This paper presents a dynamic, ecologically informed approach to conceptualizing and studying the transition to formal schooling. This perspective acknowledges that early school transitions play an important role in later school success; theorizes that a full understanding of child competence must examine the influence of the relationships among child characteristics and home, school, peer, family, and neighborhood contexts; and, most importantly, examines how these relationships change over time. This approach recommends that future policy, practice, and research be based on the following three premises. First, the transition to school must be conceptualized in terms of relationships between children and their surrounding contexts, such as schools, peers, families, and neighborhoods. Second, the measurement of children's readiness for school must acknowledge the combined influence of school, home, peers, and neighborhood contexts, the relationship among such contexts, and their direct and indirect effects on children. Third? and most specific to this paper, the examination of this transition period must address how contexts and relationships change over time, and how change and stability in these relationships Form key aspects of children's transition to school. Ultimately, research informed by these principles may advise policy and practice on transition to school in normative and high-risk populations.
