Starting high school can be a challenging but also exciting time for students. The focus of this paper lies with students’ experiences of transition into secondary school. Sixteen students from one government school in New South Wales kept a journal for their first ten weeks in high school as a way of recording their experiences. Their journal entries were studied utilising a phenomenological psychological approach following ). The aim of this research approach is to produce clear and accurate descriptions of a particular aspect of human experience () in order to reveal the essential structure of the phenomenon under investigation. Emerging from the study were seven themes about transition: the pivotal role of peers in helping or hindering settling into high school; the place of school support through programs and activities; the challenges of new procedures; different types of learning activities; feelings of confidence and success that can enhance transitional experiences; the place of homework in the a...

Transition into High School: A phenomenological study

Although teacher underestimation of ability can have a detrimental effect on children's achievement and motivation, the accuracy of Australian teachers in identifying intellectual giftedness in young children has not been investigated. This study followed 14 children, identified as potentially gifted while preschoolers, for up to 3 of their early years of school, collecting questionnaire data from 26 teachers and the parents, as well as interview and norm-referenced test data from the children. Teachers rated more highly the children whose test scores were more consistently in the gifted range, but more than half of the children were underestimated by at least 1 teacher, especially where nonverbal ability was higher than verbal ability. Strengths in reading were more readily recognized than strengths in spelling and mathematics. Child attitudes and behaviors, as well as some mutual parent-teacher distrust, may have contributed to teacher underestimation. Implications for practice and further research are ...

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Recognition of Giftedness in the Early Years of School: Perspectives of Teachers, Parents, and Children.

This paper engages with questions of logic and its politics to explore how those of us in early childhood education can become critical consumers of ‘brain research’. The research truths we use to construct classroom practices decide the meanings of our actions, thoughts and feelings and our interactions with children. Following Foucault (1980), I see these truths as intimately connected with power and its effects on us.

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The politics of logic in early childhood research: A case of the brain, hard facts, trees and rhizomes

Ideas relating to identity and belonging are central to the public discourse around citizenship that has emerged in Ireland and internationally in recent years. One thread of that discourse relates to the role of national identity in societies that are increasingly diverse and multicultural. In view of the growing importance of citizenship education, understanding children's ideas about national identity is vital if educators are to engage children in the construction of an hospitable, critical and reflective citizenry. This research was undertaken in two phases during 2003 and 2004. Participating in the study were 119 children, drawn from a range of social contexts. Premised on a social constructivist view of children and childhood, the research drew on participative and democratic methodologies. While the study suggests the existence of an essentialist conception of Irish identity, it also demonstrates the capacity and willingness of children to engage in critical reflection on their constructions of Ir...

What does it mean to be Irish? Children's construction of national identity1

There is a need to understand the transition of students from primary to secondary schooling outside the confines of practitioners' and academics' viewpoints. This thesis explores that transition from the perspectives of the students themselves. It argues that they experience the transition into secondary schooling as challenging. This issue is significant because transition into high school coincides with adolescent developmental changes - social, physical, emotional, cognitive and psychological - as well as the move from the relative stability of one teacher a year to different teachers for each subject, and the shift in status from being the most senior to the most junior students in their school. These students also face challenges such as friendship and identity issues as well as problems locating places in the new environment, for example, subject classrooms, play areas, teachers' rooms.



This study's theoretical framework is constructed from a phenomenological psychological stance. A phenomenological methodology guides this study, allowing students' experiences to speak for themselves. Other methodologies were not appropriate as the researcher wanted to hear the students' voices while they were experiencing transition. 



Few studies in the past have attempted to study transition into high school as it is lived and experienced by students themselves. This empirical study addresses that gap in the literature. Its findings could provide the necessary information needed to further assist educationalists in developing appropriate programs and activities to support this group. 	

Sixteen adolescents participated in the study. Of two common methods of collecting data in phenomenological studies - interviews and journal writing - journal writing was chosen. This data collection technique enabled the researcher to learn about transition from students' perspectives. 

The data were collected in the first ten weeks of high school from Year 7 students (first year of high school in New South Wales). Drawing on the work of Giorgi (1985a, 1985b), who translated aspects of phenomenological philosophy into a concrete method of research (Ehrich, 1997), a phenomenological psychological approach was used to analyse the data in a step-by-step process. There were four steps to the analysis of the data. The first step involved reading through the entire description of the participants' experience to get a sense of the meaning of the experience as a whole. In the second step, the description was read to identify meaning units, i.e. words/phrases that clearly express meanings of the experience of transition. In the third step, the analysis involved transformation of the meaning units from participants' concrete descriptions into more general categories. The fourth step involved two aspects: a situated structural description of the experience was written, and finally the researcher produced a general structural description that represented the whole experience of the phenomenon.

	

Because of the small sample selected, the study does not claim generalisability across other populations of adolescents. However, what the study does is to highlight seven essential themes of transition. First peers can play a significant role in enabling a smooth transition to high school. Second, schools support transition through a number of programs and activities to help students adapt to the new environment. Third, students need to learn new procedures, location of rooms and other new routines in this environment. Fourth, learning occurs through the academic, practical and extracurricular activities and some learning is more challenging than other types of learning. Fifth, high school transition is enhanced when students are confident and feel a sense of achievement and success in their new environment. Sixth, homework and assignments are a part of the high school curriculum. Finally, teachers' attitudes/abilities can affect student integration into high school and make learning fun or boring.

Students' lived experience of transition into high school : a phenomenological study

Young Children's Views of Australia and Australians

(2002). Australian Children Starting School. Childhood Education: Vol. 78, International Focus Issue 2002: Going to School Around the World, pp. 349-353.

Mella Cusack

Papers

Young Children's Views of Australia and Australians

Australian Children Starting School