Bringing matter,to matter: ‘Wild ideas’ about ‘readiness’ in the transition from the Early Years Foundation Stage to the Key Stage 1 National Curriculum in England

Abstract

‘Readiness’ and transition are topics of ongoing debate in relation to early childhood education. Critiques of schoolification and the impact of a ‘school-readiness’ agenda on policy and practice point to a tendency for increased formalisation of learning as children progress through their early years of schooling. In England, these first years of school-based education involve a transition between different and distinct educational frameworks, from the Early Years Foundation Stage to the National Curriculum in Key Stage 1. This transition can be problematic as tensions emerge between different pedagogical traditions, thus creating a potentially challenging experience for children as they progress from one educational context to the next. In this paper I argue that post-humanism can offer a useful theoretical framing to explore and critique this transition, opening space to question the role of matter in shaping experiences of transition in early years educational spaces. The paper is inspired by diffractive approaches to scholarship that encourage creativity and experimentation, making space for the researchers own co-constituted experiences in the production of new ideas and theories. The theoretically based discussion considers the notion of a ‘problem space’ in relation to early years transitions, before exploring post-human perspectives and asking the question ‘can matter, matter differently’ in transitional experiences. The paper concludes by posing a series of questions designed to prompt further discussion and debate about ‘readiness’ and transition, putting the focus on child–matter intra-actions and their potential for supporting a more complex and nuanced understanding of transition in the early years.

Introduction

This paper is an exercise in ‘wild ideas’ (Thrift, 2008, cited in Duhn, 2015). It is an attempt to engage with complex questions as an invitation ‘to speak back and take part in the production of possible futures’ (Duhn, 2015: 920). The process of recording these ideas, through this paper, is a moment of pause in an ongoing, dynamic process of ‘thinking with theory’ (Jackson and Mazzei, 2011), although in this context perhaps ‘being with theory’ would be a better phrase. I do not stand apart from the theories I engage with, as they are not tools that exist distinct from their application in the world. They run through me, colliding with thoughts, feelings, memories, experiences and knowledges, producing unique and distinctive diffraction patterns that create new possibilities for being in and understanding the world. Inspired by Murris (2017: 104), such a diffractive approach aims to allow for creativity and experimentation in the exploration of complex phenomena, allowing me to ask ‘not the “right” questions, but at least different questions’.

This discussion is situated as part of a complex conversation that engages the phenomenon of ‘readiness’ in the context of early years education. In playing with ‘wild ideas’ this paper asks what becomes possible when experiences of ‘readiness’ and transition are considered in relation to material affects. In particular, Bennett's (2004) notion of ‘thing-power’ is put to work in promoting questions that may encourage different perspectives of ‘readiness’ in relation to the transition from the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) (DfE, 2023) to the Key Stage 1 National Curriculum (KS1 NC) (DfE, 2013) in English primary schools.

The first part of this discussion explores the distinct nature of the transition from the EYFS to Key Stage 1, articulating the very significant impact this transition can have on children's early experiences of schooling. This is followed by exploration of a post-humanist framework as a device for creating space to think differently. The value of post-humanism is explored, experimenting with decentring the child in debates about ‘readiness’. The second part of the discussion explores the role of matter in school-based early childhood settings and the entangled relationships that emerge within such spaces. It plays with ideas about the value of matter in social environments, such as classrooms, engaging the question ‘how can matter, matter differently?’ By considering this question in relation to the transition from the EYFS to the Key Stage 1 National Curriculum, the aim is to explore how acknowledging the material environment differently might offer new ways of thinking about ‘readiness’. The paper concludes with a series of questions designed to hold open space for thinking through the complex relationship between matter and ‘readiness’ as part of transitional experiences in the early years.

