In this paper, we aim to contribute greater understanding of young people’s sense of competence, autonomy and relatedness during the primary-secondary-schooling transition, from the perspective of the young people themselves in the English schooling-system. This perspective is vital, given the relative lack of attention given to young people’s own experiences and views in educational research (Hargreaves, 2017). We draw on their perspectives to address the research question of how the words of children transitioning from primary to secondary can contribute further to Ryan and Deci’s Self Determination Theory (SDT; Ryan and Deci, 2000). This theory claims that satisfaction of a person’s needs for competence (attainment and confidence), autonomy (self-direction and capacity to critique) and relatedness (feeling affectively bonded to others) allows them to achieve rich learning and ‘positive-experience and wellness outcomes’ (Ibid., 2019, p.219), ultimately supporting their capacity for self-determination in learning and more broadly. Satisfaction of each of the three needs contributes in a particular way to positive-experience and wellness outcomes, whereas frustration of any of the three contributes in specific ways to negative experiences. In this article, we seek to explore how the perceived needs for a sense of competence, autonomy and relatedness are described by children as they experience a stage of their lives of potentially increased academic, social and psychological pressures: transition from primary to secondary-school (from Year 6 to Year 7, ages 10–12 years).

Our rationale for selecting SDT as our theoretical framework is our perception that the English schooling-system does not currently support young people’s self-determination sufficiently (Fielding and Moss, 2010; Riley, 2019). Through data from the two research projects investigated in this article (Moving-Up; and Children’s Life-histories In Primary/Secondary-schools (CLIPS)), we explore Ryan and Deci’s claims that schooling-systems the world-over emphasise behaviour that does not conduce to positive-experience or wellness outcomes:

Indeed, despite recent studies reviewed below, Ryan and Deci claim that investigating how to fulfil perceived needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness has been relatively neglected in educational research (Ibid., p.137) and this applies to transition studies as well. They emphasise that SDT is not just a theory for psychologists but one that relates to sociological concerns such as schooling-systems and social justice more widely (p.142).

Here we primarily conceptualise primary-secondary-school transitions as a longitudinal adaptation by students to a new school-setting and new phase of their lives, which cannot be understood only as occurring psychologically within the individual. Particularly against the backdrop of Covid and lockdowns, we fully agree with Jindal-Snape (2022) that primary-secondary transitions are not only impacted by changes to the student’s ecosystem or environment, but are also social transitions and, therefore, multidimensional due to overlapping multiple transitions within a student’s life and the lives of others around them (for instance, in and out of Covid lockdowns).

The primary-secondary transition is one educational stage at which support for basic needs may be particularly crucial to ensure what Ryan and Deci (2019) call ‘positive-experience and wellness outcomes’ (p.219). Young people are especially vulnerable at this time to feeling inadequate, lacking in power and isolated (Langenkamp, 2010). SDT suggests that when a child’s perceived needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness are met, this will lead to the positive-experience and wellness outcomes of the child having a strong sense of self-determination including healthy self-functioning, flourishing, integrity, wellbeing or good mental health. These outcomes might be accompanied by excitement, happiness, calmness, and contentedness; foster creativity, imagination and flexible styles of thinking (Helwig, 2006); promote efficient time management; reduce distractions during learning; increase cognitive performance; and be positively related to physical health (Alivernini et al., 2019, p.100).

Below, we explore how SDT has been drawn upon in a few previous transition studies before visiting the concepts of competence, autonomy and relatedness in turn.

