The development of persistent truant behaviour: an exploratory analysis of adolescents’ perspectives

Abstract

Background

While, an extensive literature reveals the many risk factors associated with truancy, less is known about the way truancy develops, intensifies and persists. In recent years, authors have argued that the development of truancy should not be understood as an individual phenomenon, but as a process of complex interactions between the adolescent and his/her parents, peers, teachers and school staff. There is, however, little research on how relationships between these parents, peers, teachers and school staff operate and influence the development of truancy.

Purpose

In this paper, we try to fill this gap by analysing the narratives of truanting adolescents, and by investigating their experiences of the onset and persistence of their own truancy.

Sample, design and methods

As part of a larger study, 20 adolescents from Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, were individually interviewed. Data were analysed qualitatively.

Results and conclusions

The stories suggest that what begins as occasional truancy can easily evolve into persistent truancy that eventually could lead to permanent non-attendance. For many of the interviewed pupils, the development of their truancy can best be described as ‘truant spirals’. Compared to the seemingly easy transition towards truanting for the first time, the narratives suggest that it is extremely difficult to curtail the pattern of persistent and intensifying truant behaviour.

Keywords:

• Truancy
• in-depth interviews
• adolescence
• social control theory

Notes

1. In 2015 the threshold for registering pupils as truant was lowered to 15 half schooldays of unexcused absenteeism.

2. From the third year of secondary education onwards, the tracking system of the Flemish educational system is quite decisive: it remains possible for pupils to ‘descend’ from general to technical and, further, to (part-time) vocational education; movements in the opposite direction almost never occur. Consequently, many pupils who truant frequently end up in part-time vocational education. If the pattern of persistent truant behaviour of these pupils is not curtailed, the risk of permanent school non-attendance in part-time vocational education is high.

3. It is, of course, possible that a young person is frightened of getting caught due to other circumstances, but still has poor relationships with these significant others. These types of cases, however, did not emerge from our data.