An analysis of collaborative efforts towards violence prevention in urban secondary schools

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was two-fold. Firstly, to explore and describe how school staff members, learners and parents collaborate to prevent violence at two urban secondary schools and secondly, to help school staff members, parents and policymakers to gain a better understanding of the complex and multi-faceted problem of addressing school violence, which should result in guiding them to adopt effective strategies to prevent violence. The ecosystemic perspective, which is an integration of ecological and systems theories combined with the typology of violence, was the theoretical lens through which the phenomenon of adolescent learner violence was viewed. The study was rooted in the sociological interpretative research paradigm and a qualitative descriptive and exploratory case study design was employed. Multi-method data collection strategies (individual, dyad, triad and group interviews; document reviews) were employed to obtain trustworthy data from the three population units of analysis (school staff members, learners and parents) at the two selected urban secondary school sites situated in Johannesburg, South Africa. The inductive qualitative content analysis of the framework approach was used to give a transparent account of the data analysis process. Constant comparative analysis was employed to discover the emergent themes. The main research findings were interpreted by relating the results to the research purpose, the socio-ecological theoretical framework and the existing knowledge base on collaborative strategies for violence prevention. The findings of the current study suggest that family-school collaboration in violence prevention is especially important for families with adolescent children. Adolescence is characterised by many physical and psychological changes and development. Adolescents strive to find their independence and establish their own identities. However, this experimentation may lead to risk-taking or antisocial behaviour. Contrary to current belief, the findings of the current study suggest that adolescent learners want their parents to be involved in their lives and that parents want to support their children’s education but may lack the know-how. The learners explicitly expressed their need for the support and guidance of both their parents and also the school staff members in withstanding the peer and societal pressures that can result in their acting in aggressive or violent ways at school. To promote the positive development of all young people, the school staff members and most centrally young people and their families, must actively work together to establish positive and effective family-school collaborative partnerships as part of their violence prevention strategies. Copyright