Academic Failure and Dropout: Untangling Two Realities
Belén Gutiérrez-de-Rozas
,
Elvira Carpintero Molina
,
Esther López-Martín
Academic failure and school dropout, or early school leaving, are two of the situations that most concern countries and educational institutions world.
- Pub. date: October 15, 2022
- Pages: 2275-2289
- 1197 Downloads
- 1545 Views
- 2 Citations
Academic failure and school dropout, or early school leaving, are two of the situations that most concern countries and educational institutions worldwide, because of their prevalence and also their economic and social implications. Despite this prominent role that academic failure and school dropout have in societies, there seems to be no consensus on the literature on their conceptualization, definition, and relationship. Moreover, it is frequent to observe how both concepts are confused or overlap in the scientific literature and how many authors avoid defining these constructs, using them indistinctly. Therefore, this work analyses whether educational research considers them as two different concepts or if they are used indistinctly. For this purpose, 2,051 keywords from 450 articles were subjected to a systematic review and classified into the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) thesaurus´ descriptors. The results reveal statistically significant differences in the descriptors according to the type of paper to which they correspond (academic failure or dropout). Thus, academic failure is associated with sociocultural, personal, and academic factors, while dropout is linked to employment and educational trajectories. These differences evidence that, although academic failure and school dropout refer to closely related educational problems, there are remarkable differences between them and between the treatment given to each of them in the scientific literature. Therefore, they should be considered as two different concepts. For all this, keyword analysis has proved to be a relevant element for the study of the structure of knowledge, allowing to clearly establish the differences between the two closely related concepts.
Keywords: Academic failure, bibliometric analysis, dropouts, keyword analysis, systematic review.
References
Ajjawi, R., Dracup, M., Zacharias, N., Bennett, S., & Boud, D. (2020). Persisting students’ explanations of and emotional responses to academic failure. Higher Education Research & Development, 39(2), 185-199. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1664999
Álvarez, C. S., & Vidal, R. G. (2013). Diseño y validación de un cuestionario sobre fracaso escolar en alumnado de educación secundaria de un centro de formación de personas adultas [Design and validation of a questionnaire on school failure among secondary school students in an adult education centre]. Revista Electrónica "Actualidades Investigativas en Educación", 13(1), 1-24. https://doi.org/10.15517/aie.v13i1.11716
Angelkoska, S., Stankovska, G., & Dimitrovski, D. (2016, June 14-17). The personal characteristics predictors of academic success [Paper presentation]. Annual International Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Antelm Lanzat, A. M., Gil López, A. J., Cacheiro González, M. L., & Pérez Navío, E. (2018). Causas del fracaso escolar: Un análisis desde la perspectiva del profesorado y del alumnado [Causes of school failure: An analysis from the teachers' and pupils' perspective]. Enseñanza & Teaching: Revista Interuniversitaria de Didáctica, 36(1), 129-149. https://doi.org/10.14201/et2018361129149
Arranz, M. (1995). Palabras clave, descriptores y recuperación de la información [Keywords, descriptors and information retrieval]. Gaceta Sanitaria, 9(50), 321-322. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0213-9111(95)71256-0
Aydin, G. (2017). Personal factors predicting college student success. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, (69), 93-112. https://bit.ly/3d3Khj0
Bergdahl, N., Nouri, J., Fors, U., & Knutsson, O. (2020). Engagement, disengagement and performance when learning with technologies in upper secondary school. Computers & Education, 149, Article 103783. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103783
Bowers, A. J., & Sprott, R. (2012). Why tenth graders fail to finish high school: A dropout typology latent class analysis. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 17(3), 129-148. https://doi.org/10.1080/10824669.2012.692071
Bozkurt, A., & Durak, G. (2018). A systematic review of gamification research: In pursuit of Homo Ludens. International Journal of Game-Based Learning, 8(3), 15-33. https://doi.org/10.4018/IJGBL.2018070102
Bratt, S. (2018). Digital library keyword analysis for visualization education research: Issues and recommendations. Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, 10(4), 595-611. https://doi.org/10.1108/JARHE-03-2018-0047
Calle-Alonso, F., Botón-Fernández, V., Sánchez-Gómez, J., Vega-Rodríguez, M., Pérez, C., & Mata, D. (2018). Word clouds as a learning analytic tool for the cooperative e-learning platform neuroK. In B.M. McLaren, R. Reilly, S. Zvacek, & J. Uhomoibhi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education, vol. 2 (pp. 508-513). SciTePress. https://doi.org/10.5220/0006816505080513
Carreira, P., & Lopes, A. S. (2018, June 28-29). Pathways of adult student-workers in higher education: Explaining the risks of early dropout, late dropout and graduation [Paper presentation]. XXVII Meeting of the Economics of Education Association, Barcelona, Spain.
