Adopting a Life-Span Perspective on the First School Transition

This article discusses the implications of life-span developmental theory for the design and implementation of an intervention into the first school transition, beginning with organized prekindergarten and ending with fifth grade. Orville Gilbert Brim's contributions to the life-span perspective are highlighted with regard to his own scholarship and his generative contributions to the field as a foundation leader. These include his formative writings about socialization after the childhood years and on the life course as shaped by continuity and change. His development of the life-span intervention cube as a framework for conceptualizing policy-inspired efforts to alter life trajectories sets the stage for a discussion of the first school transition. The example of the School Reform and Beyond project is then described as a strategy that embeds and extends the themes highlighted by Brim's work on socialization, change and continuity, and intervention.