First Transitions to Early Childhood Education and Care / Policy and Pedagogy with Under-three Year Olds: Cross-disciplinary Insights and Innovations Bd.5 (PDF)

Social and Emotional Early Transitions (ISSEET) which involves researchers from Brazil, Finland, Australia, New Zealand and the USA, as well as Scotland.







Niina Rutanen is a Professor in Early Childhood Education at the Faculty of Education and Psychology, Department of Education, University of Jyväskylä in Finland. She holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Helsinki. Her main research interests have focused on childhood studies, zero to three-year-old children in early childhood education from socio-cultural and comparative perspectives, and application of relational and spatial approaches in research on early childhood institutions. The most recent project "Tracing children's socio-spatial relations and lived experiences in early childhood education transitions -project (Trace in ECEC 2019-2023, funded by the Academy of Finland) explores children's transitions from home to ECEC, during ECEC and to pre-primary education in Finland. This project¿ includes international collaboration as part of International Study of Social and Emotional Early Transitions (ISSEET) -project.







Katia de Souza Amorim is a Full Professor at the Department of Education, Information and Communication, from University of São Paulo (Brazil), specialized in Infant Development and Early Childhood Education and Care. She is a Psychiatrist (1987), holds a master in Psychology (2001), a PhD thesis in Mental Health (2007) and a higher level teacher thesis in Infant's language development (2013). She is coordinator of projects granted in the two central areas: 1) Infants and young children with and without special needs development, interaction, language, communication, meaning and bonding, analyzing the complexity of the processes in diverse relations (parents, siblings, teachers, etc.) and in different contexts (home, ECEC institutions, foster and family care, hospital) ; 2) Infants' transition to ECEC. She is a member of the WG of ANPEPP (Group on Social Contexts of Development: evolutionary and cultural aspects) and coordinator of CINDEDI (Research Center on human development and early childhood education). She is the coordinator of international interinstitutional exchange between University of São Paulo (Brazil) and University of Tampere (Finland). She leads the Brazilian research group jointly with researchers from five other countries (Scotland, Finland, USA, Australia and New Zealand), who are investigating the complex transition process when babies start attending an ECEC institution, fomenting a dialogue between the fields of Developmental Psychology and Early Childhood Education.





Laura Herold is a Teaching Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences and the program leader of the Birth through Kindergarten Special Education Integrated Teacher Licensure Program at the University of Arkansas in the United States. She holds an MA in Early Childhood Education from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a PhD in Educational Studies from the same institution. Her work on young children's development and learning focuses on infant transitions and developmentally appropriate guidance and instruction of young children. Dr. Herold leads the US team of the International Study of Social and Emotional Early Transitions (ISSEET), which links collaborative researchers from Brazil, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, and the United States. Her work on early childhood educator preparation focuses on equity of access and achieving parity of pay by empowering and licensing educators.