teacher-centered, syllabus-driven lessons and written, group-based assessment, while the preschools tend to adhere to their child-centered, play-based approaches. The result of these differences can be a hiatus in the children's mathematics learning and the teachers' assessment of this learning. This paper reports on one attempt to bridge this gap, not, as so often happens, by "forcing down" the primary school curriculum into the preschool but by maintaining a focus on appropriate learning approaches in this period of the children's lives. The Southern Numeracy Initiative (SNI) was established in 2004 in high schools, primary schools, and preschools situated in the southern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. Its general aim was to improve mathematics and numeracy outcomes through a sustained, collaborative program of professional development and action research, particularly in the areas of pedagogy and assessment. This paper reports work done with preschool educators as part of SNI. It traces how "powerful ideas" in mathematics were identified in current preschool practice, how they were linked to the Developmental Learning Outcomes in the mandatory curriculum documents, and how the technique of learning stories (narrative assessment) was established as a valid assessment regime compatible with key principles of preschool education. The professional development focus on children's powerful mathematical ideas, combined with action research that encouraged educators to identify these ideas within children's experiences and to document these through learning stories, form the basis of this paper.

This paper investigates the effects of a sustained professional development project in South Australia in which a small group of preschool educators worked with the authors to develop their own knowledge and skills in facilitating young children's mathematical learning. Through the development of an approach to pedagogy that linked the mandated learning outcomes for preschools in South Australia to powerful mathematical ideas, the preschool educators have changed their practices in mathematics education and the ways in which they think about these practices. As well, implementation of a narrative assessment approach has provided opportunities not only for the enhancement of children's learning but also enhancement of the educators' mathematical knowledge and skills. After providing background about current research on effective pedagogy in preschools, the paper considers the impact of the professional development project on the early childhood educators, particularly in terms of their growth in knowledge, skills and confidence in early childhood mathematics. (Contains 7 tables.)

This paper focuses on effective transition-to-school programs. Using a framework of 10 guidelines developed through the Starting School Research Project, the paper provides examples of effective strategies and transition programs. In this context, the nature of some current transition programs is questioned, and the curriculum of transition is problematized. In particular, the paper raises issues around who has input into such programs and who decides on appropriate curriculum. (Contains 25 references.) (Author/LPP)