Meanings of Violence: The Classroom as a Meeting Point for Discourse and Practices

Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss how the practices and discourse of teachers are integrated into the configuration of the meanings of violence. The socio-historical theory assumptions are presumed capable of providing the epistemological and methodological orientation for studying imbrications of meanings in social practices. However, an important methodological issue arises: Although we assume that both the discourse and actions are guided by the same meanings, narrative and practical situations may exhibit characteristics that are so peculiar that we may have difficulty integrating the two data sets. This study involved the observation of the actions of teachers in the classroom during their interaction with students, to identify aspects of the meanings of violence constructed by these teachers in actions performed by them in the course of their daily work in the classroom. The analysis of data from the observations outlined the characteristics of the classrooms, in terms of episodes of student behavior and teacher responses. Regarding the actions of teachers, the overall analysis reveals a predominance of repressive actions compared to guiding and neutral actions. The semi-structured interview was able to capture the meanings in a wider and more contextualized way, involving various types of violence, their causative factors, and their consequences. However, the data indicated that the classroom environment restricts opportunities for the meaning of violence to emerge to its full extent. When considering the difficulties of integrating the two data sets, two important issues were noticeable. The first issue relates to the normalization of violence among students, which results from constant repetition of violent episodes. The second aspect refers to the violence practiced by teachers against students. According to data from the interview, few teachers included in their definitions of violence that practiced by teachers against students; only one teacher referred to her own behavior. Accordingly, data from classroom observation indicated that teachers generally do not perceive themselves as perpetrators of violence.

… the world of a classroom is a microcosm of a society, in which some structure of social roles (e.g., the asymmetric power relation of teacher <==> pupils) is pre-given, yet much of the further differentiation of social relations is constantly in a process of reorganization)

Valsiner (1997)