Creating a problem space

Early childhood education in England is underpinned by two policy frameworks – the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) (DfE, 2023) and the Key Stage 1 National Curriculum (KS1 NC) (DfE, 2013). The EYFS is a framework defined as setting the standards required of school-based and childcare providers ‘for the learning, development and care of children from birth to 5’ (Gov.uk). The framework acts to structure teaching and learning for children in education and childcare settings from birth until the end of their first year of school, within which they turn five years old. The Key Stage 1 National Curriculum is the first phase of the curriculum that all government-maintained schools in England must follow, from Year 1 (in which children are five and six years old) until children leave compulsory school-based education at the age of 16. The transition from the EYFS to the KS1 NC can be a significant change for many children, in large part due to the pedagogical shift that very often occurs between these two phases of schooling in England. The principles of the EYFS emphasise young children as active, competent and capable within their learning, advocating play-based pedagogies and attention to particular Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning, including playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically (DfE, 2023). The transition to the KS1 NC can often be marked with an increasing formalisation in terms of pedagogy as the curriculum becomes more focused on the knowledge-based content of children's learning (Fisher, 2020). The effects of these contrasting pedagogical traditions have been discussed in relation to the ‘schoolification’ of early years education (OEDC, 2006; Moss, 2012, 2013). ‘Schoolification’ is explained by Moss (2012) as creating a subordinate relationship that exerts unequal pressure from compulsory school education onto early childhood education, impacting an increased formalisation in terms of pedagogical approach and children's experience of learning. This expectation of increased formality is emphasised by both the Department for Education and Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education), both highly influential organisations impacting policy and practice in English educational settings. In 2017 Ofsted outlined their vision for a high-quality curriculum in their report ‘Bold Beginnings: The Reception Curriculum in a sample of good and outstanding primary schools’ (Ofsted, 2017). This report focused on curriculum as a tool to promote ‘readiness’ for Key Stage 1 (the first stage of the National Curriculum), recommending that a high-quality reception curriculum should strive to meet (among others) the following goals:

− to make the teaching of reading through systematic synthetic phonics the core purpose of the Reception year;

− to focus on the development of physical skills that enable children to form correct pencil grip and sit correctly at a table

− to ensure sufficient time is devoted each day to the direct teaching of mathematics, writing and reading. (Ofsted, 2017: 7)

This message, of pedagogy supporting progression to a more formalised learning experience, is echoed by the Department for Education (DfE, 2023) who state that the Reception year (the first year of compulsory school education and the final year of the EYFS in England) should be characterised by an increased focus on the teaching of essential knowledge and skills helping children to prepare for Key Stage 1. Influenced by these policy narratives, what is valued as effective teaching and learning can shift and change across this process of transition. As Nicholson and Hendry (2020: 1) observe, ‘the emphasis in early childhood is on the “act of learning” while in compulsory school the “object of learning” takes precedence’. The fundamental nature of learning and by association the ‘ideal’ learner (Bradbury, 2019) is therefore transformed, which can leave many children struggling to adjust to new expectations and ways of being.

For educators too there is a shift that occurs within this transition. The knowledges that are valued in early years contexts (for example attention to the subtleties of children's play and exploration across the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning (DfE, 2023) are pushed to the margins, whilst new subject knowledges and curriculum content are brought to the fore. Assessment processes shift from a focus on observation and analysis to measurement against attainment targets, emphasising attainment in writing, reading and mathematics above other areas of learning and development (Ofsted, 2017). This shift begins before the end of the EYFS with the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (DfE, 2024), which represents a standardisation and formalisation of learning outcomes at the end of the Reception year. Success within this framework is defined in relation to a ‘good level of development’ (GLD). According to the DfE (2024: 6), ‘Children are defined as having reached a Good Level of Development (GLD) at the end of the EYFS if they have achieved the expected level for the ELGs in the prime areas of learning (which are: communication and language; personal, social and emotional development; and physical development) and the specific areas of mathematics and literacy.’ This standardised measure of attainment is described by Nicholson and Hendry (2020: 2) as ‘an important school readiness technology … whereby children are assessed as being “ready” or “unready” for Year 1’. As a ‘school readiness technology’, the GLD is underpinned by understandings of learning, progress and attainment as measurable and definable by fixed assessment criteria. ‘Readiness’ is defined in reference to a predefined body of knowledge and characterised in terms of particular knowledge, skills and dispositions outlined in the five areas of learning and development that make up a good level of development. As Nicholson and Hendry (2020) identify, however, achieving a good level of development does not guarantee a successful transition from the EYFS to KS1 due to the complex differences in the pedagogical traditions of each phase. They characterise this issue of ‘unreadiness’ as a ‘problem space’ (2020: 2) for Year 1 teachers to negotiate.

