Pupil school mobility – a scoping review and reconceptualisation of a complex phenomenon

This paper presents findings from a scoping review of pupil school mobility – children moving school outside standard promotional and structural transitions – and proposes a framework for reconceptualising the phenomenon. Pupil school mobility has been identified as a risk factor for negative educational outcomes, but much depends on the context and circumstances around the move(s). The literature on pupil school mobility is dispersed across multiple disciplinary and topic areas and has therefore not yet reached the stage of having a comprehensive framework to guide research, theory and practice. In this paper, we address this gap by bringing together and mapping the literature on pupil school mobility. We explore the scope and profile of current research, the words and distinctions used by researchers to describe pupil school mobility, and the circumstances and outcomes associated with pupil school mobility in the literature. We furthermore identify key contextual factors impacting children’s mobility-related experiences and outcomes. Based on findings from the scoping review, we propose a reconceptualisation of pupil school mobility which: (1) extends existing theory to more comprehensively include the many different types and circumstances of pupil school mobility, (2) acknowledges that many different contextual factors “matter” to experiences and outcomes of pupil school mobility, and (3) moves away from the current dominant deficit approach to pupil school mobility, acknowledging that it is fairly common for children to move school outside standard, promotional transitions, and that this may both reflect inequalities and challenges, but also, for some, offer potential opportunities and benefits.