Considerable interest is directed to promoting children’s success as they transition to kindergarten. It is generally proposed that children who experience lower levels of transition difficulties at kindergarten entry achieve higher academic and socialemotional gains, although this premise has seldom been explicitly evaluated in tandem with children's kindergarten readiness skills. To improve understanding of the consequences of transition difficulties, this study investigated the role of transition difficulties at the child level to children's achievements at the end of the kindergarten year in a Midwestern state in the US. Results from a series of covariate-adjusted regression models showed that children who experienced less transition difficulties at the beginning of kindergarten demonstrated relatively more gains in math, reading, and social-behavioral skills at the end of kindergarten, even when controlling for kindergarten readiness skills, child and family characteristics, and classroom-level contextual factors. The findings also indicated that the associations between kindergarten transition difficulties and academic and social-behavioral skill development at the end of kindergarten did not vary by children's academic and social-behavioral skills at kindergarten entry. Taken together, these findings suggest that transition difficulties that children encounter within the kindergarten context may have significant and independent implications for children's skill development. Possible practices to ease transition difficulties are discussed.

中文翻译：

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大的小飞跃：幼儿园期间过渡困难对儿童技能发展的作用

人们对促进儿童在过渡到幼儿园时取得成功非常感兴趣。人们普遍认为，在入园时经历较低水平过渡困难的儿童可以获得更高的学业和社会情感收益，尽管这一前提很少与儿童的入园准备技能一起得到明确评估。为了加深对过渡困难后果的理解，本研究在美国中西部的一个州调查了儿童层面的过渡困难对儿童在幼儿园学年结束时的成绩的影响。一系列协变量调整回归模型的结果表明，即使在控制幼儿园准备技能的情况下，在幼儿园开始时经历较少过渡困难的儿童在幼儿园结束时在数学、阅读和社交行为技能方面也表现出相对较多的进步、儿童和家庭特征以及课堂背景因素。研究结果还表明，幼儿园过渡困难与幼儿园结束时的学业和社交行为技能发展之间的关联并不因儿童入园时的学业和社交行为技能而变化。总而言之，这些发现表明，儿童在幼儿园遇到的过渡困难可能对儿童的技能发展产生重大且独立的影响。讨论了缓解过渡困难的可能做法。