Student dropouts and the difficulty to speak about themselves

Abstract

The article discusses problems which emerged while we were conducting research on student dropout. The term student dropout refers to individuals who leave school before completing compulsory education. These problems relate mostly to the difficulty of those who have dropped out from talking about their own experience. The research was carried out in Greece in 2018 and 2019.  In Greece, student dropout has fallen considerably in recent years to among the lowest in Europe. Nevertheless it remains a problem. Our aim is to present this difficulty, the consequences on the production of data, and the ways in which they were dealt with. We investigate the causes and consequences of this refusal, through the eyes of the people who abandoned school.