A collective biography of teachers’ experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery by Philangenkosi Excellent Shabangu Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree MASTER IN EDUCATION (Curriculum Studies) in the School of Education Faculty of Education University of the Free State Bloemfontein Supervisor: Dr F. Kruger Co-supervisor: Dr M. Müller Date of submission: 30 November 2021 DECLARATION I, Philangenkosi Excellent Shabangu, declare that the thesis, A collective biography of teachers’ experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery, submitted for the qualification of Master’s in Education (Curriculum Studies) at the University of the Free State is my own independent work. All the references that I have sourced have been indicated and acknowledged by means of in-text referencing as well as being listed in the references. I further declare that this work has not previously been submitted by me at another university or faculty for the purpose of obtaining a qualification. Signature 30 November 2021 ii ABSTRACT School violence is a frequent occurrence in many schools in South Africa and finds expression such as teacher on teacher, teacher on student, and student on student violence. It is argued that contributory factors of school violence relate to the poor economic, social, and cultural background of learners, poor parental guidance, and peer pressure. In this study, I explored teachers' experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery. This study is situated within the transformative paradigm as it sought to enable collective action towards transformation in responding to the prevailing occurrence of school violence. Furthermore, the study employed critical peace education as a grounding theory to inform such collective action. In line with the qualitative nature of the study, I employed narrative inquiry as a research methodology to interrogate how teachers make sense of their experiences of school violence and the perceived consequences for curriculum delivery. The inquiry focused on narratives as stories of experience, known as experience-centred narratives. As such, I specifically employed collective biography. Collective biography allows a group of people to share memory stories on a chosen topic through the technology of speaking, writing, and listening, thereby allowing participants to identify and unpack the discursive threads and mutual cultural narratives by which subjects shape and render themselves and others recognisable. This study was conducted in the Mashishing education circuit of Bohlabela District in Mpumalanga, South Africa. Five teachers were purposively selected to participate in the study due to their experiences of school violence. This study employed currere as both the analytical framework and the process of inquiry. Thus, the development of an analytical framework was a significant component of this study because it provided the data generation strategy. The analytical framework of currere allowed participants to engage in a complicated conversation about school violence. This study employed participant journals and two open-ended group discussions as data generation strategies. The participating teachers made use of their journals to recall their past experiences of school violence, capture it as it was, and how these experiences hover over and inform the present. During the open-ended group discussions, participants collectively shared their memories and, based on these, developed possible strategies to mitigate school violence. To interpret the generated data, thematic data analysis was employed, and to ensure trustworthiness, crystallisation was employed. In this study, emphasis was placed on the value of creating iii collective efforts to transform school communities by working toward and fostering a culture of peace that is conducive to curriculum delivery. Based on the analysis of the generated data, I argue that teachers face school violence, ranging from physical, cultural, and structural violence, daily, and that such manifestations of violence hold negative consequences for curriculum delivery. To mitigate the manifestations of school violence, participating teachers should collectively develop collaborative strategies that can be employed to mitigate school violence and the negative consequences it holds for curriculum delivery. Key words: school violence, curriculum delivery, critical peace education, currere, collective biography, collaboration, culture of peace iv DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my family. To my beautiful wife Buhle MaZulu-Shabangu. Thank you for your support, encouragement and understanding when I had to spend hours on this study. To my newly born handsome son, Mveloyenkosi Mhlaba Shabangu. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” – Jimmy Dean My gratitude goes out to the following people. ▪ My supervisor, Dr Frans Kruger, for his guidance, encouragement and support. Thank you for your warm professional guidance, tireless effort, and timely feedback. Without your guidance this study would not have been realised. I also wish to extend my gratitude to my co-supervisor, Dr Marguerite Müller, for her insightful comments. ▪ To the University of the Free State for the financial support provided to me for the duration of my study. ▪ To the participants, thank you, for your meaningful contribution to this study. ▪ To the Mpumalanga Department of Basic Education, thank for granting me permission to conduct my study. ▪ To my family for the encouragement and support, you are dearly loved. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration II Abstract iii Dedication v Acknowledgements vi Chapter One 1 Orientation 1 1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Rationale and problem statement ........................................................................... 2 1.3 Research question and sub-questionS ................................................................... 3 1.4 Research aim and objectives .................................................................................. 4 1.5 Research Paradigm ................................................................................................ 4 1.5.1 Theoretical Framework 5 1.5.1.1 Critical peace education 5 1.5.1.2 Pinar’s currere 7 1.6 Research design ......................................................................................................... 8 1.6.1 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 8 1.6.2 Research Methods 10 1.6.2.1 Literature review 11 1.6.2.2 Participant journals 12 1.6.2.3 Open-ended group interviews 13 1.6.3 Participant Selection 14 1.6.4 Data Analysis 15 1.7 Trustworthiness .................................................................................................... 16 1.8 Ethical considerations ........................................................................................... 16 1.9 Demarcation of the study ...................................................................................... 17 1.9.1 Scientific demarcation 17 1.9.2 Geographical demarcation 18 1.10 Outline of the study ............................................................................................... 18 1.11 SUMMARY ........................................................................................................... 18 Chapter Two 19 Literature review 19 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 19 2.2 Critical peace education ....................................................................................... 20 2.2.1 Peace Education and Critical Peace Education 20 2.2.2 Conceptualising a Culture of Peace 22 2.3 Conceptualising school violence ............................................................................... 24 2.3.1 Defining Violence 25 2.4 Exploring the consequences of school violence ....................................................... 27 2.4.1 Introduction 27 2.4.2 Manifestation of School Violence 27 2.4.3 Consequences of School Violence 30 2.4.4 Consequences of School Violence on Curriculum Delivery 32 2.4.4.1 Conceptualising curriculum delivery 32 2.4.4.2 Consequences of violence on curriculum delivery 34 2.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 37 Chapter Three 38 Currere as an analytical framework 38 vii 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 38 3.2 Review of research methodology and methods ........................................................ 38 3.2.1 Introduction 38 3.2.2 Narrative Inquiry 40 3.2.3 Collective Biography 43 3.3 Currere ..................................................................................................................... 46 3.3.1 Development of the Analytical Framework 48 3.3.3.1 Regression: remembering the past 48 3.3.3.2 Progression: imagining the future 50 3.3.3.3 Analysis: reflecting on the past and present 51 3.3.3.4 Synthesis: developing collaborative strategies 52 3.4 Research site and participant selection .................................................................... 53 3.5 Trustworthiness ........................................................................................................ 54 3.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 56 Chapter Four 57 A collective biography of school violence 57 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 57 4.2. Our collaborative narrative ....................................................................................... 57 4.2.1 Generating the Narratives 58 4.2.2 Development of Collective Biography 60 4.2.3 Interpreting the Narratives 63 4.3 Teachers’ experiences of school violence: Our collective biography ........................ 64 4.3.1 Brief introduction to the characters 64 4.3.2 Themes of Structural Violence 65 4.3.2.1 Manifestations of structural violence at school 65 4.3.3 Themes of Direct Violence 73 4.3.3.1 Manifestations of direct violence within the school 74 4.3.4 Themes of Cultural Violence 82 4.3.4.1 Manifestations of Cultural Violence in Schools 82 4.4 Development of collaborative strategies ............................................................... 85 4.4.1. Addressing the impact of structural violence 86 4.4.1.1 Democratising the school environment 90 4.4.1.2 Parental/guardian involvement 91 4.4.1.3 Teachers’ self-reflection 92 4.4.1.4 Exercising authority with compassion 94 4.4.1.5 Response to the manifestations of cultural violence 95 4.5 Conclusion 97 Chapter Five 99 Conclusion, comments, and recommendations 99 5.1 Introduction 99 5.2 Summary of findings 99 5.3 Comments, suggestions and recommendations 102 5.4 Contribution of the study 105 5.5 Limitations of the study 107 5.6 Further research 108 5.7 Personal reflection 109 5.8 Conclusion 110 References 112 Appendix A: Ethics Clearance Certificates 141 viii Appendix B: Language editing 143 ix CHAPTER ONE ORIENTATION 1.1 INTRODUCTION Recent studies on school violence have depicted its prevalence at many schools in South Africa (Chubbuck & Zembylas, 2011; Mncube & Harber, 2013; Mgijima, 2014; John, 2016; Grobler, 2018). Broadly defined, school violence is a physical or verbal act causing harm to the targeted victim while at school or its surroundings (Zembylas, 2013; MacNeil & Steward, 2000). It has been argued that the cause of such violence is in many instances related to the poor economic, social, and cultural background of learners. Specifically, a lack of parental guidance, access to violent media programmes, and peer pressure are the perceived contributory factors (Netshitangani, 2014). School violence has a negative effect on curriculum delivery and consequently affects academic performance. The severity is demonstrated by the degree to which the media reports on the incidence of school violence. John (2016) supports this by stating that reports in the media constantly portray South African schools as aggressive, violent, and at some point, dangerous places. This position is confirmed by Morrell (2001) that the manifestations of school violence continue to occur as attested by recent reports in the media. These include, for example, a violent assault by a learner against a Soweto teacher which was captured on camera (The Star, 13 November 2018). Another report portrayed female learners physically attacking each other while others watched, cheered and recorded the violence on their cell phones (City Press, 10 July 2018). In one case, a teacher in Cape Town was caught on camera slapping a learner at Sans Souci Girls High School (News24, 6 February 2019). School violence thus, manifests in different ways: learner-learner, learner-teacher, or teacher-learner violence. The above are examples of direct violence or physical aggression and abuse that can result in serious injury and possibly death (Cremin & Guilherme, 2016). Based on the above mentioned reports, it is evident that in some instances, schools are not safe places for both teachers and learners (Harber & Sakade, 2009; Morrel, 2001). Chabangu (2014) contends that students, teachers, and other staff members are gradually becoming victims (and perpetrators) of school violence due to escalating rates of conflict and animosity in the school environment. The belief that external environmental factors have a significant 1 contributory influence on the perpetration of school violence is supported by Mgijima (2014). In some cases, the conditions in the communities influence negative behaviour at school. Structural violence in communities makes members vulnerable as it manifests in forms of inequalities, unfair discrimination, and abuse of human rights (Cremin & Guilherme, 2016). Poor infrastructure, a lack of adequate sanitation facilities such as toilets or clean water, and other forms of discrimination exacerbate social problems which can give vent in the form of school violence. In a social system with a legacy of racism, sexism, inequality, and ethnocentrism, structural violence is a distinct reality. It is achieved through institutionalised classism, adultism, nationalism, ageism, elitism, heterosexism, as well as other forms of unfair discriminatory practices (Zakrison, Milian Valdés, & Muntaner, 2019). Zakrison et al (2019), further argues that structural violence is rooted in pervasive social structures and is legitimised and normalised by stable organisations through unfair practices. Therefore, unfair practices within the school system may be the result of structural violence which could subsequently lead to direct violence (Mgijima, 2014). Although Mncube and Harber (2013) point out that ample studies have been conducted concerning the phenomenon of school violence regarding its causes and effects, Shields, Nadasen, and Hanneke (2015) argue that very few studies relate to the consequences of school violence on educators in South Africa. 1.2 RATIONALE AND PROBLEM STATEMENT Knight (2002:10) notes that curiosity in a subject may serve as a starting point for research, while Mouton (2001: 27) maintains that people who are more conscious of what is happening around them and more open to their environment are more likely to come up with interesting topics for the study. The motivation for this study stemmed from my personal experiences as a junior teacher who teaches in the community that prefers to settle disputes using violence (as opposed to dialogue). Incidents of violence emanating from the community have a negative effect on children as they become socialised in such behaviour, and are often severely traumatised by it, more so if they are the victims (Fitzpatrick, Oghia, Melki & Pagani, 2016). Very often, it is the psychological scarring experienced by children that leads them to act in a violent manner (Fitzpatrick et al., 2016). In my career as a junior teacher, I have observed that societal violence translates into school 2 violence. In support, Netshitangani (2014) states that violence in schools represents violence in a wider social context. Students and others from neighbouring areas import violence into the school. Exposure to incidents of crime, drug and alcohol abuse, family participation in criminal activity, and aggression often increase the risk of violent learner conduct (Smith & Smith, 2006). Furthermore, current reports abound with instances of violence in the school context which include teacher-learner, learner-learner, and learner- teacher conflict. For example, it was reported that a learner attacked an educator with a broomstick (News24, 2013 August 20) whilst in another case, a 17-year-old learner was brutally assaulted by two teachers (Eyewitness News, 2019 January 28). Given the occurrence of violent incidents such as these within the school context, and the relative lack of corrective action against such violence (Shields, Nadasen & Hanneke, 2015), I am curious to explore educators' experiences of violence in terms of curriculum delivery. In this study, I defined curriculum delivery as an act of teaching, learning, and assessing in a conducive environment (McGregor, 2012). Studies on the issue of school violence have been carried out extensively in terms of its causes and consequences (Grobler, 2018). However, there seems to be a paucity of studies that relate to the perceived consequences of school violence on curriculum delivery. Given this scenario, I was interested to explore teachers' experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences on curriculum delivery. 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTION AND SUB-QUESTIONS What are teachers’ experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery? In order to answer the main research question, the following subsidiary research questions were addressed: • How can school violence be conceptualised? • What are the consequences of school violence on the basic education sector in South Africa in general, and for curriculum delivery in particular? • How can currere be employed as an analytical framework to explore the experiences of teachers concerning school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery? 3 • What collaborative strategies can be developed by teachers to mitigate the consequences of school violence for curriculum delivery? 1.4 RESEARCH AIM AND OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to explore teachers’ experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery To realise this aim, the following objectives were pursued: • To determine how school violence is conceptualised; • To investigate the consequences of violence on the basic education sector in South Africa in general, and for curriculum delivery in particular; • To explore how currere can be employed as an analytical framework to explore the experiences of teachers concerning school violence and the perceived consequences for curriculum delivery; and • To explore collaborative strategies that can be developed by teachers to mitigate the consequences of school violence on curriculum delivery. 1.5 RESEARCH PARADIGM A research paradigm is a blueprint for research (Grant & Osanloo, 2014). It aids as the foundation for creating and supporting one’s research study. It also provides the framework for deciding how the researcher will approach the research project as a whole in terms of philosophy, epistemology, methodology, and analytics (Grant & Osanloo, 2014). Hussein (2018) asserts that a research paradigm assists the researcher in focusing on existing theory in an investigative field that leads to more concrete and generalisable results (Akintoye, 2015). A transformative paradigm is the research paradigm that informs this study. Mertens (2009) claims that a transformative paradigm represents a community of research designs shaped by diverse theories and philosophies, with a shared theme of collective liberation and change by group action. The ontological premises of a transformative paradigm hold that social truth is historically bound and is regularly evolving, depending on power-based factors: political, social, economic, and cultural (Chilisa & Kawulic, 2012). Chilisa and 4 Kawulic (2012) add that the epistemological assumptions of a transformative paradigm are that scholars believe that knowledge is valid if it can be translated into action that empowers people's lives and positively changes them. Methodological assumptions of a transformative paradigm entail destroying myths, beliefs, falsehoods, and inspiring people to act to change society. To this end, both quantitative and qualitative methods can be used in the research process (Romm & Norma, 2015). Given the aim of this study that sets out to explore teachers' experiences of school violence and its consequences for curriculum delivery, a transformative paradigm is applicable because focus is placed on the lives and authentic experiences of teachers (Romm & Norma, 2015). This study also considers strategies that can be employed by teachers to mitigate school violence and this will set out to devise a collective action plan to transform this dire situation. This aspect of the research also closely aligns with the aims of the transformative paradigm since research informed by this paradigm approaches research as a means of change- oriented interaction aimed not only at studying and understanding society, but also at critiquing and improving society (Mgijima, 2014). Furthermore, a transformative paradigm strives for equality in all its forms, defending peace, social cohesion, liberty, and hope (Mahlomaholo, 2009). It can be argued that violence is an oppressive, unfair, and unjust practice in whatever form of manifestation (direct, structural, and cultural). A transformative paradigm in this study fostered a generation of knowledge to combat school violence and create an awareness of peace and harmony. 1.5.1 Theoretical Framework Ravitch and Carl (2016) define a theoretical framework as a mechanism that directs the study by focusing on a formal theory constructed from an existing, coherent description of certain phenomena and relationships. It functions as the guide to construct one’s thesis and sustain it. Lovitts (2005) adds that a theoretical framework defines conditions that should be acceptable, in terms of logic, well comprehended, and consistent with the problem at hand for applying theory to the research study. Therefore, I employed critical peace education and William Pinar’s currere as theoretical lenses in this study. 1.5.1.1 Critical peace education Brantmeier (2011) asserts that critical peace education is a critique of communities and their 5 internal structural oppression. Bajaj (2008) identifies critical peace education approaches as being positioned in awareness-raising and mobilisation against direct and indirect violence. Therefore, critical peace education invites researchers to participate in structural analysis, review of asymmetric structures of influence, conceptualisation of conflict and historical awareness, and emancipatory action for change (Ibid). I employed critical peace education as a theory in this study as it aligned with the transformative paradigm that informs this study given that critical peace education reacts to different types of violence (direct and indirect) and develops new modes of educational empowerment around the globe in social contexts (Bajaj 2015). In addition, critical peace educators deliver knowledge, information, and experiences to learners that contribute to the awareness, abilities, attitudes, behaviours, and global perspectives that foster peace, and as such educational areas can be places of opportunities and change (Ibid). Critical peace education recognises the relationship between peace and social justice and investigates and questions structural disparities with a view to transforming teachers, learners, schools, and communities (Bajaj, 2008; Brantmeier, 2010; Diaz-Soto, 2005). Educators devoted to critical peace education identify, question and seek to change structures which perpetuate social disparities and unfairness (Darder, Baltodano & Torres 2003). They invest in the power of non-violence as a resource for building communities, schools, and addressing issues of violence in the broader society. Therefore, teachers may find value to explore and collaborate towards non-violent approaches into every facet of their engagement with learners, and structures within the school and broader community (Chubbuck & Zembylas, 2011). Thus, critical peace education forms a foundation on which collaborative strategies can be explored by teachers to affirmatively respond to and work towards mitigating the consequences of school violence on curriculum delivery. Furthermore, peace education acknowledges that conflict is a normal and healthy part of society, however it is about harnessing such conflict to achieve peaceful rather than violent outcomes (Lederach, 2002). In this instance, conflict is defined as an incompatibility of interests in a situation with multiple possible outcomes (Sørensen & Johansen, 2016). Conflict manifests itself in two ways: internally and socially. Internal conflict occurs when one party experience complexity making a judgement, whereas social conflict occurs when two or more parties and their preferences are incompatible (Kent, 1993). Lederach (2002) accentuates that conflict creates relational spaces in which constructive nonviolent change 6 processes can be initiated and sustained through the use of dialogue and negotiation in pursuit of individual preferences. This implies that conflict has a wide-ranging social impact. The network of life in conflict situations construct spaces of conversation where there are, by necessity, points of relationship across the boundaries of conflict, from schools to hospitals, markets to housing and transportation (Lederach, 2002), whereas violence means harming someone else in pursuit of one's own interests. I am aware that I will not be using the work of Lederbach’s (2002) and others given that it falls outside the scope of this study however, it is something worth investigating in further studies. 1.5.1.2 Pinar’s currere Currere is the Latin word (verb) that means moving or flowing like a current. Curriculum is a noun that also has its origins in Latin and implies to run the course and career (Harper, 2012). Currere is an autobiographical approach developed by William Pinar (2012) to give a wider and profound interpretation of an individual's lived curriculum experiences through recalling the past (regression), imagining the future (progression), and examining and synthesising emerging themes (Pinar, 2012). Moore (2013) claims that the term curriculum as used by Pinar (2012), extends beyond its definition as it also determines instructional standards and depicts how individuals (teachers and learners) act and interact as learning experiences are produced. Therefore, currere encourages teachers to view themselves and their learners as active partners in shaping the lived curriculum (Doerr, 2004). To realise harmonious relationships between teachers and learners, Van Manen (1991) advises that teachers must frequently reflect on their relationships with learners. Thus, Pinar’s currere aligns with a transformative paradigm that informs this research study which attempted to explore teachers' lived experiences of school violence and the consequences this had for curriculum delivery. Teacher's comprehension of the curriculum and how it relates to experiences of violence is dissected in the context of this study. Therefore, employing Pinar's currere in this study enabled me to focus on how teachers can collectively and positively respond to experiences of school violence by collaboratively strategising to mitigate the consequences of school violence in terms of curriculum delivery. 7 1.6 RESEARCH DESIGN MacMillan and Schumacher (2001:166) describe a research design as a strategy for choosing topics, research areas, and processes for generating data to answer the research questions. The purpose of a research design is to provide outcomes that are trustworthy; thus, a research design pays attention to the result and all the steps in the process used to attain the results (Ibid). A qualitative research design leads to establishing assumptions, to analyse, and to understand human experiences, attitudes, motives, and behaviours (Yin, 2008). Thus, this research employed a qualitative research design as I dissected the experiences of participants (teachers) pertaining to school violence and the perceptions they hold concerning its consequences for curriculum delivery. In this regard, focus was placed on the holistic, complex, and unique facets of human experience in their totality (Clisett, 2008). I differentiate between research methodology and research methods and explicate their relationship in this study. Leedy and Ormrod (2001) describe research methodology as the general approach employed by the scholar in conducting the research project. Research methods, on the other hand, are specific procedures, schemes, and algorithms used to generate scientific knowledge (Rajasekar, Philominathan & Chinnathambi, 2013). The link between research methodology and research methods is that a research methodology justifies the appropriate research methods employed in a study. This study employed narrative inquiry in general, and collective biography in particular, as the research methodology. 1.6.1 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Schwandt (2007:195) describes research methodology as an idea of how an investigation can proceed. It includes an overview of the premises, concepts, and procedures of a specific investigative method. Teddlie and Tashakkori (2006) add by stating that research methodology describes and defines the kinds of issues worth investigating, what constitutes a researchable question, and how to select suitable data generation methods. Bense (2012) and Craig (2011) describe narrative inquiry as qualitative research that provides participants with an opportunity to recount their accounts of events. Using narrative analysis is to take a specific view of reality as a phenomenon under research (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Chan, 2017; Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007). In this study, I used narrative inquiry to interrogate how 8 teachers make-sense of their lives and worlds by exploring their' experiences of school violence and the perceived consequences thereof for curriculum delivery. Hence, my focus was directly on narratives as stories of experience known as experience-centred narratives (Squire, 2008). According to Patterson (cited in Grobler, 2018), experience-centred narratives are texts that construct tales of personal experience through the first-person oral interpretation of past, present, and future or imagined encounters. Connelly and Clandinin (2000) state that teachers' lived experiences can be a source of knowledge for classroom practices. Thus, narrative inquiry is appropriate in this study because it allowed me to capture the experiences of teachers concerning school violence through storytelling so that I could grasp a complete comprehension of their views and how violence affected their ability to deliver curriculum. In collaboration with the participants of the study, collaborative strategies to mitigate the consequences of school violence for curriculum delivery, were suggested. In conducting narrative inquiry, I specifically employed the technique of collective biography which is a research approach where a group of researchers through speaking, writing and listening to memory stories on a chosen topic, work together to identify and unpack the discursive threads and mutual cultural narratives of subjects to shape and render themselves and others recognisable (Gannon, Walsh, Byers & Rajiva, 2014). This implies that collective biography focuses on embodiment and sociality as crucial dimensions of lived experiences (Gonick, Walsh & Brown, 2011). In this study, collective biography provided a platform for participants to describe (oral or written) their memories of school violence and its implications for curriculum delivery. Thus, combining collective biography and currere provided participants with a platform to recall and record their memories of school violence in a stream-of-consciousness manner (regression), in addition to drawing on their present experiences. Further, participants juxtapose their past and present experiences of school violence and its effects on curriculum delivery with their propositions for an imaginary future. This identified shared themes and connections between the first two stages (progression). During the final stage of the data generation, and as informed by currere, participants drew on their collective 9 biography and collaborative-knowledge to develop strategies that can be employed by teachers to mitigate school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery (interpretation, analysis, and synthesis). 1.6.2 Research Methods Rajasekar et al. (2013) describe research methods as various procedures, systems, and algorithms used to generate knowledge in research. According to Goundar (2012) and Williams (2007), research methods are techniques used by researchers to generate data. However, Apuke (2017) and Langkos (2014) contend that appropriate research methods should be applied to the study under investigation to ensure the realisation of research objectives. This study employed a literature review, participant journals, and open-ended group interviews as research methods. Below I briefly indicated how I employed currere in conjunction with participant journals and open-ended group interviews. I focused on the aspects of remembering the past (regression), and imagining the future (progression) to collectively analyse and synthesise emerging themes based on experiences of school violence and its consequences for curriculum delivery (Pinar, 2012). The first step involves remembering the past (regression) – for which the participants captured their past experiences of school violence in their journals over a protracted period of time. This was followed by all the participants coming together as a group to collectively discuss, analyse, and synthesise experiences of school violence and the perceived consequences for curriculum delivery during the first open-ended group interview. The process of narrating, sharing, analysis, and synthesis were done following an approach based on collective biography. During the second step, the participants also imagined the future (progression) as part of the first open-ended group interview, by collectively exploring what a conducive learning environment would look like, and what possibilities it would create for curriculum delivery. The imagination of the future was collectively analysed and synthesised. The third step took place during the second open-ended group interview. Based on remembering the past (regression) and imagining the future (progression), together with the participants (teachers) we considered collaborative strategies to alleviate school violence and its consequences for curriculum delivery. Having briefly considered how currere informed the use of participants’ journals and open-ended group interviews in this study, I describe the research methods employed in more detail below. 