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Migrancy Research
Immediate Effects of Migrancy
Students who change schools frequently:
- Are often coping with many other disruptions at the same time
- Suffer a sense of loss and grief from leaving a familiar environment and friends
- May have had almost no warning of the impending move
- Worry about changes:
- Will I find my way around?
- Will my new teacher be nice?
- Will the students like me?
- Will I be able to do the work?
- Feel a loss of power and control
- Need to learn new rules and routines each time they change schools
- Need to become familiar with next texts and materials
- May miss large parts of sequential curriculum necessary for academic success
- Need to adapt to new curricula, different teaching methods and new learning groups
- Need to go through an assessment process, often with unfamiliar material or subject matter
- Tend to go through an adaptation process over a period of time:
- contact... feeling excited about exploring the new setting
- disintegration... contrasting the old and new environments and feeling disoriented, isolated and depressed
- reintegration... rejecting the new environment and feeling anxious, angry suspicious, or hostile
- autonomy... regaining balance and feeling less of an outsider as confidence returns
- independence... accepting and appreciating differences between the environment as adjustment is made (Adler, 1975; Walling, 1990)
Long Term Effects of Migrancy
- Changing schools affects different students in different ways. Negative effects are often the result of many interacting factors, of which migrancy is one. Recent research indicates that changing schools contributes to poorer grades, regardless of income level.
- For frequent movers (three or more moves by grade 6):
- The more frequent the change of schools, the poorer the grades
- There is less likelihood of accessing special services
- Attendance goes down as the number of moves goes up
- There is more likelihood of repeating a grade
- Self-esteem goes down
- There are often feelings of anger, fear, depression, helplessness, isolation and insecurity
- It becomes difficult to form real friendships with other students
- Classroom behaviour may deteriorate and gradually become more aggressive or withdrawn
- There is a higher risk of dropping out of school
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