Decision-Making Processes Among Potential Dropouts in Vocational Education and Training and Adult Learning

Abstract

Context: Aiming at gaining knowledge about students' thoughts and actions in deciding to stay in or drop out of an educational programme, an empirical study was conducted on dropout among 18-24-year-old students in VET and basic general adult learning.Approach: In order to pursue this aim, the study combined two sets of data: weekly student surveys and interviews with these same students. While the surveys provide a weekly snapshot of the students' thoughts regarding the probability of them continuing in the programme, their satisfaction with the educational programme as a whole, the specific lessons they attend, and the atmosphere at the school, the interviews contribute with detailed descriptions of the students' thoughts on the same matters.Findings: Based on the students' answers over an eight-week period, it was possible to trace a graph illustrating changes in the students' attitudes. These graphs can be placed within four categories of development: the stable, the positive, the unstable, and the negative. The latter can furthermore be differentiated as reflecting a stable decline, a fluctuating decline, or a sudden decline. In the interviews, the aim was to elicit the individual students' thoughts and actions at the points when their graphs took a turn. Conclusions:The findings show that the students' thoughts and actions concern matters both inside and outside the school. Furthermore, seemingly trivial matters in the * Corresponding author: viaa@edu.au.dk ISSN: 2197-8646 http://www.ijrvet.net 112 Aarkrog, Wahlgren, Larsen, Mariager-Anderson, Gottlieb students' lives are shown to have a potentially decisive influence on the students' thoughts about staying in or dropping out of a programme. These findings confirm the importance of focusing on students' decision-making processes in research on dropout. However, further research is needed to increase understanding of processes leading to decisions to drop out of education, including the qualification of methods to capture these processes.

Student engagement at the beginning of vocational studies

“…The purpose was to capture the voices of actual young students. According to Aarkrog, Wahlgren, Larsen, Mariager-Anderson and Gottlieb (2018), seemingly trivial matters can influence students' thoughts and decision making. These cannot be detected by a survey.…”

“…There were strong emotional states connected with learning, with mastering something, and with the sense of being unskilled. Students are sensitive to occurrences at school, even those that might be perceived as trivial (Aarkrog et al, 2018). The following quote illustrates this sensitivity:…”

“…This sub-theme provides insight into various relationships between the social environment, some of which might be perceived as minor (cf. Aarkrog et al, 2018), and student engagement in relation to research question 2. Many students reported that they had previously studied in much smaller classes than were found in vocational education.…”

Early termination of vocational training: dropout or stopout?

“…To do this, students have to begin training and gather information to judge whether they can manage the vocational training in a given training environment. The analysis of Aarkrog et al (2018) is based on such a re-evaluation process and the authors argue that a student continuously revises his or her initial educational decision taking changes in personal circumstances into account. Thus, students are able to detect discrepancies between their initial expectations and actual training circumstances, such as educational and occupational requirements and context (Karmel and Mlotkowski 2010;Snell and Hart 2008).…”

“…For example, there are studies that show that timing is a decisive factor in the decision to drop out (Gury 2011;Mangan and Trendle 2008). Other studies consider factors such as training conditions in the establishment (Karmel and Mlotkowski 2010) or personal characteristics of the student such as education, family background and social conditions (Aarkrog et al 2018;Bishop and Mane 2001;Glaesser 2006). The effects of cognitive ability and personality traits (Eegdeman et al 2018, Volodina 2015, school degrees (Laporte 2013) and adequate prior knowledge (Gubbels et al 2019) are the subjects of additional studies.…”