10 1.6.2.1 Literature review A literature review involves analysing current writings about the problem under investigation through reading, reviewing, and critiquing (Randolph; 2009, Larsen, Ussing & Brunø, 2016). Ramdhani, Ramdhani, and Amin (2014) add that a literature review is a study of scholarly publications, books, and other related sources on a specific research topic, research area, or theory, and thus offers a definition, overview, and critical evaluation of such study. Furthermore, Serra (2015) describes a literature review as a comprehensive overview, and fundamental analysis of the relevant research and non-research literature available on the subject under study. Additionally, Denney and Tewksbury (2012) view literature review as a detailed examination of previous research on a particular topic. It is, therefore, a way of placing the work of other researchers into context, and positioning the subject in a broader area of information (Showkat & Huma, 2017). Melissa and Daniel (2013), cited in Schryen, Rowe, Gregory and Benlian (2017) concur that a review of literature is a method employed in research where we find, critically read, and analyse scholarly information so as to obtain new perspectives through the convergence of previously unconnected concepts, which can include data generation tools and recommended approaches implemented in similar situations. According to Kruger and Neuman (2006), a good literature review locates a research project in context, depicting the path of the previous research and how the current study is linked to the prior, thus enabling the researcher to benefit from the effort of other researchers. Therefore, it has been argued that the review of the literature depicts what is understood concerning a topic and what is not yet identified, and the justification for a new exploration is thus set (Denney & Tewksbury, 2012; Bolderston, 2008; Armitage & Keeble-Ramsay, 2008; Rowley & Slack, 2004; Arshed & Danson, 2015; Rhoades & Ellen, 2011). Serra (2015) reiterates that the literature review is meant to analyse sources that have been investigated which provides a justification for the proposed study such that it may identify the gaps in the literature. Therefore, the primary aim of a literature review is to clarify what has been investigated on the phenomenon under study, to make it clear that there are outstanding questions, and to explain the need for answering them (Reay, 2014; Schryen et al., 2017). It is from this perspective that this study employed a literature review as a research method to answer subsidiary questions (one and two) of this study. However, this study also employed currere as an analytical framework to answer subsidiary question 3. In addition, 11 this study utilised participants' journals and open-ended group interviews as research methods to develop collaborative strategies to combat school violence. 1.6.2.2 Participant journals Researchers may analyse personal documents to explore the lived experiences of participants which may include letters, diaries, and journals (Van Eerde, Holman & Totterdell, 2005; Ohly, Sabine, Cornelia & Zapf, 2010; Jacelon & Imperio, 2005; Dennis, 2014; Gawley, 2018; Reilly, 2012). Kabir (2016) describes the journal as a type of self- administered form of a document commonly used to record individual experiences. Research journals are written documents kept by individuals in which they record what is happening in their lives and in their social environments (Given, 2012). Participants' journals can also be understood as written logs that blend personal reflections, accounts of events, and descriptions of experiences (Chabon & Lee-Wilkerson, 2006). Participant journals are used in qualitative research to capture the rich personal experiences of participants and to provide a platform for participants to feel comfortable in disclosing their experiences (Jacelon & Imperio, 2005; Given, 2012). As this study sought to collectively explore teachers’ experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery, I utilised research journals in combination with open-ended group interviews as research methods to explore the experiences of participants. The advantages of using participant journals as presented by Given (2012) are that they are flexible, can be used within a variety of research designs, and can be combined with other research methods to generate data. It is for this reason that participant journals in this study were linked with open-ended group interviews. Kabir (2016), Sheble and Wildemuth (2009) also state that the advantage of employing participant journals as research methods are that they allow for the recording of events in their natural setting and, in theory, lessen the delay between the event and the recorded time. Based on these advantages, I employed strategies to generate data to elicit concrete detail, detailed descriptions, and explanations of school violence from participants’ which may not have been available through other research methods. Hayman, Wilkes, and Jackson (2012) contend that the daily experiences that teachers encounter at schools influence their attitude, morale, and their ability to deliver the curriculum. Therefore, 12 participants’ journals provided rich information of teachers’ experiences of school violence and its implications for curriculum delivery. 1.6.2.3 Open-ended group interviews An interview is an exchange of opinions between two or more people on a topic of mutual interest in order to generate data concerning the participant's thoughts, values, perceptions, and behaviours for generating information in research (Akbayrak, 2000; Easwaramoorthy & Zarinpoush, 2006; Nieuwenhuis, 2007). Alshenqeeti (2014) describes an interview as a dialogue used to generate information from the interviewee's understanding and interpretations of a given topic. Nieuwenhuis (2007) presents three types of interviews that can be employed in qualitative research. Firstly, open-ended or unstructured interviews frequently take the form of a dialogue where the interviewer discusses his or her thoughts, ideas, opinions, and attitudes about a phenomenon with the participants. Secondly, structured interviews include questions formulated prior to the interview, similar to a survey where answers are recorded on a standardised schedule. Thirdly, semi-structured interviews comprise of numerous questions that assist in the identification of sites to be explored while enabling the interviewer or interviewee to deviate to seek a more comprehensive idea or answer. Interviews have advantages and disadvantages: they have a high return rate with limited incomplete answers and that researchers can control the answering order (Alshenqeeti, 2014). However, interviews can be time-consuming, and never hundred per cent anonymous. This study employed open-ended group interviews. Open-ended group interviews invite participants to collectively share and narrate their lived experiences on a given topic (Ennis & Chen, 2012; Krueger & Casey, 2014). Rabiee (2004) describes open-ended group interviews as an instrument to elicit in-depth information from participants who are purposefully chosen because they are viewed as knowledgeable regarding the subject under discussion. Weller et al. (2018) defines an open-ended group interview as a carefully organised deliberation designed to obtain perceptions in a designated area of interest in a permissive, non-threatening environment. This form of interviewing is an open or transparent process where all parties (interviewers and interviewees) are given greater flexibility and independence which encourages co-operation 13 and helps to establish rapport (Alshenqeeti, 2014). This type of interview technique afforded me the opportunity to engage in a discussion with participants which related to their experiences of school violence. However, as an interviewer in this study, I was more eager to probe and allow the interviewee to elaborate or clarify aspects of their authentic experiences of school violence (Akbayrak, 2000). Therefore, open-ended group interviews afforded both the participants and I a platform to narrate and share our experiences of school violence in an incisive manner. Arcelay-Rojas (2018) contends that open-ended group interviews allow marginalised segments of society, such as minorities and women, to share their experiences as a collective. Dilshad and Latif (2013) agree by stating that open-ended group interviews are perceived to be predominantly beneficial when a researcher intends to explore people's lived experiences. Therefore, focus group interviews enabled me to generate high-quality data which was instrumental to explore teachers' real-life experiences of school violence (Knox & Burkard, 2009; Potter & Hepburn, 2005). Further, open-ended group interviews were appropriate as this study attempted to collectively develop strategies that could be employed by teachers to mitigate school violence (Weller et al., 2018; Nyumba, Kerrie, Christina & Nibedita, 2017). 1.6.3 Participant Selection Participant selection refers to a qualitative system of selecting relevant participants so that the topic can be appropriately researched (Polkinghorne, 2005, Lopez & Whitehead, 2013). According to Polkinghorne (2005), participants and documents for a qualitative study are not only chosen because they fulfil the representative requirements of statistical inference, but rather because they can make significant contributions in filling gaps pertaining to the topic under investigation. This study employed purposive participant selection which is the selection of people or documents from which the researcher can adequately learn about the lived experiences of subjects (Benoot, Hannes & Bilsen, 2016). This study explored teachers’ experiences of school violence and its consequences for curriculum delivery, with the intention of collaboratively (researcher and participants) devising strategies to mitigate school violence. 14 Hence, purposive participant selection ensured that teachers who had first-hand experience of school violence were involved in this study. Patton (1990) agrees that it is crucial to select information-rich cases for studying a phenomenon incisively. Information-rich cases are those from which the researcher can adequately study about issues of central significance to the aim of the study. This study purposively chose five teachers from three different schools - two primary schools and one secondary school located in the Mashishing Circuit of the Bohlabela District in Mpumalanga Province, RSA. Moreover, I pursued a representative selection in terms of gender, age and experience. 1.6.4 Data Analysis Researchers use qualitative data analysis to assign meaning to vast amounts of data so that it can be systematically communicated to their readers (Archer, 2018; Kawulich, 2004; Ngulube, 2015, 2013). Data analysis was the method employed by the researcher to simplify the generated data into a narrative, and to be able to interpret it by giving it order, structure, and meaning (Kawulich, 2004; De Vos, Strydom, Schulze, & Patel, 2011; Ngulube, 2015). Qualitative data analysis is a non-numerical assessment and interpretation of data to discover the fundamental meanings and patterns of relationships (Babbie, 2010). Qualitative data analysis was one of the crucial processes in this qualitative study because it enabled me to make-sense of all the gathered information (Leech & Onwuegbuzie, 2007; O'Connor & Gibson, 2003; Münch, 2006). According to Ibrahim (2015), qualitative data analysis is the series of procedures and guidelines by which we migrate from the generated qualitative data into some form of elaboration, comprehension, and interpretation of the individuals and the conditions we are investigating. The aim of qualitative data analysis is thus to transform raw data by searching, analysing, mapping, identifying, coding, exploring, and explaining raw data patterns, trends, themes, and categories to interpret them (Ngulube, 2015; Prokopová, Silhavy & Silhavy, 2011). It is for this reason that Patton (2002) refers to this method as an inductive analysis. Importantly, data analysis procedures should be aligned to the methods employed to generate data including the assumptions of the research approach (Ngulube, 2015). Narrative inquiry was employed as a research methodology, therefore narrative analysis was suitable for this methodological approach. 15 A narrative-based approach can be used to explain people's interactions from a phenomenological viewpoint by regarding the storyteller as the centre of interest (Breheny & Stephens, 2015; Cortazzi, 2001). The narrative analysis I conducted enabled me to approach the discourse holistically and preserve the context and particularity, as well as to present a readable story that integrates and summarises key information (Nie, 2017; Cortazzi, 2001). Narrative data analysis comprises of thematic, interactional, and structural analysis. The interactional analysis emphasises the dialogic process between the researcher and the interviewees, while structural analysis focuses on the telling by selecting particular narrative devices to make the story persuasive (Riessman, 1993). In my analysis of data, I employed a thematic analysis approach. This approach identifies themes and patterns concerning all the collected information to answer the research questions; in this case it was directly related to school violence (Ngulube, 2015; Willig, 2014; Leavy, 2006). 1.7 TRUSTWORTHINESS Trustworthiness refers to the degree to which the outcomes are a true representation of the phenomenon under investigation (Curtin, & Fossey, 2007; Perez, 2019). Trustworthiness increases the reader’s confidence that the findings are worthy, authentic, and legitimate. This study employed crystallisation as a method to ensure that results were authentic and reflected the lived experiences of the participants. Crystallisation deepens the understanding of a phenomenon whilst giving recognition to the fact that what we know is always partial (Richardson, 1994). Employing crystallisation ensured that this study reflects the unique reality of the participants as a means to provide a complex and deeper understanding of teachers’ experiences of school violence and its effects on curriculum delivery. 1.8 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS This study was subject to ethical considerations. Ethics is a division of philosophy that deals with people's conduct in terms of behavioural norms, social expectations, and relationships with one another (Blumberg, Cooper & Schindler, 2005). Research ethics are crucial for this study because I had to protect the dignity of the subjects by publishing information that is truthful (Fouka & Mantzorou, 2011; Dilmi, 2012). This study adhered to ethical standards required in terms of the University of the Free State’s Code of Ethics for researchers, and the policy guidelines on responsible research. I applied for ethical clearance to the Ethics 16 Committee in the Faculty of Education at the University of the Free State and was granted permission (UFS-HSD2019/159601). I also applied for written permission from the Head of the Department of Education in Mpumalanga Province, and the Regional Director to ensure that this study is a legal exercise. Confidentiality refers to the discreet management of information about the participants (Shah, 2011) hence participants were guaranteed that their names and school sites would be kept strictly confidential and private. I assured the participants that their identities and information will be kept anonymous, and that the study was not for personal gain or profit. The principle of voluntary participation was explained and they had the right to withdraw from the study at any time without being disadvantaged in any way. The written informed consent form (signed) included all the finer details of the research processes, in addition to emphasising the participants' right to autonomy, dignity and respect. 1.9 DEMARCATION OF THE STUDY In this section, I differentiate between geographic demarcation and scientific demarcation. Geographic demarcation is the geographical area where the study took place which also includes the participants’ location. Scientific demarcation speaks to the study being inclusive of curriculum studies. 1.9.1 Scientific demarcation According to Green (2018), the discipline of curriculum studies entails paying rigorous attention to cultural issues and methodological concerns in understanding curriculum as many kinds of text. Pinar, Reynolds, and Slattery (1995) state that the curriculum, as text, is primarily directed to teachers and educational authorities, but concerning students only indirectly through the mediation of teachers. Content contained in a curriculum offers clues to the roles and responsibilities of teachers which are related to the desired teaching and learning paradigm. Thus, the central concern of curriculum studies includes curriculum policymaking, curriculum development, and classroom teaching with the intention to improve the work of the school as an educational institution. Moreover, curriculum studies with its component of curriculum-making is a practical and deliberate endeavour. This study aimed to explore teachers’ experiences of school violence and its consequences for curriculum delivery. Thus, it is appropriately aligned to curriculum studies in education by exploring 17 participants’ experiences of school violence, in addition to developing collaborative strategies to contribute to the delivery of the curriculum in a conducive classroom. 1.9.2 Geographical demarcation This study was conducted in the Mpumalanga Province of South Africa, which is composed of four education districts: Nkangala, Ehlanzeni, Gert Sibande, and Bohlabela. This study was conducted in the Bohlabela District. This District is composed of sixteen circuits and it is the third-largest education district in the Mpumalanga Province. However, the study was conducted in Mashishing Circuit only. Participants (teachers) teach at two primary schools located on a farm, and one secondary school located in a township. 1.10 OUTLINE OF THE STUDY In chapter two, I answered subsidiary research questions one and two through conducting an in-depth literature review on school violence in South Africa. I also discuss critical peace education in developing a theoretical lens through which to conduct my narrative analysis. This is followed by a discussion of the research design, methodology, and methods in chapter three. In this chapter (3), I also focused on developing an analytical framework for this study based on Pinar's currere. In chapter 4, I report on and analyse the data generated through the participant journals and open-ended group interviews. In the last chapter, chapter five, I explain how I answered the main research questions. 1.11 SUMMARY In this chapter, I presented the context of the study, the background, as well as the rationale. The main and subsidiary research questions from which the aim and objectives of this study were derived, were also provided. This study extends existing literature on school violence as it provides a broader insight into teachers' experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery. The research design and methodology were outlined, and the theoretical framework was explained. In particular, it was indicated that this study is informed by narrative inquiry and will follow an approach grounded in collective biography. In the next chapter (2), I reviewed literature to answer the first two subsidiary questions. 18 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 INTRODUCTION A review of literature entails studying and analysing current writings on the problem under investigation through extensive reading, evaluating and summarising information on the research topic (Randolph, 2009; Larsen, Ussing, & Brunø; 2016). Hart (cited in Sibisi, 2016) asserts that a review of relevant literature differentiates the work done from what ought to be done, it determines significant variables relevant to the topic under investigation, establishes the context of the topic, and elucidates the theory that informs the study. A literature review is thus not only descriptive but an attempt to synthesise available sources in a manner to gain new perspectives on the research topic. In this chapter, I explain how school violence has been conceptualised within the literature, its perceived consequences on the basic education sector in South Africa in general, and how it affects curriculum delivery in particular. The focus is specifically towards answering the first two subsidiary research questions (cf. 1.3) in order to achieve objectives one and two of this study (cf.1.4). These objectives are to determine how school violence is conceptualised and investigates the consequences of violence. The literature review also discusses critical peace education and how it informs this study. Before exploring how school violence has been conceptualised in the literature and what its perceived consequences are, I first provide a discussion of critical peace education (Bajaj, 2008) and the manner in which violence is conceptualised within it. Critical peace education speaks to various types of conflict and violence (direct, structural, and cultural) by creating new modes of social-educational practice. Hence, it empowers individuals in conflict management skills, critical-thinking, civic awareness, political participation, and also positions teachers as transformative agents (Bajaj, 2015; Brantmeier, 2013; Duckworth, 2011; John, 2018; Kruger, 2012, 2015). 19 2.2 CRITICAL PEACE EDUCATION In this section, I discuss peace education and critical peace education by drawing from relevant literature. Based on this, I explored how a culture of peace has been conceptualised. 2.2.1 Peace Education and Critical Peace Education The study of peace education was originally conceived to be necessary to contribute to preventing violence, conflict, and war by dismantling structural violence, direct violence, and cultural violence through peace inculcation (Reardon, 2000). Uli (2014) describes peace education as an educational field and an active global social movement that can collectively promote unity and inspire dialogue among teachers, researchers, policymakers, scholars, activists, government officials, learners, and a myriad of public peacemakers. For Uli, peace education is devoted to developing cultures of peace in the entire universe. Momanyi (2018) describes peace education as an ability to overcome, manage and avoid multiple forms of violence. Begum (2012) adds that peace education is the practice of inculcating the expertise, capabilities, attitudes, and values to foster behavioural reforms. Such behavioural reforms allow learners and teachers to solve conflict peacefully by establishing situations that necessitate the promotion of peace, at local and international levels (Ibid). A central concern of peace education is to share information about the needs, the challenges and opportunities to attain and sustain peace. In addition, peace education concerns the analysis of knowledge and the improvement of reflective and participatory exercise to apply knowledge in order to avoid obstacles and achieve peace (Reardon, 1999; Bajaj, 2008, Mishra, 2015). Therefore, from the review of the literature, the concept of peace education remains complex and difficult to conceptualise as it is multifaceted and is defined diversely by different scholars. Uli (2014) states that researchers and practitioners of peace education concur that a single documented definition does not, and perhaps cannot, exist, as the methods are too various, and dependent on the contexts in which peace education programmes are deliberated, conceptualised, trialled and evaluated. Therefore, considering all these different definitions and approaches towards peace education, it is possible to distinguish peace education from critical peace education. 20 Kruger (2012) claims that peace education can be conceptualised as both a philosophical orientation as well as a practice. The practice seeks to equip teachers with the required knowledge, attitudes, skills and awareness to develop healthy institutions and establish conducive environments, while establishing principles of non-violence, kindness, empathy, and respect for all life. For Zembylas (2017), critical peace education is an approach that focuses on structural inequality and seeks to encourage a sense of change to build new socio-economic societies within politics that facilitate stability and social cohesion. Bajaj (2019) agrees that the focus of critical peace education is to examine local realities coupled with local conceptions of peace, thereby strengthening voices of the oppressed through community-based studies, stories, ethnography, and self-constructed programmes. It for this reason that critical peace education critiques structural disparities by attempting to change teachers, learners, and the society that they serve. It is this change that repositions teachers as transformative agents (Chubbuck & Zembylas, 2011; Kruger, 2015). Harris (2013) characterises critical peace education from the point of view of teachers as a sequence of educating experiences that arise from people's preference for stability, unity, peaceful ways to deal with conflict, and skills to critically analyse structures that create and legitimise oppression and inequality. Therefore, this creates a platform for teachers’ collective imagination of non-violent school environments to be grounded in social cohesion and equality to promote peace, as well as to realise the consequences of school violence (Clarke-Habibi, 2018; Harris, 2013; Harris, 2010). Snauwaert (2011) adds that critical peace education is scholarship that employs teaching and learning to curb all types of conflict and violence to create structures that foster and sustain social cohesion. Srinivasan (2009) and Harris (2008) also consider the role of learners by stating that critical peace education is a practice where learners are taught about the threats of violence to advance their abilities to counter structural and direct violence by building long-lasting peace in their societies. Thus, critical peace education attempts to strengthen human rights. Moreover, critical peace education attempts to explore patterns of power and intersectional ties between class, gender, race, language, religion, sexual orientation, ability/disability, geography, among others (Dodi, 2018). It thus calls for practical pedagogy that positions schools as potential sites of reform and transformation. 21 Importantly, critical peace education raises awareness about the different types of violence through dialogue. As such, proponents of critical peace education seek to create a platform for teachers and learners to comprehend the multifaceted and variegated nature of violence in their school environment as a way of visualising and implementing non-violent solutions and possibilities. Further, by providing spaces for comparative and collective reflections, critical peace educators act as agencies for transformation (Brantmeier, 2011; Brantmeier, 2013; John, 2016). Therefore, critical peace educators must collectively foster the critical consciousness of learners in conjunction with collective imagination and action to promote transformative learning (Brantmeier, 2011; Brantmeier, 2007). Transformative learning takes place when teachers and learners transform their borders of reference by critically reflecting and re- engaging (introspection, regrouping, reframing, continued reflective engagement) their assumptions, beliefs and consciously implementing strategies that engender new methods of promoting peace (Turay & English, 2008). Trubceac (2018) asserts that in order to realise peace, critical peace education must be home-grown at grassroots levels such as schools, homes, churches and in playgrounds, rather than in international arenas. Therefore, critical peace educators need to comprehend local realities and resist the temptation to globalise which often overlooks distinct local social conditions. Hence, the importance of collaboration to stimulate change for a better school environment that promotes a culture of peace conducive to curriculum delivery (Trubceac, 2018; Brantmeier, 2011). This is arguably in line with this view that Rank (2012) claims that critical peace education could serve as a mechanism to create peaceful school environments, which ultimately transforms cultures of conflict to cultures of peace. Therefore, critical peace education seeks to inspire teachers to collectively participate in activities and advocacy that promote social equality and justice, which in effect encourages greater peace (Bajaj, 2019; Zembylas, 2017). John (2018) confirms that critical peace educators can learn and develop conflict resolution strategies that they can implement to mitigate school violence. It is against this backdrop that I explored currere to provide a platform for educators to develop collaborative strategies to mitigate school violence. 2.2.2 Conceptualising a Culture of Peace UNESCO (2010) defines a culture of peace as a process to address the root causes of 22 violence through sets of values, beliefs, attitudes, habits and ways of life that condemn aggression and conflicts. Resolving conflicts through dialogue and negotiation between persons, organisations, and nations, should be the norm. Wintersteiner (2013) and Dutta, Andzenge and Walkling (2016), maintain that a culture of peace is a significant tool that seeks to prevent the occurrence of violence. Hence, a culture of peace is concerned with promoting sustainable economic and social progress, respect for human rights, gender equality, political engagement, democracy, free flow of information, and disarmament. Thus, constructing cultures of peace significantly enhances critical peace education to replace structural inequalities and injustice (John, 2018; Dutta et al., 2016). It is from this perspective, as maintained by Cremin and Guilherme (2016), that critical peace education is instrumental in addressing conflicts and school-based violence. For Williams (2013), critical peace education aims to develop local conceptions of a culture of peace, which includes both ending direct and indirect violence while promoting social justice. It is argued that a culture of peace creates an environment that empowers teachers to transfer knowledge, skills and expertise for dealing with various forms of violence and to promote peace education at all levels of schooling (Khan, Mahmood & Aurangzeb, 2019). Therefore, peace education programmes at school-level seek to build character based on human values, morality, and spiritual laws that fosters the natural development of competencies for teachers and learners in a peaceful school-setting (Setiadi, Kartadinata, Ilfiandra & Nakaya, 2017). Developing a culture of peace entails the provision of necessary tools of empowerment such as conflict management skills, critical-thinking, community-based education, worldviews, and political engagement skills. This leads to a significant transformation when expertise, knowledge, attitudes, and sound behaviour enable teachers and learners to agitate for a more peaceful school environment (Akinyoade, 2011; Clarke-Habibi, 2018; Dutta et al., 2016). According to Setiadi et al. (2017), a culture of peace encourages the transition from the use of violence to the use of dialogue and negotiation to promote democracy based on peace and harmonious relations to address power imbalances to dismantle potential conflictual situations and prevent violence. As such, schools can be sites of possibilities and transformation because they afford teachers a platform to deliver information and guidance to the learners that may provide skills, expertise, positive attitudes, and global perspectives 23 that inculcate a culture of peace (Bajaj, 2014; Duckworth, 2011; John, 2018). Brantmeier (2011) and Cremin and Guilherme (2016) claim that a well-established culture of peace creates a positive working environment within the school community which in turn provides spaces that are conducive to curriculum delivery, hence ensuring safer school environments for both teachers and learners. It is argued that peace education programmes spread from school to the entire community. Therefore in order to promote a harmonious society, teachers must equip learners with knowledge and skills that develop positive thinking, decision-making skills, empathetic listening, critical-thinking, problem-solving, and assertive behaviour (Salomon & Cairns, 2010). Momanyi (2018) claims that by building relations based on the spirit of hope, solidarity, respect, and peace, we can transform schools into havens of peace. Uli (2014) asserts that policymakers and educationists often see learners as the primary group targeted for peace education – irrespective of the type of conflict setting that is present. A commitment to critical peace education where teachers and learners address issues amicably and work to change systems that promote social inequities and discrimination, leads to non-violent options (socio-economic, political, psychological, and social harmony). This can be a reality by using currere as a tool of reflection to build cultures of peace in schools to address the challenge of school violence that destabilises curriculum delivery (Darder, et al, 2003). In this context, critical peace education provides teachers with the knowledge, expertise, aptitudes, values and behaviours needed for avoiding and solving conflictual situations by creating and sustaining mutually beneficial, harmonious, and positive peace-relationships (Mishra, 2015). Therefore, schools, universities, colleges, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), should serve as learning platforms for critical peace education so as to remove the root causes of school violence. It is based on this perspective, as argued by Momanyi (2018), that critical peace education can empower teachers to analyse challenges critically and encourage cohesive collaboration amongst teachers in order to understand their immediate surroundings in relation to their experiences of school violence. 2.3 CONCEPTUALISING SCHOOL VIOLENCE In this subsection, the focus is specifically on answering the first subsidiary research question (cf. 1.3) in order to achieve objective one (cf. 1.4) of this study. This subsection also attempted to define school violence by drawing from relevant literature. Lastly, the 24 conceptualisation of school violence within the realm of critical peace education is also discussed. 