Emotional nourishment begets academic coping during the primary to secondary school transition

Wood, P ORCID: 0000-0002-2727-9342, Putwain, DW ORCID: 0000-0001-5196-4270 and Freitas Fernandes, P (2026) Emotional nourishment begets academic coping during the primary to secondary school transition. British Educational Research Journal (00). pp. 1-19. ISSN 0141-1926

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Abstract

The transition from primary to secondary school is widely viewed as the most demanding in a child's educational journey. Despite a wealth of research on this transition, little is known about the children's ‘lived experience’ of it across different contexts. We target this research void by drawing on semi-structured individual interview data gathered from 24 children (aged 10–12), 12 of whom attend the final year of primary school and so are about to experience the transition, and 12 others who are in the early stages of secondary school and so are currently experiencing the transition. The findings demonstrate that despite holding a range of concerns and worries at primary school, children at secondary school were able to cope with the social, emotional and academic demands that the transition brings through the use of a range of adaptive coping strategies, and that often these abilities were grounded in, and stemmed from the ‘emotionally nourishing’ practices within the primary school they attended. The research contributes to existing knowledge in its demonstration of how the role of emotionally nourishing schools may facilitate the ability to cope with the transition from primary to secondary school.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	13 Education; Education; 39 Education
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General)
Divisions:	Education
Publisher:	Wiley
Date of acceptance:	10 January 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access:	26 January 2026
Date Deposited:	26 Jan 2026 11:40
Last Modified:	26 Jan 2026 11:40
DOI or ID number:	doi.org/10.1002/berj.70119
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/27972

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