• Tapos Kumar Dutt

During the periods of my teaching career, I have been observing with great regret that most of the students (approximately over 50% of the total students) of the economics department of ‘R’ Government College, on a regular basis, keep themselves away from their scheduled class sessions. Again, about 25% of them are habituated to attend classes sporadically and the rest 25% tries to attend classes regularly, however, they are deprived of their scheduled class sessions for the reason of the irregular and inconsistent arrangements of the class sessions. This frustrating situation of students’ absenteeism is damaging the learning environment of the educational institutes, thus creating barriers to the development of the nation as a whole with long-term implications. To get rid of this curse, therefore, I have realized a crying need at present to have an inquiry into the causes of students’ absenteeism behavior and its consequences on their overall academic experiences and over and above to provide the most vital recommendations that can effectively uproot this bad practice from the arena of the educational institutes or at least lessen the extent of this phenomenon. Having devised a qualitative research design, this research study has been carried out to elicit the perceptions of the students and teachers of the economics department and administrators of the ’R’ Government College with the utilization of the individual interviews with the research respondents. In this study, I have revealed four broad-categorized causes of students’ absenteeism labelled under four comprehensive themes which are students’ individual and their family related matters, educational institutes related factors, environment-originated factors, attendance regulation and policy matters, social phenomenon, and others. On the other hand, this study has been found out the consequences of students’ absenteeism as very harmful. This study identified that the first and foremost compromise on behalf of the absentee students is on their exam score. Another dreadful consequence is found that the practice of absenteeism is creating a huge learning gap for the students. Next, the socio-emotional skills like confidence, peer relationship and interaction with teachers are also diminished. Finally, this study has attempted to make some effective recommendations to resolve this problem that includes providing financial supports to the students, convenient classroom arrangements, making the best use of the educational technologies to turn classes as attractive to the students, arranging provision for the teachers regarding pedagogical advancements, regular class supervision, arranging teacher evaluation system by the students, expanding residential facilities, and so forth. The most effective change, according to the outcomes of this study, that can consider the college authority is the execution and proper supervision of existing attendance rule in order to get the students returned to their scheduled classroom sessions. Along with this change, another vital recommendation is to abolish the current pattern of question and evaluation practices and to make them standard and creative for the target of achieving the best possible learning goals. Furthermore, arrangement of a structured discourse with the absentee students’ parents or legal guardians can also produce a good result as per my recommendation.

Absenteeism, Academic Experiences, Learning Environment, Education Policy, Learning Gap, Socio-emotional Skills, Peer Relationship, Educational Technologies, Pedagogical Advancements, Creative Question Patterns, Learning Goals

"An Inquiry into the causes of absenteeism and its consequences on their overall academic experiences among the undergraduate economics students at ‘R’ Government College of Bangladesh", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.10, Issue 7, page no.d515-d551, July-2023, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIRTHE2054.pdf

"An Inquiry into the causes of absenteeism and its consequences on their overall academic experiences among the undergraduate economics students at ‘R’ Government College of Bangladesh", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.10, Issue 7, page no. ppd515-d551, July-2023, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIRTHE2054.pdf