2.3.1 Defining Violence Different scholars with different viewpoints have defined school violence from various perspectives. However, in relation to peace studies, violence is understood as being present when human beings are conditioned in such a way that their current somatic and mental realisations are below their ability (Kruger, 2015). Springs (2016) and Rucman (2016) state that violence can be understood as an avoidable impairment of essential human thinking, that reduces the actual degree of fulfilment of needs below what should be necessary. Galtung (1969) concurs by describing violence as the preventable damage of basic human needs, or the harm to human life, which limits the real degree to which anyone can fulfil their needs beyond what otherwise would be possible. Further, Galtung notes that conflict is normal but violence is the undesirable outcome. The above definitions highlight that violence goes against the grain of the fundamental needs of humans and diminishes their likelihood to meet such needs. The comprehension of the concept of violence depends on its different forms: it may be categorised as direct, structural or cultural violence (Galtung, 1969). Firstly, violence committed by a perpetrator which is readily identifiable as direct violence involves harming the basic needs of others (Dodi, 2018; Ho, 2007; Harris, 2010; Kruger, 2015). Secondly, Harris (2010) and Springs (2016) define structural violence as social, political and economic harm in society that in turn generates inequality, oppression, injustice and the denial of human rights. Thirdly, Galtung (1990) describes cultural violence as elements in religion, philosophy, language (speech), arts, and empirical science (logic, mathematics) that can be embedded in mindsets since childhood that manifest in power-relations and the need for violence in daily life. These include, but are not limited to, crosses, flags, anthems, military parades, the leader's omnipresent portrait, provocative speeches, and posters. Springs (2016) claims that cultural violence is also common in language such as hate speech and illumination of historical injustices and abuse, which can actually obscure and minimise the seriousness of what is at stake. 25 In considering the manifestations of violence within the school context, I employed critical peace education to examine the conceptualisation of school violence as a mobilisation against direct and indirect violence (Bajaj, 2008; Clarke-Habibi, 2018). Furlong and Morrison (2000) argue that school violence is conceptualised as a multi-faceted construct involving criminal activities, school conflicts and deteriorating school infrastructure that undermines the curriculum delivery, inhibits the creation of social cohesion, and ultimately damages the environment of the school. A study conducted by Mampane, Cherrington, Ebersöhn and Moen (2013) examined adolescents’ views on the severity of school-based violence in farm areas in the Mpumalanga Province which confirmed that the definition of the concept of violence is blurred as shown in literature. However, school violence is a reality with widespread societal implications including gang violence and bullying which have disastrous consequences for schools (Furlong & Morrison, 2000). Elsewhere it has been argued that school violence may be understood as the intentional utilisation of physical force or power resulting in injury, death, psychological damage, or deprivation (Jacobs, 2014; Henry, 2000). The most common category is direct violence within the school context which manifests itself in the form of shootings, stabbings, verbal abuse, sexual harassment, rape, coercion, bullying, gangsterism, drug-trafficking and associated abuse such as theft, vandalism, initiation, robbery, abduction, and student protests that transform into aggression (Harber, 2004; Leach & Mitchell, 2006; SACE, 2011). Psychological damage includes mental stress and burn-out induced by over-tested and over-competitive classrooms, while burdensome administrative duties interfere with the smooth teaching and assessing of learners (Pope, 2001; Harber, 2004). Schools are sites where structural violence is perpetrated as a means of social control in order to replicate current unequal power relations in social structures (Apple, 1982; SACE, 2011). Harber (2004, 2009) agrees that there is sufficient evidence within schools where structural violence such as hierarchical, patriarchal, unhealthy competitive relationships, racism, and prejudice exist. Cultural violence occurs when we ignore structural violence and direct violence by covering it to appear as a natural order of doing things (Cremin, Sellman & McCluskey, 2012). It significant to acknowledge that violence is a learned behaviour since an actor is the direct or indirect cause of violence, and therefore it can be unlearned (Trubceac, 2018; Harber & 26 Sakade, 2009; Mncube & Harber, 2013). In the unlearning process, critical peace educators can be instrumental in establishing and preserving harmonious partnerships and healthier school environments that contribute to a creation of a conducive atmosphere for curriculum delivery. Mahatma Gandhi stated that: If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children. And if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we will not have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until all the corners of world are covered with peace and love for which consciously and unconsciously, the whole world is hungering. (cited in Sarabhai, Raghunathan & Modi, 2010: 18). Therefore, teachers committed to critical peace education would be instrumental in the promotion, maintenance and deepening of peace initiatives in schools (Bajaj, 2015; Johnson & Johnson, 2006; Kruger, 2012). This is because critical peace education pays attention to improving the learning materials, pedagogy, and structures of education to tackle direct, structural, and cultural violence and other types of conflict within the school environment (Kester & Cremin, 2017). 2.4 Exploring the consequences of school violence 2.4.1 Introduction In this section, I focused specifically on answering the second subsidiary research question (cf. 1.3) in order to achieve objective two (cf. 1.4) of this study. Therefore, in this section, I investigated the consequences of school violence on the basic education sector in South Africa in general, and on curriculum delivery in particular. Hence, I first discussed the consequences of school violence on the basic education sector in South Africa before turning my attention to the consequences thereof on curriculum delivery in particular. 2.4.2 Manifestation of School Violence School violence is expressed and experienced in various ways by different individuals and cultures (De Wet, 2014). According to Jacobs (2012, 2014) and De Wet (2010, 2014), school violence can be comprehended as an intentional physical force or other means of power 27 against an individual or group of people within the school, which may result in an injury, psychological harm, murder, exploitation, or deprivation. Botha, Myburgh, and Poggenpoel (2012) assert that different forms of violence and aggression are the by-products of teachers' and learners' personal experiences which manifest in the form of direct, structural, or cultural violence. Direct violence includes physically attacking or sexually harassing an individual and may manifest in the form of learner-to-learner, teacher-to-learner, and learner-to-teacher violence. An example of learner-to-learner direct violence is the stabbing of an 18-year-old learner to death at the Forest High School, south of Johannesburg by a fellow learner (SACE, 2011). A male teacher at Bopedi Secondary School in Ngwaritsi Circuit of the Sekhukhune South District in the Limpopo Province was recorded on camera slapping learners inside the classroom – this is an example of teacher-to-learner direct violence (News24, 14 August 2019). Another example of learner-to-teacher direct violence is when a female teacher was brutally kicked and pushed over a desk by a Grade 7 learner at Alpha Primary School in Gelvandale (The Citizen, 22 August 2018). Also, Smit, and Plessis (2011) reported that a young female teacher complained about being sexually harassed by a group of older boys at a school and warned her not to report them by threatening her safety. Furthermore, direct violence may also manifest in the form of murder, robbery, intimidation, bullying, assault, gangsterism, drug trafficking, and theft of property (SACE, 2011). Structural violence within the school context is rife in dilapidated schools: most of them have no running water and electricity, gross overcrowding, inadequate and damaged furniture, no access to adequate resources, and no proper sanitation. In addition, mud schools and pit- toilets put both teachers and learners' health and safety at risk (Ndabeni, 2009; Mestry, 2014). Structural violence may also manifest in the form of racism, discrimination, denial of human rights, poverty, inequalities, and social exclusion (Mabitla, 2006). A typical example of structural violence in South African schools, as portrayed by media reports, is that of a teacher in a primary school who segregated learners according to race (BBC News, 10 January 2019). Also, a secondary school teacher passed white learners who failed while retaining black learners who had also failed (The Conversation, 24 January 2019). An example of atrocious school environments is that of Kgosi Shope Secondary School located in the North West Province where it was found that learners and teachers were using pit- 28 toilets, in addition to overcrowded dilapidated classrooms with 123 learners in one Grade 8 class, while Grade 11 and Grade 12 learners were taught Mathematics and Physical Sciences in an informal structure (SABC News, 18 October 2019). A study conducted by Amnesty International (2020: 56) confirms the above findings concerning the manifestations of structural violence in South African schools. The poor sanitation at schools further impacts on a range of rights, including privacy, health, and dignity. Amnesty International blames the South African Department of Basic Education (DBE) for failing many of its young people due to structural issues such as inequalities in the public education sector, crumbling infrastructure, and inadequate educational facilities which have not been addressed for the past 27 years of democracy. Amnesty International (2020: 38) further revealed the National Government's statistics for 2018 that exposed the fact that out of 23,471 public schools, 19% had pit-latrines, with another 37% having no sanitation facilities at all. Moreover, it was recorded that 86% had no laboratories for science-based subjects, 77% had no library, 72% had no internet access, and 42% had no sports facilities. In addition, two hundred thirty-nine schools in South Africa had no electricity. The above situation led to 56% of South African teachers reporting that a shortage of physical infrastructure hindered their school's ability to deliver quality education. Apart from direct and structural violence, cultural violence cannot be ignored when examining the manifestations of structural and direct violence, as it plays a significant role in unearthing the reasons for direct and structural violence (Sibisi, 2016). Cultural factors determine what is socially accepted as being right or wrong in communities, and these include the family, the church, communities, languages, and laws. Sibisi (2016) and Le Roux and Mokhele (2011) claim that violence that occurs in the community impacts on the schools, which then turns schools into places of violence. A SACE report (2013) described a learner who was harassed for wearing isiphandla (animal skin wristband) given to him at a religious ceremony to protect him against evil spirits. The principal proposed that the learner should wear a long-sleeved shirt to cover isiphandla. However, The Gauteng Department of Education ruled in favour of the learner and further advised the necessity for school policies to accommodate all cultures. Another example (SACE, 2013) was that of a principal who transgressed the cultural policy of the school by removing a chain of beads from a male learner who wore them to mourn his grandmother’s passing away. Thus, it is 29 evident from literature that cultural violence feeds structural and direct violence, hence hindering teachers from delivering quality education. 2.4.3 Consequences of School Violence Research reveals that the level of violence in South African schools is growing irrespective of initiatives introduced by the DBE (Grobler, 2018; Govender, 2015; Ncontsa & Shumba, 2018). These initiatives include policy development, introducing classroom rules, implementing the learner code of conduct aimed at combating drug abuse, the presence of weapons or any sharp objects, the use of violent and vulgar language, as well as to discourage threats against individuals' or their property (Fishbaugh, Berkeley & Schroth, 2003; Botha, Myburgh & Poggenpoel, 2012; SACE, 2011, 2012; Mgijima, 2014; Mncube & Harber, 2013; South African Human Rights Commission [SAHRC], 2007; Jace & Lara, 2010; Netshitangani, 2014; Grobler, 2018). However, school violence escalates despite the implementation of such policies, rules, and the learner code of conduct. Govender (2015) observes that violence targeting teachers by learners has increased significantly over the past five years. In some schools where violence has previously occurred teachers feel unprotected, even amongst their learners. A similar view is held by the General Secretary of the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), Mugwena Malukele, who contends that teachers and learners are not protected in classrooms. Based on this observation, SADTU has called for more security in classes and within school premises. A report by the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, revealed 1345 hot spots of school violence in South Africa (IOL, 15 September 2019). Mpumalanga Province, where this study was based, had the highest number of hotspots (414 hot spots) regarding school violence and crime followed by Gauteng Province (251), KwaZulu-Natal (202), the Western Cape (147), the Eastern Cape (99), the Free State (90), North West Province (80), the Northern Cape (40), and (22) in the Limpopo Province (Ibid). Jacobs (2014) also maintains that regular newspaper articles confirm that school violence is a pressing concern in South Africa. Recent incidents of school violence have been reported in the media; for example, two learners who were stabbed by a fellow learner at a school in Mossel Bay, was ascribed to gang and community-related violence (News24, 13 June 2019). In another incident, a Grade nine learner was stabbed with a pair of scissors by a fellow learner in Gauteng (EyeWitness News, 9 October 2019). It was reported that the Gauteng Provincial 30 Department of Education confirmed that there is an increase in incidents of school-based violence, notwithstanding all the security arrangements implemented at schools (Mail & Guardian 19, August 2019). A study conducted by Burton (2008) found that in South Africa about 1.8 million of all Grade 3 and Grade 12 learners (15.3%) had suffered abuse in one form or another, 12.8% had been intimidated and abused, 5.8% had been attacked, 4.6% had been robbed, and 2.3% experienced some form of sexual harassment at school. The seriousness of school violence prompted Members of Parliament (MPs) to deliberate on the issue in the National Assembly (EyeWitness News, 15 November 2019). However, Jace and Lara (2010) contend that the causes of school violence can be attributed to structural factors such as underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds of learners, depleted school infrastructure, inadequate resources, family breakdown, and gangster-related incidents. Netshitangani (2014) supports this claim by stating that structural violence such as racism, inequality, and unfairness may also exacerbate direct violence, which generally disturbs the normal functioning of the school. In addition, dissatisfaction from parents due to the DBE's delay in renovating old, vandalised and dilapidated schools, and failure to deliver learner and teacher support materials on time (LTSM) led to frustration and anger from both learners and parents which may have resulted in violent community protests (De Wet, 2014; Matomela, 2009). Further, corporal punishment unfairly administered by teachers, lack of respect, name-calling, labelling, illicit teacher-learner relationships, and cultural discrimination may be causes of school violence (De Wet, 2014). Additionally, SACE (2011) and Grobler (2018) note that violence could also extend to online offences such as cyberbullying which takes on such forms as posting pictures and videos aimed at demeaning the targeted victim, and electronic messages and texting another person using vulgar language. Cyberbullying can occur through a wide range of media and social channels, including online social networks, online forums, blog posts, video- conferencing, and instant messaging, which often results in emotional abuse and withdrawal of the victim. As such, it can be understood as a form of psychological violence. The presence of violence in schools has a significant imprint on both teachers' and learners' day-to-day existence because it influences where they move, how they dress in their school 31 uniforms, how they communicate, where they go, and who their friends are (Jacobs, 2014). Also, school violence affects schools at various levels by disrupting and undermining the sense of control of people, societies, and structures which troubles and disorganises the entire school community (Hadebe, 2000). It has been projected that a harmonious school climate is an integral part of schooling, as it contributes to the creation of cordial relations within the school as an academic organisation (Botha, Myburgh & Poggenpoel, 2012). Therefore, school violence deprives both teachers and learners of a good quality of schooling in a conducive environment as it negatively impacts on the school climate, hampering the daily routine duties of all role-players. Numerous South African and international schools are plagued by structural violence, direct violence, and cultural violence. The phenomenon of school violence portrays a negative picture of South African schools (Prinsloo, 2008). However, the National Development Plan 2030 (NDP), which outlines South Africa's development path for the next decade, places high-quality basic education at the centre of achieving the dual national objectives of reduction of poverty and inequalities (South African Human Rights Commission, 2012). In addition, the NDP aims to improve the quality of education and increase equal opportunities for all children marginalised through the legacy of apartheid policies, which includes black African children, girls, and children with disabilities. However, the incidence of school violence prevents the realisation of the democratic values of social justice, equality, inclusiveness, non-discrimination, and human rights. Having provided a broad overview of the consequences of violence on education in general, I next deal with the consequences of violence on curriculum delivery. 2.4.4 Consequences of School Violence on Curriculum Delivery In this section, I explain how this study conceptualises curriculum delivery by drawing from literature. I specifically examine how the curriculum is conceptualised through the lens of currere as informed by Pinar (2012). I then discuss the consequences of school violence on curriculum delivery by paying attention to incidents of direct, structural, and cultural violence. 2.4.4.1 Conceptualising curriculum delivery Curriculum delivery is a concept that has been widely used in literature (Baloyi, 2008; 32 Netshitangani, 2014; Mgijima, 2014; Setiawan, Martono & Gunarhadi, 2017). Carl (2009) defines curriculum delivery as all academic activities that occur on a regular school day including extra-curricular activities such as sports and social activities. Skilbeck (cited-in Mkandawire, 2010) states that curriculum delivery is the learning experience of learners, which is articulated through expected aims, priorities, strategies, and designs for learning; the application of these strategies is expected within the school context. Aneke (2015) defines curriculum delivery metaphorically as the vehicle that contains the goods (subject and contents) with the teacher being the driver who delivers the goods (subject and contents) to the consumers (learners). This definition places teachers as central figures in the process of curriculum delivery. Therefore, curriculum delivery can be understood as the actual engagement of learners who utilise planned learning materials to increase academic performance levels (Patankar & Jadhav, 2013; Afangideh, 2009; Guro & Weber, 2010; Rennie, 2001). Baloyi (2008) contends that curriculum delivery can also be comprehended as the various modes teachers employ to allow learners to accomplish their learning intentions which include support for teaching and learning, guidance, counselling and encouragement, mentoring, peer and group learning, training and tutoring for professional development, enhancement of skills and practice, and utilisation of resources (Baloyi, 2008). However, for Pinar (2012) the term curriculum stems from the Latin word currere which means to run the course. Currere refers to the reconceptualisation of one's lived experiences and the continued provision of personal support systems (Bhusal, 2015; Rabelani & Chigona, 2015). In other words, the curriculum can be understood as the elucidation of an individual's lived experiences through the social process of regressing, progressing, analysing, and synthesising to reach a uniform comprehension of curricular experiences. The National Curriculum Statement (CAPS) Grades R-12 provides guidelines for South African schools for teaching and learning. The CAPS aims at equipping learners, regardless of their socio-economic background, race, gender, physical ability, or intellectual capacity, with the knowledge, skills, and values necessary for self-fulfilment and meaningful participation in society as free citizens of a country. The CAPS further advises that this can only be achieved if all teachers have a better understanding of how learning barriers can be overcome and how to plan for diversity. Therefore, difficulties that stifle teachers' implementation of the curriculum need to be 33 properly understood to develop appropriate strategies to adequately respond in a constructive manner to such hurdles. However, curriculum delivery should also attempt to shape learners' lives with the clear intention of developing toward responsible adulthood through the shared values of the culture of peace and learning to live together in harmony. This empowers learners with critical-thinking skills, political participation and mobilisation, conflict resolution, global perspectives and opportunities, and methods for actualising inner peace (Brantmeier, 2011; Brantmeier 2013; Brantmeier, Aragon & Yoder, 2009). 2.4.4.2 Consequences of violence on curriculum delivery Teachers play an integral part in the curriculum delivery process; however, violence in schools prevents teachers from optimum delivery (Netshangani, 2014). Similarly, Patankar and Jadhav (2013) note that teachers experience hurdles such as violence in schools that hinder effective curriculum delivery. Govender (2018) and Toale (2015) contend that fruitful curriculum delivery is highly dependent on contact, cooperation, continuous peer support, and ongoing school-based support programmes. However, studies on school violence have demonstrated its negative effect on curriculum delivery, academic progress of learners, and appropriate classroom behaviour in South African schools (Meyer & Chetty, 2017; Ngqela & Lewis, 2012). Some researchers have suggested that school violence could be attributed to the prolonged effects of apartheid (Van der Westhuizen & Maree, 2010). For example, Lockhat and Van Niekerk (2000) state that one of the prominent effects of the apartheid-era was the protest against the inferior bantu education system which culminated in the burning of schools which continues to manifest in the present day. However, studies also indicate that schools may inadvertently contribute to student violence through improper classroom placement, discriminatory activities, excessively competitive learning environments, harassment, unfair school discipline procedures, biased policies, lack of guidance, physical harm, inconsistent teaching, unrealistic behavioural expectations, insensitivity to the diversity of students, and the geographical location of schools (Muthusamy, 2015; Marais, 2016). Marias (2016) elaborates that curriculum delivery in an overcrowded classroom is challenging due to high levels of disruptive behaviour, thereby undermining curriculum delivery. Govender (2015) asserts that South African schools are no longer havens for curriculum delivery, given the high levels of abuse and crime occurring within these contexts. 34 Due to high levels of abuse and criminality, both teachers and learners fear for their safety, so the teaching process is impeded by the need to deal with unruly conduct and avoiding possible incidents of aggression and violence (Ncotsha & Shumba, 2013). Moreover, in some instances, teachers spend much of their time solving violence-related issues instead of concentrating on curriculum delivery (Mncube & Harber, 2013). A research project undertaken by Reckson and Becker (2005) in the Western Cape Province depicted that school violence has severe deleterious consequences for curriculum delivery. Teachers are frequently absent as they require time off for trauma-counselling and debriefing due to school violence (Mncube & Harber, 2013). Further, teachers who are victims of school violence may display psychological distress, numbing, and burnout due to frustration, anger, depression, tension, and anxiety, leading to physical, emotional, and attitudinal fatigue (Govender, 2015; Grobler, 2015). Therefore, such psychological symptoms affect teachers' ability to deliver quality education. Numerous educators feel socially excluded after experiencing violence in school, and this has been found to have negative consequences on teachers' performance in terms of curriculum delivery, and connections with peers and family members (Grobler, 2018). Govender (2015) reiterates that if teachers are subjected to violent behaviour by learners, this often equates to a detrimental effect on their quality of teaching. Netshitangani (2014) also states that school violence delays the starting time of lessons; as such, this places a burden on teachers to devise plans to catch-up with curriculum delivery. Furthermore, Netshitangani asserts that incidents of violence erupting in the classroom distract learners' attention, resulting in minimal cooperation between teachers and learners. Such unruly behaviour diminishes teachers' productivity which leads to depression and poor morale (Ncontsa & Shumba, 2013). One consequence of such reduction in productivity is that teachers experience difficulties in completing their annual teaching plans (ATP) due to time spent on solving challenges stemming from violent behaviour and the consequences thereof (Ngqela & Lewis, 2012). Geldenhuys (2016) and Mahome and Rampa (2017) contend that school violence may result in non-attendance of teachers who are afraid of being assaulted by learners, thus some teachers come unprepared because they never know what will happen the following 35 day. In addition, teachers cannot take instant, decisive steps against troublesome learners as they fear for their safety (Harber & Mncube, 2013). Hence, all school programmes and the priorities stated in the mission statement, along with the school's expectations, end up not being achieved (Grobler, 2018). As a result, curriculum delivery is negatively impacted, making teachers to feel incompetent, disempowered, and discontent. Structural violence has also been found to be contributing to hindering effective curriculum delivery in South African schools due to poor infrastructure (Mboweni, 2014; Amnesty International, 2020). Examples are the ‘mud schools’ in Mpumalanga Province, the Eastern Cape Province, and the North West Province, respectively. According to Amnesty International (2020) and Mboweni (2014), schools consisting of mud buildings comprise of clusters of round mud huts, or in some cases, rectangular classrooms. Although mud may be an effective building material, most of these mud schools are old and dilapidated. The roofs, often built from corrugated steel, have openings due to rust, causing learners and the resources in the classroom to get wet when it rains. Textbooks cannot be left in the classes, and learners cannot walk to school when it rains (Lumadi, 2008). Mud schools still have no electricity, clean drinking water, and sanitation, and classroom furniture is old, damaged, and inadequate. These adverse structural conditions make teaching and learning challenging, which negatively impact on curriculum delivery (Skelton, 2014; Amnesty International, 2020). Lumadi (2008) concurs that curriculum delivery cannot occur effectively in a hostile environment. Mboweni's (2014) study further revealed that it is of little value for children to go to school when it is cold or rainy. This is because learners are forced to share a single classroom with learners from other grades, hence teaching-learning is profoundly affected. In addition, the available toilet is for teachers only, and learners have to rely on the nearby bushes to relieve themselves. Such conditions deny learners the fundamental right to quality education, hygiene, privacy, and human dignity (Amnesty International, 2020). Therefore, poverty also contributes negatively to curriculum delivery. In every society, there are symbolic forms of culture that help to define, delineate, and express societal values. Therefore, cultural violence depicts how direct violence and structural are legitimised (Galtung,1990). In other words, the cultural aspects that are used to reinforce and make direct and structural violence permissible and considered as being normal. The concept of cultural violence is valuable for investigating social institutions such 36 as schools to discover how symbols of culture such as ideology, art, religion, science, and hate speech become institutionalised (Khumalo, 2019). Social disruptions, parental abuse, exposure to violence and aggression, access to illegal weapons, drug and alcohol abuse, and proximity to perpetrators, all affect the likelihood of learners enacting violence in school settings (Mkhize, 2012; Ntuli, 2015). In addition, learners who have been unfairly treated by their teachers due to their cultural practices are more likely to develop a negative attitude towards their teachers, thus creating unconducive classroom environments which ultimately hinders effective curriculum delivery (SACE, 2013). It is evident from the review of literature that school violence does not only impede curriculum delivery but also negatively impacts on the entire school operational plan. Thus, school violence remains a concern not only to teachers and learners, but to the entire SA Department of Education [DoE] (SACE, 2011). 2.4 CONCLUSION In this chapter, I discussed school violence in conjunction with critical peace education, which is the mobilisation against direct and indirect violence. Further, a conceptualisation of the culture of peace was provided as the mechanism for resolving conflicts through engaging in dialogue and negotiation between persons, organisations, and nations. I established that school violence is a multifaceted construct that is diversely defined by different scholars. However, in relation to peace studies, violence is understood as being present when human beings are conditioned in such a way that their current somatic and mental realisations are below par. I further, explored the consequences of school violence on the basic education sector in South Africa, and on curriculum delivery. I also explored the manifestations of direct, structural and cultural violence and how they affect curriculum delivery. I have learned that school violence does not only disturb curriculum delivery but that it also negatively impacts a school's operational plan, making it more challenging to perform day-to-day duties. Therefore, it can be argued that there exists a need for teachers to develop strategies to mitigate school violence in order to effect curriculum delivery in a conducive environment. In the next chapter, I explore how currere can be employed as an analytical framework to dissect teachers’ experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery. 37 CHAPTER THREE CURRERE AS AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK 3.1 INTRODUCTION In the previous chapter (2), the literature review enlightened the researcher on the consequences of school violence on the basic education sector and on curriculum delivery in particular in order to answer subsidiary research questions one and two. I learned that school violence has harmful implications on the educator and curriculum implementation (teaching and learning). In this chapter, I addressed the subsidiary research question of how currere can be employed as an analytical framework to explore the experiences of teachers pertaining to school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery (cf. 1.3). To do this, I first provided a brief review of the research methodology and methods employed in this study and as discussed in chapter one. Second, I provided a thorough description of my research methodology; namely, narrative inquiry and collective biography. This description served as the background against which I utilised currere as the analytical framework – this was the third step. The analytical framework allowed participants (teachers) to collectively narrate and share their experiences of school violence by recalling, retelling, and analysing such experiences (Stoddart, 2015). Hence, the manner in which currere was employed afforded participants a platform to recall their past experiences in an attempt to develop collaborative strategies to halt future occurrences of school violence. 3.2 REVIEW OF RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND METHODS 3.2.1 Introduction The research methodology and methods that I employed as introduced in the first chapter, are described in this section (cf.1. 