The senior year high school experience and transition to college

Abstract

The purpose of this interpretative phenomenological analysis was to better understand the senior year experience concluding with the post-secondary transition, stress, and coping through the eyes of recent high school graduates and members of the Class of 2020. Schlossberg's (1984) transition model was used as a theoretical framework to study the coping resources high school seniors employed in their transition to college. This study utilized data collection methods and analysis as outlined by Moustakas (1994) and Smith (2017) to "get at the lived experience" of the participants across three interviews and the sharing of an artifact. The poignant perspectives of the five participants was analyzed into six common themes, which framed the study's three key findings; (1) the adolescent participants were actively transitioning and living through significant developmental changes identified by Schlossberg well after high school and upon college attendance, (2) the role of coping and adaptive coping behaviors were significant in the adolescent's ability to respond and manage stress, and (3), the adolescent participants had difficulty in accessing additional sources of support in their post-secondary transition and management of stress. The findings may support K-12 schools and colleges' understanding of the senior year experience as it relates adolescent stress, coping behaviors, and in their assessment of student support for high school seniors and recent graduates transitioning to post-secondary life and college.Keywords: adolescent stress, adolescent coping, post-secondary transition, Schlossberg's transition theory, transition stress --Author's abstract