School dropout processes in Spain and Chile from the perspective of the most vulnerable adolescents

Abstract

The article presents the results of two broader investigations on school dropouts in compulsory secondary education in Chile and Spain. The objective is to analyze and understand the factors influencing the motivation for dropping out from the perspective of the most vulnerable students. In total, 140 semi-structured interviews, 12 focus groups and 16 in-depth case studies are carried out with students between 12 and 24 years old. The techniques used in a hermeneutic epistemology are semi-structured interviews, focus groups and biographical interviews. The results in both countries show coincidences in three categories: School, Student Identity and Family. In the School category, some subcategories are related to an irrelevant curriculum, “being without being”, and excessive exclusionary rules at school. The discursive lines that emerge from the student identity category, among others, are a self-configured from difference, negativity and biographical abandonment. The Family dimension configures some subcategories linked to poverty, marginality or health problems. In conclusion, these are school trajectories and biographies that do not fit in a bureaucratized school, subject to measurement and regulatory control far from the lives of those who need the school most. Rather than abandoning, they are abandoned.