“It’s a Warzone” - The Nature of School-based Violence in South Africa
Keywords:
High-school learners, School-based violence, Bio-psycho-social approach, Intervention research, South AfricaAbstract
The violence that continues to raise its ugly head in the South African communities has unfortunately found its way into the schools. Various media reports paint a shocking and disheartening picture of the ever-escalating incidents and levels of violence in South African schools. This violence has dire consequences for both learners and educators who often feel like schools have become warzones. It is pivotal to comprehend the nature of school-based violence in order to devise strategies of mitigating it. Based on a mixed methods study conducted at nine high schools, data was collected from both learners and educators using focus group discussions and questionnaires and analysed using thematic analysis and statistical analysis. Measures were put in place to ensure the quality of data. The findings indicate that learner-on-learner, learner-on-educator, and educator-on-learner violence is prevalent in schools. The different typologies of school-based violence were found to be around several spheres, namely: emotional, verbal, physical, sexual, gang, property, and cyber violence. The paper concludes that violence has filtered into schools, perpetrated by learners and educators. It is recommended that a holistic approach be designed to identify bio-psycho, social-political and technological strategies for responding to different forms of violence in schools.
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