Conference Agenda

International research on student dropout describes its complex nature. In the past, researchers have focused on identifying key characteristics of students who drop out, such as various social, contextual and psychiatric risk factors (Abebe et al., 2015; Ingul et al., 2012). Moreover, researchers have pointed to clear connections between a high degree of truancy and absenteeism among students in primary and lower secondary school and drop out in upper secondary school (Bakken, 2018; Gottfried, 2014). The dropout rate is typically higher among boys compared to girls, among students with minority backgrounds compared to students who belong to the majority culture in a school, and among students with disability compared to those without a disability (Doll et al., 2013) When students drop out of secondary education, there are substantial social and economic consequences that can persist throughout their lives. They are more likely to be unemployed, to become teenage parents, to become involved in the criminal justice system, and to suffer a lifetime of low wages (Ressa & Andrews, 2022). Moreover, school dropouts affect high-income as well as low-income countries (Levin & Belfield, 2007).

The papers in this symposium address research on educational practices in Norway, Spain and Latin-America that aim to provide equitable education by accommodating students’ needs, and thereby prevent dropout and retain students in the school system. Critical questions and comments from the discussant will facilitate discussions on research and practice across the involved countries which will have relevance for a wider audience. The first paper will provide an overview of the existing international research in this area that serves as a basis for the empirical contributions of symposium which explore how school actors (teachers, school leaders) enact policies and engage in collaborations with a range of stakeholders and public services to accommodate the needs of heterogenous student populations. Internationally, researchers describe dropout among students as a complex problem. Therefore, the symposium addresses multi-actor collaboration across levels, institutional boundaries and professions. The work of these actors falls within different regulations, legal statutes, knowledge bases and resources, administrative logics, and traditions. Such collaborative work can potentially address and solve complex problems in specific contexts, but it may also create tensions that require coordination. The papers describe different educational contexts in which the challenges of providing equitable education to heterogeneous student populations are addressed in different ways, reflecting different understandings of inclusion and equity.

In this paper we present findings from an analysis of existing research on strategies to prevent dropout and retain students in secondary education. More knowledge about key characteristics of studies in this field is important because research plays an important role both in the formulation of problems and solutions - both for policy, practice and further research. Our starting point is that "dropout" can be characterised as a policy concept that has gradually become a key element in the governance of secondary education. For this study, we do not take a specific perspective on dropout as our starting point. Instead, we use analytical perspectives on knowledge production (Gunter & Ribbins, 2003) to shed light on the relationship between research, policy, and practice. By categorising the research literature as conceptual, descriptive, humanistic, critical, evaluative or instrumental, we concentrate on both features of the concept and phenomenon under investigation, as well as the research methods and theoretical perspectives used to study the phenomenon. The typologies have been developed to analyse the production of knowledge related to complex phenomena and thus also consider the context in which the knowledge is produced. The articles that make up the data material in the article have been identified through searches inspired by systematic methods in international databases. The aim of the research review is not to provide an exhaustive overview of the research field, but to identify, present and analyse the main features of the field in terms of the disciplines involved, research design and findings (Prøitz, 2023). The research overview can best be described as a 'critical review' (Grant & Booth, 2009), since it aims to shed light on what is being studied, by whom, with which methods and perspectives, as well as the context of the studies. Findings show that research on dropout has mainly concentrated on what characterises students who drop out and the reasons why they do not complete upper secondary education, but that over time there have been contributions from several academic disciplines and with other methods that together contribute to increased knowledge about the complexity of the concept and the phenomenon. Moreover, the perspectives on knowledge production give us a picture of what kind of research dominates and what we may need more of, as well as what the context in which the studies were produced may mean for how we understand the phenomenon.

Grant, M.J. & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 26, 91-108 Gunter, H. & Ribbins, P. (2003). The Field of Educational Leadership: Studying Maps and Mapping Studies. British Journal of Educational Studies, 51, 254-281 Prøitz, T.S. (2023). Forskningsoversikter i utdanningsvitenskap. Fagbokforlaget.

Education is seen as a key to providing pupils with a basis to participate in society, and to ensure jobs. Young people, who do not complete their educations, will have difficulties entering the labour market (Arntzen and Grøgaard, 2012; Bäckman et al, 2015). Over the last 25 years, a range of national policies have been introduced to prevent dropout in upper secondary education. Previous research has shown key characteristics of the students who drop out and several studies have focused on the implementation of national policies. The purpose of the paper is to provide insights into the institutional work at school level to retain students in upper secondary schools. The paper addresses what characterizes the schools and the institutional and strategic work of the actors. The data are collected from six schools which are selected because of low degree of dropouts, which provide an opportunity to pay attention to promising practices. The theory of strategic work constitutes the analytical framework which allows us to delve into the balancing processes of recursiveness and adaptation with a strategy-as-practice approach. Building on Whittington (2006) enables us to explore strategic work from a micro-perspective based on interviews with school leaders and teachers about day-to-day activities, with attention to processes of institutionalized ways of doing things and adaptations that fit the local needs. The analysis explores strategy as situated accomplished activities, what people do rather than what organizations have (Whittington, 2006). Institutional work allows us to investigate actors` purposive actions through creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006 p. 215). The data have been subject to content analysis. Findings reveal that the schools seem to have an extensive space of maneuver. They have created their own organizational designs for how to retain the students which are complex and involves many actors who collaborate within and across several arenas. The analyses show efforts are made to prevent that the organizations are loosely coupled which is perceived to be a threat to dropout. The principals seem to be central agents in the construction of the designs and involvement of several actors with different professions who contribute to the tasks and responsibilities to strengthening the focus on retaining students. The analyses also reveal processes of recursiveness where the schools keep structures and practices that works, but also processes of adaptations where here-and now praxis and the recurring practices are critically examined and developed.

