This qualitative study aims to provide insight into why teacher candidates, interested in pursuing K-12 teaching, made the decision to leave their traditional teacher preparation programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers utilized sociocultural theory as the framework to ground the research. The study finds the educational disruption…

Teacher education attrition is a largely understudied topic, especially from the perspective of the college student. What factors prevented education majors from graduating with a teaching degree? There are countless studies about teacher attrition within the first five years in the classroom (DeAngelis et al., 2013; Kopkowski, 2008; Office of…

Exclusionary discipline practices such as suspension and the disproportionality that exists among ethnicities have been a topic of interest for researchers for over 30 years. The purpose of this qualitative narrative study was to explore the perceptions of five African American males between the ages of 21-28 years old who have exited school…

Previous studies have examined patterns of withdrawal from initial teacher education (ITE) programs and have found that pre-service teachers are more likely to withdraw if they are male or older than the typical pre-service teacher. This study presents case studies based on semi-structured interviews with older male pre-service teachers who…

Despite institutional strategies to prevent student withdrawal, attrition remains a concern across higher education sectors in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. In the case of Australian universities, attrition rates have remained consistently high since 2002. Some level of attrition is inevitable, but universities can influence…

This paper describes results from a case study that focuses on the initial implementation of a new, online instructional program, the WebIT M.S. in Instructional Technology, offered at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville during 2008-2010. Survey data were collected from two groups of students: a self-selected sample of those students who…

Attrition, which courses in the humanities and social sciences particularly suffer from, is a major problem for universities and students. This paper investigates the reasons students give for prematurely discontinuing studying the Bachelor of Arts. This is a qualitative study that thematically analyses semi-structured interviews. The sample…

This dissertation addresses a continuing crisis in our nation's education system. Historically African American students have underperformed academically. This achievement gap is particularly pronounced for African American males. AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination), an academic support program for underachieving students, most…

Student retention is an ongoing issue for most engineering programmes in the United States. Although engineering continues to be regarded as a promising profession, many students beginning in an engineering programme will not successfully complete their engineering studies. In an attempt to understand student perceptions of issues that relate to…

This grounded theory study was designed to investigate the factors that influenced 20 "traditional" university freshmen to withdraw prior to the end of their first year at two Midwestern universities. A two-hour audio-taped interview was conducted with each of the participants, and the grounded theory method was utilized to analyze the interview…

Results of questionnaires (n=5,000) mailed to college dropouts indicate that: (1) most students left their freshman year; (2) they did not discusss their decision with university personnel; and (3) their reasons were academic difficulties, personal-emotional problems, and external-environmental pressures. (Author)

Discusses factors which lead to attrition from adult distance learning courses. Learning barriers included situational, institutional, dispositional, and epistemological factors. Comparisons between persisters and withdrawals are presented, and the study's impact on future distance learning programs is discussed. (Contains 26 references.) (SLW)

A study investigated why students who entered the college of education at Ohio University voluntarily withdrew from teacher education later to pursue a different major. The effects of teacher education curriculum and other factors in their decision to leave were explored. (PP)

In 1989, staff from Rancho Santiago College's (RSC's) research office conducted telephone interviews with a random sample of 255 out of the 17,359 former students who attended RSC in spring 1989 but did not return for the next semester. The study was conducted to determine why students did not return, whether they accomplished their educational…