The research involved examining the nature of the transition that students experienced in progressing to junior high school from primary school. Students' experiences were chosen as the focus of the research because the issue of substance being investigated was that of alienation. The main methodology that was used was the qualitative procedure of discourse analysis, implemented over a 3-year period. This report describes the findings from the first year of the study. The key findings of the research include the establishment of critical concerns of students. These critical concerns were articulated as psychological sense of community categories of interest, with positive and negative discourse descriptors being developed according to an analysis of students' descriptions of social regularities. The categories of interest were arranged into a sequential pattern that described pathways to increasing commitment or alienation. (Contains 3 figures and 5 tables.)