Supporting Difficult Transitions

Mariane Hedegaard is Professor Emerita of Developmental Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.Anne Edwards is Professor Emerita in the Department of Education at Oxford University, UK, where she was Director of the department and co-founder of the Oxford University Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research (OSAT).

• 1. Rethinking Professional Support for Challenging Transitions: Enabling the Agency of Children, Young People and Their Families, Anne Edwards and Mariane HedegaardPart I: A Fresh Look at Professional Work with Children, Young People and Families2. Child Based Practice Development for Children in Areas of Concern: A Model for Enabling Both the Child’s and Teachers’ Perspectives, Mariane Hedegaard3. Common Knowledge between Mothers and Children in Problematic Transitions: How Professionals Make Children’s Motives Available as a Resource, Nick Hopwood and Teena Clerke4. Changing Practices in the Highlands of Vietnam: Transitioning from Subjects of Research to Agents of Change, Marilyn Fleer, Helen Hedges, Freya Fleer-Stout and Hanh Le Thi Bich5. Radical-Local Screening of Preschool Children’s Social Situations of Development: From Abilities to Activities, Mariane Hedegaard & Naussunguaq LyberthPart II: Enabling Families as Supporters of Children’s and Young People’s Transitions6. Easing Transitions into School from Social Excluded ‘Hard To Reach’ Families: From Risk and Resilience to Agency and Demand, Anne Edwards and Maria Evangelou7 Relational Approaches to Supporting Transitions into School: Families and Early Childhood Educators Working Together in Regional Chile, Christine Woodrow and Kerry Staples8. The Transition to of Roma Children into School: Working Relationally across Cultural Boundaries in Spain, José Luis Lalueza, Virginia Martínez-Lozano and Beatriz Macías-Gómez-Estern9. Small Children’s Movements across Residential Care and Day-Care: How Professionals Build Common Knowledge and Practice That Matters for Children, Ida Schwartz10. Helping Children in Cross-Cultural Post-Disaster Settings: Creating Relational Pathways to Resilience,Pernille HansenPart III: Supporting the Agency of Children and Young People in Transitions11. When Young Adulthood Presents a Double Challenge: Mental Illness, Disconnected Activities, and Relational Agency, Sofie Pedersen12. Children with Disabilities Growing Up and Becoming Adults: Socio-cultural Challenges around the Transition to Adulthood, Louise Bøttcher13. Supporting the Transitions into Work of Autistic Young People: Building and Using Common Knowledge, Anne Edwards and Yvette FayIndex

Attending to the topic of transitions through this relational approach offers a powerful lens that makes visible taken for granted experiences and enables ways to rethink the processes, practices, and structures we have built. This book reminds us all that we can change what we have built and that, with change, we are likely to see improvements in the experience of transitions.