Helping students reappraise concerns about fitting in at the start of middle school

Without social and emotional support, adolescent students who have recently made the difficult transition to middle school experience decreased social belonging, waning academic performance, and increased risk of dropping out. 

This randomized field trial, conducted at scale across a Midwestern school district, reveals how a psychologically precise intervention for students supported transitioning sixth graders. Intervention materials taught students that middle school adversity is common, short-lived, and due to external, temporary causes rather than personal inadequacies. As a result, students realized improved social and psychological well-being, fewer absences and disciplinary infractions, and higher grade point averages. Implemented at scale, this intervention holds potential to help to address the widespread academic underperformance by the nation’s transitioning middle school students.

The period of early adolescence is characterized by dramatic changes, simultaneously affecting physiological, psychological, social, and cognitive development. The physical transition from elementary to middle school can exacerbate the stress and adversity experienced during this critical life stage. Middle school students often struggle to find social and emotional support, and many students experience a decreased sense of belonging in school, diverting students from promising academic and career trajectories. 

Drawing on psychological insights for promoting belonging, the authors fielded a brief intervention designed to help students reappraise concerns about fitting in at the start of middle school as both temporary and normal. They conducted a district-wide double-blind experimental study of this approach with middle school students (n = 1,304). 

Compared with the control condition activities, the intervention reduced sixth-grade disciplinary incidents across the district by 34%, increased attendance by 12%, and reduced the number of failing grades by 18%. Differences in benefits across demographic groups were not statistically significant, but some impacts were descriptively larger for historically underserved minority students and boys. A mediational analysis suggested 80% of long-term intervention effects on students’ grade point averages were accounted for by changes in students’ attitudes and behaviors. 

These results demonstrate the long-term benefits of psychologically reappraising stressful experiences during critical transitions and the psychological and behavioral mechanisms that support them. Furthermore, this brief intervention is a highly cost-effective and scalable approach that schools may use to help address the troubling decline in positive attitudes and academic outcomes typically accompanying adolescence and the middle school transition.