Teachers’ experiences of learner indiscipline during teaching and learning in a Johannesburg East Secondary School

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to critically explore teachers’ experiences of learner indiscipline during teaching and learning in a Johannesburg East Secondary School. The study sought to explore teachers’ experience in the midst of the wide spread learner indiscipline in South African schools, especially in secondary schools as discipline seems to have deteriorated over the years. The deterioration is evidenced by various media reports which demonstrated that some learners are misbehaving to the extents of beating up or pointing guns at, throwing objects towards and stabbing teachers and their peers. This study used critical phenomenological qualitative methodology and data was gathered using semi-structured one-to-one individual interviews with teachers. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), particularly Fairclough’s CDA was used as an analytic framework for the study while Foucault’s (1977) panoptic mechanism which uses disciplinary power as a disciplinary system was used a tool to juxtapose with the schooling system. The Panoptic mechanism presents a control mechanism whereby individuals are “inserted in a fixed place which is enclosed, a segmented space and they would be observed at every point and their slightest movements are supervised to instil in them self regulation”, which should be the situation in schools. The dearth of education research on teachers’ experience of learner indiscipline in schools has made the indiscipline to continue unabated. This study seeks set a platform for other researchers to start researching teachers’ experience with the aim to find lasting solutions to end learner indiscipline, and to help teachers with lasting solutions when dealing with learners. The findings emerging from the study are that teachers experience learner indiscipline during teaching and learning and that the lack of a culture of self regulation and internalising school rules amongst learners leads to disrupted process of teaching and learning. The other finding was that teachers do not have uniform, compliant and positive strategies to combat learner indiscipline. Teachers are more inclined towards using unconventional methods in their desperate efforts to deter learners from indiscipline.