Abstract This paper reports on the research process and findings of a commissioned study of a Sure Start Children's Centre based in the North West of England. The study focused specifically on how child observations were being carried out in the Children's Centre to inform assessment and planning. It was imperative that the research process should not be perceived as something being "done" to staff of the Children's Centre but as one in which there was a willing engagement with a view to making use of the research findings to build on their own practice. The led to the practitioners starting a cycle of action research themselves that informed the implementation of new approaches in the carrying out of child observations. It was useful for the research team to relate this course of action both to a personal and practical dimension so that practitioners could be supported in their own research-informed practice. This study identified that the practitioners are open to new ideas and are willing and eager to explore new procedures to facilitate effective practice. While the current process of observation, assessment and planning that is being followed for individual children is encouraging, it has its limitations because some children may not be observed on a regular basis and therefore information about their current needs, interests and abilities may be missed. The use of observations to assess children's progress is seen by most of the practitioners as a challenge. This study has revealed important insights into the ways in which outsider researchers can inspire early years practitioners to reflect upon their own practice and provision. Notes 1. The reformed Statutory Framework for the EYFS takes effect from 1 September 2012. 2. The CWDC was formed in 2005 with a remit to strengthen the children's workforce. However, in March 2012 it lost its status as a non-departmental public body due to cuts in public funding by the present coalition government. The Department for Education Teaching Agency has taken over the CWDC's work with early years. 3. Carefully chosen and organised quality resources placed in areas that are always available for children to access independently across every area of learning. Additional informationNotes on contributorsPatricia Giardiello Dr Patricia Giardiello is a Senior Lecturer at Liverpool Hope University Joanne McNulty Miss Joanne McNulty is a Senior Lecturer at Liverpool Hope University Babs Anderson Ms Babs Anderson is a Lecturer at Liverpool Hope University
In general terms, transition is considered to be linear movement across periods of change. This thesis aims to question and challenge such conceptualisations, offering a reconsideration of what transition means and how it might be experienced. The research explores a Senior Lecturer’s personal experiences of moving to a new place of work, entangled with the experiences of undergraduate students as they move to university. Competing perspectives of transition as passage through an onwards and upwards trajectory to blurred and disjointed happenings are pursued in order to make gestures towards new representations of transition as a complex notion, which can disorientate and make the familiar strange.
Using a postmodern analytic autoethnographic methodology, the research works with data from a research journal, focus groups and interviews, to engage and grapple with the concepts of identity, self and other. It is a grappling, which has the capacity to unsettle conventional, totalising interpretations of what might seem to be the ‘reality’ of transition. The methodology is put to work in pursuit of alternative and fractured stories of transition, through the entwining of multiple and mutual selves.
Psychoanalysis provides the theoretical framework, working, in particular, with Kristeva’s notions of subjectivity and rejection of other, alongside Lacan’s mirror stage and graph of desire in an attempt to further understand transition and the impact it has on identity. This includes reference to a personal reconceptualisation of the abject as ‘worksickness’ and how this is manifested as a proactive endeavour to make the strange familiar.
The data analysis is structured around ‘illusions’ rather than themes that allow for the interrogation of shadowy ‘figures’ emerging from the data: ‘tour and detour’, ‘betwixt and between’ and ‘pollution’. Through the use of a number of mirror metaphors, the analysis shatters the data into fragments to create multiple diversions that maintain the entanglement of identities, rather than an essentialist rendering of a ‘self/other’ dichotomy.
This study represents transition as an incomplete and paradoxical experience, which can both threaten and create barriers to, as well as strengthening aspects of identity, offering ways to reconfigure new and competing representations of self. It concludes that if transition is never achieved, since we are always in movement, then the strategies that are often used to ‘smooth’ transition require reconsideration.
'%3e%3cpath fill='%23012169' d='M0 0v30h60V0z'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23fff' stroke-width='6' d='m0 0 60 30m0-30L0 30'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23C8102E' stroke-width='4' d='m0 0 60 30m0-30L0 30' clip-path='url(%23b)'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23fff' stroke-width='10' d='M30 0v30M0 15h60'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23C8102E' stroke-width='6' d='M30 0v30M0 15h60'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/svg%3e)
