Educational and Life Transitions research theme in Education and Social Work

The Educational and Life Transitions (E&LT) theme has been focusing on transition across the life course, especially those linked to educational transitions (but by no means exclusive to education)

male student with two primary school girls, building something out of cardboard
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This E&LT research theme aligns with the University's Research Centre for Transformative Change: Educational and Life Transitions (TCELT). The former is a School Academic theme whereas the latter is a university wide centre with added representatives from different Schools across the university. The Centre is hosted within the School of Education and Social Work.

The research in the E&LT theme has highlighted the positive, dynamic and complex nature of transitions with the need to understand them as:

  1. an on-going process
  2. holistic and dynamic (Educational and Life Transitions theory, E&LT)
  3. multiple and multi-dimensional (Multiple and Multi-dimensional Transitions theory, MMT) with changes in identity
  4. requiring on-going support (SN-ABC theory) to ensure the wellbeing of the individual and significant others such as their family, peers and professionals

Current projects

  • Developing a primary-secondary transitions emotional wellbeing scale
  • Multiple and multi-dimensional transitions experiences of people living with neurological conditions and their significant others (Scottish Government funding)
  • COVID-19 and teachers' transitions
  • Using drama to support the health and wellbeing of pupils transitioning to secondary school
  • New medical graduates' transitions (Lisi Gordon CI, CSO funding)
  • Transitions of health care graduates due to COVID-19 (Divya Jindal-Snape PI, CIs from Schools of Nursing, Medicine and Dentistry, Tenovus funding)
  • Analysis of GUS dataset to understand primary-secondary transitions (ScotCen PI, Divya Jondal-Snape CI, Scottish Government funding)

Academic leads

Divya Jindal-Snape
Professor in Community Education
[email protected]
+44 (0)1382 381472

Beth Hannah
Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology
[email protected] 
+44 (0)1382381463

Lisi Gordon
Senior Lecturer
[email protected]

Research supervisors