Chan, L. M. (2000). Exploiting LCSH, LCC, and DDC to retrieve networked resources: Issues and challenges. In A. M. Sandberg-Fox (Ed.), Proceedings of the Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium: Confronting the Challenges of Networked Resources and the Web. Library of Congress.
Choi, J., & Kang, W. (2014). Themes and trends in Korean educational technology research: A social network analysis of keywords. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 131, 171-176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.04.099
Clandinin, D. J., Steeves, P., & Caine, V. (Eds.). (2013). Composing lives in transition: A narrative inquiry into the experiences of early school leavers. Emerald Group Publishing.
Cobo, M. J., López-Herrera, A. G., Herrera-Viedma, E., & Herrera, F. (2011). An approach for detecting, quantifying, and visualizing the evolution of a research field: A practical application to the Fuzzy Sets Theory field. Journal of Informetrics, 5(1), 146-166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2010.10.002
Cornelius-Ukpepi, B. U., Ndifon, R. A., & Sunday, I. O. (2019). Socio-cultural diversity as determinant of social studies students' academic performance in Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. Educational Research and Reviews, 14, 688-696.
Delors, J. (1996). Learning: The treasure within. Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the twenty-first century. UNESCO. https://doi.org/10.7788/ijbe.1996.24.1.253
Dupéré, V., Leventhal, T., Dion, E., Crosnoe, R., Archambault, I., & Janosz, M. (2015). Stressors and turning points in high school and dropout: A stress process, life course framework. Review of Educational Research, 85(4), 591-629. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654314559845
Ellegaard, O., & Wallin, J. A. (2015). The bibliometric analysis of scholarly production: How great is the impact? Scientometrics, 105, 1809-1831. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1645-z
European Commission. (2019). Education and Training MONITOR 2019. Publications Office of the European Union. https://bit.ly/3KAQwaz
European Commission, EACEA, Eurydice, & Cedefop. (2014). Tackling early leaving from education and training in Europe: Strategies, policies and measures. Eurydice and Cedefop Report. Publications Office of the European Union. https://bit.ly/3Le6UOj
Eurostat. (2022). Early leavers from education and training. https://bit.ly/3wIFc6s
Fernández Batanero, J. M. (2011). Abandono escolar y prácticas educativas inclusivas [School dropout and inclusive education practices]. Revista Latinoamericana de Educación Inclusiva, 5(2), 43-58. https://bit.ly/3Q8GY7E
Fernández Enguita, M., Mena Martínez, L., & Riviére Gómez, J. (2010). Fracaso y abandono escolar en España [Academic failure and school dropout in Spain]. Fundación la Caixa. https://bit.ly/3cxCABk
Fernández González, J. J., & Rodríguez Pérez, J. C. (2008). Los orígenes del fracaso escolar en España. Un estudio empírico [The origins of academic failure in Spain. An empirical study]. Mediterráneo Económico, (14), 323-349. https://bit.ly/3Rf6ZmO
Field, S., Kuczera, M., & Pont, B. (2007). Education and training policy no more failures ten steps to equity in education: Ten steps to equity in education. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264032606-en
Gil-Leiva, I., & Alonso-Arroyo, A. (2005). La relación entre las palabras clave aportadas por autores de artículos de revista y su indización en las bases de datos ISOC, IME e ICYT [The relationship between the keywords provided by authors of journal articles and their indexing in the ISOC, IME and ICYT databases]. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 28(1), 62-79. https://bit.ly/3ecGHTZ
Gil López, A. J., Antelm-Lanzat, A. M., Cacheiro-González, M. L., & Pérez-Navío, E. (2018). School dropout factors: A teacher and school manager perspective. Educational Studies, 45(6), 756-770. https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2018.1516632
Gross, T., Taylor, A. G., & Joudrey, D. N. (2015). Still a lot to lose: The role of controlled vocabulary in keyword searching. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 53(1), 1-39. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2014.917447
Gümüş, S., Şükrü Bellibaş, M., Gümüş, E., & Hallinger, P. (2019). Science mapping research on educational leadership and management in Turkey: A bibliometric review of international publications. School Leadership & Management, 40(1), 23-44. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2019.1578737
