Les déterminants individuels du décrochage ont fait l’objet d’importants développements dans la littérature récente. Notre objectif est de faire le point sur les connaissances scientifiques disponibles en ce domaine.

L’article présent est une revue de littérature réalisée à partir de PsycInfo et basée sur un total de 50 articles publiés entre 2010 et 2017.

Les performances scolaires et les conduites à risque précoces restent les meilleurs déterminants du décrochage. Anxiété, dépression et troubles externalisés peuvent jouer un rôle direct ou indirect dans la prédiction du décrochage. Le manque de soutien psycho-affectif favorise fortement l’intention de décrocher.

Les biais méthodologiques nuancent l’importance du genre, des résultats scolaires, et du redoublement. Le développement des connaissances sur les relations entre différents déterminants, les profils d’élèves à risque et les temporalités à risque doivent permettre de mieux comprendre les trajectoires de décrochage et les processus à l’œuvre au sein de différents contextes scolaires.

Dropping out of school is a research topic with various dimensions: non-graduation, school leaving, absenteeism, school failure and school refusal. It involves processes determined by various factors – individual, social, familial and institutional. Individual determinants have specifically been studied in the recent literature. They involve demographic and academic indicators, behaviors, attitudes and mental health of the student, as well as specific types of school refusal. The aim of our study is to update knowledge in this specific field, and highlight underlying problems and methodological issues raised in the literature.

Dropping out of school is defined as leaving school without a qualification. It involves a process of specific disengagement, which is non-reducible to the negative counterpart of school commitment. The present article is a review of literature from PsycInfo on the individual determinants of dropping out of school. It is based on 50 articles published between 2010 and 2017, related to the following topics: school dropouts, school leavers, school refusal, and academic failure. Five exclusion criteria were used: studies with single factor analysis, literature review, sample excluding secondary education, sample of less than n=100, non-general, non-mixed, or composed of a sociodemographic minority.

School performance and early risk behaviors (substance use disorders, sexuality) remain the best determinants of dropping out throughout the duration of schooling. Psychopathological factors, anxiety, depression and externalized disorders can play a direct or indirect role in the prediction of dropping out. Lack of psycho-emotional support strongly supports the intention to drop out. Motivation has an unequal predictive value, depending on the type of construct or theoretical model used. Inappropriate beliefs, low self-esteem, pessimism, creativity appear as indirect determinants of dropping out. School burnout, understood as emotional, physical and mental exhaustion due to education, directly causes a break between the student and the school.

Methodological bias can modify the significance of determinants such as gender, academic achievement and retention. Greater knowledge about the relationships between determinants, the profiles of at-risk students and temporalities should help clarify students’ trajectories and the processes at work in different school contexts. Recommendations to educational staff are put forward regarding the detection of individual indicators of dropping out.