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The research article Perceptions of Primary to Secondary School Transitions:

Challenge or Threat? aims to prevent negative issues that arise during the transition period

for students in year 6 to year 7. The issues of the transition period have been identified as

“significant and a stressful event for young adolescent students” (Mackenzie, McMaugh &

O’Sullivan, 2012, p. 298) with a lot of students having negative preconceptions. The research

acknowledges that “transitions from primary to secondary school has been shown to be a

stressful event in the lives of adolescents” (Mackenzie, McMaugh & O’Sullivan, 2012, p.

301) as it relies on past literature to help form the basis of their research aim. With this

statement pointing out that there is a need for an “emphasis on the genuinely important

problems of education that will help to ensure that socially responsible research will thrive in

education” (Herrington, Howard, Kervin, Okely & Vialle, 2016, p. 10). As the adolescent

period is quite complex and can be driven by the stress that is known to be associated

associated with any sort of transition period or change. The research article become even

more important as it looks at possible ways of preventing a negative transition from occurring

and decreasing the amount of stress that is associated with the transition, allowing for teacher

to utilise research that “improves either the operation or accountability of education” (Brown,

Pringle & Shank, 2014, p. 4). By constructing a research article that allows to be adapted in

multiple ways for teachers to develops skills to encourage a positive transition.

The research sample size includes “75 female students in year 6 and year 7, recruited

from an independent girls’ school in Sydney” (Mackenzie, McMaugh & O’Sullivan, 2012, p.

302). As there is a smaller sample size, it allows for the researchers to gain and analyse the

results through a more quality way. This may also allow for the researchers to pick up on

elements or themes from the data that may have been overlooked if a bigger sample size was

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used. However, what limits the sample is the organisation of the school, the K-12 aspect of

the school limits the particular responses that may have been generated as majority of the

students will be transitioning to the same school but on a different campus (Mackenzie,

McMaugh & O’Sullivan, 2012). They will not experience attending a new school for year 7

like other students do, which can limit how effective the research recommendations can be

utilised for teachers in other schooling organisations.

As mentioned earlier the article incorporated a mixed method approach, which

included measures such as two pre and post transition online questionaries and a semi

structured focus group. Using a mixed method approach for this article work particularly well

as it had the ability to gain information through an online questionnaire, with the answers

from the questionnaire helping generate the discussion for the following focus group. With

the focus group falling under the qualitative research approach, it becomes the key part of the

research as it generated quality responses and discussion furthered, that were which is

important for researchers as they need to be able to “explore, dig deeper and understand what

things means” (Brown, Pringle & Shank, 2014, p. 19). The articles methodology can be

reflected through Gill’s (2014) arguments as “there is an urgent need to turn to research to

generate appropriate policies and workable strategies in these troubling times and we need a

mix of research methods to develop a full picture of what’s involved” (p. 11). As the methods

were able to produce effective responses and reasons such as social and academic issues in

regards to why negative transitions can occur.

With adolescent being the key part in the research, the use of Lazarus’s cognitive-

transactional theory and Sirsch’s theoretical framework strengthens the article as these

theories help develop the basis of the research aim. As “researchers are addressing a vastly

increased range of topics and doing so from a wide range of foundational disciplines, and

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frequently from frameworks combining different theoretical positions” (Gill, 2014, p.4), the

theorists help examine and understand the perceptions that students have developed on the

transition period which, allows for the researcher to understand why negative transitions are

occurring on a developmental level. This may also provide a reason as to why so many

previous research articles have been utilised as literacy component within the research

project, as previous researcher have too noticed the difference in reason for transition igniting

the need for a focus on decreasing the negative transitions between primary to high school.

The article use of descriptive statistics allows for there to be comparison in data

between the two questionnaires that were conducted in term 4 of year 6 and year 7. This form

of statistics has been used to describe the both basic theme of academic and social, challenges

and threats to be compared across year 6 and 7. These statistics allow for a visual to see if the

challenges and threats post transition were any different for students’ after the transitions.

With “these descriptive pictures tend to become more balanced and stable than any individual

measure” (Brown, Pringle & Shank, 2014, p. 12) which permit for there to be constancy in

the presentation of the data. The t-test works effectively for this research article as there is a

confidence that the negative issues that have been occurring as something is clearly going on

a larger scale and can be seen through the sores presented. From the results that are generated

from the t-test allows for the researchers to direct their focus on determining the difference

between the year 6 and 7 scores. With the use of the t-test being a massive strength for the

articles as the difference between the means is big enough that it hadn’t occurred by chance,

which is large enough to draw an interest in investigating the issues of transitions further.

With the focus group results producing significant themes such as social issues, secondary

school subjects, having new and different teachers, homework, assessments and school

environments, emerged through the breakdown of the focus group results. These results were

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able to help the researchers explore and understand “the stress perceptions of students

surrounding the transition” (Mackenzie, McMaugh & O’Sullivan, 2012, p. 308)

Although the article did not provide any specific recommendation it did highlight

reasons as to why a negative transition from year 6 to year 7 may occur for students. As a

result of this teachers have the ability to work with the issues that could be the reason for a

negative transition and work on developing skills for their teaching practice to help prevent

this negativity occurring. Although there is an importance in “identifying the right problem,

developing effective solutions, and getting effective solutions to spread” (Donovan, 2013, p.

317) as it can be argued that by not presenting a specific recommendation within the article,

actually allows for teachers’ to form their own resources to help prevent these issues

occurring that work with their specific students, as not all these issues will occur with every

single student.

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References

Brown, L., Pringle, J., & Shank, G. (2014). Understanding Education Research, A Guide to

Critical Reading. Boulder, London: Paradigm Publishers.

Donovan, S. (2013). Generating Improvement Through Research and Development in

Education Systems. Science, 340(6130), 317-319.

Gill, J. (2014). Having Our Work Cut Out! Reflections on the Australian Association for

Research in Educations and the Current State of Australian Educational Research. The

Australian Education Researcher, 31(1), 1-14.

Herrington, J., Howard, S., Kervin, L., Okely, T., & Vialle, W. (2016). Research for

Educators (2nd ed.). Sydney, Australia: Cengage Learning.

Mackenzie, E., McMaugh, A., & O’Sullivan, K.A. (2012). Perceptions of Primary to

Secondary School Transitions. Lessons in Education Research, 22(3), 298-314.