“Stand Between” The Transition from Preschool to Primary School: Adaptation Processes from the Perspective of Complexity

The transition from preschool to primary school represents a critical moment in the educational and developmental path of the child, marked by substantial changes in contexts, relationships and demands. This shift from a familiar environment to a new one activates complex adaptation processes that involve individual, relational and contextual dimensions. The educational context plays a crucial role in sustaining this balance, offering appropriate conditions in terms of time, space and opportunities to enhance the potential of each child. A transition experienced in a positive way can have significant effects on the child's well-being and social-emotional and cognitive development, while difficulties in this phase can generate low self-esteem, reduced motivation, learning difficulties and dysfunctional behaviors. It is therefore essential to identify the factors that facilitate or hinder this process, considering not only the individual characteristics of the children, but also the role of the adults involved and the educational continuity between the two school levels. The research project aims to explore the transition process between preschool and primary school by adopting a complexity perspective. The research was conducted in Italian educational contexts, and intends to analyze how the transition is perceived and experienced by children, teachers and parents, focusing on three main dimensions: the meanings attributed to the transition, the emotional experiences and the educational practices implemented to manage the transition. For children, the role of specific cognitive and socio-emotional competences, considered by the literature to be predictive of good school adaptation, will also be explored in depth. The project is divided into five main studies. The first study aimed at investigating, through a semi-structured interview, the representation of the transition process and the strategies implemented to support the process by primary school and preschool teachers. The second study is on a large scale and explored, through ad-hoc constructed semi-structured questionnaires, the representations, emotional experiences and educational practices put in place by preschool and primary school teachers and parents. The third study is a scoping literature review that aims to explore how children's transition experiences have been studied, focusing on methodologies, research focuses and fundamental characteristics. The fourth study has investigated longitudinally the transition experience and representation of children, following them from the last year of preschool to first grade, through the use of qualitative instruments. The fifth and last study is longitudinal and aimed to analyse the development of some executive functions and emotional competences which the literature has shown to have an influence on children's ability to adapt to new contexts in the transition to first grade. In this case, quantitative instruments were employed.