Resource: Research overview

Learning activity 1 – Review quiz

In this activity, you will revise the main points of the research that has led to the development of the Life Ed resources. This will provide you with a snapshot of the messages therein that will provide a basis and justification for the implementation of transition activities in your school. You can refer to the research summary if you wish, or you can write your answers first and then check the research summary (or the answer key) afterwards.

  1. What does Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory indicate? What does it mean for students transitioning from primary to secondary school?
  2. What do teachers tend to focus on as a marker of transition ‘success’? What do students tend to focus on?
  3. With regard to academic outcomes, engagement and motivation, how are the research findings “mixed”? Do we know if academic achievement drops across the transition period?
  4. With social, emotional and physical wellbeing outcomes, what is correlated across the transition period? What does this mean for teachers?
  5. What are the five main aspects of school transition that students identified in the Student Forums project?
  6. Findings from the literature review, environmental scan, and Student Forums project are complex. What does this mean for the transfer of research into practice, and the provision of resources?

  1. Bronfenbrenner’s theory acknowledges that students are positioned within their own complex systems of influence. That is, students influence and are influenced by the people, systems, and cultures in their environments. It is within this complex individual-but-interactive environment that school transition occurs.
  2. Teachers tend to focus more on academic progress and attainment, while students focus more on the social and emotional domain.
  3. Some researchers claim that more transition stress equates to poorer academic outcomes, however, other researchers claim that academic outcomes are a product of other environmental and affective factors rather than school transition in isolation. Some studies do show that academic achievement drops across the transition, however, other studies show that this can be school-specific or not related to the school change per se.
  4. Waters, Cross and Shaw (2010) explain that a positive student transition experience is correlated with positive wellbeing indicators such as higher family and teacher connectedness and higher connectedness with school in the following year, more extra-curricular participation and pro-social skills, and fewer behavioural, emotional, peer and classroom problems. The opposite – negative experience correlated with negative indicators – is also shown in the research. For teachers, this means that we need to consider each student (with their own individual environments) on an individual basis in order to provide support.
  5. The five main aspects that students identified are:
    • school operations (maps, timetables, how to not get lost or not be late)
    • academics (how difficult the work is, and what to do if it was too difficult)
    • workload (how much work/homework there is, and how to get it done)
    • social elements (how to make new friends; how to keep in touch with old friends)
    • school–life balance (how to make sure there was still time for sports, hobbies and relaxation)
  6. This means that the resources provided need to be clear for the student, teacher and parent and carer audiences. While the modes of communication might be different for each audience, the message needs to be the clear and coherent across modes. Resources need to be inclusive and easily adaptable to the needs of different students and parents and carers, and different classrooms.