Abstract
Parents’ expectations for the middle school transition were investigated in 10 focus groups with 37 parents in two rural Appalachian communities. Parents emphasized their concerns over the social aspects of the transition for their children, particularly relationship changes and exposure to problem behaviors through peers. Moreover, parents whose children attended certain feeder schools feared their children would be socially marginalized in middle school. Student adjustment data collected from 187 6th graders in the associated middle schools were analyzed for evidence of social marginalization or poor adjustment by feeder elementary school. With few exceptions, social integration did not differ by feeder school but students from a particular feeder school experienced greater adjustment difficulties overall, according to self- and teacher-ratings. The findings highlight the need for schools to help parents understand the social transition to middle school and to monitor student adjustment when there are discrepancies across feeder schools.
Highlights
The transition into middle school represents a significant undertaking for youth
As is evident in these excerpted quotations below, which were chosen because they represented the discussions that occurred in each focus group, parents readily discussed the challenges of the middle school transition, but maintained strong concerns about the social transition in particular: P3: The social issue probably has been more important than the academic issue, as you [another parent] have pointed out ... [FG5]
Before discussing the results regarding the social transition more fully, we note that the literature on rural youth contains much discussion of the dilemma of out-migration (e.g., Elder, King, & Conger, 1996; Farmer et al, 2006; Hektner, 1995), references to educational and occupational aspirations and the role of middle school academics in those aspirations were largely absent in our focus groups
Summary
The transition into middle school represents a significant undertaking for youth. Early adolescents typically move from a small, familiar school environment to a larger, unfamiliar school setting, forge new relationships with teachers and students, and learn and negotiate novel norms, routines, and expectations (Anderman & Mueller, 2009). The middle school transition is challenging for early adolescents regardless of geographic locale, and rural youth are no exception. Recent large-scale and longitudinal studies of rural early adolescents document small but significant declines to academic achievement (Stanley, Comello, Edwards, & Marquart, 2008), significant deterioration of school belonging (Hamm et al, 2010; Perry & McIntyre, 2001; Witherspoon & Ennett, 2011), and significant increases in physical and social aggression with peers (Karriker-Jaffe, Foshee, Ennett, & Suchindran, 2008) and school misbehaviors (Witherspoon & Ennett, 2011). Parents are recognized for their critical role in young children’s transition into school in general and in rural areas (i.e., Vernon-Feagans, Gallagher, & Kainz, 2010), but are largely absent in the study of early adolescents in the middle school transition
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