A number of meta-reviews of primary-secondary transition literature have highlighted the importance of 1) the school, 2) the individual child and 3) wider contextual factors, in relation to extent of positive-experience outcomes (Evans et al., 2018; Jindal-Snape et al., 2020; Symonds and Galton, 2014). These meta-reviews and Jindal-Snape’s (2021) review of theoretical frameworks highlight that SDT has been used when exploring aspects of primary-secondary transition; and we aim to contribute further to its usefulness. Gillison et al.’s (2008) survey-based study used quality of life (QoL) as a positive outcome of transition of a small cohort of transitioning pupils in rural England. They showed how QoL was positively impacted when perceived needs for autonomy and relatedness were being met, but that QoL measures appeared unrelated to sense of competence. Symonds and Hargreaves’ (2016) small qualitative study, while drawing principally on the more frequently used stage-environment-fit theory (Eccles et al., 1993), uses SDT to show how important teacher-relatedness was in terms of supporting engagement at secondary, both directly by teachers making lessons enjoyable but also indirectly by supporting young people’s perceptions of their own competence and autonomy. Similarly, Symonds and Galton (2014) used SDT as a complement to stage-environment-fit theory to structure part of their review of over 100 studies of primary-secondary transition, with explicit focus on psychological development. Their ‘person-environment interaction framework’ proposed that school transition changed the ‘conditions’ which contributed to children’s striving towards autonomy, competence and relatedness which, in turn, led to differential positive-experience outcomes. Positive teacher- and peer-relatedness were associated with children’s better mental health outcomes. However, the authors highlighted that perceived needs for autonomy varied between children and, although restrictions on autonomy were associated with declining engagement, not all students perceived a need for increased autonomy during transition. Children’s perceived need for competence also varied, depending on how competence was negotiated in their new school. Symonds and Galton (2014) additionally highlighted the risk presented by teachers at the new secondary not having the same wealth of information as those in primary to assess children adequately. This could erode their capacity to relate to the child in ways that were respectful of their culture, interests and preferences.

A perceived need for competence has been interrogated the least of the three basic needs in the extant literature. However, Evans et al. (2018) showed that academic self-concept decreased over the course of transition in some studies, which they attributed to the differences in academic disciplines (e.g. mathematics versus English).

In comparison, more has been interrogated in regard to autonomy. For example, Eccles et al.’s (1993) research in USA, suggested that there can be a fundamental mismatch between transitioning students’ need for autonomy and the environment they find themselves in at secondary, calling for greater adaptation of school contexts to support students’ sense of autonomy. Symonds and Galton (2014) further highlighted that children lost many responsibilities on transfer to secondary and were only slowly given these again, while they were simultaneously subject to greater teacher strictness in many cases, further limiting their perceptions of autonomy. Boone and Demanet (2020) also highlighted a link between academic self-efficacy and autonomy in showing how students transitioning to non-academic tracks in Belgian secondary-schools exhibited both lower engagement and perceptions of control, which the authors linked to teachers’ assessments in primary-school determining which track they enter. In the context of Covid-19 recently, Leaton Gray et al. (2021) show how periods of ‘lockdown’ learning at home during the pandemic led to great differences in transitioning students’ perceptions of autonomy. Whereas some students enjoyed freedoms of timing and more control over the curriculum during periods of learning from home, the restrictions demanded by Covid control measures also contributed to perceptions of less autonomy, particularly once back in school. However, no empirical studies to date, as far as we know, have explored Ryan and Deci’s (2019) mini-theory of Causality Orientations Theory (COT) relating to autonomy in the transition or schooling context (see below).

Relatedness to both peers and teachers has been demonstrated in myriad empirical studies to be fundamental for positive transition experiences. Symonds and Hargreaves (2016) suggested that the trend in most existing studies is for worsening relationships with teachers but improved ones with peers. Indeed, perceptions of peer acceptance, number and quality of friendships – both in primary and on starting secondary – have been associated with quicker adjustment, more resilience, better academic outcomes and better teacher relationships too (Jindal-Snape et al., 2020); although there is some indication that there is less positive projection for lower-attaining students (Langenkamp, 2010). Evidence about relationships with new Year 7 teachers is more complex: studies have highlighted that perceptions of teacher support and enjoyable lessons were linked with higher engagement in learning, better behaviour and academic achievement (Jindal-Snape et al., 2020). Symonds and Hargreaves (2016), however, found that some students held teachers responsible for aspects of secondary they found more problematic, such as difficult homework and discipline policies. Research with students transitioning during Covid-19 (Bagnall et al., 2022; Leaton Gray et al., 2021; Saville et al., 2022 in press) highlights how relational support during students’ transition was reconfigured in multiple ways. Transitioning students appeared to rely on family support much more, where this was available, in the absence of meeting new teachers ahead of starting school. Protective peer relationships were also, in many cases, abruptly ended in primary-school due to lockdown restrictions (Saville et al., 2022 in press), suggesting potential loss of protective effect.

