Social and Academic Experiences for Transitioning Students
This chapter discusses the findings resulting from analysis of the qualitative data generated by the structured student interviews. Multiple themes were identified in the student responses to the structured interview questions they were prompted with. One set of themes dealt with more logistical and tactical coping in the transition to the new academic environment while others could be thought of as more of social and emotional coping to the changes. The themes identified were:
Social Integration/Friendship
Orientation to Classes & Facilities (Physical/Logistical)
Academic Integration (New Curriculum)
Role of Teachers through the Transition
This chapter will provide an overview of the research methods and procedures that were used to collect the data. It will also provide a discussion of the themes identified as well as provide examples of some of the students' responses that were interpreted to fall within the theme categories identified. The identification of the themes that emerged and the coding of the data can be potentially valuable to future research or to provide practitioners insights into many of the specific concerns and challenges individual students may face when transitioning into a new academic system.
Methods
Eight student interviews were conducted and, following the guidelines of Braun and Clarke (2008), and thematic coding was conducted covering the entire data set. The eight participants were each identified by an assigned letter A-H. Each participant's interview was transcribed verbatim into MSWord, including utterances that did not convey meaning (e.g., um, and uh). X overarching themes which responded to the research questions guiding the study were generated from the themes and sub-themes identified from the data extracts (see Tables x, y, and z). Comment by penny w: Hopefully the reference to tables answers your question ... you will need to correct the exact table numbers. I have re-jigged this section to enhance its logic ... do you agree? Comment by penny w: Watch tense consistency. Comment by penny w: I think you could say how many primary themes you found.
The epistemological grounding for the current study conforms to a pragmatic model. It is necessary to highlight that in using a qualitative approach that the relationship with the experience, language, and meaning associated with the participants' responses is simple and unidirectional, and fosters simplified theorisation about their perspectives. An inductive or bottom up approach was used to organise the data and ensure that the themes were strongly linked to the data (Patton, 1990). Inductive thematic analysis is data-driven and does not reflect any analytic preconceptions that the researcher may hold, nor does it entail attempts to fit the data into a pre-existing coding frame (Braun & Clarke, 2008). Consistent with qualitative best practices that were identified in the work of Braun & Clarke (2008), emerging themes were identified at the semantic level, such that researcher accepted the explicit, surface-level meanings conveyed by the data and did not look for meaning that was beyond what was expressly said, written, or recorded. Comment by penny w: I suspect this whole section might go to the Method part ... we'll check ... but here you should just stick to results in my view. Comment by Graeme Aitken: This reads like it should be referenced. Comment by penny w: Why not remove the word "yet"? Would it matter? Comment by Rajeev Sharma: GA: Not sure what this sentence means.PW: I agree ... what does it mean? Maybe leave this out. I think you were in some way justifying the language you used to describe your themes ... not necessary in my opinion.
Overarching Themes Comment by penny w: You will probably drop this heading and incorporate the following paragraph in your introduction. So, the four theme heading will be Level Two. I have started to make the corrections for these ... check throughout.
The primary overarching themes discussed below are related to influences of social integration and forming friendships, the orientation to the new physical layout of classrooms and facilities, the ability of students to integrate into a new or different academic curriculum, and the role that the teaching staff can play throughout this process. Each of these four broad categories captures a wide majority of all the responses collected from students. Additionally, each of these factors is critical to the transition phase and the questions in the survey are...
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