Send an Annotation from the Connection Collection by E-mail

This page opened in a new window. Use the form below to send this citation by e-mail or close this window if you wish to return to the Connections Collection.

Send Citation and Annotation by E-mail Enter the e-mail address to which you would like to send this citation/annotation, and click the "send e-mail" button.

Citation:

Mangione, P.L. & Speth, T. (1998). The transition to elementary school: A framework for creating early childhood continuity through home, school, and community partnerships. Elementary School Journal, 98(4): 381-397.

Annotation:
This paper describes a framework designed to ease the transition to elementary school. The effort was designed to help home, school, and community partners focus on policies and practices that support continuity and then apply them in effective ways. Rather than placing primary responsibility for young childrenÕs learning and development on the home, the school, or the community, the continuity framework suggests that the challenge is for stakeholders to work together. This entails including families as partners, sharing leadership, providing comprehensive services, addressing culture and home language, ensuring communication, promoting knowledge and skill development, providing suitable care and education, and evaluating the partnership. The framework calls for a balance between horizontal (connections among home, school, and community services) and vertical (service linkages across time) continuity. Results indicated that the continuity framework was an important and useful document and that its elements were appropriate. Suggestions for improvement include the need to emphasize family participation and provide a document accessible to everyone involved (the documentÕs language was inaccessible to families and other community participants). Several recommendations were adopted. In the national study to evaluate the framework and to identify strategies that would influence its use, 75 structured interviews and 36 focus groups were conducted with 36 partnerships. Participants agreed that appropriate elements were used to define early childhood continuity. Findings appear to support the importance of a shared vision held among partnership practitioners. The paper may be used by policy-makers and administrators in guiding decisions about transition programs. One limitation of the study is that there is no indication under which conditions the framework is most likely to succeed. In addition, because of the sampling procedures, it is difficult to generalize from these findings.