Using participatory action research to address absenteeism

Abstract

Many urban high schools serving low-income families have below-average attendance rates, which can indicate that fewer students are prepared to matriculate into college and career opportunities. Through the use of participatory action research (PAR), we -a group of four educators at Wilson High School -have changed school policies and procedures in order to address our school's most problematic behavior: students cutting class. Through the processes and outcomes that our group, the Class Cutting Task Force, has experienced, we have called upon action learning (AL) in our focus on practical and experienced problems, and we have learned an important lesson: without clear and consistent school-wide expectations, our students cannot meet their potentials. Additionally, we have become empowered to drive a school-wide improvement initiative from the ground up by using the four-stage PAR process. It is our experience with the PAR process as a method of engagement in AL for school practitioners that we aim to share in this account of practice.

Implications of child-friendly school policies in reducing cases of violence against children in elementary schools

“…Absenteeism not only affects students' academic progress, but also affects teacher planning in the classroom and at the same time the motivation of other students at school (Thornton et al, 2013). Chronic absenteeism has a significant relationship with behavior, one of which is violence against children and eventually dropping out of school (Ferrell et al, 2014;Gage et al, 2013;Kearney & Graczyk, 2014;Nolan et al, 2013). Furthermore, the data is data recorded at the Office of Women's Empowerment and Child Protection.…”

Documenting Indigenous Knowledge to Identify and Understand the Stressors of Muskoxen (<i>Ovibos moschatu</i>s) in Nunavut, Canada

“…All participants self-identified as Inuit. To rank and determine the relative importance of the characteristics used by harvesters to establish whether a muskox is healthy, we organized a "dot-voting" activity involving all the characteristics brought up during the small group interviews and any new ones added during particular validation sessions (e.g., Gittelsohn et al, 2010;Ferrell et al, 2014). Participants were given 15 dots and instructed to place between zero and three dots next to each characteristic depending on the importance they attributed to it (i.e., 0 = low importance to 3 = high importance).…”