Jindal-Snape et al. (2020, p.548) noted that, despite research studies considering individually the sense of autonomy, relatedness or competence in supporting transition, ‘the relative contribution of these factors and the interplay between them is less clear’. Our work aims to contribute to further clarity. Jindal-Snape and colleagues (2021) suggested that the discourse of almost all the papers which use SDT presented transition as being a negative experience. Therefore, in the present paper, we commit to being open to both negative and positive perspectives.

Jake recognised that positive-experience outcomes were essential for success at secondary-school:

For some children, primary-secondary transition was experienced as an exciting start to something new. In CLIPS, Ryan described how secondary-school was ‘like an evolution of primary-school’. In Moving-Up, despite the disruption posed by Covid-19, students informed us that they were more likely to be as ‘happy’ (our word), or happier, in secondary as they had been at primary. Rating their happiness out of 100, where 50 indicated ‘as happy as at primary’ and 100 indicated ‘more happy in secondary than in primary’, the mean score was 61/100 in Autumn 2020 and 57 in Summer 2021, suggesting a majority of children feeling happier across their first year at secondary than at primary. When asked if secondary was turning out as expected, the scores were similar, with average scores of 64 and 61 (where 50 indicated ‘same as expected’ and 100 ‘much better’ in secondary). Regarding what had been good about starting secondary, the most common response by far was ‘making friends’ (265/299, 89%), followed by ‘learning new subjects’ (214/299, 72%), although a tiny minority claimed that nothing in particular was good about transitioning (13/299, 5%). When asked if anything had surprised them about starting secondary, one third (96/288) actively typed ‘no’ or ‘not really’ and 15 pupils referred to how quickly they had adapted.

In our overall assessment of the 23 children in CLIPS, we perceived that there were seven whose trajectory into secondary-school seemed to have improved their positive-experience outcomes; seven who found school-life less positive; with nine who felt their positive-experiences in secondary remained consistent with those of primary-school. The importance and enjoyment of making new friends through transition was emphasised by all CLIPS children. The same was true for the enjoyment of ‘learning new subjects’ such as Design and Technology (DT), sport, dance and computing which tended to be better catered for at secondary including well-equipped labs or halls. However, as discussed below, this enjoyment did not necessarily spill over to other subjects and CLIPS children were undecided overall as to whether primary or secondary lessons were worse. Eight of the 23 CLIPS children actually looked back longingly at their primary-schools, with Jerry telling us that he would like to do all of primary again because it was ‘such fun’. On the other hand, a few CLIPS children claimed to have ‘hated’ primary, for example Dragon and Joe, who blamed their primary-schools for not having helped them sufficiently.

We did not know the academic scores or attainment groupings of the respondents in Moving-Up, but we knew that all 23 CLIPS respondents had had some difficulties in mathematics/English attainment at the end of Year 3. For 22 of the 23 children, this evidence of reduced competence was also accompanied by their perceived lack of competence (while one child usually decided not to acknowledge this). For example, Joe explained, ‘I’m not as smart as the others. I’m just like really slow’. Therefore, not surprisingly, half of the CLIPS children specifically named the difficulty of work at secondary as something they had feared beforehand, for example Chrystal fearing, ‘Not knowing how good my work is … and people are going to laugh in my face’. However, it is notable that there was no agreement among the participants in either project about the difficulty of the work in secondary. For nearly all children, it seemed that homework was a negative issue related to starting secondary but not necessarily because it was too hard. When we asked Moving-Up participants the least positive aspect of transition, the most common response was ‘homework’ from 57% (167/292); but only a few specified the difficulty or amount of work in general (11/288) when asked what had surprised them about secondary. Indeed, six Moving-Up students said that they found the work easier than expected in secondary. Similarly, among CLIPS children, there were warnings of, ‘Don’t leave your homework to the last minute but do it as fast as you can!’ (Bob); and, ‘[Homework is] really boring, really, really, really, really, super-duper boring’ (Saffa); but they also shared no consensus that it was too hard.

