Activating school bonds: a study of truanting young people in the context of the Ability School Engagement Program (ASEP)

Strong school bonds have three active components: commitment, attachment and belief (Hawkins & Weis, 1985). Young people with strong school commitment engage in learning and consistently participate in various school activities (Catalano, Oesterle, Fleming, & Hawkins, 2004). Strong school attachment also fosters a sense of belonging at school, preventing development of antisocial peer associations outside the institutional setting (Hawkins & Weis, 1985). Young people with strong school belief also internalise institutional values and follow school rules (Hawkins & Weis, 1985). There is a paucity of research however, about how the school bonds of youth at risk can be strengthened (Appleton, Christenson, & Furlong, 2008). Empirical studies have shown that school engagement interventions can enhance prosocial development (Catalano, Oesterle, Fleming, & Hawkins, 2004; Hawkins, Guo, Hill, Battin-Pearson, & Abbott, 2001). Yet less is known about the mechanisms and processes fostering that change (Maynard, McCrea, Pigott, & Kelly, 2013; Mazerolle, 2014). This dissertation explores the mechanisms of a truancy intervention, the Ability School Engagement Program (ASEP), that activate school engagement. ASEP is a police–school partnership intervention delivered in the format of a family group conference. The intervention aims to reduce truancy among youth with histories of problematic school absenteeism. I apply the Social Development Model’s (SDM) hypothesis that strengthening school bonding is a social process involving the young person and significant others at home and school (Catalano et al., 2004). I explore the mechanisms of the ASEP process within the SDM’s school bond construct comprising of school commitment (investment in doing well in school), attachment (interpersonal relations at school) and belief (attitudes towards school rules). Using 47 transcripts from the ASEP family group conference proceedings, I conduct a thematic analysis of how the ASEP processes can activate school commitment, attachment and belief. In addition, I conduct a case study analysis to unpack how ASEP can activate school belief and how that impacts on school re-engagement and social relations over a two year period. I also examine data from the ASEP exit meetings that were conducted six months after the conference and interviews with the parents that I conducted two years after their recruitment into the project. First, I find that the ASEP process differentially activates participants’ readiness for school re-engagement (or school commitment) depending on the young person’s willingness and iii presenting capability. Activating the readiness for school re-engagement is a social process that is more complex for some than others. Some young people need more support and resources for school re-engagement than others. I identify five types of truants and find that the focus of the ASEP conference process shifts depending on the truant type. Second, I find that school-based peers can influence truancy through conflict (i.e. fighting and bullying) and attachment (i.e. co-truancy). In response, ASEP endeavours to encourage school-based selective peer socialisation among the young participants. I find that this approach is better aligned to targeting co-truancy which is characterised by the presence of affective peer relations than truancy due to school-based peer conflict characterised by the absence of such relations. Third, I find that the ASEP process activates shared school belief, shared responsibility and a new social contract among not just the young people and their parents but all of the ASEP members. I conclude that school re-engagement is a social process involving multiple stakeholders. The process can be linear, chaotic, or non-linear discontinuous. In my conclusion, I discuss how the ASEP process can activate the three elements of the school bond. I discuss the limitations of my dissertation and directions for future research.