From a dynamic assessment perspective, how do teachers support their pupils during their transition from Kindergarten to primary school ?

Abstract

In the context of French-speaking Switzerland, the Kindergarten and the first two years of primary school form a single 4-year cycle. However, pupils are required to change teachers and classes after 2 years. The challenge of the transition from Kindergarten to primary school is not a new phenomenon, but this inevitable rupture must be supported (Clerc-Georgy & Kappeler, 2017). These first 4 years of schooling are particularly important, because the child enters kindergarten following its own program and will gently learn to follow the school's program (Vygotski, 1935/1995). During this transition, the child changes social and academic context to integrate another context that is unfamiliar to him or her. The new demands will generate crises in the dynamics of child development, as there will be a change in social situation through new activities in school life, new social relationships and new material conditions (Hedegaard, 2009) when he or her joins the new classroom.

In this particular context and with the aim of harmonising teaching and learning practices during this transition period, continuous training has been proposed in the form of a lesson study (Murata, 2011) in one school. Over more than a year, three teams of Kindergarten teachers, primary school teachers and university trainers met in four full lesson study sessions. Thus, during this training research, 12 lesson-observation preparations and 10 debriefings after classroom observations were filmed.

This poster aims to present how teachers in a dynamic assessment perspective identify the changes that cause crises in their pupils’ development process and to understand how they support them in this particular situation of transition from Kindergarten to primary school.