Turbulence is now a major educational issue in Europe, as a combination of migration, and poverty affect the schooling of those who are mobile, especially migrants, Travellers and/or those in poverty.Turbulence has been defined as , ‘A child joining or leaving school at a point other than the normal age in which children start or finish their education at that school, whether or not this involves a move of home’ (Dobson and Henthorne, (1999:5). Quantitative studies have shown that many of the groups of children who move schools achieve less well than those who remain at the same school (Coleman, 1990; 1997; Hagan et al, 1996, Pribesh and Downey, 1999). To date the research on turbulence has largely been quantitative and there has been, to my knowledge, no systematic qualitative study of the turbulent experience in schools. The quantitative research has been theoretically rich in using social capital theory to provide explanations for turbulence but no quantitative study has examined school processes in relation to trubulence. However, it can be argued that explanations for the penalties that turbulent children incur cannot be gained without a qualitative understanding of their experience in school. The research questions to be addressed are: 1. What is the experience of schooling for children who are turbulent? What are their orientations to learning, and the formal aspects of schooling? 2. Are there patterns to their experience and behaviour which may suggest explanations for the penalties they suffer? 3. Are their differences in the experiences of those in poverty from different group?. 4. How adequate are social capital theories in explaining students' experience of turbulence? This paper follows 17 students, who have been turbulent and who have experienced episodes of poverty and/or are from Tarveller families, from primary school through to secondary school, to see how their experiences of turbulence has affected their schooling . Preliminary findings suggest that many in this sample are more focussed on making friendships than in formal school achievement and that social the family of social capital theories cannot fully explain the effects of turbulence.

This is a longitudinal qualitative study which has interveiwed 17 students and their friends over 3 years, their parents and teachers and has triangulated these interviews with classroom and school observations. They were followed from primary into secondary school so that their experience of moving to secondar school with their peers could be compared to their experience of moving from one primary school to another.

Preliminary findings suggest that one explanation for the penalty these pupils suffer in relation to test results is that they tend to be isolated in different spaces or territories in the school (e.g. the playground) and cannot cross successfully from one space or territory into another (e.g. from the playground to the classroom). One reason for this may be that they focus much more on establishing friendships within school and gaining a sense of self value from these rather than from educational achievement. However there are differences in the relationshiops of culture and friendships for Traveller children as opposed to those who are non-Travellers who have experienced poverty. These findings are relavant to European educationists in relation to both groups.