Teaching in a school affected by gang violence in Durban: an exploration of educators’ experiences.

Abstract

The escalation of gang violence in South African schools has resulted in schools rapidly becoming places of violence. The violence is not only perpetrated by learners on fellow learners, but it is now being directed towards educators as well. The social ills existing in the communities negatively affect both learners and educators. Most studies focus specifically on how gang violence occurring in schools affects learners and thus there is a dearth of literature interrogating the extent to which educators in South Africa have been affected by the phenomenon. There is a need for policy makers and stakeholders to consider the effect of school-based gang violence on educators as the risk is not limited to learners. Acknowledging this vacuum, this study aimed to explore educators’ experiences of gang violence in Umlazi District, Durban, South Africa. The study adopted a qualitative approach to delve deeper into the educators’ narratives to understand their interpretation of the phenomenon in their natural setting. The population for this study comprised educators from one secondary school in Umlazi District. Five educators and four members of the School Management Team (SMT) were purposively selected by virtue of possessing rich data on the phenomenon being interrogated. To enhance the robustness of the findings, the researcher observed the School Safety Policy. The data obtained from in-depth interviews and the focus group discussion were analysed using the thematic analysis method. The thematic analysis process allowed the researcher to develop themes that reflected the researcher’s interpretation of the participants’ meanings of the narratives on gang violence bedeviling South African schools. This study revealed that the gang violence occurring in schools poses danger to the educators’ social, psychological and physical well-being within the school setting. The most common effects of gang violence affecting schools were mainly found to be traumatic, behavioural, and psychological. Consequently, teaching and learning have been affected thus compromising learners’ academic achievements over a period of time. Educators demonstrated the strategies they adopted to navigate situations arising from gang violence. For instance, they distanced themselves from disruptive learners, they supported each other in overwhelming situations and they worked in groups to deal with issues arising from the violence. Accordingly, the study advocates the provision of onsite psychological services to the victims of gang violence. It recommends the development and implementation of programmes meant to capacitate educators and thus create awareness on dealing with school-based gang violence.