Indisciplina e violência escolar: interpretações de professores de três escolas públicas de ensino secundário geral de Maputo, em Moçambique

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the interpretations that the General Secondary Education Teachers of three public schools located in Maputo, Mozambique on the presence of indiscipline and violence in the classrooms. The research was conceived within the framework of the Cultural Historical Psychology Classroom Research Group (GEPSA) at the Faculty of Education of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Brazil. The qualitative study, was carried out with a sample of 152 teachers of both sexes, all holding a Three Year University Degree, Bachelors and Masters Degree and different levels of teaching experience. For the collection of quantitative data, a questionnaire was administered and for qualitative analysis, 12 semi-structured interviews were carried out in each school. The results of the qualitative study show that the main actions of indiscipline and violence taking place in the schools where the study was carried out include: noise, talks among the students, laughter, jokes, provocations, jumping, lack of respect, disregard to teachers, disobedience, physical, verbal and psychological attack that occur frequently and while the classes are going on and go beyond the rules of behavior of the three schools. Teachers attribute the causes of indiscipline and violence especially to: violence that students observe in the society, lack of understanding the learning activities, impoliteness, drugs and alcohol consumption, lack of guardians supervision, laziness in the school tasks resolution, hyperactivity, theft, loss of ethical and moral values, soap operas influence, political position of the students parents, demotivating classes, weak mastering of scientific contents and lack of lesson planning on the part of the teachers, lack of definition of conduct norms and rules to apply in the classroom, size of the classrooms, lack of school furniture, large classes, lack of teaching materials, internal school regulations unadjusted to the school realities, lack of school orientation and punishment of students when they misbehave. The caractheristics of the students who misbehave and commit violence, according to the teachers interpretation, they are students who are devoted and plunged into drugs and alcohol consumption, sons of rich and poor people, excluded ones, students with little or no attention from their close relatives, students with socialization problems in the school and who have experienced any situation of domestic violence. In order to overcome this situation, teachers resort to punishment as a measure and a few teachers dialogue with students. Teachers argue that the effects of indiscipline and violent actions, can be physical or symbolic, impairing the whole Teaching and Learning Process. They also impair the teaching activity itself, stir strange reactions which include ambushments, stoning and physical attack against teachers as they leave the school premises. Teachers although do not differentiate indiscipline from violence, they maintain some gradation between both phenomena and they even perceive that violence can be the result of indiscipline.