روح الله مهدیون

The present study aimed to determining the role of senior high schools in the preparation of students to transfer to university. By using an exploratory mixed method approach, we combined qualitative content analysis with descriptive quantitative method. In the qualitative part, the study population includes 9929 senior high school teachers of Tabriz and 891 professors of Tabriz University, and in the quantitative part, it includes 2013 students of Tabriz University in the academic year 2019-2020. The participants of the qualitative part are 16 people and the quantitative part is 325 people based on the Krejcie- Morgan, which was selected by simple random sampling. In order to collect data in the qualitative part, a semi-structured interview, and in the quantitative part, a researcher-made questionnaire based on the findings of the qualitative part was used. The reliability of the quantitative part by using the internal reliability of 0.93. For data analysis, colaizzi's method analysis was used in the qualitative part,and descriptive and inferential statistics tests (Friedman's ranking and sample TT) were used in the quantitative part. Based on qualitative findings, the role of senior high schools in preparing students for transfer to university included academic adaptation, environmental adaptation, individual-emotional adaptation, pre-transitional preparation, and organizational-managerial factors of educational system. The findings of the quantitative part from perspective of the first-year students, indicated status quo of organizational-managerial factors of educational system, pre-transitional preparation, and individual-emotional adaptation was unfavorable while factors of academic and environmental adaptation had moderate situation. According to the results of Friedman test, environmental adaptation was in the highest rank followed by academic adaptation, organizational-managerial factors of educational system, individual-emotional adaptation, and pre-transitional preparation in the next ranks. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, in this study, caused different aspects of preparing students for transfer to university through senior high schools were identified, and finally, solutions for preparing students to university were presented.