Let F q be the finite field with q elements, where q is a power of a prime. We discuss recursive methods for constructing irreducible polynomials over F q of high degree using rational transformations. In particular, given a divisor D > 2 of q + 1 and an irreducible polynomial f ∈ F q [x] of degree n such that n is even or D ≡ 2 (mod 4), we show how to obtain from f a sequence {f i } i≥0 of irreducible polynomials over F q with deg(f i ) = n · D i .