A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

The Need for Theory

A key contribution to the advancement of Goal 2 is likely to be the design and support of research that informs educators and the public about those aspects of students' experiences that determine whether or not these students graduate from or complete secondary school. In this light, steps are needed to move the field away from the atheoretical stance which has characterized much of the work to date, and in the direction of developing and advancing theoretical concepts that treat retention, graduation, and completion as consequences of a dynamic interaction of such variables as student characteristics, school context, occupational prospects, and cultural influences. There are a number of "big ideas" that might drive a national research agenda on dropouts. These could include:

Social Capital

James Coleman's conception of "social capital" takes into account the importance of a network of sustained personal connections to convey expectations and conventional norms and which can also be acquired through rich and extensive interactions with adults. Weak social capital refers to the failure of families to communicate shared expectations, norms, and sanctions for not meeting the norms. According to the theory, the development of social capital by children is significant because it contributes to their readiness to internalize school norms and expectations. These expectations call for personal effort to develop the knowledge and skills that make up human capital, without which children may drop out of school unprepared for responsible participation in mainstream society.
This area is only beginning to receive attention from researchers. Much more work is required to understand how communities develop and sustain the social capital necessary for students' success in school and how policies may be developed that will assist in this process, especially for children and youth with little initial access to these support networks.

Achievement Motivation

The effects that such social variables as perceived opportunity, future orientation, and incentives may have on students' academic behavior, as well as on their transition from youth to adulthood, are the topics of study. For example, if we want virtually all youth to complete 12 years or more of schooling, strong, credible social and economic incentives will be necessary to attract and keep youth who start life in socially and economically marginal circumstances. Disproportionate numbers of poor and minority children develop the view that they are at a disadvantage in school as well as in the marketplace and respond with indifference to learning and antisocial behavior.
Some critics have suggested that the connection between entry-level jobs and school performance should be reinforced by having employers reward the contents of high school transcripts rather than simply a person's possession of a diploma. Others have suggested alternative routes to work that combine learning with training or the development of national credentialing that would certify competence to employers everywhere. Research is needed to better understand the nature of incentives and their effects on student behavior and how programs may be designed that will inspire youth to devote their time and energy to learning rather than less productive alternatives.

Social Bonding

The roles that membership, social bonding, interpersonal caring, and community play in convincing people to overcome their sense of alienation and develop an emotional attachment to social institutions such as school would be studied. For example, engaging alienated students in the tasks of academic work requires that school and learning be viewed as legitimate, fair, and worthwhile. There are many steps that seem intuitively necessary but require substantiation and study. Among them are:
- A clarity of purpose that unites students in the pursuit of common goals rather than distracting them with a "something for everyone" curriculum.
- Fairness and caring that helps students overcome fears of discrimination stemming from poor performance or differences of race, gender, or religion. Schools that strive to inspire and reward student effort and social participation are more likely to retain students than those that do not. The trick is to discover practices that bring these results.

Authentic Education

Developing "authentic" school work that involves the learning of skills and content that have meaning and motivational appeal to the student is the goal of this research. The aspects of work that build the willing participation of students are strikingly similar to those found in successful workplaces. They include:
- Intrinsic interest in the materials to be mastered so that students study and learn of their own volition;
- Sense of ownership derived from personal choice rather than by the imposition of authority; and
- Connection to the world outside of school that shows the student the relationship of schooling to his or her personal and working life.

These theories, among others like them, are dynamic rather than static. That is, they represent dropouts as students who are part of a social world and who interact with the people and institutions that surround them. As such, the theories offer a rationale for dropout programs based on the motivating properties of student life, rather than the unexamined assumptions that accompany mere membership in the at-risk categories. Accordingly, theories such as these offer an opportunity to replace the "head counting" and descriptive statistics that have to date characterized both research on dropouts and dropout prevention with explanations of behavior that offer a far more powerful and sophisticated rationale for future research and the design of dropout prevention programs.

What Do We Need to Know? References