Ortaöğretimde Okul Terki ve Sosyal Sermaye: Nitel Bir Araştırma
Dropout in Secondary Education and Social Capital: A Qualitative Study
Education is one of the critical factors boosting the development of nations in the current knowledge economy era. Many projects and programs are held by national and supranational organizations to increase matriculation and enrollment rates and length of education. However, school dropout is one of the major challenges that education systems face with. Many factors lead students to drop out. One of them is the outcomes of interpersonal relations that students experience in their families, in schools, and in their communities.
This study aimed to find out the causes of school dropout in the context of social capital. The qualitative descriptive design was adopted for the methodology. An interview form consisting of semi-structured questions was created based on the literature and the opinions of field experts. The data were collected through the interviews with 24 dropout students in Eskişehir, Turkey. These students were selected in accordance with the criterion and snowball sampling methods. It was observed that the vast majority of participants left vocational schools, had low academic achievement, absenteeism problems, and friends who also hadn’t completed high school and/or repeated a grade during secondary education. The thematic analysis method was used during data analysis. To that end, codes, categories, and themes were created. All the voice records and other documents were kept for an audit trail.
Findings are presented under three main themes: family, school, and community social capital. In each theme, there are some factors that challenged student engagement with school and education system and led to dropout. In the context of family social capital, these factors are low educational expectations of the family from student’s education; issues of trust in student-family relations; and the problems of parental participation at school. In school social capital, low expectations of school academic personnel on student’s educational outcomes, the negative effects of peer social groups leading to deviant behaviors and low academic achievement, issues with student-teacher relations, and low efforts on the part of schools to establish close relations with the family to support student educational outcomes are some of the critical problems. Lastly, in community social capital, low educational expectations of the community and the negative effects of social networks between the student and his/her friends outside the school are some of the emerging factors.
According to the results of the study, some proposals were made. First of all, it is observed that most of the participants are disadvantaged in social capital, considering their similar individual characteristics in their current social networks. These networks are generally composed of individuals who left school, had absenteeism and disciplinary problems, had to repeat grades and suffered low academic success. In schools, students are mainly in social networks consisting of low-achieving, grade-repeating, and misbehaving students. In their families, they generally have siblings who dropped out of school or parents whose education level stops before upper secondary education. In communities, students have more powerful social networks with friends out of school.
One of the causes of disadvantaged students finding themselves in similarly disadvantaged social networks could be the high school placement system in Turkey (TEOG). The system separates high-achieving students from low-achieving ones. Students with a similar level of academic success are grouped together in schools. Inevitably, students are placed into similar social networks by demographics, achievement, and aspirations. In this study, most of the students are enrolled in vocational high schools.
Considering these disadvantaged social networks, longitudinal and large-scale researches helping to reveal the groups most at risk for dropping out should be conducted by the relevant authorities in the districts of Eskişehir. Then the all authorities, in collaboration with universities, municipalities, and national education district directorates, should take the indicated necessary actions to decrease dropout rates and raise awareness of negative repercussions of dropping out in high-risk districts.
Secondly, the power of peer groups leading students to act together in school and community is evident. Even students think that school is valuable, because of the friends they make there. However, most of the time, these peer networks produce delinquent behaviors leading to low academic achievement, discipline problems and finally, dropping out. Hence, teachers should create more trust in their interactions with the students to facilitate the identification of student needs and expectations. This would also be helpful for sustaining a positive and healthy school climate by maintaining close relations between family and school. Hence, at-risk schools in particular should take more and effective actions to enhance family participation in schools. In this regard, counseling and guidance services should be optimized to promote student engagement and the school-family partnership.
