Learning on the go: voices of highly mobile urban students

Abstract

Highly mobile students experience schools and learning in different ways than their more stable peers. Repeated transfers result in discontinuity of instruction and relationships with teachers and peers. Interviews with transient urban students in grades 9–12 reveal the issues they face upon their arrival and afterward. Mobile students give insight into perceptions of teacher practice, peer-group induction, receptivity to classroom instruction, and classroom and administrative practices. Findings include fear, loneliness, embarrassment, and anxiety in new settings or when faced with another school change. While students expressed achievement concerns, peer social and emotional concerns were primary immediately following enrollment in a new school. Students found themselves unable to focus on academic studies until they could secure a peer group with which to interact. Implications for high-mobility schools include the need for structures providing transitional services and community-building environments to counteract the negative academic and developmental effects of frequent mobility.