Educators as victims of learner-on-educator violence in South African schools: a model for countering the violence against teachers

Abstract

Most of the research on school violence focus on educator-on-learner occurrences by concentrating on causes without providing solutions to the violence problem at schools. Hence this empirical study focused on how educators managed and understood the violence against them; and how this violence influenced their daily teaching practices within school environments. With this understanding, it was intended to provide a succinct meaning as proceeding from the observations and virtual and/or face-to-face interviews held with both educators and School Principals of four Case Study schools. The aim was achieved through the exploration of educators and School Principals’ experiences and perceptions. The findings revealed that educators are battling to manage and control the learner-on-educator violence at schools. Thus, Grounded Theory facilitated the exploration of the strategies that educators employ to cope with and manage the learner-on-educator violence. These unique set of coping-skills could be used to counter the violence against educators at school. The Grounded Theory design particularly permitted the researcher to understand and explain the phenomenon through the theoretical development processes leading to the creation of a new 3-step Grounded Theory model. The theory created was grounded on the data of the four Case Study schools. The theory emerged from categories and their sub-sequent themes. The researcher used Charmaz’s Constructivist Approach to Grounded Theory for reasons that the approach offered attractive features such as being flexible in its organization. The multiple-site Case Study of four schools proved useful in compensating for the saturation point requirements of Grounded Theory studies (Merriam et al., 2016). The study further revealed educators at schools as experiencing ever-increasing discouraging attitudes from learners that are frustrating and confrontational, affecting educators’ personal and professional lives. The study confirmed the findings from literature that learner-on-educator violence is a global challenge within schooling systems, including that of South Africa. This has manifested in the encroaching distrust towards ‘senior administrators’, lack of constructive involvement of parents and schools identified as becoming toxic workplace locations and this depicting negativity about schools as centres of teaching. As a way of mitigating the problems related to the learner-on-educator violence at school, recommendations were made that schools should promote colleague-to-colleague support; continue monitoring access and entries to schools; and apply well-studied deterrence strategies of which some of them were put forth and recommended by this study.