Coburn, C. E. (2004). Beyond decoupling: Rethinking the relationship between the institutional environment and the classroom. Sociology of Education, 77(3), 211–244. doi:10.1177/003804070407700302 Leithwood, K. & Seashore-Louis, K. (2012). Linking Leadership to Student Learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Lawrence, T. B., & Suddaby, R. (2006). Institutions and Institutional Work. In S. R. Clegg, C. Hardy, T. B. Lawrence, & W. R. Nord (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Organization Studies. Sage. Røvik, K. A. (2016). Knowledge Transfer as Translation: Review and Elements of an InstrumentalTheory. International Journal of Management Reviews, 18, 290-310. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12097 Whittington, R. (2006). Completing the practice turn in strategy research. Organization Studies, 27(5), 613–634. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840606064101

This paper focuses on strategies deployed by a secondary school located in a very disadvantaged context to prevent absenteeism and early dropout of students. Diamantino School offers compulsory lower secondary education and is one of four secondary schools officially classified as ‘low-performing’ in Seville. Although about a quarter of the students requires special educational support, the school achieves better rates of promotion and graduation than the schools with similar socioeconomic and cultural index (SECI). Ainscow’s (2005) conceptualization of inclusion is applied as an analytical framework for the data analysis in the sense of a never-ending process of analysis of what works and what does not; the use of evidence of various forms to identify and remove barriers and then create or adapt new methodologies and organisational arrangements, focusing on ‘the presence, participation and achievement of all students’; and putting the emphasis on ‘those groups of learners who may be at risk of marginalisation, exclusion or underachievement’. The study has a qualitative case study design and the analysis draws on various data sources such as semi-structured interviews, key documents, and survey data that are triangulated to provide a rich account on school leaders’ and teachers’ perceptions and practices of inclusion. Findings show that the school implements a long list of strategies to promote inclusion of special-needs students, including: a reinforcement programme for core subjects in 4th grade; flexible groupings for the teaching of English; group split and double –even triple—teaching; support activities arranged with a long list of external collaborating entities; their own curricular adaptations in a large number of lessons; etc. Moreover, an important strategy to prevent absenteeism and dropout is the flexible grouping of students: students can change groups even within the same academic year, and the groups are not the same for all subjects. In addition, a group is split when there is a support teacher, or the group is maintained with two or even three teachers in the class. This job of periodically rearranging the groups is very demanding for the leadership team. For this purpose, the team analyses the learning trajectory of each pupil using multiple criteria and often interviews the family. In conclusion, this case study illustrates how a school has developed strategies to accommodate individual students’ needs in collective group settings.

Ainscow, M. (2005). Developing inclusive education systems: What are the levers for change? Journal of Educational Change, 6, 109-124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10833-005-1298-4.

The paper presents the results from a two-phase study about the diversification of secondary education and the segmentation of education in Latin America. The focus of the study, carried out with the support of ECLAC during 2019 and 2021, were the dynamics of education’s segmentation in extended compulsory schooling settings. By analyzing the expansion of secondary education, this paper outlines historic and contemporary mechanisms that the State has used to extend compulsory schooling, albeit in ways that are segmented and which produce differential effects in terms of the schooling experience of adolescents and young people in the region. In its first phase, the study integrated an analysis of quantitative indicators in thirteen of the region’s countries with an analysis of the structures and institutional models of secondary school in six countries: Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico and Uruguay. The second phase examined the schooling experience of adolescents and young people in diversified structures. General and focus group interviews were conducted among a purposive sample of adolescents and young people regarding their access, trajectory and eventual (temporary or permanent) dropout. Overall, the study’s methodology combined a quantitative analysis of the main educational indicators of secondary education’s evolution in the region with a qualitative analysis of interviews to public officials and researchers (four per country) and to students (a purposive sample of 452 adolescents; 70-100 per country). By comparing the information, a matrix was developed to represent the forms of diversification of secondary education and its relation to educational segmentation. Classical categories were used for the analysis, such as educational segmentation (Ringer, 1979) to characterize the dual dynamic of inclusion and progressiveness (Author, 2017) in combination with more recent developments that allow for the analysis of the segmentation dynamics in the context of the extension of mandatory schooling. These developments include the notions of diversification and differentiation (Ojalehto et al., 2017). The main results indicate a particular form of compulsory secondary education expansion in the region under an extension-diversification pairing. This form of expansion creates at least three tensions: 1) between the laws and regulations intended to guarantee this extension and the actual outcomes for the educational trajectories, 2) between recent government efforts to sustain this extension and the persistence and/or creation of new educational segmentation mechanisms, and 3) between the perceived value of secondary education certification in social life and the relevance of the educational experience.

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