Hsieh-Yee, I. (1998). Search tactics of web users in searching for texts, graphics, known items and subjects. The Reference Librarian, 28(60), 61-85. https://doi.org/10.1300/J120v28n60_05
Hubert, G., & Mothe, J. (2009). An adaptable search engine for multimodal information retrieval. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(8), 1625-1634. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21091
Hwang, M. H., Lee, D., Lim, H. J., Seon, H. Y., Hutchison, B., & Pope, M. (2014). Academic underachievement and recovery: Student perspectives on effective career interventions. The Career Development Quarterly, 62(1), 81-94. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-0045.2014.00072.x
Kaplan, D. S., Peck, B. M., & Kaplan, H. B. (1997). Decomposing the academic failure–dropout relationship: A longitudinal analysis. The Journal of Educational Research, 90(6), 331-343. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.1997.10544591
Kiran, F., & Javaid, A. (2020). Students' perceptions of factors for academic failure in pre-clinical years of a medical school. Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association, 70(5), 803-808. https://doi.org/10.5455/JPMA.19548
Lorenzo Socorro, S., Escandell Bermúdez, M. O., & Castro Sánchez, J. J. (2015). Teachers’ opinions of student dropout from formal music education centres of the Canary Islands. Music Education Research, 18(3), 295-304. https://doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2015.1095719
Lu, C., Park, J., & Hu, X. (2010). User tags versus expert-assigned subject terms: A comparison of library thing tags and library of congress subject headings. Journal of Information Science 36(6), 775-776. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551510386173
Macedo, B., & Katzokiwicz, R. (2002). Educación secundaria: Balance y prospectiva [Secondary education: Balance and prospective]. In Oficina Regional de la UNESCO para América Latina y el Caribe (Ed.) ¿Qué educación secundaria para el siglo XXI? [What secondary education for the 21st century?]. (pp. 123-162). UNESCO. https://bit.ly/3e5iXkB
Marchesi, Á. (2003). El fracaso escolar en España [Academic failure in Spain]. Fundación Alternativas-Documento de Trabajo 11/2003. https://bit.ly/3TxSEUz
Martínez García, J. S. (2009). Fracaso escolar, PISA y la difícil ESO [Academic failure, PISA and the difficult ESO]. Revista de Sociología de la Educación, 2(1), 56-85. https://bit.ly/3D1HyRZ
Martínez-Otero, V. (2009). Investigación y reflexión sobre condicionantes del fracaso escolar [Research and reflection on determinants of academic failure]. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Educativos, 39(1), 11-38. https://bit.ly/3wIQd7J
McCutcheon, S. (2009). Keyword vs. controlled vocabulary searching: The one with the most tools wins. The Indexer, 27(2), 62-65. https://doi.org/10.3828/indexer.2009.21
Mora, T., Escardíbul, J. O., & Espasa, M. (2010). The effects of regional educational policies on academic failure in Spain. Applied Economic Analysis/Revista de Economía Aplicada, 18(54), 79-106. https://bit.ly/3BfTz4A
Muñoz Martín, B. (2016). Descriptores y palabras clave [Descriptors and keywords]. Revista ORL, 7(3), 179-183. https://doi.org/10.14201/201673.14814
National Center for Education Statistics. (2022a). Trends in High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: Indicator 1: Event Dropout Rate. https://bit.ly/3ebCVdm
National Center for Education Statistics. (2022b). Trends in High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: Indicator 2: Status Dropout Rate. https://bit.ly/3CL9FEB
Online Computer Library Center. (2009). Online catalogs: What users and librarians want: An OCLC report. OCLC Online Computer Library Center. https://bit.ly/3Kx7dDI
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2008). Education at a Glance. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/eag-2008-en
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2012). Equity and quality in education: Supporting disadvantaged students and schools. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264130852-en
Pascual Barrio, B., & Amer Fernández, J. A. (2013). Los debates sobre el fracaso y el abandono escolar. Las propuestas educativas internacionales y españolas [Debates on academic failure and school dropout. International and Spanish educational proposals]. Práxis Sociológica, (17), 137-156.