6). This is done as a means to segue into a more in-depth discussion of narrative inquiry and collective biography that formed the background against which I developed the analytical framework of this study based on currere. A research design is a structure within which a study is conducted, and as such serves as an essential strategy to guide the research phases: selection of participants, data 38 generation, data analysis, and methods employed to ensure the trustworthiness of the research findings (Burns & Grove, 2001; Jongbo, 2014; Rahi, 2017; Ram, 2010). Therefore, the research design provided the general investigative structure and orientation, and the context within which the data was generated and interpreted (Abutabenjeh, & Jaradat, 2018 Boru, 2018). This study employed a qualitative research design. As this study engaged with teachers’ experiences of school violence, a qualitative research design allowed me to explore the numerous, detailed and individual aspects of human experience (Yin, 2008). A research methodology can be understood as an organised approach for addressing the research questions in a study, and concerns the numerous stages that are employed in a particular study (Abutabanjah, & Jaradat, 2018; Boru, 2018; Langkos, 2014). Furthermore, research methodology describes and identifies the forms of topics that need to be studied such as: what comprises a researchable topic, what assumptions are made, how to construct a problem in such a way that it can be studied using specific procedures, and how to choose and establish suitable data collection methods (Abutabanjah, & Jaradat, 2018). It includes an analysis of the theories, concepts and methods aligned to a specific investigative approach. From this perspective, the research methodology illustrates how a research project was conducted (Moore, 2016; Mohajan, 2018; Tobi & Kampen, 2017; Tracy, 2010). In this study, I employed narrative inquiry in general and collective biography in particular, to explore teachers’ experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for teaching and learning. The use of narrative inquiry and collective biography enabled participants (teachers) to freely voice their experiences on school violence. To ensure authentic data generation, appropriate research methods were employed. According to Goundar (2012) and Williams (2007), research methods are techniques used by researchers to generate data. Apuke (2017) and Langkos (2014) add that appropriate research methods should be applied to a research project to ensure the realisation of the research objective. Hence, I conducted a literature review to answer the first two subsidiary research questions. To answer the third subsidiary research question, I explored specific literature to create an analytical framework based on the concept of currere. In addition, within the narrative and biographical methodology, I employed participant journals and open- 39 ended group interviews as research methods to answer the fourth subsidiary research question. Next, I discussed the narrative inquiry and collective biography in more detail. 3.2.2 Narrative Inquiry The conceptualisation of narrative inquiry emanates from the slogan Dewey coined that education is life (Altan & Lane, 2018). Scholars have employed narrative inquiry as a research methodology to investigate participants' essential life stories and experiences, and to explore the possible influences of these experiences on their wellbeing (Altan & Lane, 2018; Zhang, 2019; Andrews, Slater, Squire & Tamboukou, 2004; Reid, 2017). Furthermore, narrative inquiry can be broadly interpreted as a collection of signals, graphic text, verbal or other visual signs, that are created to convey a certain message (Squire, 2012). Sandelowski (1991) avers that narratives are often described as tales that involve a temporary arrangement of events, and an attempt to make meaning of them. Wang and Geale (2015) maintain that narrative inquiry is considered as a collective approach encompassing collaborative narrating and storytelling. According to Connelly and Clandinin (1990; 2006), narrative inquiry is a mode of communication representing the experiences and impressions of available data elicited from the research participants which can be expressed in the form of written text, diaries, photographs, conversations and autobiographical/biographical pieces of documentation, memos, and journals. Based on the above explanations, it can be argued that the purpose of narrative inquiry is to interpret the experiences of individuals, examine strategies for understanding, and present real-life experiences through the stories of the research participants (Squire, 2013; Wang & Geale, 2015; Komolthiti, 2007). Given that human beings are storytellers who lead storied lives, narrative inquiry plays an important role in exploring teachers' lived- experiences in the school context; hence, teachers are regarded as narrators of their own experiences and stories (Zhang, 2019). Therefore, this study employed the technique of narrative inquiry, in general, to collectively explore teachers' experiences of school violence and its consequences for curriculum delivery. To achieve this, I invited the research participants (cf.1.6.3) to narrate and share their stories and experiences of school violence through an analytical framework informed by currere (cf.1.5.1.2). The narratives and stories 40 allowed me to explore the participants' (teachers) lived experiences of school violence and created the conditions to develop collaborative strategies that teachers could adopt to mitigate school violence. A common characteristic of narrative inquiry is that scholars study the stories of participants that they retell from their own perspective (Creswell, 2003). This means that the participants build their stories to communicate a personal viewpoint of an event and its consequences. Based on this, employing narrative inquiry provided the opportunity to generate relevant data to answer this study’s research questions, particularly subsidiary questions three and four (cf.1.3). Moreover, Sarasa (2015) asserts that narrative inquiry can empower teachers to transform hostile school environments. I agree that this was also the case in this study, for as teachers shared their experiences of school violence through engaging in currere, the others suggested strategies that have previously been found to be effective when implemented to address school violence. Therefore, the transformative nature of narrative inquiry arguably aligns with the transformative paradigm that informs this study. Elbaz-Luwisch (2002) supports the argument raised by Sarasa (2015) by citing a pedagogy of life-telling that fosters teachers' growth through listening, retrieving, and publicly sharing personal stories in small groups, seminars, or classes, and thereby attempting to legitimise individual experiences in an academic environment. It has been argued that narrative inquiry amplifies ‘silenced’ voices by utilising storytelling to convey participants' experiences to the listeners (Wang & Geale, 2015; Reid, 2017). The experiences shared by the participants in this study expose the personal practical knowledge of teachers gained from their experiences, and knowledge extracted from their minds, bodies, and operational plans. This facilitates a specific way of rebuilding the past, and to plan the future to address a particular phenomenon (Sarasa, 2015; Pinar, 2012). Within the narrative methodology, currere as an analytical framework allowed for the research participants to share their past and present experiences of school violence as a collective and this precipitated the envisioning of a non- violent school environment in the present and in the future. Narrative inquiry, informed by currere, served as a means to explore the life-stories of the teachers and to listen to the 41 stories of others thereby comprehending their experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for teaching and learning. Squire, Davis, Esin, Andrews, Harrison, Hydén, and Hydén, (2014) contend that narrative inquiry is a sophisticated and flexible methodology. This is because the researcher and participants frequently communicated the narratives' significant points and provided validation throughout the generation and analysis of information (Wang, 2010). At the same time, the researcher gathered information, negotiated interactions and transactions, and explored new ways of engaging with the participants to immerse them in the research process as co-researchers. This allowed the researcher to gain a deep understanding of the complex meanings found within the life experiences of the participants (Haydon, Browne, & Van der Riet, 2017). Mitton-Kükner, Nelson, and Desrochers (2010) contend that since narratives are reliant on recalling past events of the participants, they can also be misinformed or manipulated. Thus, collecting previous experience information from autobiographical memory could include bias or exaggerated forms of past experiences (McAdams, 2001). However, to ensure the authenticity of the collected data, active cooperation with the participants was essential during the data collection phase (Clandinin, 2013; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Hence, much emphasis was placed on collective narratives as experiential stories, generally known as experience-based narratives (Squire, 2008). As discussed in chapter one, experience-based narratives are recognised as stories of experience (Van Niekerk & Savin-Baden, 2007; Patterson, 2008). Hence, they present a way in which teachers’ make-sense of school violence experiences, thereby assigning meaning to them. A further step that was taken in this research was to attempt to develop collaborative strategies to curb such school violence based on the stories of experience shared by the participating teachers. It is from this perspective that narrative inquiry, positioned with collective biography, afforded participants the potential opportunity to collectively narrate and retell their personal accounts of school violence as a means to reflect on them to find answers to prevent future incidents of aggression. Having discussed 42 narrative inquiry and the relevance of this methodology to my study, in the following section I will discuss collective biography. 3.2.3 Collective Biography Collective biography is a qualitative research methodology that has been widely used to study participants' lived experiences through their memories (Davies, De Schauwer, Claes, De Munck, Van de Putte & Verstichele, 2013; Svorenčík, 2013; Gonick, & Gannon, 2014; 2013). Hawkins, Al-Hindi, Moss and Kern (2014) state that collective biography is a qualitative, feminist methodology. This is supported by Wihlborg (2013) who confirms that collective biography aligned to narrative inquiry, can be instrumental in studying individuals' lived experiences. De Schauwer, Van de Putte and Davies (2017) also conceptualise collective biography as a research methodology that investigates the memories of the participants. For them memories contribute greatly to investigative research. Thus, collective biography can be understood as a research methodology that relies on writing, speaking, and listening to the memory-stories on a chosen topic of mutual interest (Zbróg, 2016). Svorenčík, (2013) and Gannon and Gonick, (2006) acknowledge that collective biography was motivated by the collaborative technique of memory research established by Frigga Haug and her colleagues in Germany in the 1980s as an intervention in Marxist-socialist sexist awareness practices. It is this transformative orientation of collaborative biography that arguably makes it an action-orientated methodology which was particularly relevant for this study. It is the transformative orientation that is important, given the study’s aim (c.f.1.5). Collective biography entails working collaboratively to unpack conversational threads and common cultural narratives from which themes are established and made identifiable (Davies & Gannon, 2006). It is from this perspective that collective biography invites participants to converse regarding a selected topic by telling their stories by drawing from their past experiences (Davies & Gannon, (2011). Given that collective biography is a methodology used to explore experiences where participants collectively narrate their stories orally, active listening and questioning becomes imperative to acquire rich information. 43 Collective biography accesses this process by foregrounding bodily sensation as a way of knowing. From this perspective, collective biography allowed teachers to collectively narrate their lived experiences of school violence, in addition to sharing their journal entries during the first open-ended group discussion (cf.1.6.2). In utilising collective biography, an assumption was made that teachers lived experiences are significantly influenced by direct, structural, and cultural violence rooted in the school system (Rosenberg, 2019). The teachers lived experiences were sequentially explored from past to present experiences, and the imagining of future experiences. This sequential exploration was aligned with the manner in which currere was employed in this study. Using collective biography in line with currere, the research participants were encouraged to imagine a peaceful school environment. Importantly, the capacity to imagine is necessary for social justice in schools in general, and for curriculum delivery in particular. This approach allowed for the collective imagination of the future self, how teachers and learners can live together in harmony by using different methods of doing and being, and promoting conducive environments for curriculum delivery (McArdle, Knight & Stratigos, 2013). However, collective imagination should follow the collective narration of the teachers' lived experiences. After the participants had collectively narrated their experiences of school violence, they were requested to imagine a future in a non-violent school and how to foster quality curriculum delivery. Thus, collective biography is considered as a collaborative practice that gravitates toward creating alternative modes to develop collaborative strategies to mitigate school violence. However, this required the development of capabilities to discover and be aware of how knowledge is collectively created. This collectively created knowledge can contribute to the development of critical competencies in the analysis of numerous assumptions made in the curriculum delivery process (Svorencik, 2013). This means that the main objective was not based on finding ‘the truth’ of the individual experiences of school violence which pre-exist, but rather to collectively draw on individual experiences as a means to promote transformation away from school violence and to implement quality teaching and learning methods to enhance curriculum delivery. Gannon et al. (2015) agrees that collective biography must challenge participants to describe 44 theoretically their lived experiences of school violence, and then implement practice in their schools. Once all the moments of writing, narrating, listening and reading were finalised, the memories were used as data and then analysed to gain deep insights into the formation of the story (Hawkins et al., 2016). In addition, Davies, Flemmen, Gannon, Laws and Watson (2002) state that the significant practice of collective biography is that the interpretation and analysis of data leads to the formation of a new narrative or story. Based on the shared analysis of school violence, participants had to revisit their experiences in order to reflect on why they experienced school violence, and how this disrupted teaching and learning. Through the recalling of past experiences of school violence, participants were able to identify the consequences of direct, structural, and cultural violence in their schools in the present (Hawkins et al., 2014). In addition, collective biography draws on our embodied experiences of specific ideas as the body is not a discrete individual entity, but rather as a mobile-affective site of writing and remembering. This was closely linked with narrating, listening, and writing through the workshop process as each listener or writer started to become someone ‘other’, a subject whose influence on others' lives became apparent (Davies & Gannon, 2011). A final and important aspect to consider in the manner in which collective biography is employed in this study concerns the approach to questioning by the researcher. As participants shared their memories and stories, attention was specifically directed towards posing relevant and timely questions to guide participants to produce rich, detailed memories. Such questioning processes stimulates participants to leap into the past with a central point in mind (Beals, Braddock, Dye, McDonald, Milligan & Strafford, 2013). As participants referred to their entries in their journals regarding school violence to re-capture details of their experiences, this created the opportunity for exploring such moments that participants failed to coherently articulate. To conclude, collective biography, as informed by currere, was employed to engage in a complicated conversation of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum 45 delivery – something that is often not easily communicated by victims - and to develop collaborative strategies to mitigate such school violence. 3.3 CURRERE Currere is an autobiographical method formulated by William Pinar in 1975. Pinar (2004, 2012) views curriculum as a complicated conversation with oneself and others, and as such offered teachers an approach to investigate the relationships between academic knowledge and life history in the interest of self-comprehension and social reconstruction. Wang (2010) states that currere is an approach by which teachers articulated the relationships between school knowledge, life history, and intellectual development in ways that promoted self- transformation. Therefore, currere being positioned within narrative inquiry and collective biography, provided a convenient platform for participants to collectively share and narrate their experiences of school violence in order to move towards self-comprehension to promote social transformation through the collective structuring of strategies to eliminate such violence. For Grumet (1989), currere entails the collective stories of curriculum experiences that we narrated and shared with our colleagues, peers, and learners about our past, present, and future. This implies that currere encouraged sound behavioural patterns of teachers and learners and their collaboration to transform violent situations (Moore, 2013; Sierk, 2014). As such, currere reconceptualises curriculum as involving deep conversations rather than being only concerned with learning outcomes. Currere is further conceptualised as an attempt to understand oneself in order to mobilise for positive and effective pedagogical action (Pinar, 2004, 2012). Situated within the transformative paradigm, this study employed currere as an analytical framework to make-sense of teachers' collective narratives of school violence. Moreover, Pinar (2004) mentions that currere is an ongoing, complicated conversation that encourages interdisciplinary exploration of educational experiences. Therefore, the analytical framework of this study, as informed by currere, allowed teachers (participants) to engage in a complicated conversation about school violence. This conversation sought to explore teachers' educational experiences, thereby analytically responding to questions such as the perceived consequences of school violence for 46 curriculum delivery and developing potential collaborative strategies to mitigate such school violence. Thus, teachers' engagement in an in-depth conversation demonstrated a willingness to explore and understand school violence and its effects on curriculum implementation. Therefore, employing currere as an analytical framework provided the opportunity for an in-depth comprehension of teachers lived curricular experiences concerning school violence. Based on the comprehension of participant’s lived curricular experiences, one can visualise possibilities for addressing social justice specifically to eradication school violence (Moore, 2013; Le Grange, 2014). It has been argued that curricular experiences encourage teachers to embrace a pedagogy that reflects narration, sharing, listening, compassion, and social justice through their meaningful engagement in a complicated conversation (Milam, 2008; Hlatshwayo, Shawa & Nxumalo, 2020). As a complicated conversation, currere examines the relationships between teachers and their educational encounters, life history, identity, and social (re)construction (Beierling, Buitenhuis, Grant & Hanson, 2014). Smith (2013) avers that reflection in terms of currere should focus on teacher's experiences and the articulation of these experiences. Such reflections, in turn, become the motivation for the transformation of unwanted behaviours (Pinar, 2004). Thus, currere offers possibilities for change as it encourages transformative storytelling through teachers' reflection on educational experiences.The adoption of currere equipped teachers with the necessary tools to mitigate school violence to create a conducive environment for curriculum delivery. Beierling et al. (2014) acknowledge that currere was conceived as a solitary activity. However, the collaborative aspect of the currere process can enrich and enliven the experiences of participants (teachers) because they collectively narrate and share their stories. It is through highlighting participants’ distinctive experiences and emphasising the depth of universal themes, that the participants in this study participated in collective biography. The manner in which currere was applied in this study required the participants to reflect on the past and look towards the future, as a means to gradually analyse their lived curriculum experiences of school violence. This process allowed for considering the perceived consequences for curriculum delivery of past and present manifestations of school violence. 47 This insight in turn provided the framework to collectively construct strategies to mitigate school violence. The intention of developing of these collaborative strategies was to ‘emancipate’ teachers from the constraints of the manifestations of school violence that have been found to have negative consequences for curriculum delivery (cf.2.4.4.2). In addition, I applied an analytical framework informed by currere as a narrative means for collective and collaborative autobiographical reflection in order to guide teachers’ reflexive practice on their experiences of school violence. Having discussed currere and the manner in which this theory informed this study, I turn to the analytical framework employed by focusing on the four stages of currere: regression, progression, analysis, and synthesis. 3.3.1 Development of the Analytical Framework An analytical framework is an instrument that, among others, provides a plan to analyse the data generated in a study (Coral & Bokelmann, 2017). The development and the employment of an analytical framework was significant for this study because it provided a blueprint that included data generation research methods (Coral & Bokelmann, 2017; Liam, 2012). From the generated data, the analytical framework further guided this study in terms of identification of what data would be relevant for analysis, and what should be discarded (Coral, 2018). This study employed the four stages of currere for data collection. Data was collected from the open-ended interviews and participants' journals. Thus, it served a dual purpose. It is important to clarify that in a collective biography the analysis and interpretation of data leads to the creation of a new narrative or story. Therefore, the process of analysis and interpretation occurred during the data generation process in addition to after the data was generated. The process of data generation, data analysis, and data interpretation is thus inextricably interconnected. In the section below, I discussed how the analytical framework was developed and applied in this study. 3.3.3.1 Regression: remembering the past Pinar (2004) elucidates that the concept of an individual's lived-experience serves as a source of data. Within the regressive step, participants are encouraged to remember a particular educational experience. The regressive stage is a discursive practice of truth- telling to oneself (Pinar, 2004). In this study, regression was associated with the research 48 participants keeping a journal. Researchers have used personal documents to explore the lived-experiences of participants, and such personal materials may include letters, diaries, and journals (Van Eerde, Holman & Totterdell, 2005; Ohly, Sabine, Cornelia & Zapf, 2010; Jacelon & Imperio, 2005; Dennis, 2014; Gawley, 2018; Reilly, 2012). Participant journals opened the door to teachers’ personal experiences of school violence (Stoddart, 2015). For this study, participants were requested to keep a journal in which they recorded their past and present experiences of school violence. The journal entries were first-person accounts about participants’ experiences which built a foundation for further discussion and analysis. It also identified the point of departure as it is the first point of reference in the currere processes. The uniqueness of a first-person narrative contributed to the authenticity in data generation. Grumet (cited in Stoddart, 2015:64) emphasised that storytelling is genuine as it provides authentic evidence for analysis in the way of personal experiences. This authenticity also extends to the other three stages of currere employed as the analytical framework, as it provides adequate structure for data generation. In this study, the participants’ journals were utilised for both teaching and research processes. They were used to obtain data from the lived-experiences of teachers concerning school violence. Further, participant journals are instrumental tools in studying any phenomenon in qualitative research (Thupayagale-Tshweneagae, Wright & Hoffmann, 2010). Participant journals reflect the research participants’ subjective knowledge of the experiences, emotions and meanings associated with the phenomenon under study. Each entry expressed the unique and particular experience of school violence that each participant encountered. The wound that haunts our consciousness by severing our private lives from our public world may begin to repair itself, at least on the level of text, as the languages of both worlds and their ways of being, mingle in educational theory and practice (Stoddart, 2015). Collective biography and currere provided an appropriate first step for this study because it offered a retrospection that was drawn from lived-experiences recorded in journal entries that generated authentic data. Thus, in this study, participants referred to their journals to recall their past experiences of school violence, and how these experiences still hover over them to inform the present. In 49 this manner, participants offered a detailed but complicated image of their past. These images converge with their current circumstances and influence their ways of thinking and acting. Within the first step of the currere framework (regression), participants referred to their journal entries to recall and share their experiences of past and present concerning school violence. In the next section, I focused on progression as the second phase of the analytical framework. 3.3.3.2 Progression: imagining the future The second stage of the analytical framework is based on progression. Pinar (1994) directs us to look the other way - not on how the past may contribute to the present, but instead to how the future might inspire us to act on and transform the present. In the second stage of the data generation process, I employed the first open-ended group interviews where participants were encouraged to gaze into the future and imagine what a future, free of school violence, could be like. At this point in the research process, participants were prompted to collectively picture what a violence-free school would look like, what it would be for a teacher in such an environment, and what it would mean for curriculum delivery. Therefore, participants were asked to construct what they imagine in the form of a narrative a story about their future. The narrative offered support and structure to the currere framework, thereby offering participants a framework to express their past and present experiences of school violence. As such, Stoddart, (2015: 51) states that: As we worked within the framework of currere as narrative inquirers, what became clear to us was that as participants, we meet ourselves in the past, the present, and the future. What we mean by this is that we tell remembered stories of ourselves from earlier times as well as more current stories. All of these stories offer possible plotlines for our futures. The progression stage in currere is useful in curriculum delivery, particularly when controversial content is being taught (Kanu & Glor, 2006). Teachers (participants) used their imagination to project into the future and to envision what a non-violent school campus would be like, and what possibilities it holds for curriculum delivery. Thus, the progression 50 stage increased the possibilities of a non-violent school environment which developed strategies to implement for a smooth and uninterrupted curriculum delivery. This is because this stage does not only look at what the future may hold, but also what it would look like. Thus, the progression stage encouraged the participants to look beyond the manifestations of school violence, and to imagine a better future free from school violence. 3.3.3.3 Analysis: reflecting on the past and present During the third stage of currere, which was completed during the second open-ended group interviews, one is informed by the complexities of one's present by examining both the past and the present (Schubert, 2009). During this stage, one distances oneself from the past and future. This distancing allows one to create a subjective-third space of freedom in the present that moves one closer to understanding one's life (Pinar, 2012). During this analytical moment, participants describe the present, exclusive of the past and future (Pinar, 1976). Participants were encouraged to consider how the past, present, and future are interrelated; thereby asking how the future is present in the past, the past in the future, and the present in both. In this study, this stage of currere found expression when participants examined the link between their past encounters of school violence and their vision of a non-violent future. This entailed reflecting on how one got into the situation one finds oneself in. Participants were further encouraged to look at the connections between their memories of school violence and their future ideas of curriculum delivery in a conducive learning environment. In doing this, the participants objectively identified the common themes and relationships between the first two stages of currere; namely, remembering the past and envisioning a better future. Since this is a qualitative study, I applied narrative analysis which refers to different kinds of texts which have a common storied form (cf.1.6.4). A narrative-based approach was used to explain teachers’ experiences of school violence from a phenomenological viewpoint, by taking their narratives as the point of interest. Within the narrative analysis, I specifically employed thematic data analysis. I identified themes and 51 patterns across the generated data. While reading through each story I asked myself: what is this about? Was it about direct, structural or cultural violence? I wrote my thoughts below each story. This process was repeated for all the stories. Similar stories and themes were also clustered together. These stories were then arranged in three groups: stories and themes that related to direct violence, structural violence and cultural violence. 3.3.3.4 Synthesis: developing collaborative strategies The fourth stage of currere is synthesis, which integrates all the reflective components of currere into the present. During this stage, which was completed during the second open- ended group interviews, participants re-entered the lived present (Pinar, 2012). This practice of re-entering the lived present involved participants' bodily sensations and behaviour (Pinar, 1976). This was a crucial stage of the study because of the importance of data analysis and interpretation, and for creating transformative possibilities. This stage provided a conducive platform for the practices of collective biography to create spaces to collectively develop strategies to mitigate school violence. During this stage, participants were asked to evaluate their reflections developed during the first three stages (regression, progression, and analysis). Through a continuously evolving synthesis of the past, present, and future, participants moved towards self-actualisation as they reflected on their new understanding of school violence and the potential consequences thereof in terms of their role in curriculum delivery. With a better understanding of the past, present, and the envisaged future, this stage, therefore, allowed the participants to develop strategies to mitigate school violence. Pinar (2012) states that this stage provides a sense of agency, allowing participants to acquire new self-generated knowledge from the currere process. Within the context of this study, it is this sense of agency that guided participants in exploring possibilities for the mitigation of school violence. The analytical framework of currere thus offered participants an opportunity to revisit and critically reflect on their present and past experiences of school violence; and to project themselves into a non-violent future as a means to empower themselves through considering transformative possibilities in the present through the development of collaborative strategies to eradicate school violence. 