Improving the attendance rate of students with mental disabilities in language teaching: A case study of Japanese

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate if it is possible to improve the attendance rate of undergraduate students with mental disabilities. This paper begins by reviewing attendance and learning from long- versus short-term concepts. The participants included 12 students with mental disabilities who studied Japanese at a British university in the South East of England in the 2018/2019 and 2019/20 academic years. The study used mixed methods using quantitative students’ attendance rates and student’ written and verbal comments. Data analysis for attendance rates were conducted by calculation and for student’ written and verbal comments we used qualitative data analysis. The results showed that the average attendance rate over the years and the data also showed positive results. The study concludes that it is possible to improve the attendance rates of students with mental disabilities. This study may be of interest to anyone who is involved with and support students with mental disabilities.   Keywords: Attendance, higher education, Japanese, language learning, students, mental disabilities.