Improving Attendance of Chronically Absent High School Students

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2020-05-07

Department

Goucher College

Program

Masters of Education

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

This work may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. To obtain information or permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the Goucher Special Collections & Archives at 410-337-6347 or email archives@goucher.edu.
Public Domain Mark 1.0

Abstract

This study examines if building personal relationships with students through positive social conversations and individual conversations after absences can improve students’ attendance within high school chemistry classes. There was some variation in the independent variable for the different hypotheses. All subjects (n = 84 ) received the intervention of positive social conversations and individual conversations after absences were in place. The group of students with chronic high absenteeism (n = 8 ) also had targeted individual conversations in addition to what all students received. The group of students with recent high absenteeism or past high absenteeism (n = 15 ), had secondary individual conversations in addition to what all students received. The dependent variable was classroom attendance. The attendance of individual students during a baseline of ten class periods was compared to attendance during an intervention phase of ten class periods. For all three null hypothesizes there was no significant difference in number of days present out of 10 during the baseline and intervention periods. Implications and ideas for future research were discussed.