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Not every absence from school is problematic and in need of a response. It is therefore a meaningful endeavour to differentiate between normal and problematic absence from school. However, the current literature on absence from school has not to a sufficient degree reflected on the conditions that enable some absences to be constituted as problematic while others are not. In this dissertation I aim to explore and critically engage with the processes and conditions that constitute absence as a problem in a Danish context. I present a critical perspective, starting from the assumption that meaning is constituted, negotiated, and made dominant through various discursive practices. Using discursive practices as an analytical tool, I explore the conditions that enable absence to be constituted as particular kinds of problems that require particular kinds of responses. Furthermore, I critically engage with how these conditions serve to make the idea that absence is problematic dominant, while excluding other meanings. I operationalise this general aim through three approaches based on exploring the historical conditions, the current international scientific literature, and the practical conditions at school. The latter is based on a one-year participant observation at a single school in Denmark (Summerfield) and 33 interviews with school staff, youths (aged 12–15), and their parents.
The general argument is that regular attendance is a state project which has, since its inception as a problem, been closely connected to governing the state of Denmark. A range of historical conditions have over time made schooling not only legally compulsory but also normatively the proper path to a good life. This constitutes the emptiness of empty chairs as a problem. Absentees has through this history come to be seen as being on their way towards a potential life of crime, mental health issues, and other ills. This ensures that it is difficult to negotiate for the meaning of absence as being anything else than a problem. I highlight two conditions that serve to problematise absence in Denmark today: 1) discursive practices centred around the optimisation of mass schooling and the scientific measurement of education which makes absence a problem due to its societal costs, and 2) welfare oriented discursive practices centred on saving children’s lives which make absence a problem because children’s well-being is affected negatively. These ensure that even punitive responses to absence are justified because the ends justify the means. The same two general problematisations are present in the scientific literature in the problem-solving and helping discourse, respectively. The problem-solving discourse frames absence as a cause of negative effects and seeks to optimise schools by solving absence through the most effective means. The helping discourse frames absence as a sign that children are not thriving, missing out on opportunities to thrive at school, and looks to help children by targeting their individual needs. Together they align in the idea that meticulous measurement can help us differentiate between whose absence needs individualised treatment and whose absence can be solved by more cost-effective responses. I further critically engage with aspects of the above general argument in the three articles of the dissertation.
Article 1 (chapter 5) engages with the normative basis of the causal claims made in the literature: absence causes negative effects and prevents the good of school. I argue instead that causal judgements are made in light of what children do instead of school, what is likely to have happened if the children had come to school, and which things are worth learning. Furthermore, what is learned in school often depends upon what is learned outside school and vice versa. The causal claims of the literature takes for granted the idea that school learning is what is worthwhile, thereby silencing alternatives. This lends scientific authority to claims that rely on a normative ground.
Article 2 (chapter 7) presents the first qualitative study of the dissertation which explores the registration practices that were important both to the political and scientific discursive practices above. I show that the teachers used various “dirty” contextualisation strategies in order to make absence meaningfully categorisable in “clean” categories of the registry. However, these “clean” categories decontextualised the meaning of absence, a process that was even further pronounced once the various categories were added together to give a single pattern of absence. This pattern was then analysed by the upper levels of school staff, being contextualised in new ways. All of this meant that youths and their parents had few opportunities to negotiate how their absences were classified, analysed, and understood and therefore problematised. This silencing was hidden behind the authoritative “clean” data.
Article 3 (chapter 8) explores the practices of responding to absence at Summerfield School. I show how the idea that school is the proper path towards a good life made helping and pressuring responses intertwine. The helping responses to absence served to position youths as responsible for choosing the proper path – even though school is compulsory and entails no choice. I argue that each step of the response to absence created the conditions for absence to become recognisable as a more severe problem based on whether the youths and their parents accepted the responsibility given to them and showed their regret. This effectively silenced youths’ and their parents’ negotiation attempts. Importantly, I show that powerful discursive support for this way of understanding and responding to absence was operating, meaning that other alternative understandings available to the staff did not become relevant.
In addition to the articles, I argue that some schools may problematise absence more than others based on how absence intersects with discourses on socio-economic status and ethnicity. I argue that knowledge creation about youth’s perspectives is fragmented when based at school because these youths are often absent. When they are present, they will not tell everything because they may not trust adults – leading to school-based understandings being the dominant one. Lastly, I present two youth’s perspectives to explore what could be gained if we were able to better listen to youths. In the context of their lives, youths have good reasons both for attendance and absence. Indeed a lack of reasons to attend can become a reason to stay absent. This indicates an alternative problem: that youths have not been given enough opportunity to develop their own reasons for attending school.
On the basis of this dissertation, I propose that research should study absence from school as a political and contextual phenomenon which cannot be removed from the context that constitutes it, because this problematically exempts this context from critical reflection. I recommend that research should take more heed of the fragmentary nature of absence and should work more on exploring positive solutions from a critical perspective. In terms of practice, I propose that more political and legal support should be provided to enable schools to give children and youths the opportunity to make a “comeback” after long periods of absence. I recommend that schools should be given more time to make room for listening to youths who are absent so that schools do not need to assume that the issues have been understood before the youths have been listened to. I present the proposition that we give legal leeway to allow absence to remain in the background of the other issues youths are struggling with, so that these issues can be attended to first. Lastly, I advance the idea that we should be open to writing laws more accommodating of the idea that there is more to children’s lives than school and absence from it.
