Moving beyond the concepts of school readiness and adjustment, this book reimagines the transition to primary school as a complex, dynamic and multidimensional process. It considers three dimensions: individual transitions; the reorganisation of relationships and collectives; and educational processes designed to support change.

First, the book develops a conceptual and methodological framework for studying these dimensions; then, it illustrates this framework through qualitative research conducted in Japan, China, and Australia. Using ethnography, auto-ethnography, and action research, the studies examine children’s crises, the evolution of their social circles, and the development of a comprehensive transition curriculum. Within- and across-context analyses demonstrate how broader structures, institutions, relationships, and children’s agency interact to produce distinctive trajectories and recurring mechanisms.

This book provides researchers and educators working in early childhood education, elementary education, child development, and educational psychology with a coherent framework and practical analytical tools.

Junqian Ma is an associate professor at the School of Education Science, Nanjing Normal University. She is also a researcher at the Adolescent Education and Intelligence Support Laboratory of Nanjing Normal University, a designated Laboratory of Philosophy and Social Sciences at Universities in Jiangsu Province. She received her PhD from Monash University, Australia, in 2017. Before pursuing her doctoral studies, she worked as a primary school teacher at the Primary School Affiliated to East China Normal University in Shanghai. Her research interests include child development, children’s transition to primary school, early childhood education, and primary education.