Educational Timelines With Students Restarting Their Secondary Education in a Dropout Recovery Program

• In Event: Adapted Interview Approaches With Students of Color in Urban Schools and Settings

Abstract

High school dropout in the U.S. is essentially a “shared tradition” in low income and urban schools serving students of color (Fine, 1991, p. 21). "Partly rooted in school failure and disengagement and partly in community poverty and student life circumstances" (Barrat, Berliner, & Fong, 2012, p. 227), an array of factors related to families, schools, and communities have been found to affect the likelihood of dropping out (Rumberger, 2011).

Although considerable research has examined risk factors associated with school dropout and "pushout" (Lukes, 2013; Rumberger, 2011; Tuck, 2011), dropout is not always permanent and less work has focused on students who restart their education (Barrat et al., 2012). What do we know about these students?

The present study sheds light on this question and more specifically, the complex educational experiences of students who restart their secondary education and the contextual factors which shape their experiences in important ways, particularly life circumstances and the classroom context. Participants (n=20) were predominantly Latino, 18-24 years old, and were enrolled in a dropout recovery program in an urban public school district in Los Angeles.

The proposed paper highlights an adapted interview approach utilized in the study, which was informed by both phenomenology and grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Merriam, 2009). The adapted semi-structured interview approach centered on the way students understood and explained their past and current educational experiences (Seidman, 2013). To help gain a nuanced portrait of their educational experiences across time and contexts (e.g., school and home), participants were asked to draw a timeline of their educational journey from pre-kindergarten through the dropout recovery program and were asked open-ended questions that tapped into the perceptions they held about their experiences along the way (e.g., "What elementary school did you go to?" "What was elementary school like for you?" "Did you have a favorite teacher in elementary school? What did you like about him/her?"). The same set of questions was repeated for middle school and high school. The focus on students' perceptions emerged from the need to examine viewpoints from a source that is rarely heard-students themselves, particularly students in urban public schools who may leave school for multiple reasons related to life circumstances and broader school failures yet are labelled "dropouts” who have not experienced success in school (Howard, 2002).

The educational timeline strategy will be illustrated with sample drawings completed by participants and audio slices from student interviews. I will also discuss the value of this method for understanding the complex educational experiences of student populations that are understudied and misunderstood, especially populations who have experienced severe barriers yet continue to pursue their education alongside barriers (e.g., school dropout, unfavorable conditions at home, health issues, job demands). Educational timelines shed light on students’ progress through school and the challenges and accomplishments they experience along the way, as they develop over time and make progress toward goals. Lessons learned and implications for future research and program practices that best meet the needs of students will be addressed.

Author

• Monique Corral, University of California - Los Angeles