Rethinking a ‘problem space’ through an entanglement with matter

This paper offers a different reading of the ‘problem space’ identified by Nicholson and Hendry (2020), engaging ideas from post-humanism to question the role of the material environment in shaping experience of transition from the EYFS to the KS1 NC. The role of matter is rarely foregrounded in discussions of ‘readiness’ with the focus tending to be on ‘ready-schools’, ‘ready-children’ and ‘ready-families’ (PACEY, 2013; UNICEF, 2012). It is the social elements of ‘readiness’ that tend to dominate discussions with the role of matter, if it is considered at all, as a functional enabler of positive social interactions between the different people involved in processes of transition. This functional view of matter can be seen to dominate education. Malone et al. (2020: 150) consider that ‘Traditional human-centric thinking about curriculum has accepted children and objects as performing functional roles within the curriculum, with a particular focus on their usefulness and importance in pedagogical processes.’ Whilst matter in education is often seen through an instrumentalist frame, as enabling actions that support progress towards particular goals and outcomes, this is not the only way to understand the role matter plays in shaping educational experience. Hackett (2021), for example, invites consideration of ‘more-than-human’ aspects of the spaces and places inhabited by young children, shifting focus from the role of human actants to what else might be involved in early childhood experiences.

The entanglement with post-humanism that underpins this paper is inspired by Duhn (2015) and her mobilisation of the notion of ‘wild ideas’ expressed by Thrift (2008). Duhn (2015: 920) identifies that ‘the ability to question the taken for granted is what can create a productive relationship between philosophy and the social sciences by enabling “wild ideas”’. Thrift's ‘wild ideas’, Duhn suggests, ‘are an aspect of what happens in the encounter between philosophy and the social sciences when complex questions invite the world to speak back and take part in the production of possible futures’ (ibid.). In creating space for wild ideas to emerge I draw on aspects of a diffractive methodology discussed by Murris (2017). Specifically, I invite diffractions and intra-actions without ever placing myself outside of the conversation. As Murris (2017: 104) states, ‘I am co-constituted, not as an individual agent, but as part of the always becoming of the world.’ I am co-constituted through the writing of the paper, my ideas of ‘readiness’ emergent from entanglements of theory, philosophy and practice, brought together through this process. As Murris (2017: 104) advises, ‘instead of applying a prescribed framework, the key is to be creative and experiment … asking not the “right questions”, but at least different questions that e/merge when we encounter a move away from, for example, human experiences of objects’. By entangling a post-humanist framework with discussions of ‘readiness’ we can, as Lenz-Taguchi (2014: 80–81) advises, ‘pay greater attention to the performative agency of different matter and the environment that will make us think differently about how we organise and perform childhood practice’.

The inspiration afforded by a post-humanist framework is to find a different entry point into this conversation of ‘readiness’, such as that taken up by Snaza et al. (2014: 39–40) who put forward a convincing argument for the value of post-humanism in understanding school contexts. They state,

in addition to the many humans inhabiting various spaces within schools, schools are also sites that contain networks of wire and pipe linking the building architecture to the subterranean infrastructure of cities and beyond to the swirls of the oceans and global deposits of prehistoric dead organisms waiting to be mined and redefined; dead non-human animals on plates in cafeterias … light bulbs, cleaning chemicals, historical records, sporting equipment and cooking utensils.

