Session Information
05 ONLINE 00 PS, General Poster Session (online) - NW 05
General Poster Session
Contribution
Most children experience at least one school transition in their life (1). A school transition can be a difficult time for children worldwide (2-4). In preparing for the transfer to secondary or high school (depending on the system), children report feelings of excitement, but also feelings of loss, sadness, loneliness, stress, anxiety, and worry (5,6). Children express concerns about the increased size of the building and getting lost, getting bullied by older peers, increased discipline, losing friendships with peers from primary or middle school, and having to make new friends (3,5,7-9). Although most children adapt to the new situation within the first year, for some children the transfer can have long-lasting negative effects on their feeling of safety, relationships, motivation, and grades (1,3,4,10).
Person-environment fit theories (3,11,12) seek to explain why some children are able to adapt quickly after transitioning, whereas others do not. If there is a mismatch between the needs of children and what the environment can offer them, children might experience negative effects on their wellbeing (3,11,12). Six different needs have been identified to foster a successful transition to secondary school: the need for safety, relatedness, autonomy, competency, enjoyment, and identity development (3). Interventions aimed at the transition between primary school and secondary school that focus on those needs could help facilitate a more successful transition.
The Talent Classrooms is an intervention that aims to support the transition to secondary education in one of the largest cities in the Netherlands. The Talent Classrooms focusses on children in the final grade of primary school. Children are eligible for the Talent Classrooms if a) they show above-average potential, but their teacher thinks they do not meet that potential because of various circumstances, and b) their grades in language-related subjects lag behind compared to their grades in other subjects. During this intervention, children follow weekly extra-curricular lessons, with a curriculum on language and culture. These lessons are taught by a secondary school teacher at a secondary school. The goal of the Talent Classrooms is two-fold: stimulating their participants to achieve the highest possible secondary school track by improving their performance in primary school subjects (especially language-related subjects), and facilitating a more successful transition by introducing their participants to a secondary school setting before transitioning.
The main research question of the current qualitative study is: Are the Talent Classrooms able to facilitate a successful transition between primary and secondary school by fostering the needs found by Symon and Galton (3)? If the Talent Classrooms are successful in fostering these needs, they could set an example for similar interventions outside the Netherlands, since the transition between primary and secondary school is a potentially stressful moment world-wide.
Method
Participants In this qualitative study, ten Talent Classrooms participants of the 2015-2016 cohort were interviewed in 2020-2021. Four participants were girls, six were boys. All participants were between 15 and 16 years old at the time of the interview. The semi-structured retrospective interviews took place four to six years after participating in the Talent Classrooms. Nine participants were in the 4th or 5th year of secondary school (equivalent to grade 10 or 12 in the K-12 system). One participant completed secondary education and was in the first year of tertiary education. Participants were of Dutch, Indonesian, Moroccan, Turkish, Serbian, and Saint Martin descent. Material The semi-structured interviews were approximately 30 minutes long and focused on how participants experienced participating in the Talent Classrooms, and the effects of the Talent Classrooms on the short and long term. An example of a question is: “What are the most important things you learned during the Talent Classrooms?”. Follow-up questions were asked until the interviewer could form a clear view of the situation. The interviews were transcribed ad verbatim, with omission of filler words. Data Collection The interviews were conducted by the first author. Two interviews took place in May 2020, after which the research was temporary paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The other eight interviews took place in March and April of 2021. Interviews took place online via Microsoft Teams. The interviews were recorded and transcribed ad verbatim. Analysis First, sensitizing concepts were created corresponding with the needs for safety, relatedness, autonomy, competency, enjoyment, and identity development3. Subcodes were created of specific situations or actions that might be promoted during the Talent Classrooms that could foster these needs. For example: code – Need for autonomy, with subcodes encouraging children to commute to school on their own and holding children responsible for their own homework. Second, the first author applied a combination of open coding and closed coding. Closed coding was used to apply the sensitizing concepts, while open coding was used to identify other themes within the six needs (3). Third, axial coding was used to group themes under specific needs. Fourth, the last author of this paper coded three interviews using the code book that resulted from the third step. The first and last author discussed differences between codes and adapted the code book accordingly. This resulted in an intercoder reliability of 73.3%.