Pérez-Esparrells, C., & Morales Sequera, S. (2012). El fracaso escolar en España: Un análisis por Comunidades Autónomas [Academic failure in Spain: An analysis by Autonomous Communities]. Revista de Estudios Regionales, (94), 39-69. https://bit.ly/3AyaPkh
Radhakrishnan, S., Erbis, S., Isaacs, J. A., & Kamarthi, S. (2017). Novel keyword co-occurrence network-based methods to foster systematic reviews of scientific literature. PLOS ONE 12(3), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0172778
Rojas-Barreto, L. S., & Artunduaga-Cuellar, M. T. (2018). Students and teachers' causal attributions to course failure and repetition in an ELT Undergraduate Program. English Language Teaching, 11(5), 39-54. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v11n5p39
Romero Sánchez, E., & Hernández Pedreño, M. (2019). Análisis de las causas endógenas y exógenas del abandono escolar temprano: Una investigación cualitativa [Analysis of endogenous and exogenous causes of early school dropout: A qualitative research]. Educación XX1, 22(1), 263-293, https://doi.org/10.5944/educxx1.21351
Sarra, A., Fontanella, L., & Di Zio, S. (2019). Identifying students at risk of academic failure within the educational data mining framework. Social Indicators Research, 146, 41-60. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-018-1901-8
Simpson, C., Baker, K., & Mellinger, G. (1980). Conventional failures and unconventional dropouts: Comparing different types of university withdrawals. Sociology of Education, 53(4), 203-214. https://doi.org/10.2307/2112529
Soares, D., & Almeida, L. S. (2019). Para além da nota: Definição de perfis de sucesso e fracasso escolar [Beyond the grade: Defining school success and failure profiles]. Psicologia Escolar e Educacional, 23, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1590/2175-35392019013894
Soler Monreal, C., & Gil-Leiva, I. (2011). Evaluation of controlled vocabularies by inter-indexer consistency. Information Research: An International Electronic Journal, 16(4). https://bit.ly/3pZwcWB
Staiculescu, C., & Richiteanu-Nastase, E. A. (2018). University dropout. Causes and solution. Mental Health: Global Challenges Journal, 1(1), 71-75. https://doi.org/10.32437/mhgcj.v1i1.29
Stearns, E., & Glennie, E. J. (2006). When and why dropouts leave high school. Youth & Society, 38(1), 29-57. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X05282764
Tang, K. Y., Chou, T. L., & Tsai, C. C. (2020). A content analysis of computational thinking research: An international publication trends and research typology. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 29(1), 9–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-019-00442-8
Tinto, V. (1975). Dropout from higher education: A theoretical synthesis of recent research. Review of Educational Research, 45(1), 89-125. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543045001089
Tsay, M. Y. (2011). A bibliometric analysis on the journal of Information Science. Journal of Library and Information Science Research, 5(2), 1-28.
United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. United Nations. https://bit.ly/3CJnAuO
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (2016). No dejar a nadie atrás: ¿cuánto falta para la educación primaria y secundaria universal? [Leaving no one behind: How far to go to universal primary and secondary education?]. https://bit.ly/3R9UOrJ
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (2022). UNESCO Thesaurus: Academic failure. https://bit.ly/3KxxmC8
Valkov, P. (2018). School dropout and substance use: Consequence or predictor? Trakia Journal of Sciences, 16(2), 95-101. https://doi.org/10.15547/tjs.2018.02.004
Van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2010). Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics, 84, 523-538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0146-3
Vaquero García, A. (2005). El abandono escolar temprano en España: Programas y acciones para su reducción [Early school leavers in Spain: Programmes and actions for their reduction]. Revista Galega do Ensino, 13(47), 1443-1464.
Wood, L., Kiperman, S., Esch, R. C., Leroux, A. J., & Truscott, S. D. (2017). Predicting dropout using student-and school-level factors: An ecological perspective. School Psychology Quarterly, 32(1), 35-49. https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000152
Wu, J. F. (2018). A bibliometric analysis of picture book research between 1993 and 2015. Reading Psychology, 39(5), 413-441. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2018.1451419