Students

The selection of student participants followed a purposeful technique of criterion sampling (Patton, 2002). Potential participants were those for whom supplementary learning support information would be passed on to their new school to support their transition. Such students were routinely nominated by their teachers toward the latter part of the school year. Three schools did not have students with learning support needs transitioning to high school, so the student sample was drawn from the remaining nine schools, representing a decile rating spread from one to three.

Information Sheets (Appendix A) and Consent Forms (Appendix B) were provided to school liaison personnel who then invited parents and caregivers of identified students, along with their children, to participate in the research. (It was a condition of Massey University Human Ethics approval that schools make the first approach to families.) In a gesture of respect to families, consent forms were written in English, with alternate versions in dual language formats - English and Māori, Samoan, Tongan, Hindi, Cook Island Māori, Fijian, and Nuiean. (A sample of these is provided in Appendix B). It was agreed that the school liaison person was best placed to decide which version of the letter would be appropriately sent to each family.

Consent Forms were returned by 58 families from an approximate population of 250 students with learning support needs identified within nine schools. The exact population was difficult to ascertain because both the identification of students and management of this part of the

process was outside of the researcher’s control. A process tracking form (Appendix E1) was supplied to assist classroom teachers with distribution and collection processes.

Fifty-two parents and caregivers took up the invitation to participate and gave consent for their child to participate. Subsequently, students were given the opportunity to personally accept or decline involvement and one student of the 52 students with parental consent declined to take part. Thus, Phase One questionnaires were completed by 51 Year Eight students comprising 55% boys (n = 28) and 45% girls (n = 23); forty three percent (n = 22) from intermediate schools, 29.5% (n = 15) from full primary schools, and 27.5% (n = 14) from contributing primary schools, as Table Ten details.

Table 10

Phase One Student Participants

Characteristic Freq %

Students’ gender

Male 28 55

Female 23 45

Students’ contributing school

Intermediate 22 43 Full primary 15 29.5 Contributing primary 14 27.5 Students’ ethnicity Samoan 23 45 NZ Māori 11 21 NZ Euro/Pākehā 6 12 Asian 2 4 Indian 2 4 Pākehā/Māori 2 4 Tongan 2 4

Cook Island Māori 1 2

Nuiean 1 2

Tokelauan

Ethnicity details were provided by parents and caregivers on their questionnaire forms. Reference to school roll statistics (www.ero.govt.nz) showed the resulting study sample was

relatively representative of the district’s student population.

Phase Two

On follow-up post-transition, it was found that ten students had left the district placing them outside the scope of the study design. Therefore 41 students from three secondary schools were re-approached to continue with the study. All agreed to continue their participation in the study and completed Phase Two questionnaires.

Phase Three

Phase Three required identification of a small, homogeneous grouping of students who appeared to have transitioned well compared to their peers. A comparative analysis of pre- post attitudes to transition from Phase One and Two questionnaires was employed to identify possible interviewees, ten of whom would be selected to take part in the interview phase.

This practice of ‘unique sampling’ (Merriam, 1998) is appropriately used in this instance

where a sample is chosen based on unique attributes or prior available information (Patton, 1990). The decision-making process is presented graphically in Figure Three. To highlight Phase Two (post-transition) change more clearly, Phase One (pre-transition) student ratings are presented in lighter tone and ordered by increasing value.

Given previous research findings into attitudinal change involving students within general school populations (Cox & Kennedy, 2008; Evangelou et al., 2008; Galton et al., 2003), it was expected attitudes to transition would improve post-transition. In the current sample, all students did not experience more positive attitudes post-transition, however for most students their attitudes to transition improved.

One student left the district after completing the second questionnaire, leaving 40 available

student ‘possibles’ from which to select an interview sub-sample. On examination of variables of the ‘Attitudes to Transition’ scale prior to analysis, one result set was found to represent an extreme outlier in the data set (see Student 48 in Figure Three). While not considered a threat to the outcomes of the study, it was decided to exclude Student 48’s results for examination of pre-post differences only.

Note: Students 12, 13, 20, 24, 35, 40, 41, 42, 45, and 46 are highlighted to indicate selected interview subsample. Student 28 was unavailable at the time of interviews.

Figure 3. Phase One and Phase Two ratings for the ‘Attitudes to Transition’ scale

The ‘Attitudes to Transition’ scale produced a possible score range of 10 – 40 representing

increasing positivity, with 25 being a ‘neutral’ score. Phase One attitude ratings produced a range of 19 – 36 (M = 29.21, SD = 4.91) with 79% of students indicating a positive attitude to transition (M ≥ 25). In Phase Two, 92% of students indicated positive attitudes (M = 31.72, SD = 4.87), ratings ranging from 21 - 40. Mean attitude ratings compared favourably with results from of over 4000 students made available by Homerton College at the time on their website: 30.43 pre-transition and 31.56 post-transition.

With the expectation that students would rate their attitudes to transition more positively post- transition, differences were examined using a paired-sample, one-tail t-test; the null

15 20 25 30 35 40 41 21 24 30 46 13 40 19 7 25 2 34 45 15 28 35 1 39 47 12 20 26 27 42 32 36 44 51 16 38 3 6 10 29 49 50 14 31 43 48 Attitude Score Student Number Pre-transition Post-transition

hypothesis being H0: x̅2 ≤ x̅1. Subsequently, the H0 was rejected: t (38) = 3.1657, p < .003 indicating that the pre-post differences were indeed significant in the predicted direction. This finding provided assurance of a stable foundation on which to proceed. It was found that overall, 29 out of 40 students felt equally or more positive post-transition.

By way of a rule to locate ten students for whom the transition appeared to be most positive relative to their peers, it was decided that all students whose scores indicated a pre-post transition discrepancy of at least one standard deviation (post-transition SD = ~5.00) would be considered for interview. Fourteen students fit the imposed criteria. However, on closer inspection of the data it was found that for three students (10, 36, and 51), while their pre-post scores differed by one standard deviation, their pre-transition scores were already above the post-transition mean. Thus, these three students, being already more positive than many of their peers before transition, were excluded from the selection sample, which left eleven students from which to draw the interview sub-sample. Access to these students was once again managed by the respective high school liaison staff. Unfortunately student 28, who met the selection criteria, was unavailable for interview but seven girls and three boys, agreed to take part in the interview phase. The selected interview sub-sample is identified within the graph with a heavier marker point.