Expected Outcomes
It can be concluded that the Talent Classrooms seems successful in fostering the needs for safety, relatedness, enjoyment, and identity development (3). Participants indicated that this helped them in their transition to secondary school. However, fostering the needs for autonomy and competency (3) could still be improved upon. Specifically, the results of the current study showed that introducing children to a secondary school setting before transitioning made them feel better prepared for entering secondary school. This way, their need for safety (3) was fostered. In addition, the intervention offered the opportunity to form friendships outside primary school, which prepared participants for secondary school and fostered the need for relatedness (3). By giving participants the responsibility over their schoolwork the Talent Classrooms fostered the need for autonomy (3). However, some participants felt that the gap between primary school and secondary school was still big, and felt the Talent Classrooms could have better prepared them. The Talent Classrooms partially fostered the need for competency (3), as participants felt that the intervention did not help them improve their primary school performance, because the lessons mainly focused on secondary school subjects. However, participants did indicate the Talent Classrooms gave them a head-start once they entered secondary school. Further, the Talent Classrooms offered more challenging lessons compared to primary school, which increased the participants’ enjoyment and motivation, and fostered the need for enjoyment (3). Finally, by introducing children to new topics and subjects, participants discovered new skills, talents and interests. This way, the Talent Classrooms fostered the need for identity development (3). The Talent Classrooms seems to be a promising intervention. Participants indicated that the intervention helped them in their transition to secondary school, possibly because the Talent Classrooms fostered a number of specific needs children have during this transition (3).
References
(1) Jindal-Snape D, Symonds JE, Hannah EFS, Barlow W. Conceptualising Primary-Secondary School Transitions: A Systematic Mapping Review of Worldviews, Theories and Frameworks. Frontiers in education (Lausanne) 2021 Mar 17,;6. (2) Evans D, Borriello GA, Field AP. A Review of the Academic and Psychological Impact of the Transition to Secondary Education. Frontiers in psychology 2018;9:1482. (3) Symonds JE, Galton M. Moving to the next school at age 10–14 years: an international review of psychological development at school transition. Review of education (Oxford) 2014 Feb;2(1):1-27. (4) Wigfield A, Eccles JS, Mac Iver D, Reuman DA, Midgley C. Transitions during early adolescence: Changes in children's domain-specific self-perceptions and general self-esteem across the transition to junior high school. Dev Psychol 1991;27(4):552-565. (5) Mumford J, Birchwood J. Transition: a systematic review of literature exploring the experiences of pupils moving from primary to secondary school in the UK. Pastoral care in education 2021 Oct 02,;39(4):377-400. (6) Bagnall CL, Skipper Y, Fox CL. ‘You're in this world now’: Students’, teachers’, and parents’ experiences of school transition and how they feel it can be improved. British journal of educational psychology 2020 Mar;90(1):206-226. (7) Curson A. The Blind Nursery School Child. The Psychoanalytic study of the child 1979 Jan 01,;34(1):51-83. (8) Rice F, Ng-Knight T, Riglin L, Powell V, Moore GF, McManus IC, et al. Pupil Mental Health, Concerns and Expectations About Secondary School as Predictors of Adjustment Across the Transition to Secondary School: A Longitudinal Multi-informant Study. School Mental Health 2021 Mar 22,;13(2):279-298. (9) Tobbell J, O’Donnell VL. The formation of interpersonal and learning relationships in the transition from primary to secondary school: Students, teachers and school context. International journal of educational research 2013;59:11-23. (10) Spernes K. The transition between primary and secondary school: a thematic review emphasising social and emotional issues. Research papers in education ;ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print):1-18. (11) Eccles JS, Midgley C, Wigeld A, Buchanan CM, Reuman D, Flanagan C. The impact of stage-environment on young adolescents experiences in schools and in families. Am Psychol 1993;48:90101. (12) Deci EL, Ryan RM. Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. : Springer Science & Business Media; 2013.
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