Conceptions of early leaving: A comparison of the views of teaching staff and students

Recent synthesizing work on the student retention literature suggests two divergent discourses. The first is a discourse of assimilation which locates the problem in individual students' circumstances or abilities. This is challenged by an emerging discourse of adaptation. The new discourse focuses on higher education itself, proposing fundamental changes to adapt universities to a new purpose in a changed society. Here we present findings from interviews with teaching staff, which formed part of a multi-method investigation into attrition. Drawing on Zepke and Leach's (2005) model, we contrast the conceptions of early leaving suggested in these interviews with our previously reported findings from interviews with students who had considered leaving but stayed, and students who had withdrawn. We find staff more likely than students to externalize attrition in terms which problematize students. Students were more likely to focus on issues relating to their experiences of the university. © 2007 Sage Publications