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Web site logical path (children): [intro] [notes] [tinto] [ideas] [projects] [successes] [Dweck] [Possible] [new]

My pages on student retention and dropout

This is the head page for my material on student dropout/retention, and Tinto's ideas. (Terminology: dropout, retention, persistence, attrition, ...) I offer three main things here:

• A basic overview or orientation to the issues. Published research offers detailed accounts and/or lengthy accounts; university policies generally leave any overview unstated, and pre-suppose questionable things.
• A place to present the work my students and I have done in the area.
• A list of interventions to improve retention for which there is actually evidence of making a difference. I have come to the view that the theory, though interesting to me, is too weak to predict what will work. Consequently, if you want to make a difference (as opposed to a gesture) then you would be well advised to ignore all advice other than trying to replicate proven successes.

0. This page is mainly a short index pointing to other pages. If you want to print them all off as one, then print this single composite page.

1. An introductory perspective on student retention. This page gives some numbers and basic facts about it. Discusses alternative definitions of "dropout".

2. Notes and reviews on the literature. Including some basic issues of method in researching what the dropout rate actually is.

3. My analysis of Tinto's model, and the questionnaire we developed.

4. Some other theoretical ideas on dropout (Some new thinking, considering integration alternatively as an aspect of quite different ideas: PDP, feedback to students, employee attrition, learning communities, recruitment and training)

5. Some local projects
   

   Interventions that have actually worked with evidence of reduced dropout

6. Evidence-based retentioneering discusses the few practical interventions I've come across for which there is evidence that they reduced dropout.

7. Dweck's work has also led to demonstrated large positive effects on education, which we can reasonably assume lead to lower dropout as well as higher grades.

   Practical approaches for Glasgow University

8. The policy approach I myself would recommend for Glasgow

9. Possible interventions to apply at Glasgow: what I thought in 2007.

10. New thoughts on interventions

11. Student generated PDP (Nick Bowskill's project)

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