This communication is part of a research project Educational Transition and Pedagogical Renewal: Challenges and Difficulties in the Transition from Progressive Primary Schools to Conventional Secondary Institutes (TRANSRENOV), Convocatoria 2023 - "Proyectos de Generación de Conocimiento" funded by the Ministry of Science, Research and Universities of the Government of Spain. The main focus of the project is to investigate the transition of primary school students from renovating schools (from 6 to 12 years old) to "conventional" secondary schools (from 12 to 16 years old). It is worth mentioning that this research is linked to a previous research entitled El Cuarto Impulso de Renovación Pedagógica en España (2020-23, Plan Nacional de I+D+I. RN: PID2019-108138RB-C21), in which we detect the concern of teachers and families for the transition of students enrolled in renovating schools, that is, with a strong commitment to a comprehensive and integrated education based a child-centred approach, more active and participatory methodologies, multi-level groupings, a redefinition of the role of the teacher, more democratic structures, two-way relationships between school and families, and greater openness to the environment (Beneyto-Seoane et al., 2023).

Recently, some research has pointed to the need to study and understand educational transitions from multiple perspectives (Azorín, 2019), assuming that it is a highly complex process, which involves both students and their families and teachers at both stages, and the evolution of which may involve obstacles that compromise such fundamental rights as access to quality education and opportunities for lifelong learning (UN, 2015). In this regard, it is no small matter that ample evidence has associated the transition to a general decline in students' academic achievement (González-Rodríguez et al., 2019; Harris and Nowland, 2021; van Rens et al., 2018), as well as to an improvement in their levels of well-being (Harris and Nowland, 2021; van Rens et al., 2018). For this reason, most researchers have considered that transition involves not only an academic adaptation, but also an emotional and social adaptation (Evans et al., 2018).

It is surprising, however, that school grammar in primary schools has not been considered as an important dimension of the transition, the starting point of which is precisely at the end of this educational stage. This issue is problematic if we take into account the (moderate) increase in the number of primary schools that challenge the traditional model of the transmitting graded school and opt for alternative pedagogical conceptions, practices and methodologies (Feu-Gelis and Torrent, 2020), as we have pointed out below. At the international level , this knowledge gap has also been identified and recognised in the literature (Jindal-Snape et al., 2020).

In any case, we can affirm that we have identified and analysed some of the factors that facilitate or hinder a full transition, which we group into three dimensions: 1) school grammar, i.e., the set of practices, routines and relationships that define and constitute the ethos or culture of the school (methodologies, curriculum, assessment and teaching role); 2) family environment, i.e., the impact of academic and emotional support during the transition (Evans et al., 2018); and 3) aspects concerning students, specifically the capacity for academic planning and self-regulation (Bharara, 2019; González-Rodríguez et al., 2019); and the capacity to deploy social-emotional competences (Calvo and Llard, 2016; González-Rodríguez et al., 2019; Jindal-Snape et al., 2020), a key element for cooperating with peers, establishing new friendships in an optimal way and creating a greater sense of belonging, which stimulates school participation and promotes both academic achievement and students' emotional and social well-being (Bharara, 2019).

The proposed research, therefore, has the following general objectives: 1) To describe the process of transition to secondary education of students from innovative schools who move to conventional schools, in their academic, emotional and social dimensions; 2) To analyse and identify the institutional factors and mechanisms that facilitate or hinder the adaptation of students to secondary schools; and 3) To analyse and understand the school experiences of students and their families in their subjective dimension. For this reason, we propose a longitudinal study - little used to date (Evans et al., 2018; Jindal-Snape et al., 2020) - with a sample made up of multiple agents from the educational community (pupils, teachers and families) and a mixed methodological approach (qualitative and quantitative strategies). The project develops an integrated case study with multiple units of analysis (Yin, 20054): the case refers to the phenomenon itself (the specific educational transitions of students moving from innovative primary schools to traditional secondary schools), and the units of analysis are the students who are the protagonists of these transitions, including families, teachers and school and high school principals. Firstly, in order to analyse the impact of transitions on students' school performance and perceived well-being throughout the different stages of the transition process, administrative records and data collected using a specially designed questionnaire will be used. Secondly, in-depth interviews will be carried out with students and families in order to understand the subjective factors of specific transitions. Finally, teachers and head teachers of the schools of the students in the sample will be interviewed to analyse the mechanisms and institutional factors that facilitate or hinder the transition processes. The collected qualitative information will be transcribed verbatim, coded and analysed thematically using ATLAS.ti to identify relevant "configurations of meaning" in order to respond to the stated objectives (Willig, 2013). This will be followed by a generalisation of the created cases (Simons, 2011), which consists of comparing the different cases to identify common themes, patterns and interconnections between them. The quantitative information from the academic reports and the scales, using the SPSS statistical package. A one-way analysis of variance model (ANOVA) of repeated measures (using time as a factor) will be adopted to determine whether there are significant changes in academic achievement, in the acquisition of citizenship skills and in levels of well-being during the first year of transition.

At the moment, the research is in the phase of elaborating the theoretical framework, so that the conclusions that are presented have to do, fundamentally, with the review of the scientific literature published on the phenomenon that constitutes the object of our study. At this point, we can affirm that some fundamental issues have been identified when approaching an academic research that is certainly unpublished or very rare due its subject matter and peculiarity. Firstly, the renovation phenomenon is eminently plural, so that it is necessary to propose an open research capable of incorporating the diversity that characterises the current renovation movement. This fact increases the complexity inherent to the question of transition, as the scientific literature published on the transition between conventional centres has already shown. This complexity is also linked to the characteristics and determinants of the maturational stage in which the change of school takes place, between the ages of 12 and 13. We could say that it is a cyclical transition or overlapping transitions. The existential dimension adds complexity to the research and it will be necessary to refine the theoretical and methodological approach, for example, when delimiting the phenomenon in time. The change of centre occurs in a vital transition in progress that transcends the period in which the change under investigation takes place. Provisionally, we can affirm that although attention has generally been focused on the negative aspects of the transition (i.e., on the hindering elements of the process of school change), there have also been positive elements (i.e., the elements that hinder the process of school change), there are also positive elements linked to this change and, specifically, to the transition from a renovating primary school to a secondary school due to the pedagogical characteristics and principles that define the current renovation.

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