Targeting Social Well-being to Improve Transitions to School

School-entry is one of the major transitions in childhood. As such, it poses a potential challenge but also important opportunities for childrens mental health and well-being. While the cognitive prerequisites for a successful transition to school have been thoroughly investigated in the past, childrens social well-being in this critical phase has so far received less scientific attention. This project will put the focus on childrens social well-being, involving bonds within their families as well as their social networks outside of the home. An international research team comprising developmental psychologists, education and child mental health experts from Austria, Germany, Sweden and the UK, will follow a large representative sample of preschoolers in their transition from kindergarten to school. We will pool data from five research sites and four different European countries with widely varying school-entry practices. This will allow to gain a comprehensive understanding of risk factors and protective factors for childrens social well-being during the critical period of transition to school. In addition, laboratory-based measurements and cutting-edge neuroscience techniques will be used to examine in depth the quality of children`s key relationships with their parents, peers and teachers for a subset of children at each of the research sites. In particular, we will measure interpersonal biobehavioral synchrony, i.e. the extent to which children are able to coordinate their rhythmic brain activities with other people and thus literally get on the same wavelength with them. We expect that interpersonal biobehavioral synchrony will emerge as a core mechanism underlying young childrens experiences of social connectedness and positive relationships both within their families and with their peers in educational contexts. Based on our scientific results, we will develop and disseminate guidelines detailing evidence-based strategies for fostering social well-being amid this major transition in childrens lives.