Schools and early years settings are fundamentally more-than-human environments. To understand the complexities of life in these spaces we need to find ways of engaging with this conversation about ‘readiness’ that recognise the importance of the material in learning (Lenz Taguchi, 2011). The hope is that by shifting focus in this way we can afford ‘moments of methodological improvisation and curation, where our senses might pay attention differently to the relational processes at work in empirical materials’ (Holmes and Jones, 2016: 111). What is required in this discussion of ‘readiness’ is an ontological levelling, a focus on ‘what objects do or might be capable of doing beyond our ability to think them’ (Snaza et al., 2014: 17). I am mindful, however, in exploring this post-humanist framework, of not simply inverting a hierarchy, placing things on a pedestal above human inhabitants of these spaces. In taking this ‘ontological levelling’ seriously, therefore, it is helpful to specifically emphasise the relational nature of this post-humanist ontology. As a post-humanist-relational framework, the ideas developed in this paper focus on the ‘inter-relations, interdependencies and coexistences of meaning and matter’ (Lenz Taguchi, 2014: 81). The interest is, as Anggard (2016) states, not in studying what children can do with the material world, but in considering what children and the material can do together. The focus of this paper is, therefore, to consider ways in which children and matter (the human and the more-than-human) come together in educational settings and the ways in which ‘readiness’ may be framed through these intra-actions. It will consider the instrumentalist ways in which matter is commonly theorised in relation to ideas of ‘readiness’, whilst also working to propose ‘wild ideas’ about where and how material discursive becomings might be taken up and materialised throughout educational transitions (Murris, 2017).

The role of matter in an early years classroom

Picture a classroom.

What do you see?

I close my eyes and immediately certain images come to mind.

Tables. One or two clustered together in blocks with chairs around, enough for everybody.

Trays. Blue or green, neatly pushed up against the wall, labelled with tiny pictures of their contents, colour-coded by subject.

Maths. Rulers, colourful bears of different sizes, Lego bricks, strings of beads.

English. Pencils neatly sharpened, paper white and crisp.

Books. Arranged in baskets by coloured band.

On the walls. Numbers, letters, words.

Pots of cress and runner beans growing on the side. Maybe a tank of tadpoles. Coats hung in a row, one or two abandoned on the floor. Lunch boxes, water bottles, PE bags.

It is a familiar scene, the stuff of the classroom. It waits there. Waits for those who populate this space. Adults, children. It waits for little hands to put it to use, to write, draw, sort, eat, count, sit, read. It waits for them to give it purpose through their interactions.

Or does it?

We live in a world populated by ‘stuff’. Our schools are filled with resources that have a significant part to play in what Jones et al. (2012: 50–51) describe as the ‘rational endeavour for development and progress’. There is a somewhat unspoken rhetoric surrounding the role of the material world in educational contexts. Jones et al. (2012), drawing on Sutton-Smith (1997), identify that in general there is an assumed relationship between the act of playing with certain objects and the outcome of progress and development. When we think about matter in educational spaces, very often we think of the ways in which children ‘use’ their environments. The EYFS (DfE, 2023) recognises that children have the capacity to be capable, confident and self-assured within their learning and development. This belief often translates into an emphasis on children's agency and autonomy, of ‘children as agents, using their environments’ (Rautio, 2013: 401). This focus has been important in advocating for the position of children as powerful within their own lives. However, the human-centric focus leaves open a question of what else might be possible if we give the agency of matter the same consideration.

