Examining the school adjusment of 9th grade students: A mixed method study

The main purpose of this study is to determine the school adjustment levels of ninth-grade students who have just started secondary education, to monitor the development and change of students' school adjustment levels over time, and to examine whether various factors have an effect on this development and change process. Within the scope of this purpose, the study was carried out by using the exploratory sequential mixed method design. In accordance with this pattern, firstly, focus group interviews were conducted with 53 ninth- grade students studying at 8 different high schools, and the factors affecting students' school adjustment were examined based on student opinions. As a result of the focus group interviews, it was found that belief about success, being happy at school, not having a close friend in the high school, distance from school to home, school size, and student accommodation were the factors affecting students' school adjustment. After the focus group interviews, a school adjustment scale was developed to determine the school adjustment levels of high school students. In the scale development process, 519 students were applied for exploratory factor analysis and 602 students for confirmatory factor analysis. As a result of the analysis, a structure with satisfactory psychometric properties consisting of two sub-dimensions, social adjustment, and academic adjustment was obtained. In the last stage of the study, the change and development of school adjustment levels over time was followed by applying the school adjustment scale developed in the second phase of the study to a total of 719 ninth-grade students studying at 6 different high schools at the beginning, middle and end of their first semester of high school. In addition, it was examined whether of gender, participation in the school adjustment week, peer support obtained from relevant literature and belief about success, being happy at school, not having a close friend in the high school, distance from school to home, school size, and student accommodation obtained from focus group interviews had an effect on school adjustment by using linear mixed model. It was found that students adjust quickly to school and the adjustment process of the students differs according to the school type, the change, and development of the school adjustment levels of the Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School students over time were significantly lower than the students from Anatolian high schools that accept students by local placement or a high school that accepts students with a central exam score. Based on this finding, whether the factors obtained from the relevant literature and focus group interviews had an effect on school adjustment processes were examined separately for three school types. Although students' opinions were obtained in the focus group interviews that the distance to the school, the size of the school, and the student accommodation affect the school adjustment, it was found that these features did not affect the school adjustment process at the quantitative stage. In addition, it was seen that attending the school adjustment week did not have a significant effect on the school adjustment process of the students. In support of the findings obtained from the focus group interviews, it was determined that having close friends at the school settled, belief in success and being happy at school affect school adjustment at the quantitative level. It was observed that the effect of peer support and gender also differs according to school types, but primarily affects social adjustment to school. The findings from the three studies were brought together in the light of the relevant literature and discussed together, and suggestions were made for various stakeholders, especially researchers, practitioners, and policy makers, in line with the results.