Transition Into Middle School

As the readings so often portrayed, the transition into middle schooling can be quite a rough event for students. In fact, a study conducted by Waxman and Huang (1998) found that middle schoolers harboured the most negative classroom perception when compared with the views of elementary and high-school students. This semester’s readings have repeatedly shown that the more independent learning style of middle school can overwhelm students; in fact I myself remember being anxious about having to attend different classrooms in my first year of middle school. Compound these classroom structure changes with rapid physical and cognitive development and it becomes clear that there are great challenges to be had in educating the middle years student.

A poignant quote from Labaree reads ‘A surgeon can fix the ailment of a patient who sleeps through the operation, and a lawyer can successfully defend a client who remains mute during the trial, but success for a teacher depends heavily on the active cooperation of the student.’ (Labaree 2000, p. 228) I volunteer as a classroom assistant at a low socioeconomic school through the Flinders Mentor program and frequently witness breakdowns in teacher—student relationships. Classes are overpopulated and disproportionately filled with students who require special assistance due to learning disabilities, physical disabilities or just students who are at-risk due to dysfunctional home or social lives. I am often tasked with taking small groups of known ‘disrupters’ away from the class to give them closer attention. Although they can still be difficult at times, I have developed a very positive rapport with these students over the year which affords me far less resistance to my instructions when compared to the same student’s response to their actual teacher. ‘As much research continues to confirm, teachers relating to their students remains one of the most significant factors in generating positive academic and social outcomes.’ (Keddie and Churchill in Pendergast and Bahr 2010, p.

I had of course participated in collaborative learning as both a school and university student, but had never thought in depth about why it is that students do it. Brown summed it up well in saying that ‘Comparing representations with others and explaining ideas to others takes learning from the individual plane to the cooperative plane, and allows students to see what is the same and what is different about their ideas and interpretations.’ (Brown in Pendergast and Bahr 2010, p. 227) Collaborative learning allows students to see other viewpoints and come to understand the reasoning behind those views. A classroom may have a multitude of variables in student backgrounds which influence wildly differing views on the same content. I think that promoting a collaborative learning atmosphere, and allowing students to share their unique view with others, is a very important aspect of schooling and developing in students a healthy