Interrupted Lessons: Teacher Views of Transfer Student Education

Abstract

This study examines how teachers teach when transfer students enter their classrooms during the school year. Eight schools participated, two from each of four community types: agricultural, military, urban, and stable. According to the teachers, transfer students experience learning problems because schools use different curricula and new students miss instruction while adjusting. However, these beliefs about the impact of transfer did not predict strategies teachers used to identify and address educational needs of transfer students. Most teachers outside agricultural communities planned their teaching as if their entire class remained with them from September to June even though as many as 50% of their students would transfer schools. The inconsistency of teacher beliefs and strategies may be due to teacher goals for integrating new students into classwork, to the limits teachers set to their responsibility for transfer students’ education, and to an assumption of population stability that underlies the educational system.