Adjusting to and thriving in a new school: Role of students’ expectations, educational attitudes, and resilience during secondary school transition

ABSTRACT

For some students, the transition from primary to secondary school is a difficult and stressful event that can have potential negative effects on their psychological wellbeing, social adaptability, and academic achievement. Although several individual, environmental, and family protective factors have been investigated, direct and indirect contributions of expectations and educational attitudes on resilience have not yet been fully explored. In the present study, using a sample of 744 (8 schools, Study 1) and 39 (3 schools, Study 2) 8th grade (day or boarding) secondary school students in Uganda, we initially explored: (1) gender and residence status differences in transitioning students’ resilience and educational attitudes, (2) predictive effects of educational attitudes, gender and residence status on resilience, (3) the direct and indirect effects of educational attitudes and expectations on resilience, and (4) the students’ perspectives about the transition process. In study 1, data were collected using self-report questionnaires whilst in study 2 data were collected from focus group discussions. Quantitative results indicate that (i) girls reported to have received more physical care for better adjustment than boys, whilst day and male students reported to have received more psychological care during school adjustment than their counterparts, (ii), residence status was a stronger predictor of resilience than were gender and educational attitudes, and (iii) student’s expectations had direct and indirect effects on resilience through educational attitudes. Results of the thematic analyses show that transitioning students have unrealistic expectations and mixed feelings during adjustment. To foster resilience of transitioning students, schools could cultivate a culture of high realistic expectations, peer connectedness, and positive educational attitudes, as well as organize several transitional strategies and activities that involve parents throughout the first year of lower secondary school.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• school transition
• educational attitudes
• mixed methods research

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the students for their willingness to take part in the study, the teachers who helped us during the data collection phase, KAAD for partly funding the project, and Dr. Thomas Hunt for proofreading the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Availability of supporting data

Supporting data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The study was partially funded by Katholischer Akademischer Ausländer Dienst (KAAD).

Notes on contributors

Diana Kwarikunda

Diana kwarikunda is a student at the University of Potsdam. Her current research interests are in educational psychology and school psychology whilst using a mixed methods approach. She has published several articles e.g. in the African journal of research in science and mathematics education.

Nakalema Gladys

Nakalema Gladys is a lecturer of special needs education at Mbarara University of science and Technology. She specializes in problematic and health compromising behaviors at the University.

Charles Magoba Muwonge

Charles Magoba Muwonge is a senior lecturer of educational psychology and education foundations at Mbarara University of science and Technology. His current research interests are in cross cultural psychosocial barriers to mathematics learning currently corroborating with other 10 researchers in Europe and Asian for this project.

Joseph Ssenyonga

Joseph Ssenyonga is a Postdoc fellow at the University of Konstanz in Germany. He is also a senior lecturer of educational psychology at Mbarara University of science and Technology. His research interest is in maladaptive behaviors in secondary school.

Ulrich Schiefele

Ulrich Schiefele is a professor of educational psychology at the University of Potsdam. He is currently the chair, department of educational psychology. His current research interests are goal orientations and teacher behaviors under the project “Teach” that is funded by the Germany research fund. He has served as editor for different journals in Europe.