Student Disengagement

Could Art be the answer to disengagement in key stage 3 and 4 boys? For the purposes of this study, Art will not simply mean the pedagogical content of art and design in the classroom but, indeed, the wider impact of arts education on students, and the potential it harbours in enabling students to access education in general, and help to address the sociocultural issues in their lives as they develop. Furthermore, when discussing art education, the teaching of both music and performing arts is encompassed, as is the basic engagement with more formal art forms and cultural experiences such as, art galleries, museums, theatres, and music and dance performances. Kindler and Darras (1997, p. 169) suggest that by actively supporting their students

Gibbs and Poskitt (2010) suggest that engagement encompasses a students’ sense of belonging and connectedness to a school, teachers and peers, and they define it as the level of participation and intrinsic interest that a student displays. They also propose that certain behaviours and attitudes are required for engagement in education. It could be argued, then, that the presence of these distinct features of engagement, must also be present in the features of disengagement. If we look at the features within behaviours and attitudes listed by Gibbs and Poskitt (2010) such as persistence, effort, and attention (behaviours) and motivation, positive learning values, enthusiasm, interest, and pride in success (attitudes), we can begin to frame them, instead, in terms of disengagement. In particular, if disengagement is defined as a deficiency of these attributes, there is a clear target for solutions and intervention techniques towards the aim of cultivating or strengthening

While other, mainly European, countries use the term ESL (Early School Leaving) and, historically, Canada and the US use the term ‘dropout’ (Rogers, 2016; School Education Gateway, no date), the terms all, broadly speaking, mean the same thing. In the UK, the Department for Education release annual and quarterly NEET figures (Department for Education, 2013). In the most recent quarterly report, July to September 2017, the NEET rate decreased by 1.0 percentage point (to 15.2%) for the 19-24 and decreased by 0.6 percentage points (to 13.3%) for the 16-24 age groups. Over the same period the NEET rate increased by 0.3 percentage points (to 9.0%) for the 16-18 age group (Department for Education, 2017). Analysing the underlying data reveals that the percentage of NEET 16-18 year old boys in England has increased from 8.7% in the year 2000 to 10.6% in the year 2017, while the percentage of NEET 16-18 year old girls in England has decreased from 9% in 2000 to 7.4% in 2017 (Department for Education,