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The international contributors to Supporting Difficult Transitions discuss examples of transitions that are problematic for children, young people and their carers. Focusing on vulnerable children and young people, the transitions include: starting school, changing schools, starting work, entering a new culture or a culture that has been changed to focusing on vulnerable children and young people. The book will be useful to practitioners involved in supporting children and their carers as they make these moves; students and course tutors in the caring professions; researchers; and policy makers and those who implement policy for children and young people. The different case examples are given coherence by drawing on cultural-historical approaches to how people move between practices. Particular attention is paid to how practitioners can build shared understandings of what matters for children and young people and for the institutions they are entering. These understandings become a resource to strengthen collaborations between practitioners or between practitioners and the children and their carers, as they support entry into new practices.

Written by a team of international contributors and featuring case studies from a range of educational settings in Australia, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, and the USA, this edited book is the first in the field of early childhood and youth studies to draw on Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory to give insights into transitions in childhood, what they are and how they are differently experienced. Transitions are explored holistically so the chapters not only focus on the person transitioning but also the institutions in which the person is transitioning from and to, with a focus on schools and daycare. The contributors look at how societal values and policies impact these transitions and comparison are drawn between international settings. The book includes chapters on expatriate families, immigrant children, home-school transitions, the role of play and communities. Through interviews, case studies and the analysis of empirical material from fieldwork, Children's Transitions in Everyday Life and Institutions reflects on the best ways to engage children so that they may emerge as competent actors in their new settings and transition well.

Early Learning and Development provides a unique synthesis of cultural-historical theory from Vygotsky, Elkonin and Leontiev in the twentieth century to the ground-breaking research of scholars such as Siraj-Blatchford, Kratsova and Hedegaard today. It demonstrates how development and learning are culturally embedded and institutionally defined, and it reflects specifically upon the implications for the early childhood profession. Divided into parts, with succinct chapters that build upon knowledge progressively, the everyday lives of children at home, in the community, at pre-school and at school are discussed in the context of child development and pedagogy. The book explicitly problematises the foundations of early childhood education, inviting postgraduates, researchers and academics to drill down into specific areas of international discourse, and extending upper-level undergraduates beyond the fundamental underpinnings of their learning. Ultimately Early Learning and Development offers new models of'conceptual play'practice and theory within a globally resonant, cultural-historical framework.