Konsten att främja närvaro och förebygga och åtgärda problematisk frånvaro

Sammanfattning: The work in primary school, including promoting attendence, preventing absence and remedying problematic absence is formulated in laws and decrees, the regulatory documents of primary school as well as “policydocuments” on a municipaly level and the individual schools documents in form off action plans and routines. It is a very important work, but what is formulated does not always correspond to what is implemented.The purpose of the study is to analyze how the principal and the Student Health Team in grade 7-9 of primary school works with promoting all students attendence, preventing absence and remedying problematic absence. Two questions have been used.- The first question is about what the principal and the Student Health Team do in the concrete work with promoting all students attendence, preventing absence and remedying problematic absence.- The second question it is about what the principal and the Student Health Team do in the work with promoting attendence, preventing absence and remedying problematic absence, in accordance with the action documents such as plans and routines of the individual schools and the municipality.Previous research shows that it is mainly absence in relation to individual-related and social-related problems that is highlighted. Research on promoting attendance and what that work looks like in everyday school activities is not made visible to the same extent (Gren Landell, 2018).The theoretical starting point of the study is social constructionism. The social constructionism is also the starting point for the discourse theoretical approach and the discourse analysis. Three predetermined discourses have been used in the study and it ispromoting attendence, preventing absence and remedying problematic absence. The three predetermined discourses are defined in relation to the school's governing documents. The discourses stand in proportion to the responsibility and authority of the two sub-discourses, responsibility and power and talks and meetings, a collaboration. The theoretical starting point, which includes the three perspectives of special education: the category perspective, the quandary perspective, and the relational perspective has also been used.The chosen method is semistructured qualitative interwievs and anlysis of the schools documents in the form of action plan and routines. The results that are reported are basedon seven interwievs with principals, and seven groupinterwievs with representatives from the Student Health Team, along with eight differently documents.The most important results to emerge is that there is a difference between what the principals and the representatives of the Student Health Teams strives to accomplish, what they claim to be doing and what they actually are doing in the concrete school work. That means that the constructed thoughts, words and deeds do not correspond. The study shows that it is the work with promoting attendence that is desirable and that it visualizes a desirable reality. Meanwhile the study shows that it is the concrete work with preventing absence and remedying problematic absence that is given the most attention in school. The responsibility and authority of the two sub-discourses along with dialogue and meetings and a cooperative work stands in proportion to the overall discourses. It is surprising that what the principals and representatives construct largely corresponds with what the texts in the documents construct. There is a desire to work promotionally from the relational perspective, simultaneously, it is the preventional work in accordance with the categorical perspective that is given the most attention.