Summary:

The purpose of this study was to investigate links between early adolescents’ subjective
experiences of stress associated with the middle school transition and their academic outcomes.
They expected to find links between transition stress and academic performance, motivation, and
school bonding.

The age of the participants was 7th and 8th grade students.

The results found that adolescents who experience greater stress regarding the middle school
transition are at risk for experiencing lower academic performance and motivation. To their
surprise, although transition stress is a non-cognitive factor in academic performance, friendship
stability is not.

One of the authors discussed why they thought adolescents who were relatively stressed about
the transition to middle school were more likely than their peers to face academic and
motivational challenges. They said that one possibility is that their overall stress about the
transition is that the adolescents create a self-fulfilling prophecy. This means that they expect
that they will have a difficult time and these expectations make it more likely that they will
actually have increased challenges.

One new thing that I learned about noncognitive factors during adolescence was the difference
between mastery and performance motivation. I already knew about intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation, but these terms put it into a more applicable way for me. As a music teacher, I do not
want my students to feel the pressure from performance motivation. Instead of teaching to a test,
I want to teach so that my students learn and grow. Hopefully, they will be motivated by
increasing their knowledge of music, rather than succeeding on an assessment.

Goldstein, S.E., Boxer, P., Rudolph, E. (2015). Middle school transition stress: Links with

academic performance, motivation, and school experiences. Contemporary School

Psychology, 19(1), 21-29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40688-014-0044-4