For children with disabilities and their families, starting school is considered a particularly sensitive and, therefore, challenging phase: The children face the challenge to deal with changes in the support structures surrounding them. The families face the challenge to organise additional support addressing the specific needs of their children (Janus & Siddiqua, 2018). As a result, children with disabilities (Jiang et al., 2021) as well as their families (McIntyre et al., 2010) tend to find the transition to be particularly difficult. As educational disadvantages at transition to school affect a child’s whole educational career (Crosnoe & Ansari, 2016) and thus the life of the child’s family, designing an inclusive transition setting for children with disabilities is crucial both for the children’s future academic trajectories and the families’ future experiences.

Although the transition to school is such an important biographic milestone, recent research activities addressing the transition to school of children with disabilities haven’t been systematically reviewed yet. Available reviews on this topic focus on studies conducted before the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) in 2006 (e.g., Janus et al., 2007). As a result, it is difficult to identify current research gaps and to derive future research needs in this field.

Therefore, we conducted a systematic review that focus on the transition to school of children with disabilities (Then & Pohlmann-Rother, 2023). In order to structure the research field, we developed a theoretical model of inclusive transition to school and used it as a conceptual framework of our review. According to the ecosystemic perspective on transitions (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), three levels are considered relevant for the transition within this model: The (1) individual level includes the actors in the transition process, i.e., the child; families/parents; preschool teachers; the teachers in compulsory school-based settings; the neighbourhood (Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta, 2000); and service providers such as school psychologists or therapists. The (2) process level contains the processes that moderate the successful course of the transition to school in general, i.e., the long-term and high-quality (Garber et al., 2022) adaptive support of the child; the support and active involvement of families/parents in the transition (Cook & Coley, 2017); children’s interactions at the peer level (Dockett & Perry, 2004); (multi-)professional cooperation of teachers with each other and with service providers (Ahtola et al., 2011); and the coordination of the institutions’ activities to foster alignment and continuity between the educational settings (Boyle et al., 2018). (3) Finally, on the societal level, the administrative framework of the transition (e.g., the legal provisions regarding the school enrolment process) is set.

Following this model and addressing the current need in conducting a systematic review of transition to school of children with disabilities, we focus on the following research questions:

1. What samples and research designs are used in empirical studies on the transition to school of children with disabilities published since the adoption of the UN CRPD in 2006?
2. What are the main research priorities on the transition to school of children with disabilities?
3. What are the needs for future research regarding the transition to school of children with disabilities?

We use the term ‘transition to school’ to describe transitions from preschool to compulsory school-based settings. According to the biopsychosocial model of the World Health Organization (2001), we focus on ‘children with disabilities’ as a group of children who experience long-term restrictions in their social participation and in their interactions with their environment because of permanent physical, mental, or psychological exceptionalities.

We conducted the review following the PRISMA guidelines (Page et al., 2021). First, we defined the inclusion criteria of the review. Content-related criteria for inclusion were the studies’ focus on the transition to formal schooling as well as the studies’ additional focus on the group of children with disabilities. Formal criteria were the publication in English or German, the design as an empirical study, the publication in the period 2006–2022 (up to March 31th, 2022), and the publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Subsequently, we conducted a systematic literature search. In the first step, we conducted a systematic data base search in six scientific databases (PsycInfo, Web of Science, ERIC, JSTOR, BIDOK and Fachportal Pädagogik). This process yielded 4,559 studies. Afterwards, we excluded duplicates and obviously irrelevant records (e.g., studies addressing an inappropriate age group). As a result, 1,654 studies remain for abstract screening. This was performed by two independent raters according to the inclusion criteria. Non-matches were discussed for consensus validation of the results. In this way, 1,480 studies that did not meet the inclusion criteria were excluded. We proceeded by conducting a full-text analysis of the remaining 174 studies. This was performed independently by both raters before discrepancies were discussed and consensus validation was performed. Thus, 31 studies were identified to be included in the review. The second step of our search aimed at additional sources, e.g., searching the bibliographies of included studies. This step produced another 774 records, which were filtered again, e.g., by removing duplicates. We double-checked the abstracts and full texts of the remaining studies and discussed any discrepancies. This left us with 24 studies for inclusion in the review. In total, N=55 studies were included in the review. The overall rate of agreement of all assessments by both raters was 78.26%. In order to systematize the search results, the identified studies were categorized using a coding system developed on the basis of the model of inclusive transition. For this, the three levels relevant for the transition (individual, process, and societal level) were derived from the model as main categories. Then, the main categories were deductively broken down into subcategories according to the relevant transition actors (child, families/parents, etc.) and processes (adaptive support of the child, etc.). After that, the studies were assigned to the categories according to their thematical focus. The assigning process were conducted by two independent coders (Cohen’s Kappa = .80).

RQ 1: Samples and research designs. The analysis of the studies included in the review indicates that there are quantitative large-scale studies focusing on the transition to school of children with disabilities, but they are not distributed equally across the levels: On the one hand, all studies on societal level are large-scale. On the other hand, just one study on process level (i.e., studies focusing on the processes that moderate the transition) and no study on individual level (i.e., studies focusing on the subjective perspectives of the transition actors) are large-scale. Furthermore, studies considering the transition of children with developmental disabilities are particularly common. The research designs of the studies included in the review reflect a wide range of data collection methods with (qualitative) interview and (quantitative) questionnaire surveys predominating. RQ 2: Research priorities. Most of the studies primarily address the individual level (N=45), especially the perspectives of parents, pedagogues, and additional service providers such as therapists. An emphasis is on the perceived facilitators (e.g., children’s school readiness skills) and barriers of a successful transition (e.g., lack of expertise of the pedagogues). However, studies concentrating on the moderating processes in the transition (N=6) (e.g., teachers’ (multi-)professional cooperation) or the administrative framework of the transition (N=4) are sparse. RQ 3: Research needs. The review helps to identify both general and specific needs for future research. In general, future studies on the transition to school of children with disabilities need to focus the processes that moderate the transition in a more comprehensive way as these processes are main facilitators of the successful course of the transition. An additional emphasis on the institutional and administrative framework of the transition would be meaningful, too. Specifically, future studies should examine the children’s perspectives in the transition as well as the role of the peers.

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