'Voiced' Research as a Sociology for Understanding 'Dropping Out' of School

How we obtain more complex understandings of the phenomenon of 'dropping out' of school is one of the most urgent policy and practice issues facing educational practitioners, policy-makers and sociological researchers at the moment, as increasingly numbers of young people fail to complete their secondary schooling. In this paper, we argue that a different 'sociological imagination' is required - one that is simultaneously more attentive to the lifeworlds of young people, that is more reflexive of its own agenda, and that is mindful of the wider politics within which 'dropping out' is being experienced. A heuristic around 'voiced research' is discussed in the context of an Australian study that explored the circumstances of 209 young people who left school prematurely. It is argued that such an approach enabled the phenomenon to be 'named' in a different way, which was more inclusive of the lives, experiences, aspirations and complexities of what was occurring at the point these young people decided to exit school.