For some of the CLIPS children, academic attainment records at primary may have damaged their academic self-concepts, if not their overall self-confidence. They certainly mostly found themselves in lowest sets in secondary and several were withdrawn into support groups (sometimes during favourite lessons or break, which caused frustration). However, we perceived that at least five of the 23 children sustained their personal self-confidence despite having a relatively low academic self-concept in mathematics and/or English. Mohamed, for example, was confident to be perceived as ‘cool’ rather than smart and confidently saw detentions as contributing to his coolness. However, we did find the children with greatest self-confidence tended to be those with marginally higher attainment and therefore academic self-concept.

We judged that eight CLIPS children persisted throughout transition to lack sense of competence academically, non-academically and in relation to self-confidence. What differentiated them was how they dealt with the potentially painful knowledge of being categorised as less academically competent by the schooling-system. Yet 15 of the CLIPS sample articulated the desire and design to keep trying to improve their competence, including some whom we perceived to have the weakest sense of competence. Four children just carried on with ‘business as usual’ at their new secondary, without paying academic attainment much attention at all. But the final four appeared to feel that there was no point trying anymore and that they no longer cared about academic competence (e.g. Joe and Jeff, below). Only one child prioritised high academic grades as his main motivation in life – above, for example, ‘being kind’, ‘looking after my family’ or ‘being rich’.

It is important to emphasise also CLIPS children’s non-academic sense of competence. Every child had a hobby or school subject in which they felt highly competent, including, for example, nature-study, kick-boxing, football, art, dance or playing computer games. Some had suggested previously that these were unvalued by their schools, for example, Anna telling us, ‘[The teachers] don’t know how good I am at drawing … because I don’t really feel like I have to show my true drawings or identity to the school’.

Relatedness to peers and teachers impacted on children’s experiences of lessons, firstly when being separated from friends in class; and secondly when they perceived many teachers as very strict rather than caring and responsive to their interests and preferences (which would also have supported their autonomy). Several of the CLIPS children explained that sitting away from friends and without emotional connection to the teacher led to many lessons being perceived as boring or irrelevant in secondary-school; while in contrast, at primary-school lessons might have been boring because they were sitting with the same teachers and peers all the time. Britney was indignant when a teacher said, ‘I don’t care about your name, I just care about learning’. CLIPS children also listed many prohibitions imposed by their new secondary-school teachers, some of which they perceived as pointless or unfair and which potentially distanced them from teachers and/or each other and undermined their sense of autonomy and relatedness. Outlawed behaviour included laughing in class, chewing gum, (hair) highlights, earrings, slumping on your desk, using your phone, and touching each other. By the end of Year 7, two CLIPS children had been excluded from two different schools for breaking school rules, presumably having very negative effects on their sense of competence, autonomy and relatedness.

However, although 59% (162/274) of the Moving-Up sample indicated that they missed their primary teachers, comments from some CLIPS children indicated that there were students who were surprised by how kind or approachable their secondary teachers were, more than by how strict they were. For example, despite his multiple detentions, Mohamed explained: ‘It’s nice: the teachers like me and I like the teachers’. Zack advised that, ‘The teachers are usually nice and very understanding’ and he singled out his form-teacher who spoke Bangla as he did. Similarly, Chrystal explained how she became close to the one teacher who had the same colour skin as she did. Britney reported that if you were upset, ‘[Teachers] will ask you how you’re doing, and then if you say like you’re not fine, they will just tell you ‘What’s wrong?’

However, relatedness with peers was the best part of transition for many. There were 100% of the students in Moving-Up who told us they had made friends since starting secondary, with 89% agreeing that this was a positive transition outcome and 14 of them explicitly naming this as surprising. There were just 8% (24/288) who had not found this positive; and 9% (27/288) reported having been bullied. Despite some CLIPS children having worried about making friends before transition (for example, Anna feared ‘nobody liking me and getting laughed at and failing the tests’), Britney reassured next year’s transitioning cohort by revealing:

However, Jake described feeling ‘ashamed and anxious’ without his primary-school friends in Year 7, explaining ‘I feel totally different without them’. Similarly, 62% (170/274) in Moving-Up missed their primary friends with 31% (85/274) missing their primary playtimes.

