While child development is well-recognized as a complex process which could hardly be decomposed into separate lines or domains in contemporary psychological theories, the decomposition approach is widely used in empirical studies. Based on the cultural-historical theory, this study argues for adopting the unit of analysis as a way to bridge this gap, and finds “role adjustment” as a suitable unit to analyse child development during the transition to school. The case of a 5-year-old second-generation Chinese Australian child's transition to school (with a total of 34 h of observation and 5 h of interview) is presented to verify its feasibility and to illustrate how it could be achieved in a research practice. The case study demonstrates that a child's role adjustment is in essence a process of transforming his/her role system, during which his/her major roles, the relation of the major roles, as well as his/her role-taking patterns change as a whole, and by tracing a child's role adjustment trajectory, how the child is learning and developing, what difficulties he/she encounter, and why these difficulties appear become clear.

中文翻译：

---

以角色调整为分析单位研究过渡期儿童发展

虽然儿童发展被公认为是一个复杂的过程，在当代心理学理论中很难分解成单独的线或域，但分解方法在实证研究中被广泛使用。基于文化历史理论，本研究主张采用分析单元作为弥合这一差距的方式，并找到“角色调整”作为分析过渡到学校期间儿童发展的合适单元。以一名 5 岁的澳大利亚华裔二代儿童过渡到学校的案例（共 34 小时的观察和 5 小时的访谈）来验证其可行性并说明如何在研究中实现它实践。个案研究表明，孩子的角色调整本质上是一个角色系统转换的过程，