Cognitive Style and School Refusal

The degree to which truancy may contribute to delinquency, social disorder and educational failure has led to continued political and public interest in the problem of school non‐attendance or refusal. There is, however, a notable lack of empirical research into the phenomenon of truancy and school refusal. This paper investigated the learning style of 17 students aged 15‐17 years identified as school refusers and compared their style distribution to that of 850 students in regular attendance in mainstream secondary schools. The Cognitive Styles Analysis was administered individually to students in the Refusal Group at their Centre during the period of one term. The results indicated that, compared to the comparison group, the learning style of the school refusers was skewed to the Wholist end of the Wholist‐Analytic style dimension. An implication of this research is that a particular learning style was associated with school refusal and research is merited particularly to (a) develop further research into the learning characteristics of students who refuse school and (b) inform a developing school response to refusal.