The rise of violent incidents in South African schools has sparked widespread concern. Most studies on school violence focus on the experiences of learners; little attention has been paid to educators' experiences. As a result, violence against educators is both underreported and understudied. The research question prompting this study was: What…

The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic has been felt by both male and female students in Open and Distance e-Learning (ODeL) and contact-based learning institutions in South Africa. However, young female students have been the most affected group. Societal norms that reinforce cultural practices which favour male students hinder the academic…

An extensive body of research exists on the background characteristics that predict learner achievement. However, in South Africa, little attention has been paid to the level of educational aspirations and the factors that shape the level of aspirations. Using a bio-ecological systems theory of development, we explored the role of gender,…

Out of school youth (OSY) are adolescents who have not completed their schooling and are not currently enrolled in school. This study sought to understand why learners drop out of school by interviewing 41 OSY (aged 13-20 years). Respondent Driven Sampling was used to recruit OSY. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. Gender differences…

Girls' vulnerability to sexual violence and harassment is a recurrent theme in much of the literature on schooling in sub-Saharan Africa. Within this research, girls are often framed as passive victims of violence. By drawing on a case study, this paper focuses on 12 to 13-year-old South African school girls as they mediate and participate in…

Does historic school engagement buffer the threats of disrupted schooling -- such as those associated with the widespread COVID-19-related school closures -- to school engagement equally for female and male high school students? This article responds to that pressing question. To do so, it reports a study that was conducted in 2018 and 2020 with…

Sub-Saharan African countries have made remarkable strides in closing the gender gap in primary enrolment and more girls than ever are attending school. With the existing gender differentials in youth literacy rates, an important question is whether they are learning as well as their male classmates. This article explored factors that contribute…

Late language emergence (LLE) may result from genetic and environmental factors. Little is known about environmental factors in LLE in South Africa. The study describes the nature of differences in language functioning between toddlers with LLE and without LLE, and which factors were associated with LLE in a middle-income area in South Africa.…

The validity of traditional opinion-based student evaluations of teaching (SETs) may be compromised by inattentive responses and low response rates due to evaluation fatigue, and/or by personal response bias. To reduce the impact of evaluation fatigue and personal response bias on SETs, this study explores peer prediction-based SETs as an…

This paper is a secondary analysis, using data from the South African 2015 cycle of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). TIMSS is a trend study that assesses Mathematics and Science achievement and is designed to measure changes in the education system over time. The participants of the study included 12,514 learners…

Since 1994, there has been a doubling in the enrolment of students in South Africa's public universities. Students, especially first-generation students, face numerous challenges that may impact their subjective perceptions of their well-being. In a milieu of high levels of suicide and depression amongst South Africa's student population, the…

Boys are commonly associated with disruptive behaviour and physical fighting at school. Explanations for this behaviour range from naturalistic "boys will be boys" approaches to analyses which focus on the social construction of masculinity and emphasise the gendered nature of boys' behaviour. Whichever view holds sway, it is often…

The school system in South Africa has only in recent years begun to more deeply grapple with issues of power and privilege along a number of axes of oppression including race, gender, class and recently, sexual and gender diversity. As a result, learners who embody sexual and gender diversity experiences spaces of belonging and exclusion in school…

Research on sexual practices among young South Africans has proliferated in light of the national imperatives to challenge the spread of HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and unwanted early pregnancies. In this special issue of "Perspectives in Education" the authors builds on this research by examining how Life Orientation (LO) or Life…

Amphibians play an important role in the functioning of ecosystems and some of them inhabit human gardens where they can successfully reproduce. The decline of amphibian diversity worldwide suggests that people may play a crucial role in their survival. We conducted a cross-cultural study on high school students' tolerance of frogs in Chile,…