School drop-out/early leaving from education and training: diachronic and comparative analysis of conceptualisation and operational definition in Europe and Italy

The political-institutional and academic literature shows a lack of unambiguous positions on the phenomenon of school drop out/early leaving from education and training, both with regard to its conceptualisation (nominal definition) and its operational definition (properties, unit of analysis, reference time of the detected condition, institutions involved). Considering that the nominal definition and the operational definition of a social phenomenon assume relevance because its descriptive analysis and its monitoring are based on these elements, expressing its significance (prevalence) on a given territory, but also and above all because they serve to help take decisions to solve practical problems, in this specific case, relating to the design and planning of measures aimed at combating it, the contribution aims to help disambiguate the meaning associated with the different expressions and indicators used in the European and Italian political-institutional contexts. The contribution proposes a diachronic and comparative analysis of a number of European (European Council; European Commission; Council of European Union) and Italian (Ministry of Education) political-institutional documents considering the period from 2000 - the year of the Lisbon Strategy approval, which focuses on the role of education for Europe’s social and economic growth - to the first half of 2023. Based on the salient aspects observed from the analysis of the documents, the contribution traces two perspectives of conceptualisation and detection of the phenomenon: the “ex post perspective” in the European context, the “in itinere perspective” in the Italian context.