Researching the Transition to High School for Adolescents with a Disability: Qualitative Action-Project Method as an Exemplar Approach

ABSTRACT

The transition from elementary to middle or high school is an important experience common to most adolescents in North America. However, very little research has been conducted to understand the experiences of students with a disability status and the stakeholders involved in the transition. Clearly, there is a need to generate information that views the transition as a process between students and stakeholders that takes place over time. This investigation illustrates the utility of the action-project method for studying the transition to middle or high school. Three cases involving Canadian adolescents with different disabilities (learning, sensory/motor and emotional/behavioural) and their parents, as key stakeholders, are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Disability
• transition to high school
• contextual action theory
• action-project method
• adolescence
• parent–child relationships
• case study
• peer relations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Systems vary in the number of educational stages between elementary or primary school and high school. Some jurisdictions move students to middle or junior high school before high school. Other jurisdictions move students immediately to high school. Throughout this paper we refer to the first move out of elementary school because the greatest number of changes in systems is experienced by students during this transition.

2. Names of participants have been replaced with pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [410-2009-0060].