When daycare professionals’ values for transition to school do not align with the educational demands from society and school: the temporal aspects of common knowledge

Preparing children for school is seen as a central practice demand for daycare professionals during children’s last year in kindergarten. This demand creates challenges for practitioners and practice development. In the research presented here, the aim was to study how changes in demands for preparing children for school, conflict with what matters for professionals in kindergarten and the values underpinning good practice, and how this difference may be resolved. The study took the form of a practice developing research, and the intervention is analysed in terms of building common knowledge and exercising relational expertise and agency among daycare practitioners, the researchers and school practitioners.  The study contributes to shaping the relational concepts by recognising the temporal dimension of using common knowledge as children are prepared for the transition to school.