STUDENT RETENTION: WHAT THE RESEARCH AREA SAYS

Abstract

Research in education insistently seeks to investigate schools from the perspective of drop out students, in the point of view of negativity and academic failure. Also, there is a need to research other epistemologies, such as school retention. Therefore, the objective of this papper is to carry out a systematic literature review to understand how research is being carried out around the topic of school retention. To investigate research approaches in the area, a systematic literature review was carried out in the periodical databases CAPES, BDTD of IBCIT, Google Scholar, Scielo, using the expression “permanência escolar”. We investigated 1035 works and 83 were selected. We found that the majority of research is recent and that the meaning of the term school retention is not yet well defined. Research on school retention does not have the same meaning as research on dropout. Among the topics most discussed in research on school retention are pedagogical issues, in which the majority of research focuses on issues within the school. We understand that research on the topic of school retention needs to be further explored and that, within the universe of research carried out, the majority of studies study permanence from the perspective of the school institution itself.