Call for Contributions to a Special issue on
Comparative perspectives on school attendance, absenteeism, and
preventive measures in Europe and beyond
Guest editors: Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg & Ulf
Fredriksson (Stockholm University)
School non-attendance has been described as an underresearched
problem (e.g. Kearney, 2008; Dannow, 2018), but as researchers in the field we have
witnessed increasing interest in recent years. The causes of absenteeism are heterogeneous,
dimensional, and multi-factorial (Gregory & Purcell, 2014), and a lack of
attendance is better described as a symptom of many other underlying problems
than as a clearly defined, monodimensional phenomenon. School attendance
problems come in many different forms, labeled for instance as school refusal,
truancy, school withdrawal, and school exclusion (Heyne, et al. 2018). We know
that school attendance problems mirror social inequality in society and the
school system (Klein et al., 2020). Recent studies taking into account the
perspectives of pupils, parents, and teachers have shown, for example, that it
is important for students that schooling be organized in predictable ways
(Warne, et al., 2020). A positive school climate was also important for
facilitating students’ willingness to attend school regularly (Karlberg, et
al., 2020).
International comparative studies on school attendance
are rare. Using data from the PISA study, Keppens and Spruyt (2018) were able
to show that absence can be related to the specifics of different school
systems. However, much more research needs to be done if we are to understand
the relationship between truancy and the characteristics/organization of the
educational system. A scoping review of literature during the period 1980-2020
on school attendance and related problems shows a dominance of publications
from the US, Australia, the UK, and Japan, but also lists articles from India,
China and Singapore, as well as European countries like the Netherlands, Finland,
Spain, and Sweden (Heyne, et al., 2020). The field is definitely international,
but this does not necessarily mean it is sufficiently represented through
comparative studies. Comparative education studies can search, for example, for
the reasons behind why certain problems find their expression in attendance
problems. Investigating school attendance through a comparative perspective will
help shed light on differences and similarities in the educational systems of
Europe.
We are interested in qualitative and quantitative
studies that can shed new light on attendance and absence, their backgrounds, and
measures and policies for counteracting related problems. Understanding, for
example, children’s perspectives or parents’ experiences, or teachers’ or other
stakeholders’ views, is in line with what we hope to present to readers in
order to gain new understandings of related problems. Quantitative data offers other
options and opens up for broad understandings, for example of the relevance of
school belonging or the role positive relationships in school play in high
attendance. We are hoping for articles that allow new insights into educational
policy, instructional practices, issues of organization, and management of the
educational system and the importance of these aspects in relation to school
attendance.
We invite researchers to suggest articles that take up
questions related to school attendance from international and comparative
perspectives. All articles should explicitly develop how and/or why the chosen
comparative perspective contributes relevant knowledge on school attendance. The
dimension of comparison – speaking with Bartlett and Vavrus (2017) – can follow
horizontal, vertical, or transversal dimensions, including comparison between
different countries or cases, apply different actors’ perspectives, dig into
historical dimensions or take specific institutional organization and much more
into account.
Please submit methodological, theoretical, and
state-of-the-art contributions to the knowledge in the field of school
absenteeism, its backgrounds, and how to prevent and deal with the problem. Each
contribution should contain 5,000-7,000 words.
Submission Deadlines
The deadline for abstracts is 15 September 2022
(150-300 words). Full articles are due 15 January 2023, and will undergo rigorous double-blind review. The publication of the special
edition is planned for Autumn 2023.
Please send your abstract to one of the
following E-mails:
susanne.kreitz-sandberg@edu.su.se
ulf.fredriksson@edu.su.se
About the guest editors
The idea for this special volume has grown out of an international
comparative research project on structural, relational, and individual
dimensions of school attendance. We want to address researchers from the field
of international and comparative education and other relevant areas. The main
criteria for articles to be included in this special issue will be the quality
of the article and its contribution to research on school attendance,
absenteeism, and preventive measures in Europe and beyond, with focus on
methodological and theoretical questions in the international and comparative
education field.
