All articles

The article deals with transition from kindergarten to first grade at primary school as a process involving the child, the family and educational institutions of different levels. It discloses the notion of effective transition as a set of conditions in which a child can enter school life, find its place in it, establish communication with adults and peers, show independence, experience emotional well-being, etc. Empirical research shows a connection between preschool educational environment and effective transition to the first grade at primary school. The preschool environment is assessed by the degree of its orientation to the child, democracy, etc. (as described in the method called The scales for comprehensive rating of the quality of education in preschool educational organizations, ECERS). Transition is rated according to the degree of success in how a child gets used to school, the level of his independence, self-confidence and so on, as described in The checklist of a child’s social and emotional development, PSED. The result shows that schoolchildren with greater independence in the first grade are those exposed to a preschool environment where care-givers encourage dialogue, respect between children and adults, contribute to independent resolution of conflicts, emphasize positive behavior, practice a smooth, intuitive transition between different activities and so forth. It suggests that the creation of such an environment is more effective than consistent and targeted training.

Background. Against the backdrop of rapid socio‑cultural change, the development of social competence in preschool children has become a key task of education. Despite broad recognition of its importance, empirical data indicate a low level of social competence in many children, which predicts later difficulties with adaptation and learning. This creates the need to analyse existing barriers and practices among the primary agents of socialisation—parents and educators.

Objective. To identify and compare parents’ and preschool teachers’ assessments, practices and perceived barriers in developing preschoolers’ social competence, in order to outline directions for optimising their collaborative efforts.

Sample. The study involved 178 parents of preschool children and 57 teachers from preschool educational institutions in Yuzhno‑Sakhalinsk.

Methods. The study was conducted as a cross‑sectional, multi‑informant survey. A specially designed questionnaire was used; to monitor data validity, it included fictitious, non‑existent methods.

Results. Parents and teachers showed a high degree of agreement in identifying the most difficult components of social competence: “anticipating the consequences of one’s actions”, “taking account of other people’s feelings” and “admitting rule‑breaking and correcting one’s behaviour”. This convergence reflects the objective difficulty of fostering metacognitive and reflective functions. At the same time, there were marked differences in the practical toolbox. Teachers actively employ structured techniques (role play with explicit rules – 72.6%, peer mediation and social stories – 47.4% each), whereas parents more often use emotion coaching (17.2% versus 5.3% among teachers), which can be explained by differences in interaction contexts. A key finding was the documented gap between declared knowledge and actual behaviour: 25.9% of parents and 18.1% of teachers reported using non‑existent methods, and 46.6% of parents and 26.3% of teachers chose ineffective strategies at least once in scenario‑based tasks. This points to insufficient operational competence and susceptibility to “pseudo‑scientific” rhetoric.

Conclusions. There is an objective consensus between parents and teachers regarding the core difficulties in developing preschoolers’ social competence. However, coordination of efforts between family and preschool institutions is hampered by differences in methodological resources and by the gap between declarative knowledge and everyday practice. To increase the effectiveness of work in this area, targeted measures are needed to provide methodological support for parents and to adapt evidence‑based practices (such as emotion coaching) to the realities of preschool groups.