52 3.4 RESEARCH SITE AND PARTICIPANT SELECTION In the previous section, I discussed the analytical framework of currere and how it was applied to provide a platform for participant-engagement. In this section, I discussed the selection process of the research participants which refers to the procedures employed to select potential participants in a qualitative study (Lopez & Whitehead, 2013). The central question that researchers need to keep in mind when selecting participants is what the researcher wants to achieve, and what they want to know (Polkinghorne, 2005). This implies that the way researchers choose participants should be tied to the research objectives, and that this aligns with an appropriate selection strategy. It is from this perspective that I adopted a purposive participant selection strategy (cf. 1.6.3). Purposive participant selection can be understood as the intentional selection of participants due to the desired qualities they possess to further the goals of the study (Etikan, Musa, & Alkassim, 2016; Tongco, 2007). Further, purposive participant selection is a non-random technique that does not need underlying theories, or a set number of participants. It is commonly employed in qualitative research as a method of identifying participants who have experience in a subject being studied (Marton, 2013). Purposive participant selection highlights the researchers’ selection as a series of strategic choices about whom, where, and how the study should be conducted (Palys, 2008). Therefore, the aim of purposive selection is to choose information-rich cases whose involvement will inform and answer the questions under study (Patton, 1990). This entails identifying and selecting individuals or groups who are proficient and well-informed about a phenomenon of interest. In the case of this study, participants were selected based on having experience, or currently experiencing, school violence. Benoot, Hannes and Bilsen (2016) state that participants must be willing to participate and communicate their experiences and opinions in an articulate, expressive, authentic, and reflective manner. This study purposively involved five teachers from three schools (two primary schools and one secondary school) located in the Mashishing Circuit of Bohlabela District in the Mpumalanga Province. The five teachers came from the schools that I had targeted for this study. Moreover, I pursued a representative selection in terms of gender, age, and experience. I did this to attempt to capture the wide range of perspectives that relates to teachers experience of school violence. Hence, two male teachers and three female teachers 53 participated in this study. One male teacher, who is in his mid-forties, has more than 20 years of experience, while the second male teacher who participated had only 6 years of teaching experience and is in his mid-twenties. There were three female teachers who participated in this study: one has 19 years of teaching experience and is a Head of Department (HoD) in her early forties; the second female teacher is an acting HoD in her early thirties with 5 years of teaching experience; and the third female is a post level 1 teacher in her early twenties with only 3 years of teaching experience. A representative selection which covers the larger population of teachers in the district, potentially ensures that relevant teachers were purposively selected in order to generate authentic data. The participants were from three schools. One of these schools is a former missionary school and is located on a farm. This school is furthermore categorised as a quintile 1 school due to the socio-economic status of the community in which it is located. The second school is also a farm school and is regarded as a quintile 1 school due to the socio-economic status of the community in which the school is located. The third school is located in a township and categorised as a quintile 2 school due to the community’s disadvantaged socio- economic status (Van Dyk & White, 2019)1. The above details of participants and schools are aimed at generating confidence in the reader that the data generated is authentic and a real-life reflection of participants’ lived experiences. 3.5 TRUSTWORTHINESS Trustworthiness can be understood as confirmation that the findings are an authentic reflection of the participants' lived experiences (Perez, 2019). According to Moss (2004), trustworthiness is a criterion employed by the researcher to ensure that the study is the factual representation of the phenomenon under investigation. Nieuwenhuis (2010) contends that trustworthiness is an essential procedure in qualitative research as it increases the readers' confidence that findings are worthy and reliable. 1 The National Norms and Standards for School Funding [NNSSF] (Republic of South Africa, 2012:3) aimed to improve equity in the funding of education by ranking each school into one of five quintiles. This ranking is based on the unemployment rate and literacy rate of the community in which the school is located, with a Quintile 1 ranking indicating a poor/impoverished school, and a Quintile 5 ranking indicating a wealthy/affluent school. The reasoning behind this notion is that schools serving poor communities (Quintiles 1 and 2) should receive more state funding than schools serving wealthier communities (Van Dyk & White, 2019). 54 However, in narrative inquiry, trustworthiness is ensured by means of verisimilitude which is defined as a criterion in which the writing seems ‘real’ and ‘alive,’ transporting the reader directly into the world of the study (Loh, 2013). Since narrative studies involve the interpretations of personal experiences, it must ring true, and it must have credibility – where audiences must experience a congruence with their own experiences of a similar or parallel situation. Therefore, it was important that this study satisfied the criterion of verisimilitude to ensure trustworthiness. In this study, I also considered crystallisation to ensure trustworthiness (cf.1.7). Crystallization provides us with a deepened, complex, yet thoroughly partial understanding of a topic (Ellingson, 2009). Ellingson, (2009) acknowledges that while there is always more to know about the topic, one can nonetheless produce extremely rich, evocative, useful accounts through crystallisation. In any qualitative approach, crystallisation seeks to produce knowledge about a particular phenomenon through engaging a deep, complex interpretation. In addition, crystallisation provides another way of achieving depth through the compilation of not only details, but also of different forms of representing, organising, and analysing such details (Ellingson, 2009). In the context of this study, I presented the individual narratives of the participants, and below each narrative analysis was an annotation of the story. Ellingson (2009) contends that crystallisation discourages qualitative researchers to generate superficial representations as it combines multiple forms of analysis and multiple genres of representation into a coherent text or series of related texts. This is achieved through building a rich, transparent, and impartial account of a phenomenon that problematises its own construction, highlights researchers’ vulnerabilities and positionality, makes claims about socially constructed meanings, and reveals the indeterminacy of knowledge claims (Stewart, Gapp & Harwood, 2017). I employed crystallisation to affirm and reflect on the participants' unique existential experiences as a means to provide a sophisticated and in-depth understanding of teachers' experiences of school violence and the perceived consequences thereof for the delivery of the curriculum. Thus, within the context of this study, participants were required to refer to 55 their journals to share collectively unique existential experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery. 3.6 CONCLUSION In this chapter, I discussed the research methodology and methods that were employed in this study. I discussed the techniques of narrative inquiry and collective biography to indicate the relevance of addressing the research questions. I also discussed currere and indicated how it was used in this study as both the analytical framework and the process for generating data. The research methods for data generation were also explained, and justification for the employment of these research methods was provided. Further, narrative data interpretation, the participant-selection strategy, and ensuring trustworthiness in the research, were outlined. The currere framework culminated in the creation of a collective biography, which I present in the next chapter (4). 56 CHAPTER FOUR A COLLECTIVE BIOGRAPHY OF SCHOOL VIOLENCE 4.1 INTRODUCTION In the previous chapter (3), I explored how currere was applied as an analytical framework to interrogate teachers’ experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum implementation in order to answer subsidiary research question three (cf.1.3.). I also discussed and justified narrative inquiry and collective biography as research methodology. In this chapter, I employed the participants’ journals and open-ended group interviews in order to develop a collective biography based on stages one, two and three of the currere process (c.f.3.3.). In creating the collaborative narrative in this chapter, I concentrated on the teachers’ shared experiences of school violence. The currere framework allowed the participating teachers to collectively narrate and share their experiences of school violence thereby, recalling, retelling, and analysing such experiences in attempting to develop collaborative strategies to mitigate school violence. In addition, currere also facilitated the interpretation of teachers’ experiences of school violence. The interpretation of the teachers’ experiences was informed by the discussion in chapter two. In what follows, I first described the process involved in generating, developing and interpreting the collective biography, after which I presented the collective biography. 4.2. OUR COLLABORATIVE NARRATIVE In this section, I discussed the generation of the collective biography based on the experiences of school violence, and the interpretation of these narratives. The collective biography generated information based on the journal entries of participants, and from two open-ended group interviews that were conducted to promote collective sharing and reflection, in addition to collectively analysing these shared narratives of school violence. The discussion facilitated through the open-ended group interviews informed the analysis and interpretation of the shared narratives. 57 4.2.1 Generating the Narratives I briefly indicate the process that was followed to prompt participants’ narratives about their experiences of school violence and what they perceive of the consequences on curriculum delivery. At the start of the research process, the five participants were requested to keep a journal in which they recorded their past and present experiences of school violence. The participants were asked to share their past and present experiences of school violence from their journal entries during the first open-ended group discussion. This group interview was conducted at a farm school in Mashishing Circuit of the Bohlabela Education District. This practice of sharing served as the founding principle on which I constructed a collective biography of teachers’ experiences of school violence. Since the data generation process was guided by currere, three foci were used to guide the autobiographical narratives of school violence during the first and second open-ended group interview. These foci were: • Remembering the past – participants made use of their journal entries to recall their past experiences of school violence, to narrate them, and to share how these experiences hover over and inform the present. • Imagining the future – after sharing past experiences of school violence, participants were encouraged, during the first open-ended group interview, to envision the future; a future free of school violence, and what possibilities it would create for better curriculum delivery. The imagining of future possibilities was collectively synthesised. • Developing experienced-based collaborative strategies - based on remembering the past and imagining the future, and discussing how the past, present, and future are interconnected, strategies were developed collaboratively based on previous experiences to mitigate school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum implementation in the present. This was the focus of the second open-ended group interview. The three foci were formulated based on the currere framework which informed the data generation process of this study (cf.3.3.1). Thus, in response to these foci, we engaged in discussions, which I audio-recorded, with each participant being offered an opportunity to share experiences. After participants shared their experiences, a general discussion followed. During the two opened-ended interviews, to ensure that the participants focused 58 on the three foci, I asked follow-up or probing questions which redirected the respondents to refocus on their narratives, if needed. These follow-up questions were not necessarily scripted but elicited elaboration and clarification, where applicable. Having shared our narratives of our experiences of school violence during the first open- ended group interview, the different stories were collaboratively interpreted. In this chapter, I presented five separate narratives that I felt resonated with one another, and that allowed me to answer the research questions. This process of presenting separate narratives involved selecting the most relevant and suitable information that would allow me to answer the research question. The separate stories were combined in a narrative that was based on past and present experiences of school violence. To create this combined narrative, I transcribed the participants’ words to enhance the compiling of the collaborative biography. It should be noted that the collective biography was intentionally written in informal South African English with very little linguistic editing to respect and reflect on the participants’ contributions - all participants use English as a second language (Müller et al., 2018). However, despite the emphasis on generating verbatim accounts, it is advisable that the text must be reader-friendly (McLellan-Lemal, Macqueen & Neidig, 2003; Braun & Clarke, 2006). Thus, Halcomb and Davidson (2006) argue that a combination of verbatim transcription and the participants’ use of vernacular language could be employed to satisfy the criteria of verisimilitude and crystallisation to ensure trustworthiness of the study (cf.3.5.). It is significant to note that the purpose of a collective biography is to share and make-sense of the participants’ lived-experiences and not necessarily assessing the truth and factual account of events (Beals et al., 2013). Collective biographical memory work provides an important mechanism for engaging with personal experience as a means to reflect on and learn from it, and ultimately to facilitate a transformative process (Beals et al., 2013). Within the context of this study, the latter focused on collaboratively developing strategies to address the perceived consequences of school violence for curriculum delivery. In the next section, I provided a brief description of how the narratives shared by the participants were interpreted before proceeding to present the collective biography. 59 4.2.2 Development of Collective Biography The development of the collective biography aligns appropriately with the theory of critical peace education, which Bajaj (2008) describes as awareness-raising and mobilisation against direct, cultural and structural violence. In this way, strides towards achieving the aims of critical peace education can therefore be made through employing a methodology that promotes collective efforts that focus on the social and material contexts of the participants. Furthermore, if the interest of a research project does not portray a single viewpoint, but requires the involvement of several viewpoints, a collaborative analysis becomes applicable. Therefore, from a perspective grounded in critical peace education, teachers must contemplate local realities and resist the desire to generalise their experiences and overlook different material and social contexts that impact on the presence of direct, cultural and structural violence. Furthermore, the way collective biography was employed in this study highlighted the value of creating collective efforts to transform school communities by fostering a culture of peace that is conducive to curriculum delivery (Brantmeier, 2011). The development of the collective biography focused on questions of memory, and the generation of narratives about experiences of school violence. Thus, participants were encouraged to draw on their storied experiences of school violence using participant journals. As stated above (cf. 4.2.1.), in evaluating the stories shared by the participants, it was not necessarily the ‘truth’ being the focus of inquiry, but rather its affective quality (Van Schalkwyk, Boonzaier, & Gobodo-Madikizela, 2014), and the possibilities that this opened to collaboratively create strategies to mitigate school violence within the specific contexts of the participants. This focus of the inquiry thus assumed that memories exist in their own present. This assumption is based on the notion that memories exist in two distinct forms: a relentlessly recurring image stereotyped and static, and the unconscious bodily response to conditions that bear psychic resemblance to the original experience (De Schauwer, Van de Putte & Davies, 2017). During the development of the collective biography, focus was placed on three forms of violence discussed in chapter two: direct, structural, and cultural. During the first open-ended 60 group interview, I aimed to avoid clichés in seeking details of the embodied moments of experiences of violence. Participants started by sharing their remembered written stories (from their journals) of school violence. Thus, the journal writing, and telling and sharing of each of the participants’ experiences of violence involved a collective practice of emergent listening; a listening that opens each listener to others’ memories ontologically, epistemologically, and ethically (Masschelein, & Roach, 2018). Each participant was encouraged to listen to the stories of the other participants to ‘live’ the story out of their own bodies. Participants took turns to share their stories. When the need arose to facilitate the open-ended group interviews, I prepared three questions that were used to guide the data generation process (c.f.4.2.1.). Participants were also encouraged to question the storyteller for clarification and elaboration to bring the story to life. By focusing our curiosity on the details of all the stories, it resulted in an authentic presentation of experiences. From the stories we shared, it became evident that curriculum delivery was greatly interrupted by school violence. In developing the collective biography, it must be noted that the interest was not to examine memory-event(s) of the participants in general, but rather to address the specificity of school violence (as a past event and as a story to be told/written). However, as the interest was on emergent listening and being able to attend to the details of situations of being, each narrative had the potential to become part of an unfolding collective story. The purpose of this was not necessarily to signal the substance of any particular individual, but to open the participants to new insights (Davies et al., 2006) within their particular social and material contexts, and their experiences of school violence. Thus, in the stories that we shared we attempted to connect to each story through our individual experiences of school violence. The end result was that we felt we knew how to respond differently and positively if a similar incident happened in the future. In addition, the deepening of knowledge gained from the telling and re-telling of the story encouraged a spirit of comradery. It is this sense of comradely and support that enabled the collaborative creation of strategies to mitigate school violence. As stories were shared and written in collective biography workshops, we did not claim to tell the whole truth of what happened, as one may only articulate what is remembered. 61 In collective biography processes, knowledge surfaces out of numerous interactions: out of the remembrances that are produced during the discussions; out of the practices of telling, listening, writing, and reading out loud; out of the researchers’ embodied selves in the discussions as they are affected by and affect each other; and out of the collectively documented analyses of those memories (Davies & Gannon, 2006). During the analytical stage of the currere framework that took place during the second open-ended group interview, the participants were encouraged to isolate the present from the past and future. This must be done before discussing how the past, present, and future are interconnected (Pinar, 2012). It is through this bracketing that the development of a subjective-third area of liberation is generated in the present, which enabled participants in this study to collectively imagine a desired non-violent future school environment (Stoddart, 2015). The collective imagination of collaborative strategies using the currere framework aimed at dismantling school violence. I attempted to show how the collective biography process, as informed by currere, involved a transformative movement of school environments with frequent instances of violence, toward the promotion of a culture of peace through not just telling individual memories, but through collective, collaborative and emergent telling/listening/writing/reading/ and analysis. Through an interactive process of talking and listening, of writing and rewriting, the direct, cultural and structural manifestations of school violence that register themselves within each of our bodies, and our ways of understanding our lived experiences within the school context are manifested. Yet, it is precisely this manifestation that allowed for imagining how a future non-violent school environment might look, and what possibilities it could hold for curriculum implementation (Wihlborg, 2013). Thus, through employing the framework of currere, participants collectively imagined what a non-violent, conducive school environment would look like, and what possibilities it would create for curriculum delivery. It was through employing collective biography that I hoped to highlight and deepen our insight of local realities of school violence, thereby allowing us to develop collaborative strategies that teachers could employ to mitigate direct, structural and cultural violence within the school context. 62 4.2.3 Interpreting the Narratives In creating a collective biography based on participants’ experiences of school violence, it is imperative that the interpretation was influenced by the narrative inquiry practice in which analysis transpires during the study, wherein the researcher identifies themes either within or throughout an individual's story to construct stories in the process of storying and re- storying (Müller et al., 2018). Furthermore, Müller et al. (2018) indicate that a collaborative approach to analysis must guide the interpretation. In the interpretation process, we thus collectively re-storied our individual narratives in order to formulate a separate narrative that was informed by the critical peace education theory as well as previous literature on school violence. The literature review enabled me to recognise particular concepts that guided our articulation of our narrative experiences. In this manner, cultural violence, direct violence, and structural violence were linked to the themes that emerged during the sharing of our narratives. Müller et al. (2018) suggest that we should accept the partiality and incompleteness of our narratives as they are not intended to be a detailed or generalisable narratives. Within the context of this study, the collective biography should thus not be understood as a generalisable narrative of school violence within the South African context; rather, our narratives are primarily intended to be an intimate interaction with some of the problems that emerged from our contexts (Kruger 2020). It is hoped that our experiences and the interpretation thereof allow teachers to reflect and draw on experiences and strategies to address occurrences of violence within school contexts. This is because autobiographical narratives have the power to reveal the complexity, ambiguity, and nuances of participants’ lived-experiences of school violence, while further advancing our understanding of what it is like to implement curriculum in a violent school environment. Thus, from the review of literature and the narratives shared by the participants, it became evident that school violence has a detrimental effect on teaching and learning as the literature suggested, and that teachers perceive the quality of teaching and learning to be greatly compromised by the manifestations of school violence. Thus, teachers have demonstrated a desire to teach in non-violent school environments. Next, I discussed the collective biography I created based on the participants’ shared narratives. 63 4.3 TEACHERS’ EXPERIENCES OF SCHOOL VIOLENCE: OUR COLLECTIVE BIOGRAPHY In this section, I briefly introduce the characters in our collective biography. These characters originated from the memory-stories shared by the participants who referred to their journal entries and responses in open-ended group interviews. In terms of the ethics in research, all participants are allocated a pseudonym to protect their identities and to ensure that the information they shared is treated confidentially. In presenting the collective biography it must be noted that for a better understanding I grouped the narratives in line with the different forms of violence which I discussed in chapter two (cf. 2.3). As such, I presented the collective biography under the broad themes of structural, direct and cultural violence. I commenced with the theme of structural violence since this form of violence is regarded as contributing to the manifestation of both direct violence and cultural violence (cf. 2.4.2.). Although each narrative represents an initial phase of interpretation, below each narrative I provided a further interpretation to answer subsidiary research questions three and four (cf. 1.3), and as a means to answer the main research question. 4.3.1 Brief introduction to the characters o Thabo is a young male teacher with five years of experience as a consumer studies teacher. Thabo has experienced various forms of violence in the school he is currently teaching at, and he feels exhausted and drained because of his experiences. However, Thabo feels strongly that he would prefer to teach in an environment where school violence is the least of his concerns, and in which he can focus on being a good teacher in his subject area. o Jabu has been a teacher for more than two decades and is heavily involved in extra- curricular activities. Jabu believes that extra-curricular activities can enhance academic performance. Thus, Jabu used to be a choir conductor at the school he currently works at. When he was still the choir conductor at the school, the choir won several competitions and were presented with several trophies for the school. However, Jabu feels that he has not obtained adequate support from the school principal for developing music as an extra-curricular activity at school. This has led to Jabu stepping down from the role as conductor of the school choir. 64 o Zipho has more than fifteen years of teaching experience. Ever since she started her teaching career, she has been working in a farm school2. Zipho has been a victim of violence in the school and feels demotivated as a result. She feels that some of the violence being perpetrated emerges from the political volatility of the area, and that the school has been turned into a political football by prominent political figures in the area. o Naledi is a young female teacher who has been teaching in a farm school for the past two years. Ever since her arrival, she has been exposed to ill-disciplined learners’ who often exhibit violent behaviour. Naledi would love to teach in a non-violent school where both teachers and learners respect each other. o Sifiso is a young teacher who has only two years of teaching experience. Ever since his arrival at the school where he teaches, he has been experiencing violence. This violence often manifested in violent behaviour of learners at the school. Sifiso, however, remains steadfast in his belief that violence can be overcome. 4.3.2 Themes of Structural Violence In considering the experiences of the participants regarding structural violence, I argue that within the school context it is observable through dilapidated school infrastructure, no running water and electricity, overcrowded classrooms, lack of adequate furniture, no access to adequate resources, buildings constructed from mud, and pit-toilets that exposes both teachers and learners' to health and safety risks (Ndabeni, 2009; Mestry, 2014). In addition, I understand structural violence to manifest in the form of racism, discrimination, denial of human rights, structural factors that enable poverty and unjustifiable inequalities, and social exclusion (Mabitla, 2006). 4.3.2.1 Manifestations of structural violence at school Zipho speaks about elements of structural violence in her school as it relates to social, political and economic harm in society, which in turn generates inequality, oppression, 2 According to Du Plessis and Mestry, (2019), farm schools can be recognised through their location (distance from towns), topography (infrastructure, conditions of roads, bridges to school), access to information technology, the transport infrastructure used by teachers and learners to access the school (roads, buses, taxis), access to services and facilities such as electricity, water, and sanitation, the health, educational and economic status of the community, as well as the social conditions in the community. 65 injustice and the denial of human rights within the school context (cf. 2.3.1). In light of this manifestation of structural violence, Zipho narrated her experiences of school violence: The floor of the classroom is broken, and it is producing some small stones with large amounts of dust that surfaces especially when learners are walking on it and when the wind blows if our door and windows are open. This classroom compromises both teachers' and learner’s health from exposing them to dust. In Zipho’s narrative, I have identified the crumbling classroom floor as a manifestation of structural violence (cf. 2.4.2.). For Zipho, the condition of this classroom is not conducive for curriculum delivery because of the broken floor and the dust emanating from it. Furthermore, she indicates that learners were playing with the small stones that they picked up from the floor and throwing them at each other. Apart from the potential to spread illnesses, the broken floor (Amnesty International, 2020) may result in being hit by a stone; even if thrown playfully, it could lead to injuries. According to the Regulations on Minimum Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure (DBE, 2013) [hereafter Norms and Standards] the DBE has a constitutional obligation to ensure that every school must have water, electricity, internet, working toilets, and safe classrooms with a maximum of 40 learners. Once these are provided for, the DBE has the responsibility to provide libraries, laboratories and sports facilities in all schools (RSA, Equal Education, 2013). However, the fact that the DBE does not address, or is unable to address the infrastructure issues at the school, it impacts negatively on the teachers and learners’ rights concerning teaching and learning in a conducive environment (DBE, 2013). This is a form of structural violence that infringes on learners’ and teachers’ dignity, and ultimately contributes to unequal education opportunities (RSA 1996: s.29; Van den Berg et al., 2011). Thabo gave a very detailed narrative of experiencing structural violence. This experience left him frustrated during the early years of his teaching career. As a former Funza Lushaka bursary holder,3 I was pleased to receive a call from the principal of the school stating my major modules matches with the needs of 3 The Funza Lushaka Bursary Programme is a multi-year programme to promote teaching as a profession. Bursaries are available to enable selected students to complete a teaching qualification in identified areas of priority. Recipients of these bursaries are required to teach at a public school for the same number of years that they received the bursary (www.funzalushaka.doe.gov.za ). 66 their curriculum, therefore, I must report to school on the following day if I have not yet been placed. On the following day, in the morning, I requested the directions from the principal. He gladly gave me all the required directions. Unfortunately, I arrived late due to the long distance, and on my arrival, it was almost closing time, so I was advised to report to the circuit office for the documentation of my employment. The day ended very well; I was looking forward to my first day at work. In the morning as we were driving to school, I observed that the school was very far from town. We were almost in the middle of the farm. The principal said to me we were getting closer to the school. The first thing that I noticed was the rondavel4 which was used as a classroom. I thought maybe we were just passing. I saw the principal pulling over and saying we have arrived. Apart from the old rondavel with old broken furniture inside, I also saw an RDP house5 which was old with stones on top of the roof. I was shocked as I was told by the principal that this was his office. As we entered his office, I observed that the furniture was broken. The roof had leaks. We went to the assembly area where I was introduced to the learners. The learners were so excited to welcome their new teacher. After the assembly, the relevant HOD [Head of Department] took me to class. As I entered the class, I observed that there were broken windows, broken door, and floor with holes. I looked around the entire class. Through the holes in the classroom walls, I saw a boy carrying a textbook running to the clerk’s office, as they were sent by a teacher to make copies. The building was dilapidated, walls of the classroom were going to fall at any given time. There was only a piece of ceiling which was still left hanging on the roof and waiting for the next wind to blow it off. The HOD introduced me and left me with learners. Before I could utter a word, three learners came to me, and said that they don't have chairs to sit on and proceeded to go and look for them. 4A rondavel is a traditional African style house. It is usually round and is traditionally made with materials that can be obtained in raw form locally. The rondavel's walls are often constructed from stones. The mortar may consist of sand, soil, or some combinations of these mixed with dung. The floor is finished with a processed dung mixture to make it smooth. The roof braces of a rondavel are made of tree limbs, which have been harvested and cut to length. The roof itself is made from thatch that is sewn to the wooden braces with rope made from grass (Naude, 2007). 5 The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was introduced by the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), in 1994 to redress the imbalances of the past and to redirect economic development. RDP housing is a low-cost housing system provided by the government for poor South Africans with a combined income of R3500 or less per month (Mashwama, Thwala & Aigbavboa, 2019). 