A useful concept in thinking through the agency of matter is Bennett's (2004) notion of ‘thing-power’. Through ‘thing-power’ Bennett (2010: 20) ‘draws attention to the efficacy of objects in excess of the human meaning, designs or purposes they express or serve’. In school settings matter is often considered primarily from this association of human meaning and purpose, with certain forms of matter given specific value for their perceived ability to support the achievement of particular goals and outcomes. Rautio (2013: 461) echoes this view, stating that ‘child–matter relations are often approached teleologically: as serving a distinct purpose often relating to socialisation and/or development as maturation’. In line with this way of thinking, ‘things’ exist as political tools inscribed with specific means and uses, able to control behaviour and dictate the learning that will occur within planned and structured scenarios. Things therefore, become a powerful force in determining our expectations of events and have a significant role to play in ensuring normative behaviour (Skreland and Steen Johnsen, 2022). The danger of this understanding of the relationship between children and things is that the child–matter relationship is reduced to instrumental activity, ‘the significance of which is predetermined and known by adults’ (Rautio, 2013: 461). Bennett's notion of ‘thing-power’, however, offers a completely different perspective of the role of ‘things’ in classroom spaces. Bennett's thing-power materialism considers that ‘stuff’ ‘commands attention as vital and alive in its own right, as an existent in excess of its reference to human flaws and projects’ (2010: 350). From this perspective, the ‘stuff’ or ‘things’ of the classroom have their own vital energy and possess a power of their own by virtue of their operating in relation with other things (Bennett, 2010).

An instrumentalist view of matter may be active in the construction of the ‘problem space’ identified by Nicholson and Hendry (2020). This is evident in the association of ‘high-quality’ practice with an instrumentalist view of matter in Ofsted's (2017) report ‘Bold Beginnings’. Ofsted (2017: 5) reported that schools where writing was considered to be of a high standard ‘paid good attention to the children's posture and pencil grip … they used pencils and exercise books, while children sat at tables, to support good, controlled letter formation’. They state in this report that when children are learning to write, resources should be suitable to their particular stage of development, while adults are responsible for teaching correct pencil grip and how to sit correctly at a table. There is a strong sense in this report of a ‘proper’ use of materials and that, if used correctly, interaction with these materials would produce the desired progress in learning and development. The role of matter here is given little, if any regard in terms of its own power and agency. Findings of the report state that in a good or outstanding setting, ‘Leaders and staff knew that most learning could not be self-discovered or left to chance through each child's own choices’ (Ofsted, 2017: 17). In order for children to progress in their learning and development, the report considers that effective teaching needs to acknowledge that ‘most knowledge, skills and processes need to be taught directly’ (ibid.). The relationship these findings imply is fundamentally concerned with human interaction, with the role of things being to support human relationships as learning is guided towards a prescribed end. Objects, things and materials are given a supporting role, for example the manipulation of materials in specific ways to produce defined learning in relation to mathematical development. This early interaction with materials is expected to pay into later results and outcomes, securing children's frequent use of practical equipment to support learning of new concepts. The underpinning assumption is that ‘only after much practice and rehearsal with concrete resources would teachers move children onto representing their understanding through visual images and models’ (Ofsted, 2017: 25). There is a taken for granted assumption therefore, that the ‘proper’ interaction of children and materials will support progression through increasingly complex and abstract ways of thinking, learning and knowing.

This instrumentalist view of matter is problematic as if we only see children's relationship with things as serving a predefined purpose or outcome of learning, then we may limit the rich potential for emergence and unpredictability in children's education. It is incumbent upon us as educators, therefore, to question our own relationships with matter in our planning and construction of high-quality spaces for learning. Through the processes that shape our practice we should take time to question our material assumptions and the effects these have on the opportunities that emerge for children. In critically considering child–matter relationships we might ask the following questions:

How do we perceive matter as an agent in our planning processes?

Do we value the unpredictable relationships with matter that can emerge in our classrooms?

Is there space in our planning (both of the physical space and in terms of the structures and routines that shape these spaces) to recognise the active role of matter in shaping our classrooms as relational spaces?

Questions such as these prompt important critical reflection for educators, for as Lenz Taguchi (2011) considers, as adults, our different views of the child–matter relationship can act to make children competent in different ways. For Ofsted (2017: 17) competence is framed as engagement with matter in prescribed ways, as evidenced in the following statement:

Teachers sometimes directed children's play until they became confident to play without adult intervention. For example, at the end of the reception year, children were playing more confidently with traditional board games, playing snakes and ladders, doing jigsaws, building models with blocks (Lego), matching dominoes and creating complex wooden railway tracks. This was because at the start of the year, teachers had spent time teaching children how to play, use equipment carefully and take turns.

