Three Provocations About Retention and Attrition and Their Policy Implications

Abstract

One of the recurring debates in relation to languages and cultures education in Australia concerns the issue of retention and attrition. The clarion call seems to have been continuous for the last 30 years or so. I want to offer three provocations around this issue:

• 1. We think it’s our fault but maybe it isn’t—research shows us that at each point of transition students will choose to change languages, regardless of their experience. A concomitant issue is that at university level some students have already decided how much of a language they are prepared to study (often due to administrative/structural constraints of their degree or for other personal reasons—cf. the phenomenon of the language tourist).

• 2. The curriculum wars—my recent experience of working with the Australian Curriculum: Languages has highlighted a fundamental philosophical divergence between how curriculum is conceptualized in schools education and at tertiary level. My question is whether this difference (which I will outline) is leading to attrition (or retention).

• 3. Gender and identity—while languages classes at all levels of schooling are typically dominated by females, and females make up a larger proportion of the language teaching corps in schools, at university level things can be somewhat different. I would suggest that there are some intriguing questions waiting to be teased out in relation to how students identify with staff in terms of gender and identity at tertiary level and whether this has an impact on retention (or attrition).

For each of these provocations, I will present some initial research and discussion.