67 I didn't know where they were going to find those chairs because even the other classes were experiencing the very same problem. As I was busy with my introduction and laying down my ground rules, I saw two learners coming back with nothing and one carrying a white 20 litre plastic bucket. I asked him where he was taking this to. Before he could say a word the learners in class answered on his behalf and said siyalisebentisa sir [we use them as chairs, sir]. I went to my HOD to report that some learners were standing - they do not have chairs to sit on. The HOD laughed at me and said welcome to the club young man. As I was walking out of the RDP house which serves as the admin block and offices, I saw a group of boys herding cattle passing by the school premises. When I got into class, I asked my learners who are these boys. Why are they passing by the school? Aren't they supposed to be at school? My learners gladly answered that were doing Grade 7 last year and they are now working on the farm as herders. The nature of the entire school is challenging due to old and crumbling infrastructure. I was frustrated by the entire condition of this school. On top of that there are only two classes which are semi-conducive for teaching and learning. As teachers, we don't have a stable and permanent place for storing our belongings such as files, textbooks, scripts of the learners, and other donated resources. Furthermore, this school is very old. It was built and is owned by the Roman Catholic Church and up till now nothing has been done to improve the infrastructure. The provincial Department of Education has a lease contract with the church. In Thabo’s narrative, I identified multiple forms of structural violence that ranged from a dilapidated infrastructure, possible child-labour, old classrooms, mud buildings with inadequate furniture, and insufficient access to adequate resources (cf. 2.4.2.). Structural violence has been found to be hindering effective curriculum delivery in South African schools due to crumbling infrastructures (Mboweni, 2014; Amnesty International, 2020). Textbooks cannot be left in the classes, and learners cannot walk to school when it rains (Lumadi, 2008). Mud schools in most cases do not have electrical power, clean drinking water, and sanitation, and if there are classroom furniture, these tend to be old and inadequate. These structural conditions make teaching and learning challenging and negatively impact on curriculum delivery (Skelton, 2014; Amnesty International, 2020). 68 Thabo is teaching in a farm school, which is owned by the Roman Catholic Church but is being leased by the Mpumalanga Department of Education. Previously, this particular farm school served as a missionary school. Based on the memory-story shared by Thabo, the buildings are old and outdated and inadequate for functioning as a school. There exists a possibility that the Mpumalanga Department of Education is not willing to renovate the school because the land the school is built on is owned by the church (Gardiner, 2008). The church is also not willing to renovate the school as they claim that they do not have sufficient funds (Maponya, 2010). Such conditions at the school relate to structural violence. Hence, Thabo, as well as the other teachers and learners, find themselves being exposed to structural violence due to crumbling infrastructure which poses a danger as the school buildings are crumbling and not fit for human occupation. Apart from the old dilapidated school infrastructure, the school does not have proper furniture as illustrated by the fact that some learners were using buckets as chairs. Such an environment hinders the provision of quality education which learners are legally entitled to receive (cf. 2.4.2). The Department of Basic Education’s National Education Infrastructure Management System (NEIMS) (2021) Report, indicates that 5836 schools in SA have an unreliable water supply, while 5167 schools were still using pit-toilets. An important aspect the was foregrounded in the narrative was that the future of schooling for learners who passed Grade 7 is not guaranteed because of socio-economic circumstances. This may be the case since the secondary school that learners can attend is located approximately 32 kilometres away from the farm and the transport is not reliable. In Mpumalanga Province in the small town of Delmas, learners were documented as walking in the dark, in the early hours of the morning through farmland bushes, and exposing themselves to dangers such as being mugged. It was further reported that these learners were walking approximately 20 kilometres to get to school (Sowetan Live, 2021 March, 15). The is illustrated in the experience shared by Thabo who realised that young boys after Grade 7 opted to seek employment on the local farms as herders. Section 29 of the South African Constitution (RSA, 1996a) states that everyone has the right to a basic education. But this basic right is not met. In addition, the South African Schools Act of 1996 (RSA 1996b: Chapter 2, s.3) stipulates that children are legally obliged to attend school from the age of seven to the age of 15 (or the completion of grade nine). Furthermore, section 28 of the Constitution (RSA 1996c) specifically protects children from unfair labour practices, from 69 work that is inappropriate for a child’s age, and work that puts the child’s education and physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development at risk. However, the narrative shared by Thabo is indicative of a direct violation of these rights and represents a manifestation of structural violence. In a similar vein, Naledi spoke about the conditions experienced at the farm school where she is employed at. Her experiences also signal the presence of structural violence within the school environment. This was a farm school6 with fewer than 80 learners in total, and with only three teachers. We had few classrooms and as a result we had to combine learners in one class. Just like the Grade 6 and 7 learners who occupied one class, and so we are expected to teach in this setting. There’s no effective curriculum implementation. Even us as teachers, we are overloaded with work. We stand from eight in the morning till two-fifteen [in the afternoon]. We are always tired due to our overloaded and congested timetables. The school cannot even afford to hire teachers through SGB [school governing body] posts because the budget allocated to the school was too small7. Thus, funds are not sufficient to cater for the day-to-day operation of the school and some point the principal would tell us there are no funds to buy paper for making copies. That was the most frustrating moment because there were not enough textbooks. I remember I used to teach from Foundation Phase up to Senior Phase. In Naledi’s narrative, I identified overcrowding and inadequate access to resources as manifestations of structural violence that hinder effective curriculum delivery (cf. 2.4.2.). Structural violence manifests in the form of overcrowded classrooms, inadequate furniture, and lack of access to resources (cf. 2.4.2). Furthermore, the manifestation of multi-grade teaching is also a potential hazard as multi-grade teaching may not be ideal especially when teachers are not prepared for it, in addition to being detrimental to learning due to high levels of disruptive learner behaviour (Ashfaq, Yousuf & Dahar 2018). Multi-grade teaching 6 Maponya (2010) describes that one form of farm school, is a school that caters for the children of the workers staying on a farm. Since these schools are on private land, the initiative for establishing them rests entirely with the owner of the farm. 7 According to the Amended National Norms and Standards for School Funding (DOE, 2021) quintile one to three are only allocated R1466, 00 per learner. While small schools are only allocated a national fixed amount of R33, 968 for the 2021 financial year. 70 contributes to overcrowding that infringes on learners’ rights to access quality education. Marais (2016), Khan and Iqbal (2012) indicate that curriculum delivery in an overcrowded classroom compromises quality education due to teachers being confronted with instructional and evaluation constraints. A second aspect is the lack of access to adequate resources. Mestry (2014) notes that inadequate furniture and the lack of access to adequate resources negatively impacts on teaching and learning. It is unfortunate that in some schools where violence had previously occurred, teachers experienced psychological trauma such as depression and burnout (Govender, 2015). In our narrative, we observed how the manifestations of structural violence in schools continuously prevent and disturb effective curriculum implementation, thereby contributing to teachers’ stress, which in turn could ultimately result in burnout. Zipho speaks about her encounter with a furious parent who happened to be a political figure in the area where the study was conducted who threatened to mobilise community members to protest her alleged unfair treatment of the learners at the school where she teaches. I remember when I was called by the principal to report to his office urgently. He told me that there was a parent complaining about me stating that I told his child is dirty and stinking. I tried to explain to the principal as to what transpired. I told the principal that I was going to class for my period when one learner in class was busy picking broken concrete pieces on the floor and throwing them at his classmates. His classmates were not happy and reported him to me. I therefore reprimanded the learner stating how can he pick these dirty concrete pieces and throw them at other learners. I further, said to learner that he's putting other learners at risk by throwing broken concrete pieces. What if it hit an eye? The boy was angered by me reprimanding him in front of the class. When he arrived at home, I think he told his parents that I said he is dirty and stinking. On the following day, the parent reported to school. I learned that the parent is one of the political leaders. He promised that he will shut-down the school. The parent stated that as long as I am still working in this school he will mobilise other parents to protest against me. During the following week I was visited by the circuit 71 manager. It means the matter has escalated to the next level. I humbled myself and I stated that I never thought this was going to be a big issue because I was only reprimanding a learner just like any teacher or parent would do if confronted by such a situation. However, I am unreservedly sorry for that. The parent got furious and stated that I should be issued with a written warning; if they don’t give me a warning he will storm the school with other parents and further report the matter to the provincial Department of Education. The matter was further taken up to the school governing body. I was also instructed to apologise. This has affected me in my curriculum implementation in exercising my authority as a teacher because I felt that the parents were targeting me. The reason I thought the parents and SGB were unfairly targeting me was because of our toxic environment that we work under. If you question something done by the principal in particular, he takes that as a personal attack and reports you to the SGB so that you can be victimised. I have indicated that structural violence is a phenomenon built into the system which occurs over a long period (Netshitangani, 2014). For Zipho, her authority as a teacher was challenged by a learner who displayed dissatisfaction by being reprimanded by her. Consequently, the learner’s parent, who is a prominent political figure in the area, verbally threatened her. Jace and Lara (2010) and Netshitangani (2014) contend structural factors such as low socio-economic backgrounds of learners, racism, inequality, and unfairness may contribute in exacerbating the manifestations of structural violence within the school, which generally disturbs the normal functioning of the school. Mabitla (2006) concurs by stating that structural violence may also manifest in the form of the abuse of human rights, inequalities, social exclusion, political oppression, and injustice. Thus, this was a power-based incident of violence that manifested in the form of patriarchal oppression. Zipho was intimidated and threatened by the parent. This is largely because female teachers are continuously challenged by learners who are predominantly boys. Stephen, Ramsook and Simonette, (2016) concur that female teachers are disrespected and intimidated by boys within the classroom. They refer to this as a gender-specific challenge that is largely experienced by female teachers. The threat made by a protesting parent in response to Zipho’s actions may furthermore lead to structural violence which may 72 subsequently deny learners access to education. Furthermore, it is also significant to note that the working environment at Zipho’s school was not conducive, as one of the participants reported that the school was placed under administration due to unfavourable audits conducted by the Department of Education. As a result, the school administration did not have direct access to funds meant for the day-to-day operations (RSA, 1996d). This, in turn, made the working environment untenable. For example, Zipho indicated that at some point the school did not have sufficient paper to make copies for learners who did not receive textbooks. As this narrative illustrates, on the one hand there exists interference by political leaders who intimidated a female teacher, and on the other hand, issues of maladministration at the school negatively impacted on teachers to fulfil their duties. These issues relate to structural violence and they negatively impact curriculum implementation in addition to hindering conditions conducive to effective teaching and learning. The main experiences of structural violence that the participants shared relates to dilapidated school infrastructure, lack of teaching and learning resources, unequal access and opportunities to education, and political intimidation. I argued that these aspects relate to structural violence, hence they disturb curriculum delivery. For instance, in chapter two it was noted that a crumbling and dilapidated school infrastructure, lack of access to resources, overcrowding, and denial of human rights (such as child labour) all relate to structural violence (Ndabeni, 2009, Mestry, 2014, Mabitla, 2006). Thus, developing countries such as South Africa must find alternative means to provide equal educational opportunities for all learners to learn in a decent environment that is conducive to curriculum delivery and thereby ensuring that all learners are not discriminated against. Considering the above narratives of the participants, it is therefore apparent that the participants are faced with structural violence that affect their psychological wellbeing, hence curriculum delivery is compromised. 4.3.3 Themes of Direct Violence Direct violence is understood as violence that is committed by a perpetrator to harm the basic needs of others (cf. 2.3.1.). The narratives of direct violence shared by participants include physical attack, intimidation, bullying, and name-calling that manifest in learner-to- 73 learner, teacher-to-learner, and learner-to-teacher violence (cf. 2.4.2). 4.3.3.1 Manifestations of direct violence within the school The first narrative presented experiences of direct violence shared by Thabo. It was early in the morning and I had a first period with my grade 11 class to teach consumer studies. Learners were already displaying elements of ill-discipline. When I entered the class, learners made those funny comments and even went to the extent of calling me by my nickname while other learners were laughing. They called me by nickname mainly because I was teaching in an area where I grew up. However, I tried to ignore all those funny comments and name-calling, although I was demeaned by it. I started my lesson of the day. As the lesson progressed, I kept on asking whether they understood or if anyone had a question? One boy raised his hand. I gave him a chance to talk. He spoke in IsiZulu, saying, "Yini lento osifundisa yona vele?” [What is it that you teaching us?]. I politely responded by saying that I don't mind answering your question; however, for now, I am still busy with the lesson. You can always come to me during break-time. I will explain everything to you. Again, I asked if there was anyone with a different question. The very same boy raised his hand. I gave him a chance to speak; he said, "Nalesilungu osikhulumayo asisizwa kumele ufundise ngesizulu manje noma uphume ke okungcono” [We don’t understand even that English language you are speaking, you must teach us in IsiZulu or you must leave the class]. Remember English is the medium of instruction in this school. And I can’t teach this subject in IsiZulu. As I was trying to explain as to why am I teaching in English one of the big boys stood up and came straight to me. He stared at me in the eye, and after that, he went to open the door and told me to leave the class, or else he will kick me out of the class. There was nothing I could have done to save my teaching period but I had to leave within twenty minutes f or my own safety. As I was walking towards the staffroom, I bumped into the principal and reported what transpired in the classroom. The principal, head of department, and Life Orientation teacher went to class to talk to these learners. After the incident, I was ordered to go back to class and teach. However, it was very much difficult working under that condition because even though learners 74 had apologised I could see that this was a forced apology. They did not mean it. Furthermore, the teacher-learner relationship had been destroyed by such an incident. As a result of that incident I was no longer comfortable in teaching this class like I used to because of the fear that I had. I was also afraid to encourage learners to ask questions because of my previous experience with regards to that. I felt that my authority as a teacher was unfairly challenged by learners who humiliated me as a teacher and as a person. The banning of corporal punishment was such a good move. However, due to the abolishment of corporal punishment learners think they can do as they want to. They can talk to teachers as they want to without showing any form of respect. Thabo was a young teacher who had only five years of teaching experience, teaching in area where he grew up. It is for this reason that some of the male learners called him by his nickname. In addition, learners showed dissatisfaction toward English as the language of teaching and learning (LoLT). Apart from the desire of the learners to be taught in their home language, the incident shared by Thabo illustrates the difficulty for curriculum delivery since he was afraid to engage with learners about their comprehension of the subject content they were being taught. Furthermore, it is apparent that learners were indirectly disadvantaged by this incident as it had a long-lasting negative impact on Thabo’s ability to effectively deliver the curriculum (cf. Jacobs, 2014; Hadebe, 2000). According to the Norms and Standards for Language Policy in Public Schools (DoE, 1997: section 5b, 2), a learner must choose the language of learning and teaching upon application for admission to a particular school. In addition, the DoE stipulates that if there is no school in the District that offers the desired language as a LoLT, the learner may request the Provincial Education Department to make provision for instruction in the chosen language. In most cases this is not done. Although English is the predominant international language of communication and commerce, research has shown that learners learn best in their home language (Kerfoot & Simon-Vandenbergen, 2015). Also, a Grade 4 learner born into an African language speaking home is expected to use the same textbooks and write the same assessments as a child born into an English-speaking home. The implication is that by the time these learners reach Grade 4, the learners whose home language is English would have had 9–10 years of full immersion in English, whereas the learner with an African home 75 language would be severely disadvantaged for only having four years of immersion. This is a gross inequality that persists as a result of the legacy of apartheid (Daily Maverick, 5 February 2019). The above manifestations relate to structural violence as it denies the learner an equal opportunity to participate in educational opportunities (Eldridge, Van der Berg & Rich, 2017). It is evident that structural violence could lead to direct violence as Thabo found himself being bullied and forced by learners to leave the classroom as he was implementing the language policy of the school (cf. 2.3.1). Similarly, Sibisi (2014) contends that structural violence plays a significant role in rationalising direct and cultural violence. Due to the fact that the learners in Thabo’s class felt that they were not sufficiently fluent in the language of learning and teaching, namely English, it can be argued that the use of English subjected them to unequal learning opportunities. This may, according to Navsaria, Pascoe and Kathard (2011), ultimately deny learners an opportunity to perform well in their studies. It is, therefore, apparent that these learners would have preferred to be taught in their home language which could potentially allow them equal learning opportunities through participatory parity and epistemological access, and possibly preventing their frustration to find expression in direct violence as experienced by Thabo. The next narrative was shared by Sifiso who spoke about his experiences at school and how he perceived these to relate to direct violence. It was in the morning and I had the first period. In my previous lesson, I had given learners a task to be done as their homework. As I was busy requesting the class work exercise books for marking and controlling, I learned that one boy had not done the work. I asked him why he didn't complete the homework. He said he was busy with other homework and that I was always giving them homework to do. I then asked, why he had brought his book if you knew very well that he didn't do the task because he should have told me that he did not complete the task due to other homework. As I was busy trying to establish as to what was wrong with this boy, his classmates shouted ‘vele akabhali lona!’ [He doesn’t do his homework!]. I tried asking what makes you not to do your homework. The boy was not willing to cooperate with me, instead he was so disrespectful and ended 76 slapping me right in front of the whole class, and went back to sit at his desk. One learner ran to the staffroom and reported the incident. The boy who slapped me was taken to the office of the principal for questioning. I was not part of the questioning. However, I was told by the principal that the boy had been suspended for seven days. The suspension letter also indicated that the boy must come with his parents after the seven days. Netshitangani (2014) avers that violence in schools represents violence in a wider social context and that learners and other stakeholders import violence into the school as part of their lived experiences. In Sifiso’s narrative, the learner possibly came from a society where violence is prevalent. A study conducted by Shumba and Ncotsa (2013) concur by stating that over 91% of respondents in their study reported that violence in communities was enacted at school. In addition, violence is very common in communities and surrounding areas where my study was conducted. A consequence of this social manifestation of violence leads to much damage to school infrastructure and contributes to learners coming to school carrying weapons and indulging in substance abuse (Ibid). Arguably, if the learner in Sifiso’s narrative had been schooled in social ethics and morals outside of school, this situation may have unfolded differently (Brantmeier, 2007, 2011; Bajaj, 2019). Such an approach resonates with a culture of peace which advocates for the resolution of conflicts through the use of dialogue and negotiation between conflicting persons (cf. 2.2.2.). A culture of peace seeks to prevent violence that is based on education for peace, the advancement of sustainable economic and social development, respect for human rights, equality between men and women, democratic participation, tolerance, the free flow of information, and demilitarisation as an alternative to a culture of war and violence (Wintersteiner, 2013). If the learner was provided with sufficient opportunity to develop the necessary knowledge, skills and disposition to address conflict peacefully, he may have responded differently. Roné Mcfarlane, co-head of research at Equal Education, states that in response to school violence, teachers need to be trained to better handle violent learner behaviour and the occurrence of violence in schools (Kruger, 2012). Kruger (2015) indicates that direct violence can be understood as preventable damage to basic human needs, or the harm to human life, which limits the real degree to which anyone can fulfil their needs beyond what otherwise would be possible. 77 Based on this understanding of direct violence, one can argue that Sifiso’s experience of school violence limited his ability to perform his duties that included curriculum delivery. This type of direct violence from learner-to-teacher is a manifestation of physical assault. However, it also crucial to note that this incident of direct violence could have been prevented. Next, I considered Jabu’s narration of his experiences based on a confrontation between the school’s principal and himself. As a teacher there are extra-curricular activities that we are tasked with by the School Management Team that include training learners and participating in competitions, if available. I was therefore assigned to be a conductor for the choir in this school. After we have participated and won at the circuit level and the district level, we were supposed to proceed to the next level which is provincial music competitions. I was very much excited to report to the principal that we had won, and that we were proceeding with the competitions to the next level. I further reported that the District music coordinator indicated that schools will have to cater for and transport their learners. He replied by saying the school has no funds to transport and cater for these learners. I tried contacting the coordinator of music at the District to assist these learners with transport and catering. Unfortunately, the District ordered the schools to fund such extra-curricular activities. The coordinator called my principal to check why we were not funding this extra-curricular activity. After that call I was summoned to the office and the principal said to me that it seems as if I am not doing this for the learners but for myself and I am busy advertising myself and painting him as a bad manager. He again told me that there are no funds for this competition. He was shouting at me as if I was one of his children. Grobler (2018) states school violence may manifest in the form of teacher-to-teacher, learner-to-teacher and teacher-to-learner violence. Jabu’s narrative is a typical example of teacher-to-teacher violence as it portrays how Jabu was verbally abused by his colleague. Jabu’s narrative provides an example of bullying and verbal abuse as a dimension of school violence. According to the South African Council for Educators [SACE] (2013), bullying and verbal abuse are forms of physical violence that are prevalent in schools. In addition, bullying 78 is described as a pattern of power abuse that can be perpetrated on both children and adults through such acts as name-calling, gossip, isolation, shoving, and yelling (Aulia, 2016). The tone of the language that the principal used is indicative of elements of bullying, given the manner in which he engaged with Jabu. According to Jabu, he was shouted at and belittled by his principal during their disagreement regarding funding of the choir to proceed with the music competitions. It can be argued that the principal abused his power and verbally abused Jabu. A study conducted by De Wet (2013) shows that school principals are capable of humiliating their intended victims and thereby abusing their authority, bringing such victims into disrepute amongst parents and co-workers, and ultimately breaking their passion to teach. In addition, De Wet (2019) argues that school principals often use extra- curricular programmes to the detriment of their targeted victims; for example, through frequent changes in timetabling and providing minimal support in terms of resources allocated to these extra-curricular programmes. As result, teachers who were victimised by their principals suffered from depression, headaches, sleep deprivation, stress, and burnout (De Wet, 2014). In addition, De Wet (2014) discovered that educators withdraw both emotionally and psychologically from extra-curricular and academic activities in order to avoid further victimisation and abuse by the school principal. Further, Grobler (2018) asserts that extra-curricular activities and the priorities stated in the school’s mission statement, along with the academic activities as envisioned, end up not being achieved due to the manifestations of school violence, thus, curriculum delivery is negatively impacted and teachers are left feeling incompetent, disempowered, and discontented. This resonates with Jabu’s experiences in which he felt disempowered and discontented because of the principal’s choice of not availing funds for the choir competition which were meant to benefit the learners and the school. Hence, Jabu’s experiences left him demoralised and demotivated to effectively deliver the curriculum. Naledi narrates her story of being verbally abused by a Grade 6 learner who also intimidated and threatened to beat her. Bullying manifested in the form of name-calling, threats, and intimidation (cf. 2.4.2). Naledi categorises her experiences as direct violence. 79 I was teaching in a farm school which had seventy learners in total. On my arrival I thought there won’t be a challenge of discipline due to the small number of learners. However, there was this Grade 6 boy who was taller than me in height. A couple of days ago I had given the class an assignment to do and I asked those who did not complete it to step forward. He, along with his friends were amongst the learners who did not do the task so as a punishment they were supposed to dust off all the desks on the following day. He blatantly said he will not do it and there's nothing I could do about it. I then told him to follow me to the principal's office. We went there and I told the principal what was going on and left him there. When he came back to class he spoke in Sepedi which he knew was foreign to me. When he told his friends they all started laughing but the rest of the class was shocked and looked at me. I asked them what did he say and they said to me that he was calling me by my private part and he was going to smack me. It took me by great surprise and I was a bit scared, so I told him to get out of my class. He stood up and walked towards me - I almost peed myself - but his friends held him. I then told the class that if he doesn't go out I will, and I did. I went to the principal's office to let her know that I will not be teaching in his presence because I felt that my safety was compromised. She went to talk to him but he had left the school premises. A few hours later a learner handed me the principal's cell phone, and on the other side there was the boy and his mother cursing me and threatening me. His mother spoke a little of IsiZulu so I understood all that they said. In that phone call I asked the mother to come to the school with the boy so that she can find out what happened, but she never did. The following day the boy came to school and carried on like nothing had happened. A few weeks later he came and apologised since I was not talking to him, not marking his books, and had no interaction with him. Based on research conducted in South Africa, it has been argued that learner-to-teacher bullying is a serious problem that teachers face (De Wet, 2010; De Wet & Jacobs, 2006). Naledi’s narrative is an example of learner-to-teacher violence as she was verbally abused and bullied by a Grade 6 learner in full view of the learners. Netshitangani (2014) states that incidents of violence erupting in the classroom distract learners' attention, hence learners become uncontrollable and difficult to manage and this may lead to reduced or even minimal cooperation between teachers and learners. The learners in Naledi’s classroom were not 80 only negatively impacted as a result of the manner in which the boy verbally abused her, but also she had to spend valuable teaching time in attempting to restore order during and after the incident. This meant that curriculum delivery was impeded. Teaching and learning processes were further impacted as Naledi opted to leave the classroom to avoid further confrontation and disturbance. This account, as shared by Naledi, supports Ncontsa and Shumba’s (2013) assertion that violent behaviour contributes toward diminishing teachers' productivity, in addition to teachers becoming depressed and demoralised within the context of their work. To exacerbate the situation, the parent of the learner cursed, intimidated and threatened Naledi during their telephonic communication. This occurrence is aligned to Mgijima’s (2014) claim that the external environment has a major influence on school violence. In this case, the perceived unwillingness of a parent to cooperate with the teacher to address a learner’s misbehaviour potentially contributed to the situation and (indirectly) impacted on curriculum delivery. Based on the narratives shared by the participants, it is evident that all of them experienced some form of direct violence in their respective schools. The main experiences of direct violence that the participants shared, included verbal abuse, bullying, intimidation, threats and physical attacks. These manifestations of direct violence were revealed in teacher-to- teacher as well as learner-to-teacher situations. Furthermore, it is apparent that in some instances external factors contributed to the manifestation of direct violence within the school. The consequence of direct violence experienced by teachers is that it has a detrimental effect on their psychological wellbeing and includes demoralisation, psychological stress and burnout that may ultimately lead to high rates of absenteeism and resignation (Grobler, 2018; Netshangani; 2014; Aulia, 2016; Garcia-Reid, 2008). In this study, the participants specifically indicated that they felt bullied, depressed, and demoralised due their experiences of direct violence. As a result, one participant withdrew from participation in the extra-curricular programme at the school. These consequences all contribute to denying teachers opportunities to deliver the curriculum in a conducive setting. Having shared narratives in which participants recounted their experiences of direct violence, I next consider the manifestation of cultural violence. 81 4.3.4 Themes of Cultural Violence Cultural values determine what is socially accepted as being right or wrong in communities. Contributing factors include such institutions as the family, the religious institutions, communities, languages, laws, religious insignia, symbols, flags, anthems and military parades, provocative speeches, and posters (Dodi, 2018; Galtung, 1990; Springs, 2016). The study of cultural violence examines how direct violence and structural violence are legitimised and made acceptable in society (Dodi, 2018; Galtung, 1990). Thus, within the context of this study, I identified hate speech such as the accusation of witchcraft [ubuloyi], and cultural practices such as wearing of isiphandla, as manifestations of cultural violence that could ultimately lead to direct violence. 