What Are We Doing to Early Adolescents? The Impact of Educational Contexts on Early Adolescents

Abstract

For some children, the early adolescent years mark the beginning of a downward spiral in school-related behaviors and motivation that often lead to academic failure and school dropout. Although these declines are not so extreme for most adolescents, there is sufficient evidence of gradual decline in various indicators of academic motivation, self-perceptions, and school-related behaviors over the early adolescent years to make one ask why. Several investigators have proposed that these declines could result from the types of educational contexts to which many adolescents are exposed during the middle-grade years. This hypothesis is explored in this article. First, the results of analyses using the eighth-grade cohort from the National Educational Longitudinal Study comparing student outcomes in different types of middle-grade school settings are reported. Second, the results of several relevant studies assessing the impact of specific school environmental characteristics on the course of change in early adolescents' school-related motivation are reported. For some children, the early adolescent years mark the beginning of a downward spiral in school-related behaviors and motivation that often lead to academic failure and school dropout. For example, Simmons and Blyth (1987) found a marked decline in early adolescents' school grades as they move into junior high school. Furthermore, the magnitude of this decline was predictive of subsequent school failure and dropout. Similarly timed developmental declines have been doc