Disciplinary practices in schools and principles of alternatives to corporal punishment strategies

Abstract

The aim of the study was to determine the consistency prevailing between the disciplinary practices in the schools and the principles of the Alternatives-to-Corporal Punishment strategy. The three main research questions that guided the study were to determine (1) How much variance of offences can be explained by disciplinary measures of alternative corporal punishment? (2) How well do the different measures of alternative corporal punishment predict offences? (3) Which is the best predictor of offences given a set of alternative measures? Twenty-nine schools participated in the survey and five schools participated in the case study, so the achieved sample was 34 schools. From the 29 survey schools, one principal and one Life Orientation (LO) teacher participated. All in all 58 people participated. The results revealed that 66.60% of the variation in the offence of vandalism was explained by the predictors. When vandalism was predicted it was found that School identification (â = .693, p < .05), gender (â = –.180, p < .05), coordination of disciplinary committee (DC) meetings (â = .116, p < .05), communication with parents (â = 1.070, p < .05) and monitoring compliance to DC (â = .852, p < .05) were significant predictors.  Responsibility, school location, experience as a principal, availability of policy, capacitation on discipline, counselling, recording of sanctions and monitoring implementation of sanctions were not significant predictors (varying â and p > .05). The results reveal that there was no established consistency between the disciplinary practices in the schools and the principles of the alternatives-to-corporal punishment strategy.

Keywords: alternative measures; corporal punishment; disciplinary offences; practices; sanctions