Positive transitioning to school of resilient grade 1 learners from divorced homes : a participatory visual study

PhD (Psychology), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2018Transitioning to first grade is a milestone event in children’s lives. Although transitioning to formal school is a normative event, it can pose a challenge to some first graders, causing them difficulty in adjusting well. When children transition to formal schooling such as Grade 1 (first grade), they experience changes that may complicate their positive adjustment. Some children find the adjustment stressful. This frames adjusting to formal school as a risk in itself. Additionally, some children are faced with more than just the developmental challenge of adjusting to first grade; there are also additional risks that some first graders are faced with that cause higher vulnerability, like, for example, parental divorce. Such a transitioning first grader needs to cope with adjustment challenges in the school environment along with challenges impacting on the home environment because of the parental divorce. However, some children adjust well to the challenges of first grade and this implies resilience. Resilience is the process of positive adjustment despite the challenge of adversity. Therefore children are seen as resilient when they are able to cope well with school adjustment and additional risks that challenge them. The Social Ecology of Resilience Theory (SERT) explains that resilience is constructed by both the child and the social environment that includes families, schools, and communities. Multiple accounts of resilience in varied contexts of risk attribute resilience to resources in the child and in the social ecology. What resilience theory does not, however, prominently explain, is the resilience-enabling processes that contribute to children’s positive adjustment to first grade despite the additional challenge of parental divorce. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore resilience-enabling processes by establishing why some children adjust well to first grade despite the additional challenge of parental divorce. To do so, a multiple case study (with five first graders) was conducted. Visual participatory methods were used with primary informants as well as semi-structured interviews with them and with secondary informants. This approach provided an intergenerational account that includes children’s and adults’ perspectives. To achieve the aim of this study and to answer the research question, sub-aims (detailed below) were developed. This PhD study includes four manuscripts that each address a sub-aim. Manuscript 1 uses a Scoping Review to explore the existing literature that explains positive adjustment to first grade in general; no studies could be sourced to explain positive adjustment to first grade despite parental divorce. Masten’s Shortlist of Resilience was used to analyse the literature and to identify the protective factors that are facilitated by both the individual and the social ecology and that support positive adjustment to first grade. Based on the findings, it is evident that all six of the short-listed protective factors are apparently facilitative of children’s positive adjustment to first grade. In all instances, children, their families, and/or their school ecologies were co-responsible for the relational, agency, mastery, intelligence, meaning-making, regulatory, and cultural processes that support positive adjustment to first grade. As mentioned above, the Scoping Review reveals a gap in the literature explaining why and how some children adjust well to first grade despite parental divorce. This gap is addressed in Manuscripts 2, 3, and 4. Manuscript 2 focuses on the contributions of first grade teachers in the school ecology and on how they supported children’s positive adjustment to first grade despite parental divorce. Five first graders were the primary informants and their parents (biological and step-parents where applicable) as well as first grade teachers were the secondary informants. Semi-structured interviews (with primary and secondary informants) and visual methods such as Draw-and-talk and Photovoice (with primary informants) were used. This manuscript addresses the gap identified in Manuscript 1, in part, by concluding that the first grade teachers’ ordinary, holistic actions supported children’s development in all developmental domains that contributed to their positive adjustment to first grade despite their parents’ divorce. In Manuscript 2 the focus pertains only to one social ecology – the school specifically. Because of this, the focus in Manuscript 3 is on the significant adults in all the social ecologies who contributed to children’s positive adjustment despite parental divorce. Findings explain the resilience-enabling processes of significant adults to children adjusting well to first grade despite parental divorce. These findings point out how respectful parent relationships contributed to parent collaboration; how open communication channels provided clarity; and how significant adults co-supported the child’s school life. This manuscript concludes with the implications of this study for members of the helping profession who work with children of divorced parents, who are adjusting to first grade. Manuscript 4 contributes to answering the gap in the literature by exploring how the systems rooted in social ecologies enable children’s resilience when their parents are divorced so as to result in their coping well with adjusting to first grade. The article is aimed at School Psychologists (SPs) working in schools to leverage supportive systems enabling positive adjustment to first grade when their parents are divorced. A single instrumental case study is used. The parents and first grade teacher of that case study informant were secondary informants. The same methodology as in the previous Manuscripts was used. Findings point to internal, school, and familial risks and resources that impact on a child’s positive adjustment. I conclude by advocating that SPs working in schools with first graders of divorced parents adjusting to first grade could activate the child’s sense of agency and meaning making, work systemically to engage systems of support, and mobilize systems through task-sharing. Together, these manuscripts address a gap in the literature – its failure to explain from a Social Ecological perspective why or how some first graders adjust well to first grade despite parental divorce. This doctoral study identifies the social-ecological stakeholders who contribute to first graders’ positive adjustment to formal school, as well as children’s own contributions, like their agency, in adjusting well. The implications of the manuscripts address stakeholders, including parent figures and first grade teachers, who need to take action in supportive ways according to what children experience and what they need, to enable positive adjustment to first grade, despite parental divorceDoctora