The problem with this way of thinking is that what is valued and evaluated as knowledge (Lenz Taguchi, 2011) is determined by the dominant perceptions of ‘proper’ interaction between people and things, with perceptions of children's ‘readiness’ for Year 1 being determined by their ability to engage in these proper interactions. This teleological view of children's relationship to matter has the potential to limit our understanding of what is happening in early learning spaces. As Rautio (2013: 471) warns, ‘We stand a chance of missing what kind of beings our children are now if we observe their matter-relations only from the viewpoint of the future, of education and of learning for adulthood.’ How then do we approach material relationships differently in early years classroom spaces and what effect might this different perspective have on processes of transition from the Early Years Foundation Stage to the Key Stage 1 National Curriculum? Skreland and Steen Johnsen (2022: 711) advocate Bennett's notion of ‘thing-power’ as a trigger that impels us to ‘confront our habitual ways of thinking’ and it is with this theory that we will begin the next section, asking the question, ‘can matter, matter differently?’ and if so, what impact might this have on the ways in which we understand ‘readiness’ and transition in the early years?

Can matter, matter differently?

Bennett's notion of ‘thing-power’ is a useful provocation for thinking differently about the relationships of people with the material world in educational contexts. Rather than teleological and instrumentalist perspectives, it offers an understanding of all matter as entangled, something more akin to Ingold's (2013) notion of a ‘dance of animacy’ between human and non-human actants. All matter expresses agency through what Lyttleton-Smith (2019: 659) describes as ‘complex webs of intra-activity’. There is no strict hierarchy as all bodies are mutually and equally agential and engaged in the production of phenomena (Lyttleton-Smith, 2019). In light of this theoretical shift, from an instrumentalist to a mutually entangled view of matter, we can begin to think about how matter can come to matter differently in a school or classroom environment. Rautio (2014) suggests that instead of focusing on predetermined and knowable outcomes of child–matter relations, we should focus on children's relationship with things as intrinsically relevant. That is, rather than having value as a developmental tool, driving towards specific end goals, material intra-action can actually be ‘an end in itself’ (Rautio, 2014: 461). Exploring ‘readiness’ as emergent within a relational ontology can help to shift focus from a determinate relationship between children and things towards an unpredictable and entangled relationship. Rautio (2014: 461) explains this shift stating that, ‘It is no longer the independent child who responds to, develops with, learns from and consumes inert or powerless objects; rather it is the engagement of the child and “things” that produces diverse “children” and equally diverse “things”.’

Acknowledging this intra-active relationship may be powerful in shifting our focus when thinking about ‘readiness’ and children's experience of transition from the EYFS to Key Stage 1. We may be inspired to take notice of seemingly insignificant events that occur in classroom intra-actions and to wonder about their intrinsic value. For example, where we observe children struggling to adapt to the shifting expectations of a curricular transition, we might learn a great deal about their experience by paying attention to the relationships with matter within actions and behaviours that we do not fully understand. For the child who begins collecting and hoarding seemingly mundane classroom objects; the child who becomes restless and anxious unless sitting on the edge of the group at carpet time; the child who runs and jumps everywhere within the small classroom space, refusing to sit at a table; do we see these as signs of ‘unreadiness’ or are we open to understanding these behaviours differently? Somerville (2018: 109), drawing on Rautio (2013), would consider these as ‘autotelic material practices’, those things that children do with no purpose other than that which is in and of themselves. Rautio (2014) advises us to pay attention to these autotelic behaviours and to consider their value in understanding children's diverse experiences. We are prompted to ‘follow children who write, draw, speak, jump and shout without a clear purpose’ (Rautio, 2014: 403) and to actively make space for this in our day-to-day practice. We are challenged to recognise and question the agency of our material environments and the invitations they offer to children. For example, how does the large expanse of grass that makes up the school field invite a different physical intra-action, compared with the asphalt playground? What different possibilities are opened through children's material relationships with these spaces? How does the oozing texture of PVA or white-glue invite a different set of relationships to matter than the solid form of a glue stick? Do we perceive a ‘proper’ usage of and interaction with these materials, or are we open to the rich possibilities that might emerge through a focus on intra-action and autotelic practices?

