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Image taken from theleap.co.uk  Citation: King, Andrew. “Minding the Gap? Young People’s Accounts of Taking a Gap Year as a Form of Identity Work in Higher Education.” Journal of Youth Studies , vol. 14, no. 3, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011, pp. 341–57, doi:10.1080/13676261.2010.522563. Summary: This study consists of a series of interviews with people who took a gap year before entering university within the last 5 years. The goal of this study was to better understand how these people perceive the value of their gap year, with respect to their academic and professional careers. The author, Andrew King, is a professor in sociology at the University of Surrey who spent his doctoral research examining the young people's transition to adulthood, particularly in regards to the phenomenon of the gap year. The results of the study showed that most people who take a gap year believe they were able to achieve higher levels of emotional maturity and independence compared to their fellow

Article taken from Volume 25 of Research in Post-Compulsory Education Citation: van der Zanden, Petrie J. A. C., et al. “Fostering Critical Thinking Skills in Secondary Education to   Prepare Students for University: Teacher Perceptions and Practices.” Research in Post-Compulsory Education , vol. 25, no. 4, Routledge, 2020, pp. 394–419, doi:10.1080/13596748.2020.1846313. Summary: This study consisted of a series of semi-formal interviews with nine secondary school teachers asking them to evaluate the "critical thinking" skills they saw as important to succeeding in post-secondary education. The primary contributor for this study, Petrie van der Zanden, is a postdoctoral researcher for the Teachers Academy, located in the Netherlands, with a particular interest in how teachers affect student growth in critical thinking. The other contributors are all professors involved in varying fields of study including behavioral science, developmental psychology, and teacher education. 

Research Question The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has left many students worried about their academic futures. Changes in family finances have forced students to take a gap year or outright drop out of school in order to seek out minimum wage jobs. And even students in more secure financial positions have had to deal with increased anxiety and stress over college now that campuses have shifted to online instruction, pushing them further into considering taking a break from college. During these uncertain times, it would be prudent to analyze this issue as thoroughly as possible. What are the vectors that determine why students take a gap year, drop out, or transfer to another school? How do these decisions affect the trajectory of students’ academic and professional careers, and are these changes in trajectory necessarily a bad thing? How do divisions of class, gender, and race affect this trajectory? Potential Sources: Lichtenberger, Eric, and Cecile Dietrich. “The Community Colle

Where things stand right now After some consideration I decided to go with my first research proposal, since it is more personal to me and has a lot more avenues to pursue. I am sure the history of college will remain relevant to the discussion of college gap years and dropping out regardless. I have also considered narrowing my research topic to exclude college transfers. I think all three topics (gap years, dropping out, transferring) are somewhat interconnected and can bring about an interesting synthesis of ideas, but I am worried I'm taking too broad of an approach that can leave all three topics underdeveloped in the final research paper. Researching articles Using just some general keywords like "dropping out," "transferring college," and "gap year," I was able to find a lot of useful information for my research paper. A lot of the articles I saw related to students taking gap years or even dropping out due to COVID-19, for both financial and pe