4.3.4.1 Manifestations of Cultural Violence in Schools In the following narrative, Thabo shared his experiences of school violence which is categorised as cultural violence. On a certain weekend, I had to go home to do some rituals as per my belief. We slaughtered a goat and I had to wear isiphandla8 as a symbol of my connection with my ancestors. On my return, I met my principal and he poked the isiphandla saying ‘You went home to do buloyi [witchcraft] for me; you think you will overthrow me. You won't succeed. You are just a small boy’. I was angered by his provocative words. Cultural violence is identified in terms of cultural elements such as religion, philosophy, and language (speech) that can be applied to explain direct or structural violence (Springs, 2016). The type of school violence that is manifested in Thabo’s narrative is deemed as cultural violence. Based on the above account it can be argued that the principal at Thabo’s school did not show respect towards Thabo’s observation of his cultural practices. Instead, he used it as an opportunity to demean him. Thabo was wearing isiphandla to symbolise connection with his ancestors, but the principal viewed this practice as constituting ubuloyi [witchcraft]. This accusation angered Thabo. It can be construed that the utterances of the principal of calling Thabo a witch can referred to as hate speech. The principal was 8 Isiphandla is specifically made from goat skin taken from a selected part of the slaughtered goat. The isiphandla is traditionally viewed as a sign indicating that a certain ritual has been performed in the family, for example, when a baby is born, or when a family member has passed on or when cleansing is performed. One member within the family is designated to cut isiphandla. 82 deliberately not respecting all cultures and religious orientations (a basic human right in SA as per the Constitution) and using his own culture and beliefs as justification to commit violence against others. Section 9 (3) of the South African Constitution (RSA, 1996e) states we may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth. However, Springs (2016) states that cultural violence is commonly manifested in hate speech. Elsewhere the school principal was accused of insulting both teachers and learners, insinuating that the school is ‘his turf’, therefore no one could tell him what to do (De Wet, 2013, 2020). According to the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill (Department of Justice and Correctional Services, 2018, section 4(1) (a), the following is explained as hate speech: Hate is understood as any person who intentionally publishes, propagates or advocates anything or communicates to one or more persons in a manner that could reasonably be construed to demonstrate a clear intention to be harmful or to incite harm; or promote or propagate hatred based on language, culture, race and religion, to mention a few. Bullying is defined by De Wet (2014) as behaviours targeted at one or more employees that that are done purposefully or unintentionally that clearly cause humiliation, offence, and distress, and that may tamper with the quality of work and create an unpleasant working environment. In Thabo’s narrative, there are also elements of fear, insecurity and lack of trust manifesting because of differences in cultural practices. The SACE (2013) indicates that the Gauteng Department of Education ruled in favour of a learner who was unfairly treated for wearing an isiphandla and who was instructed by the principal to wear long sleeves to cover his isiphandla. However, the Gauteng Department of Education advises that there’s a necessity for policies such as the learners’ code of conduct to accommodate all the cultures of the learners in a school. Therefore, this incident confirms the assertion by Harber and Sakade (2009) that teachers in South Africa are exposed to different forms of violence, such as cultural violence within the context of the school. Furthermore, schools 83 are encouraging violence by actively perpetrating it through hate speech and verbal abuse amongst individual teachers (SACE, 2013; Harber & Sakade, 2013). Thus, Thabo’s narrative illustrated that schools are directly or indirectly producers of violence (cf. 2.3). The following extract has been extracted from Naledi’s narrative in which she highlights the connection between language and violence (c.f.4.3.4.1.). When he [the boy] came back to class he spoke in Sepedi which he knew was foreign to me. After making those utterances all of his friends began laughing but the rest of the class was shocked and looked at me. I asked them what did he say and they said me that he was calling me by my private part, and he was going to smack me. It took me by surprise and I was a bit scared so I told him to get out of my class. He stood up and walked towards me (I almost peed myself) but his friends held him back. I then told the class that if he doesn't go out I will, and I did. In Naledi’s narrative, she indicated that she was insulted by a learner in a language that she did not understand, and that the learner was aware of this fact. This is an example of hate speech which may, in this instance, be categorised as cultural violence. It is apparent that the learner took advantage of Naledi due to her gender identity. The learner insulted Naledi by referring to her private parts and threatened to beat her, thereby violating her dignity. To illustrate the point about the seriousness of hate speech, findings made by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC, 2014) indicate that the hate speech of teachers at Dr Viljoen Combined School towards black and coloured learners were racist, derogatory and violated the learners’ rights to equality and human dignity. Section 9 (1) of the Constitution (RSA, 1996) states that everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law. The concept of cultural violence is critical for investigating social institutions such as schools in order to discover the ways that symbols of culture such as ideology, art, religion, and science become institutionalised and are used to justify structural and direct violence (Khumalo, 2019). Furthermore, the SACE (2013) indicates that there is a growing trend of cultural violence in schools, and that learners are unfairly treated by their teachers due to 84 their cultural practices; hence, they more likely to develop a negative attitude towards their teachers and learning. This is because incidents of school violence negatively impact on the teacher-learner relationship and results in unhealthy classroom environments which ultimately hinders effective curriculum delivery (cf. 2.4.4.2.). Thus, cultural violence can also be directed towards teachers by learners and could be based on gender identity and language affiliation. Based on the narratives shared by participants and examples from literature, it is evident that cultural violence serves as a foundation for direct and structural violence which denies both teachers and learners of their basic human rights. In the following section, I provided the collaborative strategies that were developed by participants in response to their experiences of structural, direct and cultural violence within the school context. 4.4 DEVELOPMENT OF COLLABORATIVE STRATEGIES In this section, I present the collaborative strategies developed by the participants’ based on their narratives of school violence. As discussed in the previous section, the participants’ narratives relate to structural, direct and cultural violence. The manifestations of these forms of violence within the school context were found to have a detrimental effect on curriculum delivery. The development of the collaborative strategies aligns with the synthesis stage of the currere framework where participants re-enter the lived-present to make it complete (Pinar, 2012), through imagining a non-violent school environment. Participants were requested to reflect on and evaluate the three stages of the currere process (regressive, progressive, and analytical) to collaboratively develop strategies to mitigate school violence. The development of the collaborative strategies also considered the manner in which the participants’ intellect, emotions, and behaviour are revealed in the present. Through a continuously changing synthesis of the past, present, and future, one moves toward self- actualisation which is informed by the participant’s knowledge of the consequences of school violence gained from the currere process, and the envisioning of possible strategies to mitigate school violence. 85 During the synthesis stage the participants reflected on their new understandings of who they are, based on the regressive, progressive and analytical stages of the currere process. Thus, the synthesis stage enabled participants to select aspects of the past and present to honour, and what to let go off in order to work towards non-violent futures. This reflection stage also permitted the participants to reconsider who they want to be, and what their aspirations should be as teachers. This moment provided a sense of agency, allowing participants to use the knowledge acquired through the currere processes to attempt to develop collaborative strategies that could be employed by themselves (and other teachers) to mitigate school violence. Therefore, in considering the above experiences of school violence shared by the participants, and in order to address subsidiary research question four, we developed collaborate strategies to alleviate violence. These collaborative strategies were developed as response to our past (remembered) and present experiences of school violence. 4.4.1. Addressing the impact of structural violence In response to the manifestations of structural violence within the school context, participants proposed that all teachers within affected schools should engage the School Governing Body (SGB) on how curriculum delivery is negatively impacted due to dilapidated and crumbling school infrastructure, inadequate furniture and a lack of resources such as textbooks. According to Section 20(a) of the South African Schools Act [SASA] (RSA, 1996), functions allocated to the SGB include promoting the best interests of the school and striving to ensure its development through the provision of quality education for all learners at the school. The SASA further states that in order to achieve the provision of quality education, the SGB must maintain and improve the school's property, buildings and grounds, including school hostels. Teachers should also direct their grievances to the provincial and national DBE as they have a constitutional obligation to meet the Regulations on Minimum Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure (DBE, 2013). Moreover, civil society organisations and local communities must also play their part as their children have to attend schools with safe environments conducive to curriculum delivery. Their involvement can be through organised school meetings and concerted campaigns to raise awareness of 86 combating violence at schools. Thus, this could lead to an imagined future where teachers deliver curriculum in conducive classrooms supported by adequate resources such as furniture and textbooks to enhance curriculum delivery. Additionally, teachers and the SGB need to collectively embark on a fundraising campaign by approaching local businesses, among others, for donations. This could also be extended by approaching successful alumni members. In the event where the school does not have such alumni, schools should be encouraged to adopt at least one outstanding ex-student from the neighbouring school to request assistance with regards to fundraising efforts and networking with local businesses. Furthermore, television shows such as Umphakathi on Moja Love TV could be approached to broadcast the ‘voice’ against school violence and expose the issue of inadequate resources, among others. Similarly, local community radio stations could also be approached to provide teachers with an opportunity to make presentations on the conditions faced by teachers (and learners) in affected schools. Both these platforms (TV and radio) could thus be employed as sources to create public awareness of the infrastructural and resource shortcomings faced by schools, and to request donations such as mobile/temporary classrooms, second-hand textbooks, and office furniture. Thus, the fundraising campaign may lead to an imagined desired future of having adequate infrastructure and well-resourced schools that promotes effective curriculum delivery in particular. It was indicated that due to socio-economic circumstances some learners drop out of school before the legal age to engage in labour (c.f. 4.3.2.1.). To address the issue of child labour, teachers need to create awareness in the local community that Section 43(1) of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (RSA Constitution, 1997) provides that no person may employ a child under the age of 15 years or who is under the minimum school-leaving age. The Constitution of RSA (1996) stipulates that children have the right to social services, and quality schooling. In the narrative shared by Naledi (c.f. 4.3.2.1.), she can engage social workers to intervene in the child labour case. Reyneke (2018, 2018), similarly recommends that social workers should be involved in schools to assist learners and create dignified and conducive school environment that will contribute to the realisation of children’s right to basic education. 87 According to Education White Paper 6, educational support services must be offered by social workers and educational psychologists (Vergottini & Weyers, 2020). The formation of the National Committee for School Social Work Education and Practice (NACOSSWEP) was a direct response to the necessity for educational support services to be offered to needy learners. The NACOSSWEP recommended that school social work should become a field of speciality within the profession, and the authority to appoint school social workers be delegated to each province. However, it is worth noting that only the Western Cape, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, and Gauteng Province have been able to make sporadic appointments of social workers in schools (Vergottini & Weyers, 2020). This study was conducted in Mpumalanga Province and these services are still not provided. It has therefore recommended that the National Department of Basic Education should expedite the appointment of school social workers9 (Reyneke, 2018). However, as this may take time to materialise, for immediate relief SGBs should take the initiative to enlist the services of professional social workers so that the emotional and psychological wellbeing of both teachers and learners are attended to. This may lead to an imagined future where all learners of school-going age are supported through social and welfare services to attend school. In addition, learner’s psychologically needs will be adequately satisfied due the availability of social services within the school environment. This may, in addition, result in the creation of harmonious relations between teachers and learners due to the valuable and constructive role that social workers could play. Parents who are leaders in the community can also play a central role in the mobilisation of resources for the holistic development of learners. Holistic development is defined as the human development that is meant to involve all aspects of a person (John, 2017). This development is designed to accommodate physical development, mental growth, emotional development, and social development (DBE, 2011). In attempting to foster holistic development, the quality learning and teaching campaign by the Department of Basic Education can be instrumental in this regard. The Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign (QLTC) was launched in 2008, and aimed to make education a societal matter by mobilising 9 School social work is the application of social work principles and methods within the education system in order to render holistic social work services to learners, parents, educators and the school as community, with the main goal of addressing personal, emotional, socioeconomic and behavioural barriers to learning, and creating an environment where the learner can reach his or her full potential (Vergottin & Weyers, 2020) 88 communities to create awareness of the importance of quality education. The campaign also aimed to instil quality education involving collective responsibility such that the community has to monitor and support the implementation of the QLTC and the delivery of quality learning and teaching in all public schools. Lastly, the campaign aims to sensitise communities, corporates, organisations and members of society to adopt both underperforming and successful schools by ensuring adequate and sufficient provision of learning materials and textbooks to the schools (DBE, 2011). The QLTC comprises SGB representatives, teacher-union representatives, and the representative council of learners (RCLs), religious formations, traditional leaders, community organisations, business people, and organisations. The QLTC strives to make education a societal matter, thereby ensuring that every school-going child is at school. Another focus of the campaign is to ensure a safe and violent-free school environment and to protect the school and its assets from vandalism. It thus aims to mobilise the school and broader community in support of the QLT campaign in order to achieve quality education for all through the involvement of all stakeholders such as parents, learners, teachers and the community at large. This may lead to an imagined future where parents who are leaders in the school community are actively involved in the education of their children. Such parents would also support the school through accessing sponsors to donate furniture, mobile classrooms, textbooks, and computers. In addition, parents could be encouraged as part of the campaign to provide voluntary community-based security within the school, through the identification of potential areas of threats that need security such as securing a school main gate, as this will contribute to the safety of both teachers and learners within the school. The provision of voluntary community-based security is in line with section, 20 (1) (h) of the SASA (1996) as it stipulates that parents, learners, educators and other staff members should be encouraged to render voluntary services to the school. In the next section, I discussed the democratisation of the school environment as one of the collaborative strategies proposed to mitigate direct violence within the school. 89 4.4.1.1 Democratising the school environment In response to the manifestations of direct violence within the school, teachers should attempt to democratise their classrooms. The SASA (1996) states that learners at secondary school level should be part of the SGB through the RCL so as to actively participate in the governance of the school. The SGB must promote the best interests of the school and strive to ensure its development through the provision of quality education for all learners at the school (Ibid). In addition, the SGB must support the principal, educators and other staff members of the school in the performance of their professional functions (RSA, SASA, 1996), and this may lead to successful curriculum delivery. Further, the RCL in their capacity as representatives of the learners have the responsibility of supporting teachers to ensure that they deliver curriculum in a conducive teaching and learning environment. Another important aspect to consider is the code of conduct for learners at the school which acts as guidelines for desired behaviour within the school. It is advised that teachers become proactive to manifestations of school violence through the application of democratic principles and practices of social justice to break the chain of school violence, thus creating spaces for responsibility, readiness and deliberation which would enable education to produce responsible and successful future citizens (Mncube, 2008). Omodan and Ige (2021) agree with Mncube (2008) by stating that schools should be coordinated democratically, with the notion that democracy is best learned in a democratic environment where participation and freedom of speech are encouraged, where positive discipline and a sense of fairness and justice prevails, and where democratic principles function to enhance positive attributes such as willingness to participate, innovative thinking, collaboration, autonomy, and problem-solving skills in both leaners and teachers. Thus, a democratic approach foregrounds the importance of extensive consultation that is characterised by high levels of participation with the elected class representatives, and if possible, with all the learners in a class, on issues that may directly or indirectly affect the learners. This would mean that decisions taken will not be an authoritative decision, but rather will be a collective decision taken and owned by both learners and teachers. Such a democratic approach may enable learners to feel a sense of ownership of the school. Also, this makes all learners aware of the possible consequences for not adhering to 90 democratically formulated decisions. Thus, positive discipline was collectively proposed as a strategy to mitigate school violence. Positive discipline can be understood as an alternative to emotional and physical punishment. Instead of enforcing the desired behaviour patterns through fear and castigation, positive discipline seeks to encourage good behavioural practices without instilling fear. This is achieved by providing learners with positive behavioural models, positive reinforcement, and guiding learners in understanding why certain behaviours are unacceptable (Durrant, 2010). Thus, positive discipline can be comprehended as a method of guiding learners’ behaviour by paying attention to learners’ psychological, physical and emotional needs (Khewu, 2012). Also, positive discipline provides learners with a platform to understand their transgressions and to appreciate how appropriate behaviour can transform such transgression into positive experiences and opportunities. This contributes to learners valuing the importance of positive change and rejecting the employment of violence as consequences for transgressions. Thus, democratised classrooms may lead to an imagined future where learners working hand-in-hand with teachers to maintain discipline. As such, learners take responsibility for all the decisions taken during the democratic process. However, it is crucial that teachers display exemplary moral and ethical behaviour at all times for learners to emulate. In the next section, I discuss how parental involvement can curb direct violence within the school. 4.4.1.2 Parental/guardian involvement If teachers hope to create peaceful classrooms and school environments, they must prioritise parental involvement by establishing a tripartite communication channel that involves teachers, learners and parents. Parents should be encouraged to regularly review and oversee children’s progress and not only when there is a problem. Teachers should increase opportunities for liaising with the parents/guardians of learners. Such active liaising may strengthen the ties between the school and parents thereby creating a conducive and transparent working atmosphere for both teachers and learners conducive to curriculum delivery. In a study conducted by Maluleke (2014), it was found that parental involvement10 10 Chapter 1 (xiv) of the South African Schools Act (RSA, 1996), defines a parent to mean - ( a) the parent or guardian of a learner; (b) the person legally entitled to custody of a learner; or (c) the person who undertakes to fulfil the obligations of a person referred to in paragraphs (a) and (b) towards the learner's education at school. 91 enhances learner educational accomplishment, attendance, good behavioural patterns, and the support of the general public. In order to encourage parental involvement, teachers should establish a two-way communication such that a parent has direct access to the teacher of their children, and teachers having direct access to the parents of the learners. Such communication can be facilitated through the use of cellular phones and email, in addition to home-school visits. Maluleke (2014) argues that learners whose parents communicate frequently with their teachers tend to perform well in their academic activities. Topor, Keane, Shelton and Calkins (2010) concur with Maluleke by stating that parental involvement leads to the desired future of improved learner’s academic performance, improved school attendance, and a decrease in violent learner behaviour within the school. Regular and transparent communication between parents and teachers may lead to an imagined future of violent-free behaviour while improving learner-performance, school attendance by learners, and deepening the values of education as a societal matter. Sapungan and Sapungan (2014) agree that parental involvement provides numerous possibilities for success in terms of advancements in the child's self-esteem, behaviour, and educational success in all learning areas, as well as participation in extra-curricular activities. 4.4.1.3 Teachers’ self-reflection Self-examination involves teachers reflecting on their day-to-day interaction with learners. This reflection can be done through the onion model of self-reflection. Kruger (2012) states that the onion model of reflection involves both inward and outward movement. Outward movement is followed by inward movement from the outer layers to the more inner layers, where the teacher's fundamental qualities are situated. In each layer, different questions should be addressed. Such questions may include: • How do you respond to learners’ disruptive behaviour? • What can you do about it (competencies)? • What influences you (environment)? • What do you believe in (beliefs)? • Who are you (identity)? • How do you see your role in alleviating conflict? and 92 • Why are you here? The individual's professional behaviour is embedded in his or her consciousness of self (identity), sense of mission (ideals, calling, inspiration), relationship with fundamental characteristics, and an awareness of the possibilities and demands of the situation (Kruger, 2012). For Kruger (2012), this model seeks to engender a harmonious relationship between the outer environment and the inner core qualities, thereby ensuring that the professional behaviour of teachers becomes models to counter school violence and achieve personal fulfilment. In addition, such daily reflection could enable teachers to identify conscious or unconscious practices that they engage in that may cause animosity among learners, such as name-calling or over-praising learners who have obtained high grades while criticising other learners who scored low marks. For example, on a weekly basis provide learners with an opportunity to provide feedback on aspects that they may have found offensive or that led to violent behaviour. This can be done on a regular basis, and anonymously to avoid possible victimisation. Leigh (2012) states that exit cards are instruments for developing critical reasoning and self- discovery, as well as a comprehension of the world. Thus, it is proposed that exit cards could be used by teachers to deepen self-reflection of their daily engagements with learners, and to address practices that may inadvertently contribute to violence within the school. In reading these exit cards, teachers must attempt to listen to all the learners’ voices and note their areas of concern and intervene towards remediating troubling issues. The use of anonymous exit slips are arguably a better form of dialogue and negotiations between learners and teachers (cf. 2.2.2). As such, dialogue and negotiations encourage resolving conflicts peacefully and justly, through the recognition of cohesion, collaboration and coexistence. Negotiations are marked by high levels of the tolerance of differences. Such social relations revolve around civic dialogue and consensus-building that results in the creation of a culture of peace. Apart from providing teachers with a self-reflective tool, the use of exit slips may also, over time influence learners’ behaviour as they will realise that there are other methods of solving conflicts and problems than to engage in disruptive or violent behaviour. This technique may lead to a future of non-violent classrooms as teachers will use the information obtained from the exit cards to reflect and ultimately attempt to rectify any form of utterances and behaviour that may lead to violence. 93 4.4.1.4 Exercising authority with compassion According to the code of professional ethics of educators as advocated by SACE (2011), teachers are advised to exercise authority with compassion, thereby avoiding any form of humiliation, and refraining from any form of abuse, physical or psychological. It has been stipulated that teachers should not reprimand learners in front of their classmates as this might be interpreted as humiliation (McEachern, Aluede & Maureen, 2008). If such acts of humiliation are regularly enacted, it may also be viewed as psychological abuse. McEachern et al. (2008) agree that these forms of psychological abuse can include verbal and nonverbal interactions, discriminatory behaviour, unfair grading practices, and the maltreatment of underperforming learners. For McEachern et al. (2008), learners who are the victims of emotional abuse demonstrate anxiety, recalcitrant behaviour, school phobia, social withdrawal from classmates and peers, feeling of worthlessness, and loss of determination. Such learners also display academic challenges or impediments. Thus, if a teacher has to reprimand an ill-disciplined learner and maintain a peaceful classroom, it is advisable to take the learner away from observers. The teacher should then proceed to talk to the recalcitrant learner politely; hence, recognising that learners and teachers are equal partners in education. For Healey, Flint, and Harrington (2014), partnership is rooted in the values of trust, honesty, mutual respect, openness, and the drive to collectively work towards achieving a shared educational goal. Such an approach leads to an imagined future where learners feel safe in their classrooms and reciprocate by displaying good behaviour by respecting teachers and acknowledging them as partners in education. Equipping learners with values such as mutual respect, affirmative acts, positive thinking, and assertive behaviour may contribute to the creation of harmonious school environments (c.f.2.2.2.). A role of the Learner Representative Council (LRC) in creating a peaceful and conducive teaching and learning environment is paramount. The LRC is a democratically elected structure in secondary schools whose primary responsibility is to assist the school management team (SMT). The LRC may have access to information concerning impending violence against teachers targeted by troublesome learners. Also, the LRC may have ‘inside 94 information’ due their age group but have no capacity in handling such incidents (Singh & Steyn, 2013). Thus, in order to capacitate the LRC, teachers must provide internal training to LRC members. Such training should reflect the LRC members’ local realities, focus on the school’s code of conduct for learners, and create an awareness of the consequences of school violence. Inviting the LRC to engage in the development of strategies to curb learner violence would be imperative in enhancing a peaceful school environment (c.f.2.4.3.). During the training session facilitated by teachers, LRC members should be encouraged to collectively envision a non-violent school environment, and the possibilities it would hold for curriculum delivery (c.f.2.4.4.2.). Such imaginations could provide a platform for both teachers and LRC members to collectively work to change practices and systems that promote social inequities and discrimination. As such, currere might serve as a tool for reflection to build cultures of peace. In so doing, teachers will be inculcating a culture of peace that is characterised by negotiation, tolerance and dialogue as opposed to acts of violence (c.f.2.2.2.). Thus, investing in young leaders through regular training sessions leads to envisioning a peaceful future through eliminating school violence since these learner- leaders will be equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to address potential imminent violent situations, in addition to serving as the voice of teachers and learners in building non-violent schools. In this section I discussed exercising authority with compassion by teachers as one of the strategies to mitigate direct violence within schools. In the next section, I discuss strategies that can be used to alleviate cultural violence. 4.4.1.5 Response to the manifestations of cultural violence In response to manifestations of cultural violence within the school context as shared from the narratives of participants (cf. 4.3.4.1.), this section discussed strategies developed by participants that can be employed to curb cultural violence. Thabo narrated how his principal referred to his practising of his cultural traditions in a derogatory fashion. Naledi similarly shared her experiences of a learner who intentionally used derogatory remarks against her by using his home language (Sepedi) to insult her whilst knowing that she could not understand what he was saying. The RSA Constitution (1996) states that no person or the 95 state may unfairly discriminate against anyone based on their culture. Furthermore, the Constitution states that everyone has the right to use the language of their choice as far as practicable to participate in cultural life. The South African Schools Act [SASA] (1996) states that South Africa’s diverse cultures and languages should be protected and advanced, and the rights of all learners, parents and educators should be upheld and promoted, and that racial discrimination may not be practised in implementing the language policy of public schools. These promoted the acceptance of diverse cultures within the broad South African society, and for the purposes of this study, in schools. It has been recommended that schools should create an environment where teachers demonstrate a willingness to learn more about each other’s cultures and languages, and specifically those of colleagues and learners (cf. 2.2.2.) within the school context, it was recommended that time should be allocated per week to provide a platform for learners to respectfully engage with and learn about other cultures and languages. This practice is in line with the principles and practices of critical peace education that employs teaching and learning to curb all kinds of conflict and violence to create a culture of peace thereby transforming hostile school environments (cf. 2.2.1.).Further, the subject of Life Orientation (LO) can also be instrumental in the promotion of the principles and practices of critical peace education through inculcating the principles of unity in diversity and ubuntu (DBE, 2011). Such an understanding of the value of Life Orientation is perhaps even more important for teachers employed at multicultural schools. Central to creating an environment of respect and acceptance is asking constructive questions about each other’s cultural practices with the clear intention of learning and ultimately understanding diverse local cultures. It is by asking such questions that may enable us to reach a common ground of understanding and thereby preventing violence that may occur due to intolerance or misunderstanding of cultural diversity. Such a practice is in line with the principles and practices of peace education because it seeks to promote unity and inspires dialogue among teachers and learners by sharing information about the needs, the challenges, and opportunities to attain and sustain peace specific to cultural diversity (cf. 2.2.1.). 