The Challenge of Student Attendance and Absenteeism During COVID-19: Narrative Perspectives From an Urban High School Setting

• In Event: Lessons From the Past, Present, and Future: The Evolving K–12 Responses to the COVID Crisis

Abstract

This narrative study explores the experiences of students, families, and school leaders related to student attendance and absenteeism in a small, low income district in southwestern New Jersey during the COVID 19 pandemic. As with other educational outcomes in the K-12 context, chronic absenteeism is experienced disproportionately by specific student groups. Students of color, students with disabilities, students living in poverty, and highly mobile students are among the groups that are most prevalently absent (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2016) under typical circumstances. With the advent of the COVID crisis, however, K-12 leaders had to make rapid and continual adaptations to existing processes across their programs, and the ways that attendance is collected, assessed and conceptualized continue to evolve.

This study draws from the following theoretical frameworks: 1) Complex Dynamic Systems Perspective (CDS); 2) Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI). The Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) incorporates multiple motivational and identity perspectives with motivated action as deriving from the individual’s unique meaning of a social-cultural role at the time of action (Kaplan et al., 2019). A social-cultural schema and script for normative behavior comprise each role, and within the frame of what the individual commonly understands about the role, the individual constructs his own version of the role, known as the role identity, and can apply to the student, parent, and school leader roles.

The qualitative method of narrative inquiry is utilized for this study. Narrative inquiry enables the researcher to capture the unique perspectives of participants, and is especially suited for addressing the methodological challenge of presenting dynamic and complex experiences (Kim, 2015), as is the case with the multi-causal problem of absenteeism of vulnerable students. Data will be collected through the use of semi-structured interviews, focus groups, observations and document analysis at the site or through Zoom.

Vulnerable students and families experience an array of barriers to attending school, even as school is adapted to remote and hybrid delivery systems due to COVID. Indeed, a lack of access to a continuous internet connection, adequate devices for academic coursework, additional instructional support and prior knowledge and literacy with widely used virtual learning platforms are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of barriers experienced by chronically absent students and families. While the problem of daily, physical attendance to the school building may have been alleviated, the problem of attending and engaging with an unfamiliar, rapidly changing educational system during unusually turbulent times is, not surprisingly, leaving many families out in the cold when it comes to the equitable access of learning and achievement outcomes.

In short, this study will contribute to the field by proposing strategies for supporting vulnerable students and families experiencing chronic absenteeism during the COVID 19 crisis and beyond. By helping school leaders and policymakers understand chronic absenteeism during COVID 19 from an array of stakeholder perspectives, vulnerable students can be more equitably supported to access important quality of life outcomes such as graduating high school.

Author

• Jennifer Antoni, Temple University