Revisiting the Narratives of Finnish Early School Leavers: Mapping Experiences of Detachment through a Self-determination Theory Lens

Figures & data

Table 1. Description of circumstances and experiences linked with the three basic psychological needs.

Circumstances	Experiences
Supporting Respect, care, and safety Informative, encouraging, and understated feedback Structure providing consistency in guidelines and expectations Listening to a person’s perspective Acknowledging improvement and mastery	Satisfaction Sense of belonging, connection, and trust Feeling significant to others Experiences of warmth, bonding, and care
Indifferent Neglecting, ignoring Important others pay little or no attention to a person’s needs Weak structure Important others ask a person to set aside his/her psychological needs	Dissatisfaction A sense of disregard A sense of detachment A sense of being detached from peers A sense of being insignificant to important others A sense of being ignored or neglected
Thwarting Controlling relationships, exclusion Non-existent structure, chaos Rejection Controlling behavior Suppressive or contradictory feedback Verbal and/or physical violence Leaving without care or support Abusive behavior	Frustration A sense of social exclusion A sense of hopelessness A sense of alienation A sense of helplessness A sense of loneliness A sense of coldness from important others Feeling distant from important others

Sources: Cheon et al. (2019), Costa et al. (2015), Ryan and Deci (2000, 2017, 2020), Van der Kaap-Deeder et al. (2020), and Vansteenkiste et al. (2020).

Table 2. Circumstances in the background of need perceptions and experiences storied by participants—examples from the narrative data.

Supporting Sanna “I had a good home and a good family. I can’t blame them for anything.” Saara “I think I got enough support at school. I wasn’t in normal classes; I was placed in a youth home. It was different, less kids in a class.” Johanna “When she [the teacher] noticed that I hadn’t raised my hand for a long time, she would ask me, ‘Johanna, what do you think of this?’”	Satisfaction Saara “The school assistant, her persistence with me, was that why I got along with her so well? Maybe I tested her a little, how much she would stand.” “When she encouraged me, said that I can do it, I felt that I really will be able to do it! Small things, they mean so much!” Aaro “If you feel safe, it’s easy to do things; you don’t need to use energy being alert all the time.”
Indifferent Iiro “There was not an actual care-keeper; I was managing things quite a lot on my own.” Siiri “I had been quiet and harmless for two years [in vocational school], so they didn’t pay much attention. I invented good reasons for absences and later on I often went to school high on drugs. The teachers didn’t notice it at all.” Sanna “The teacher, he was in the habit of showing off; he kind of needed to gain authority and he always wanted that his word was the law.”	Dissatisfaction Tuomas “I didn’t spend leisure time with my classmates. They were so childish. I spent my time with a little bit older people.” Tuomas “There was nothing to do in school. It was boring. I didn’t learn a thing. There was nothing but sitting. I found much more to do elsewhere.” Siiri: “I was kind of invisible to teachers.” Markus: “I think they didn’t focus on how to make me interested in school. It might have [interested me] if I had been in a normal class. They just threw me among the special kids, in the special class.”
Thwarting Sanna “I remember the first Swedish lesson, when the teacher came in: ‘I love children and the children love me. I have a whole dozen of them and everything is done as I say.’ When someone was slow in learning, he singled out that child and asked again and again. He did it to me the very first day and after that, I didn’t speak a single word of Swedish.” Markus: “The headmaster said, ‘Enough of you, no need to come back!’”	Frustration Johanna “Especially with my own child I realized that it’s not the school. It’s the being alone, the reason that I couldn’t stand it. Because I didn’t have even friends, nothing interested me.” Johanna “From a child’s point of view, you are ashamed of being alone, but you just try to show that you are not lonely. But then you really are so lonely anyway.” Saara: “The sense of being an outsider, that’s how I felt in my childhood [among peers in elementary school].” Sanna “I hate when someone is singled out. She may have some real problems with learning, but she is singled out and made to seem even more stupid than she is, not even given an opportunity to learn. You get kind of locked up, even if you would want to learn you cannot. I hated it, and I couldn’t even hide it; if nothing else, you could see it in my eyes.” Johanna: “If a child can hate an adult, I did hate him [the teacher]. He used such a tone of voice to me and used to say that you [the Finnish Roma] usually don’t do homework, don’t much go to school.”

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