96 In the narrative shared by Thabo, the principal could rather have engaged in asking questions such as: Why do you slaughter a goat in the ritual ceremony? What is the significance of wearing isiphandla? How do you feel when another person touches isiphandla you are wearing? Such questions are of crucial importance because they do not only provide knowledge but can serve as a foundation for building non-violent school communities through intercultural understanding (c.f.2.2.1.). Thus, a willingness to learn about each other’s culture demonstrates a move towards achieving an imagined future, where our cultural diversity will not contribute to structural and direct violence. For Laura (2011), intercultural understanding consists of both affective and cognitive domains. The cognitive aspect of intercultural understanding comprises knowledge about one’s own as well as other cultures. It further includes knowledge about the differences and similarities between cultures. While knowledge is an important component, it is not adequate for intercultural understanding. This implies that positive attitudes towards other cultures are also necessary; these include empathy, curiosity, and respect. These values are expressive of a culture of peace (cf. 2.2.2.). Laura and Southwell (2011) accentuate that an individual’s affective response to intercultural difference is known as intercultural sensitivity which can be understood as individuals’ active desire to motivate themselves to understand, appreciate and accept differences among cultures’ (Moore-Jones, 2018). Thus, the positive acceptance of different cultures demonstrates a move towards mutual respect and an understanding our diverse cultural practices. In this section, I discussed the collaborative strategies developed by participants in a collective workshop based on their experiences of structural, direct and cultural school violence. The developed strategies were informed by critical peace education to create peaceful school environments that ultimately transform cultures of conflict and violence into a culture of peace. 4.5 CONCLUSION In this chapter, I set out to develop a collective biography of school violence. In developing the collective, I drew from the participants’ narratives of structural, direct and cultural violence, in addition to sharing their journal entries and eliciting information during the open- 97 ended group interviews. The development of collective biography delved into questions of memory and the recall of manifestations and experiences of school violence, and the impact it has on curriculum delivery. The interpretation of the narratives was informed by the narrative inquiry practice where the analysis emanated during the study which involved the researcher identifying themes within the participant’s narrative. The manifestations of school violence in the narratives shared by the participants were grouped according to the themes of structural, direct and cultural violence. Based on the shared experiences of school violence and the perceived consequences it holds for curriculum delivery, participants developed collaborative strategies that could be used by teachers to mitigate school violence. By adhering to the currere process, these collective strategies aimed to engender collective imagining of a conducive non-violent school environment for curriculum implementation. 98 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION, COMMENTS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS 5.1 INTRODUCTION In the previous chapter (5), I presented the narratives of school violence shared by participants and the interpretation thereof, based on the themes of direct, structural and cultural violence. The narratives of the lived experiences of school violence, in turn, allowed the participants and I, to explore and develop collaborative strategies to mitigate school violence. In this chapter, I provided a summary of the main findings. This indicated how I answered the main research question: what are teachers’ experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery? Based on the findings of the study, I commented and offered suggestions before considering the contribution that I believe the study made. Also its limitations, and possibilities for further research, were outlined. I concluded the chapter by providing a brief personal reflection on my learning experiences during the course of this study. 5.2 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS In this section, I briefly reviewed the main findings of the study. I did this by highlighting the findings as they relate to each chapter to depict how the specific subsidiary research questions were addressed. In chapter two, I conducted a literature review to deliberate on school violence. This was done with specific reference to critical peace education which pertains to mobilisation against direct and indirect violence (cf. 2.2). Critical peace education focuses on structural inequality and attempts to encourage transformation aimed at the construction of new socio- economic realities within a politics that facilitates stability and social cohesion (Zembylas, 2017). In the literature review, I discussed the three types of violence as identified in the seminal work of Galtung (1969, 1990); namely, structural, direct and cultural violence (cf. 2.3.1). These forms of violence were dissected to gain an understanding of how they might manifest in the school context (cf. 2.4.2). I indicated that in relation to peace studies, violence, broadly conceived, is understood as being present when human beings are 99 conditioned in such a way that their current somatic and mental realisations are below their ability levels (Kruger, 2015). After considering the different forms of violence, I discussed how a culture of peace has been conceptualised as an instrument of resolving conflicts using negotiation and dialogue between persons, organisations, and nations (Wintersteiner, 2013). Based on the literature review, I determined that violence is a multifaceted construct that is defined differently by different scholars (cf. 2.3.1). Having considered the different angles in which violence had been conceptualised, I explored the consequences of violence in the basic education sector in South Africa, and on curriculum delivery, in particular. I established that school violence had a detrimental effect, not only teaching and learning, but it also harms the climate of the entire school community (cf. 2.4.4.). This negative impact might also result in psychological distress that finds expression in burnout being experienced by teachers. By conducting the literature review in chapter two, I satisfied subsidiary questions one and two of this study. In chapter three, I explained how currere was employed as an analytical framework to explore teachers’ experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery. I first provided the research methodology and methods that were employed in this study by employing narrative inquiry and collective biography (cf. 3.2.2). This was followed by the discussion of currere particularly on how this concept was employed in this study as both the analytical framework and the process for generating data. I also discussed and justified the research methods employed for data generation (cf. 3.3.1). In addition, narrative interpretation was explained, the participant selection strategy was described, and the criteria for ensuring trustworthiness was outlined. Trustworthiness ensured that this study produced authentic findings that reflected the participants’ collective experiences of school violence (cf. 3.5). The currere framework culminated in the creation of a collective biography, presented in chapter four. In chapter three, I aimed to answer subsidiary question three of this study. In chapter four, I addressed subsidiary research question four of this study, which was to explore the experiences of the participants, and to develop collaborative strategies which could be adopted by teachers to mitigate the consequences of school violence on curriculum 100 delivery. To develop these collaborative strategies, I first presented the collective biography. I commenced the chapter by indicating how the collective narratives were generated, and based on these, how the collective biography was developed. This was followed by a description of how the generated narratives were interpreted. The interpretation of the shared narratives of participants was informed by the narrative inquiry practice in which analysis transpires during, and as part of the sharing of narratives itself (Müller et al., 2018). Next, I briefly introduced the ‘characters’ before presenting the collective biography itself. The collective biography was structured according to the manifestations of school violence, and informed by the themes of structural, direct and cultural violence. In developing the collective biography, the focus was primarily on the question of (embodied) memory and the participants’ experiences of school violence. By drawing on the shared narratives pertaining to structural, direct and cultural violence through the use of journal entries and two open- ended group interviews, I now clearly understood participants’ experiences of school violence and how it affected their ability to optimally deliver curriculum. Based on the narratives, together with the insights gained from the literature review, the participants and the researcher attempted to developed collaborative strategies that could be employed by teachers and other stakeholders to mitigate school violence. These strategies were specifically developed in relation to how they might contribute through collective imagination that seeks to envisage nonviolent school environment that is conducive for curriculum delivery. Collaborative strategies included enlisting the support of SGBs to activate their legislative power, enshrined in the South African Schools Act (1996), to mobilise resources for the school such as furniture, textbooks, and mobile classrooms as immediate relief. Civic organisations, provincial and national departments of education, and corporates should be approached to perform their social obligations by providing resources, so as to realise a dignified and peaceful learning environment that is characterised by a culture of peace. In response to the manifestations of direct violence, collaborative strategies were proposed focusing on encouraging and equipping teachers to democratise the school environment, their classrooms in particular, to ensure collective decision-making by both teachers and 101 learners. Such collective decision-making may contribute to ensuring that teachers and learners take ownership of such decisions and work towards implementing them. It was also suggested that parent/guardian involvement should be prioritised to ensure frequent communication amongst teachers, parents, and learners as this may positively contribute to the establishment of harmonious relationships between learners, thereby, contributing to the enhancement of effective curriculum delivery. The importance of teacher self-reflection to promote dialogue between teachers and learners was also proposed as a strategy that could address the issue of school violence. As part of the self-reflection process, it was proposed that teachers could also utilise techniques such as exit cards which learners will be able to anonymously share with teachers about how they believe teachers’ actions contribute to animosity and adversarial relationships at school. Furthermore, it was stated that as teachers are entrusted with authority, they should exercise such authority with compassion as a way of mitigating school violence. Finally, in response to the manifestations of cultural violence, a collaborative strategy that was proposed was that of intercultural understanding to develop intercultural sensitivity. Such sensitivity may contribute towards teachers and learners showing empathy, curiosity, and respect towards cultures different from theirs that in turn might contribute to creating a peaceful school environment. 5.3 COMMENTS, SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS In this study, I investigated teachers’ experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery. As the study unfolded, it became apparent that the participants (teachers) felt the need to express their experiences of violence as it played out in the school context, and the negative consequences that became evident. It became obvious during the data generation phase of the study that there existed a need among the participating teachers to communicate with others about their traumatic memories and experiences of school violence. Such communication was, however, not only concerned with finding support through recounting and reflecting on past experiences, but also for looking for a better future. This vision was about focusing on the present moment and taking up collective responsibility to work towards inculcating harmony in the school environs we 102 find ourselves in as individual teachers. Thus, it became evident that there existed a view amongst the participating teachers that in order to dismantle the chain of school violence it is necessary for teachers to reflect on their past and present experiences to build a culture of peace. This can be done by teachers developing networks and exercising collective agency. Collective agency refers to the notion that a group of teachers share and thus pursue a mutual interest of bettering their working environment to influence larger contexts (Hokka, Vasantanen & Mahlakaarto, 2016). Thus, in the context of this study, collective agency would manifest in collective initiatives such as a group of teachers developing collaborative strategies to curb school violence. This is done through negotiating, and mutual understanding of themselves as a group of professional teachers, and a common purpose to eradicate external and internal challenges pertaining to school violence. Hence, collective agency is intertwined with teachers' collective professional identity, including elements of shared commitments, identifications, and group memberships. Through collective agency teachers are capacitated to reflect on social conditions and to contribute to the transformation of hostile cultures and structures within the school. This can be driven either by the teachers themselves through informal arrangements between individual teachers within the school or at circuit level, or it might become a more formalised process of networking that is facilitated by the provincial or national Departments of Basic Education. Such a network of support could operate in two ways. Firstly, an internal network of support driven by teachers within the same school, can occur in the form of formal meetings authorised by the school principal and SGB where teachers (and learners) would share their experiences of school violence and how it has impacted on curriculum delivery, specifically as a means to collectively explore possible strategies to curb such violence. Secondly, an external network of support can be facilitated by the provincial or national Departments of Basic Education. The focus of the external network will be on inviting experts in the field of school violence to conduct workshops for teachers on how to deal with learner violence and school violence in general. This could be made official such that teachers could participate in these workshops as part of their continuing professional 103 teacher development. The implementation of the Continuing Professional Teacher Development (CPTD) system manages teachers' continuing professional development. The SACE is authorised to oversee the system under the National Policy Framework for Teacher Education and Development (DoE, 2006). As a result SACE, as the statutory body for professional educators, has the overall obligation for the implementation, management, and quality assurance of the CPTD system, as stated in the SACE professional development and research mandate11 (Gomba, 2018). Within the context of this study, these internal and external networks of support would promote methods that eliminate direct, cultural, and structural violence within the school context through the development of strategies that equip teachers with the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively deal with school violence. The theory of critical peace education was instrumental in the development of collaborative strategies based on the experiences shared by the participants. It created a platform for participating teachers to collectively imagine non-violent school environments grounded in social cohesion and equality. This promotes peace, as well as the realisation of the dire consequences of school violence (Clarke-Habib, 2018; Harris, 2010, 2013). It is suggested that in-service teachers should be better informed about the potential value of critical peace education. The knowledge about critical peace education could be disseminated amongst teachers through regular workshops that are organised by the Department of Basic Education. These workshops that are offered to in-service teachers should also contribute toward continuing professional development and focus on informing the participants about the principles and practices of critical peace education. Importantly, the general focus of the proposed workshops should not only offer teachers theoretical knowledge of what CPE entails, but practical knowledge of how it might be implemented in the school context. The interactions between the research participants in this study were collaboratively analysed to determine the complexity of school violence, and to demonstrate the 11 There are numerous types of continuing professional development practices available, such as workshops, symposiums, discussions, mentoring, colleague and specialist coaching, and courses that can either be used to supplement or replace existing professional qualifications. Demonstrations and peer observation, mentoring, inductions for new teachers, job rotation, teamwork and group work, clustering of schools and school visits, as well as designing and executing school improvement projects, communities of practice, lesson studies, reflective supervision, and technical assistance, are all examples of CPD activities (Gomba, 2018). 104 significance of specific local realities. Therefore, the recognition of the teacher as an embodied being with complex emotional responses is crucial in moving towards non-violent school communities. A transformed school society characterised by a culture of peace cannot come from outside and be imposed on a school community in a hierarchical fashion; it should emerge from within us and be with us as we move towards a shared peaceful future of school environment. Such a culture of peace is characterised by the transition from the use of violence to the use of thoughts and dialogue as a mechanism to promote democracy based on peace and harmonious relations, thereby resolving power imbalances and dismantling conflict and violence (cf. 2.2.2.). In considering these comments and suggestions, I would like the contribution of this study to be framed as incomplete and partial. Its importance lies not in offering straightforward responses to what a non-violent school environment should be, but rather in deliberating on the daily experiences and thoughts of those who are striving towards transformation, and to pause and consider how these experiences might inform a response. Our past experiences of school violence shaped our present responses to curriculum implementation. Therefore, teachers’ experiences need to be foregrounded as a crucial and important curriculum resource in responding to school violence. These narratives shared in this study were conditioned by the forms of school violence that we strive to dismantle; and by the detrimental effects of school violence that is rooted as much within the fabric of the wider community as it is within school community itself. 5.4 CONTRIBUTION OF THE STUDY I believe that this study contributed to the fields of curriculum studies, critical peace education, and research methodology. Below, I described what I believe the contributions to be while remaining cognisant that these contributions remain limited and open to critique. Firstly, I believe that the study offered an original contribution to the field of curriculum studies within the context of South Africa. Inquiry in the field of curriculum studies involves paying rigorous attention to cultural issues and methodological concerns that are intertwined with the conceptualisation of curriculum as numerous kinds of text, including extending the curriculum as a text (cf. 1.9.2.). Conceptualising the curriculum as text offered clues to the 105 roles and responsibilities of teachers, which in turn is related to desired teaching and learning environments. In addition, curriculum as text, is primarily directed to teachers and educational authorities; concerning students, it is only directed through the mediation of teachers. It is from this perspective of the mediation of teachers’ development of collaborative strategies to mitigate school violence that this study attempted to imagine non-violent school environments conducive to curriculum delivery. I have learned that school violence holds detrimental consequences for curriculum delivery. Considering this, the study attempted to offer opportunities to the participating teachers to collaboratively develop strategies that can be employed to eradicate school violence. These strategies were specifically informed by the social and material realities of the participants. Thus, the development of collaborative strategies is transformative in nature as it seeks to empower teachers to respond to their local realities of school violence, and thereby contribute to the creation of environments which are conducive to curriculum delivery. Although slight, the second contribution relates to the field of critical peace education and built on the insights of the importance of considering local realities. Critical peace educators ought to understand local realities and reject the temptation to generalise which overlooks distinct material and social conditions. In response to the local realities of school violence, participants developed collaborative strategies that could be employed by teachers to mitigate school violence, in order to create non-violent school environments that are characterised by a culture of peace (cf. 2.2.1). I have argued that critical peace education is fundamentally understood as providing the foundations for mobilisation against structural, direct, and cultural violence. Using critical peace education as the theoretical lens for this study, teachers were empowered to respond to their local realities of school violence. The strengthening of marginalised voices through collective biography, shared stories, and self- constructed programmes created a platform for teachers to collectively imagine non-violent school premises founded on social cohesion and equality (cf. 2.2.1). The third contribution relates to research methodology. The use of collective biography together with Pinar’s concept of currere, offered a novel means to explore the lived- 106 experiences of research participants. Within the context of this study, the use of collaborative inquiry allowed participating teachers to engage in conversations by sharing stories regarding experiences of school violence. The use of currere in combination with collective biography this meant that participating teachers were allowed to engage in a complicated conversation of school violence. The complicated conversation explored teachers’ educational experiences, thereby analytically responding to questions such as the perceived consequences of school violence for curriculum delivery and developing potential collaborative strategies to mitigate such school violence (cf. 3.3). The collective narration, retelling, and listening of participants’ personal accounts of school violence offered both a means to analyse and reflect on past experiences, and also to contextualise and gain insight into present experiences and how these might inform addressing the phenomenon of school violence. Currere made it possible to engage in a complicated conversation about school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery - which is often not easily communicated. Thus, collective biography, informed by currere, afforded participating teachers a platform to collectively engage in a complicated conversation about school violence based on collaboratively developing strategies to mitigate it. 5.5 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY As with all research, this study can also be developed and elaborated in the future by circumventing its limitations. Hence, I focus on what I perceive to be the major limitations. The first limitation relates to the scale of the study. This study was conducted only within one circuit (Mashishing) of the Bohlabela Education District in Mpumalanga Province. Furthermore, the five research participants were from only three schools. The findings of the study thus relate to experiences within a limited context and cannot be generalised. However, although the findings are not generalisable, I believe that they are still valuable narratives that reflect the authentic lived-experiences of participants concerning school violence. As this study employed narrative inquiry, it focused on stories of experience known as experience-based narratives. Participants used their experience-based narratives to construct tales of personal experience through first-person oral presentations of past, present, and future or imagined encounters. Thus, it produced rich and authentic data. Another challenge that I experienced which limited the study was the constraints of participants to engage in research activities without disturbing the schools’ teaching and 107 learning schedule. This study employed purposive participant selection and I proposed that data generation would be conducted after school hours so as to avoid the disturbance of curriculum delivery. However, some participants were reluctant to stay after working hours as they also had other responsibilities to attend to. This resulted in spending limited time with participants. Ideally, one would want teachers to meet regularly to discuss possible strategies in a reflexive manner. A further limitation of this study was the limited number of schools that were involved and the fact that they are predominantly quintile one to three schools. If this study involved quintile 5 schools located in urban areas, I might have gained diverse insights of their experiences of school violence. 5.6 FURTHER RESEARCH The first avenue of research that I wish to pursue would be to explore the experiences of learners concerning school violence with the specific aim of developing peer support networks to address both the consequences as well as causes of school violence. Such a study might involve learners within the four districts of Mpumalanga Province; namely, Bahlabela, Nkangala, Gert Sibande, and Ehlanzeni. This will be a comparative case study involving four boarding schools, purposively selected from each District. Conducting a comparative case study would enable one to compare the experiences of violence by learners and the possibility for developing relevant peer support networks that responds to specific contextual realities. A second avenue for future research I wish to explore is how school management teams (SMTs) might employ currere as a framework to explore factors hindering and factors contributing to curriculum delivery, and then use these findings to develop means for effective curriculum delivery. It would be potentially informative for SMTs to understand factors that hinder effective curriculum delivery in order to recommend appropriate measures to be implemented as responses to the idemtified challenges. Thus, this research would provide the SMT with the 108 appropriate instruments of identifying factors that hinder curriculum delivery within the specific department, and to further employ currere as a means to develop appropriate strategies to overcome hindrances as a means to contribute to effective curriculum delivery. 5.7 PERSONAL REFLECTION Undertaking a postgraduate research degree has been one of the most challenging yet exciting experience for me - from drafting a research proposal to presenting my research findings and finalising my dissertation for examination. Central to research was the extensive reading of relevant literature. I believe that engaging in extensive reading for the purpose of this study has equipped me with relevant research skills and further contributed to my professional development as a researcher as I engaged with the ideas and theories of other scholars and deepened my knowledge of both the fields of curriculum studies and critical peace education. The extensive reading enabled me to appreciate the importance of research methodology and the internal alignment of all the elements of the research design. A significant aspect of my growth during the study was the deepening of the understanding of narrative inquiry. I came to appreciate that narrative inquiry is a research methodology that seeks to provide participants with a platform to retell their personal experiences (Bense, 2012; Craig, 2011). In employing narrative inquiry, I specifically focused on experience- centred narratives that are understood as texts that construct tales of personal experience through first-person oral interpretation of past, present, and future or imagined encounters (Grobler, 2018). Thus, narrative inquiry was instrumental in the interpretation of the participants’ experiences of school violence. It also facilitated the examining of strategies for comprehension and presenting real-life experiences through the stories of the research participants. Furthermore, I have also come to appreciate the importance of constructing coherent arguments at paragraph and chapter level that are adequately supported by relevant scholarly work and acknowledging this through the use of in-text citations or cross referencing, where applicable. 109 At a personal level this study afforded me an opportunity to understand the importance of collaboration, in addition to grasping a more complex understanding of our profession and our roles as teachers within the broader society. By co-working with the participating teachers in the development of collaborative strategies to mitigate school violence, it has contributed to my professional development as an in-service teacher. 5.8 CONCLUSION In this chapter I reported on the findings and how the main research question was answered through addressing specific subsidiary research questions. In chapter two, I conducted a review of literature to discuss prevalent school violence. The discussion centred on critical peace education to mobilise against direct and indirect school violence. The focus of critical peace education is dealing with structural inequalities to encourage transformation aimed to construct new socio-economic realities within a politics that facilitates stability and social cohesion. Furthermore, within the literature review, I deliberated on the three types of violence: structural, direct and cultural. In chapter three, I explored how currere can be employed as an analytical framework to explore teachers’ experiences of school violence and its perceived consequences for curriculum delivery. I began with a detailed discussion of the research methodology and methods that were employed in this study which included discussing the use of narrative inquiry and collective biography. In addition, I discussed currere and elaborated on how this concept was employed in this study as both the analytical framework and as the process for generating data. The currere framework I employed culminated in the creation of a collective biography, as presented in chapter four. I also discussed narrative interpretation, participant selection strategy, and the method of ensuring the trustworthiness of this study. Trustworthiness ensured that this study reflected the collective authentic lived-experiences of school violence of participating teacher. 110 In chapter four, I presented the collaborative strategies that were developed by participants and I to mitigate the manifestations of school violence. I began the chapter by demonstrating how the collective narratives were generated, and based on these, how the collective biography was developed. I also described how the generated narratives were interpreted. The interpretation of the collectively shared narratives of participants was based on the narrative inquiry practice in which analysis transpires during and as part of the sharing of narratives itself. The strategies that were developed were based on the manifestations of direct, structural and cultural violence, and these strategies were specifically in relation to how they might contribute through collective imagining to the creation of a (non-violent) school environment conducive for curriculum delivery. In chapter five, I presented the summary of the findings of this study. I further presented the suggestions that align with the developed collaborative strategies that teachers can employ to mitigate school violence. In addition, I presented the contribution of this study to the field of curriculum studies as situated within the theory of critical peace education. Moreover, I presented the limitations of this study such as the geographical area in which this study conducted. In this chapter five, I also presented the avenues for further research on the topic. 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