This focus on intra-action may be extremely valuable in developing new and different understandings of the role of matter in the transition from the EYFS to Key Stage 1 learning environments. Rather than focusing on the affordances of ‘things’ to promote particular ways of being (for example the functional use of furniture to support the development of writing skills, as described in the recommendations of the Bold Beginnings report (Ofsted, 2017)), we can instead embrace the power of ‘things’ as ‘giving rise to diverse modes of being a child’ (Hackett and Rautio, 2019: 1020). We can move beyond fixed notions and ideas of ‘readiness’ and the ‘ready-child’, towards a phenomenon of ‘readiness’ that emerges in the moment, in the day-to-day intra-actions that emerge in classroom spaces. This view requires us to be open minded about what ‘readiness’ might look and feel like in practice, embracing the generative potential of emergent spaces, given that, as Hackett and Rautio (2019: 1027) state, ‘Emergent systems require a degree of randomness and autonomy, not control, to function.’

Whilst this paper does not aim to provide concrete answers and strategies for ensuring ‘readiness’ across the transition from the EYFS to Key Stage 1, it does aim to open further avenues for questioning the status quo and thinking differently. By questioning deterministic views of the role of material environments in producing ‘readiness’ we shift towards other, non-deterministic possibilities for thinking. Instead of asking how we can use children's engagement with matter to ensure and promote ‘readiness’, we can ask how ‘things’ and ‘doings’ matter to children throughout transitional processes (Rautio, 2014) and how ‘readiness’ might emerge from human/more-than-human intra-actions. By looking closer, or looking differently, at what occurs between children and things, we open space for new insights and understandings. Rautio (2014: 467) demonstrates this, questioning the insistent focus on ‘tidying up’ in young children's spaces. She states that ‘We tend to look at messiness as inability and immatureness on the child's side and insist on providing boxes and inventing games to get children to tidy up.’ She responds to this by prompting us to question how having ‘things’ scattered around might matter to children, encouraging us to think differently about taken-for-granted practices. It is possible that the post-humanist framework explored in this paper can support the emergence of different understandings of how children might experience the transition from the EYFS to Key Stage 1, questioning taken-for-granted assumptions about the relationship between children and ‘things’ in the classroom environment and the value that is put on certain types of (deterministic) interaction. A focus on autotelic practices that emerge, those intra-actions that have no obvious extrinsic goal, being instead internally motivating (Rautio, 2013), may offer significant and illuminating insights into the ways in which matter matters to children throughout this transition process. As Rautio (2013: 399) tells us, ‘To witness something seemingly pointless, yet inherently rewarding for those who engage with it, is occasion to ask: what is it that takes place in the moment?’ This shift in focus could help to foster different understandings of the active role that matter plays within this transition, and in our understanding of ‘readiness’.

And … and … and …

Inspired by the and … and … and … of Deleuzian philosophy, this paper ends not with a definitive conclusion, but with a tentative series of questions that might prompt further consideration of matter as an active constituent of transitional processes:

− How does matter, matter to children throughout processes of transition?

− How might a focus on the agentic role of matter affect our understanding of the emergence of ‘readiness’ as children progress from the EYFS to Key Stage 1 environments?

− How might attention to autotelic practices and behaviours influence our understanding of children's experience during transition?

− What kinds of invitation do our classroom spaces extend to children and how do children respond to these invitations as part of transitional processes?

Through these questions I invite continued engagement with this conversation of ‘readiness’, keeping dialogue open with the hope that the materiality of children's transitional experiences is recognised as an important aspect of ‘readiness’ in the early years.