We became interested in how physical lockdown restrictions that continued (to some extent) in secondaries were affecting students’ opportunities for relatedness at breaktimes. Two-thirds of survey-respondents (88/128) indicated that breaktimes had changed since primary, with only 24% (31/128) saying they now actually played regularly and 31% (39/128) that they never played at breaktimes. However, open-ended Moving-Up responses showed that time was still spent with friends, but ‘chatting’ or ‘hanging out’ instead of more active play, in which case, relatedness may have been enhanced in different ways. Some of the CLIPS children described that they still played football or ping-pong at playtime while others just liked to ‘hang out’, but they lacked equipment for traditional playtime activities that had been popular in Year 6, such as the climbing frame or swings. The reduced length of playtimes that some CLIPS children perceived might also have limited their opportunities.

Findings from our two projects, Moving-Up and CLIPS, have contributed to addressing the gap in educational research referred to by Ryan and Deci (2019), by substantiating – with vivid detail from children’s own words about their experiences – Ryan and Deci’s early claims that schooling-systems emphasise behaviours that may not conduce to positive-experience and wellness outcomes (2019, p.137; see also Jindal-Snape et al., 2021). Our findings support previous studies relating to the disruptive time of the primary-secondary transition, by illustrating the potential benefits of giving policy priority to:

Our findings have provided greater understanding and insight into Ryan and Deci’s Causality Orientation Theory (COT) in the context of transition, indicating that more could fruitfully be practised to develop an Autonomous Orientation among transitioning children (as previously highlighted by Eccles et al., 1993; Gillison et al., 2008). Our CLIPS findings illustrated that those children – the majority – who developed Controlled or Avoidance Orientations, may have done so because their perceived needs for a sense of competence and/or relatedness were not being met. They thereby used up valuable energies in riling against being controlled or avoiding failure and punishment – rather than into learning engagement and positive relationships. This may have put them at an immediate disadvantage as they set out on their secondary-school journeys; and it highlighted the inseparability of the three needs for a sense of competence, autonomy and relatedness (addressing the research gap expressed by Jindal-Snape et al., 2020).

Our combined data-sets also reaffirmed SDT’s emphasis on the fundamental need for a sense of relatedness during the transition process (Jindal-Snape et al., 2020; Symonds and Galton, 2014; Symonds and Hargreaves, 2016). It is encouraging that social bonding had helped most participants enjoy transition whereby ‘making friends’ was reported as the most positive aspect of transitioning. However, to increase young people’s positive-experience and wellness outcomes, those who direct the schooling-system would do well to put in place practices and structures that explicitly support and encourage free and equal relationships among peers. Our data suggested that changes may need to be made, for example, to school social-sites such as playgrounds and eating areas, with more varied equipment for recreational activities and games; and more time allocated to break and lunchtimes.

We revealed more good news about transition – which highlights the inclusive scope of SDT’s ‘sense of relatedness’ – that relationships with teachers were shown to be both crucial and surprisingly good, with many children having experienced caring and considerate teachers. Some CLIPS children also described how just one special teacher could be important in boosting their sense of relatedness and belonging and thereby facilitating the start to secondary-school. However, there were other data suggesting that teachers could be experienced as unnecessarily restrictive which, in keeping with SDT, did not conduce to positive-experience outcomes. This finding may illustrate that teachers themselves also need to feel competent, autonomous and related, and the schooling-system must provide teachers with quality space and time to enable them to support children more fully at a time when they are particularly vulnerable. This could mean Year 7 having a separate building (see Saville et al., 2022 in press); or dividing big schools down into smaller schools on the same site (see Fielding and Moss, 2010); and would certainly mean increased systemic support for teachers’ own positive-experience and wellness outcomes.

Our findings have also addressed a research gap by emphasising the wide scope of SDT’s ‘sense of competence’. Our data have highlighted the negative effects of secondary-schooling focusing too exclusively on the child’s grades in mathematics and/or English and not intensively enough on nurturing the self-confidence aspect of competence and its non-academic aspects. By schooling focusing on the full range of the ‘sense of competence’, more children stand to feel valued and thereby engaged at secondary-school. Several policy strategies suggest themselves in this regard.

Data informing this paper is not currently available publicly.