Young Children's Health and Wellbeing Across the Transition to School: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis

Abstract

This paper reports on the systematic search and review of the literature relating to the health and wellbeing of young children across the transition to school. It identified 56 papers (including empirical studies, reviews, commentaries, and reports) relevant to the research questions and completed an interpretive systematic review to ascertain the current state of the literature. The review employed the Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS) method to allow for a rigorous and systematic review of a disparate literature which stretches across several disciplines. The findings are presented in seven thematic categories: current conceptualisations of health and wellbeing, assessment and measurement, 'school readiness', service integration, transition actors, 'at risk' children, and child voice. These findings illustrate the ways in which concepts have been constructed, identified, and operationalised in early years research, practice, and policy. Moreover, it highlights that 'what is known' can be used to inform the review or implementation of services, practices, and partnerships that support child health and wellbeing during the transition to school.

Knowledge translation for public health in low- and middle- income countries: a critical interpretive synthesis

“…The CIS method of analysis is a review type that incorporates systematic review methods with qualitative enquiry techniques to enable the synthesis of a range of types of evidence. From this analysis, ‘synthetic constructs’ are generated, in order to draw together themes to form new concepts or theories [ 16 , 20 , 21 ]. The CIS method was chosen for this review because it allows for the synthesis of a large and diverse body of literature, followed by the development of concepts through an interpretive analysis [ 16 ].…”

“…At this stage, the articles were also assessed by the first author for quality, utilising a quality assessment tool, drawing on Fane et al’s [ 21 ] use of Attree’s grading system from A-C [ 23 ] whereby an A grading was for primary research or review with high relevance to the compass question, B was primary research or review with less relevance, and C was an opinion/commentary, description of programs, or an article that provided background information only. Thirteen papers were excluded at this point.…”

Children’s socialization into the mobile preschool: a priming event collectively performed by novice children, ‘old-timers’, and pedagogues

“…Corsaro and Molinari (2000; considered the transition to primary school, and although research into educational transitions has mainly considered transitions to primary school (e.g. Fane et al 2016;Ballam, Perry, and Garpelin 2017), the significance of early childhood education and care (ECEC) and children's perspectives has recently been underlined in such transitions (Einarsdottir 2011;Kocyigiti 2014;Ackesjö 2016). Recently, more studies have examined transitions to ECEC (Kalkman and Clark 2017;Wilder and Lillvist 2018;Picchio and Mayer 2019).…”

Using emoji as a tool to support child wellbeing from a strengths-based approach

“…Increasingly, for young children, defined internationally generally as birth-to-eight (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009), the concept of wellbeing has been operationalised to identify areas of need and risk in order to support the healthy development and wellbeing of young children (Fane, MacDougall, Redmond, Jovanovic, & Ward, 2016). This construction of child wellbeing has led to the pervasive use of standardised assessments and large scale quantitative measures derived by adults, for young children, which have greatly informed knowledge, practice, and policy relating to child wellbeing.…”