The ACoRNS team is delighted to have been awarded £35,000 from the Froebel Trust for a project focusing on ‘The voices and experiences of children with autism, and their families, in their transitions from nursery to primary school’.
The project starts on March 1st 2018 and will involve children, families and staff at the Aviary Nursery in Eastleigh. The project is led by Professor Sarah Parsons and Dr Hanna Kovshoff at the University of Southampton, working in partnership with ACoRNS founding members Kathryn Ivil and Gareth Shaw from Aviary Nursery. The ACoRNS team will be joined by Dr Efstathia Karakosta from Southampton Education School.
This project runs until the end of November 2018 and will follow 4-6 children during the months before their transition to primary school. Children’s voices and experiences will be at the centre of the research through the creation of a series of digital stories.
The digital stories will illustrate both the positive experiences and the challenges that children and their families face as well as show how these challenges are addressed within the Nursery. The digital stories will be used in a novel way as a tool for facilitating the transition by introducing the primary school to the child as a child, rather than as a paper-based description of needs and difficulties.
There will be a project website and more information available in due course!