Staying home as speaking out: Absence as a reflection on support in work-based learning

Work-based learning is a central component of vocational education and training (VET), yet student absence from workplace placements is often understood in administrative or behavioural terms. This article examines how VET students interpret absence from work-based learning and what such withdrawal reveals about the relational, psycho­logical, and organisational conditions shaping participation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 26 upper-secondary vocational students in Sweden who experienced work-based learning as challenging, the study employs reflexive thematic analysis informed by the theory of communities of practice and Biesta’s three domains of education. The findings show that absence from work-based learning emerges as a situated and meaningful response to learning environments perceived as lacking recognition, safety, or pedagogical purpose. Students described withdrawing in response to emotional exhaustion, relational insecurity and poor workplace treatment, experiences of meaning­lessness linked to limited learning opportunities, as well as practical and structural barriers disrupting continuity. Rather than indicating a lack of motivation or commit­ment, absence functioned as a relational and communicative act through which students signalled that participation had become untenable. By reconceptualising absence as an educationally and ethically significant phenomenon, the article contributes by foregrounding absence as student voice and an indicator of inclusiveness and responsiveness in work-based learning arrangements.