An examination of the reasons of vocational school students' absenteeism (Kastamonu sample)

It's known that, students' participation in school affect economic and social development of the countries. For teachers and schools to help students develop knowledge and skills, students have to be present and engaged at school. Student absenteeism is a major concern for schools, because absenteeism causes students miss important learning and developmental opportunities. The success of the plans to encourage students to attend school depends on an understanding of the factors that keep them away from school. Although there are lots of researches on absenteeism in elementary and secondary schools, and also high schools, there aren't enough researches on vocational school students' absenteeism problem in our country. It's believed that absenteeism in technical and vocational education hasn't been deeply analyzed and so not as well understood yet in our country. The purpose of this study was to gain insight into student absenteeism in vocational schools. For this purpose, articles, reports and dissertations dealing with the causes of student absenteeism were deeply analyzed first. Then, vocational school students were asked about reasons of their absences from school. In this study, data were collected through 'Absenteeism Reasons Form'. Sample group was consisted of 864 vocational school students. This study was designed using quantitative research method. In order to investigate the absenteeism reasons of vocational school students, descriptive-scanning model was used. When the findings obtained from the research were examined, it was seen that the average values of the other sub-dimensions were close to each other except for the health problem-induced sub-dimension. The highest mean sub-dimension was caused by health problems, while the lowest was the source of friends. According to the obtained results, ideas and solutions for improving attendance and reducing absenteeism at vocational schools were revealed. Key Words: Absenteeism, Absenteeism Reasons, Vocational School Students 2019, 157 pages Science Code: 10213