School Experiences and Adolescent Wellbeing John Gray, Maurice Galton, Colleen McLaughlin, Barbie Cl

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School Experiences and Adolescent
WellbeingJohn Gray, Maurice Galton, Colleen
McLaughlin, Barbie Clarke and Jenny
SymondsFaculty of Education, University of
CambridgePresentation on some aspects of the
review undertaken as a contribution to the
Nuffield Foundations Adolescent Mental Health
Initiative
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The Main Themes

• Schooling does matter greatly. Moreover, the
  benefits can be surprisingly long-lasting.
  Schools are about social experiences as well as
  scholastic learning.
• (Rutter, 1991, our emphasis)

• If mental health difficulties have increased, it
  must be because the quality of childrens
  experiences has deteriorated.
• (Layard, 2009, our emphasis)

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Trends in Conduct Scores

• Conduct problems showed a continuous rise for
  both boys and girls over the whole 25-year
  period. This seems to be an increase in
  non-aggressive conduct problems such as lying,
  stealing and disobedience.
• (Collishaw et al, 2004)

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Trends in Emotional Problems

• Adolescent emotional problems (such as
  depression and anxiety) have increased for both
  girls and boys since the mid-1980s.

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The UNICEF League Table(top/bottom four
countries)
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UK Life Satisfaction and Liking School by Age
and Sex (HBSC, 2006)
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The Review Five Key Topics

• The Supportive School
• school connectedness, relationships with
  teachers and peers, pupil satisfaction with
  school, membership of learning community,
  handling of academic pressure, thinking small.
• The Transfer Debate Primary to Secondary
• Changes in Attitudes to Schooling Over Time
• Vulnerable Groups
• Wellbeing in an International Context

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The Review Main Features

• Systematic literature review - well over 300
  potentially relevant references
• Wide-ranging view of what might count as outcome
  indicators of adolescent wellbeing
• Main sources of evidence overwhelmingly from UK
  and North America
• Very few studies have adopted a longitudinal
  perspective over significant periods of time
• Difficulty of disentangling school-related
  effects from other influences on young peoples
  development
• Reanalysis/meta-analysis, where available, of
  much smaller number of studies relating
  specifically to school transfer

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Three Phases of Schooling
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Two Theories about Transfer

• Stage-Environment Fit

• Status Passage

• Dips in attitude seen as a consequence of poor
  fit between adolescents developmental stage and
  the school environment (Eccles).
• Clash between young peoples growing desire to
  make their own decisions about themselves with
  their experience of greater competition, less
  freedom and teacher-dominated classrooms and
  learning

• Transfer is a ritual designed to initiate an
  individual into their new role (Measor and
  Woods).
• Some discontinuity provides a sign to
  adolescents that they are moving from childhood
  to young adolescence.
• The process needs to be managed to incorporate
  elements of continuity and discontinuity

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Pupils Concerns about Transfer

• Personal adaptability fitting in, being
  youngest, smallest
• Peers making new friends, keeping old ones,
  bullying
• Teachers adjusting to several teachers,
  increasing teacher strictness
• Size getting lost, not using authorised routes,
  etc.
• Work coping with different subjects, doing
  homework on time
• Moving getting to school on time, learning the
  rules, bringing right books, school dinners,
  lockers, etc.

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(No Transcript)
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Concerns Pre/Post Transfer

• Negative Perceptions Before

• Negative Perceptions After

• Making friends and retaining old ones
• Harder nature of the work and coping with
  homework
• Getting lost in the new environment

• Fewer concerns about coping more expressions of
  disappointment about the repetitive nature of the
  curriculum
• Worries about peers decrease but still concerns
  about bullying and making new friends
• Teachers prove stricter than anticipated and
  adjusting to their varying styles and
  expectations can be problematic

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Psychological Changes Across Transfer
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Attitudes to School
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Attitude to Maths
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Attitude to Science
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Attitude to English
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Overall Patterns?

• Most pupils adjust fairly readily to the change
  of school.
• A minority do not.
• Particular issues underlying longer-term concerns
  include
• peer and teacher relationships
• attitudes to school in general
• attitudes to subjects like maths science.

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Vulnerable Groups 1 Trends in Initial
Adjustment

• Had Settled in Well
• or Very Well
• 1966 Nisbett Entwistle - 79
• 1986 ILEA 1986 - 82
• 2008 Evangelou et al. - 75

Persistent Problems 1986 ILEA - 6 2005 Chedzoy
Burden -10
Special Educational Needs 25 have more
difficulty at transfer (Muldoon 2005) 12 more
likely to be bullied (Evangelou et al. 2008)
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Vulnerable Groups 2Fighting, Bullying and Being
Bullied (Craig Harel, 2004)

• No aggressive behaviour 35
• Victimisation 10
• Fighting 14
• Bullying 8
• Fighting and Bullying 9
• Fighting or bullying and Victimisation 24
• TOTAL 100

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Vulnerable Groups 3Permanent Exclusions
1990-2006
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Overall Patterns?

• The vulnerable group has remained fairly
  constant over time at around 1 in 10 students.
• Sizeable groups of 10-14 year olds experience
  aggressive behaviour, either as recipients,
  perpetrators or both.
• Many secondary schools have responded to the
  various pressures on them over the last two
  decades by markedly increasing the level of
  formal exclusions.

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Implications for Schools?

• Disengagement from school (resulting in
  diminished wellbeing) can set in fairly soon
  after transfer.
• Relatively few schools seem sufficiently
  sensitised to the need for constant reappraisal
  of the continuity/discontinuity mix as pupils
  move up.
• Wellbeing issues are as much as about school
  culture as school organisation.
• Few schools seem to pay sufficient attention to
  the nature of their students social experience
  of learning and teaching, especially (but not
  exclusively) outside the classroom.

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Englands Rankings by Quartile in HBSC Surveys
in 2005/06