While violence against children (VAC) has been a long-established global concern, more recently attention has been drawn to how violence occurs in and around schools (VACS) and the role of education in preventing and responding to violence. Whilst awareness about VACS is growing, more robust data are needed to inform policy and practice. Concerns…

Efforts to address school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) globally are hampered by conceptual and methodological difficulties in capturing meaningful data needed to inform policy and practice. Whilst the emphases of influential studies tend to be on measuring practice of violence, the authors investigate whether they can develop a more…

This article examines how policies and strategies to address school-related gender-based violence have evolved since 2000, when gender-based violence within education was largely invisible. Through an exploration of policy enactment in three countries--Liberia, South Africa, and Brazil--it traces remarkable progress in policy, programmes, and…

This paper interrogates the influence of a tradition-modernity dichotomy on perspectives and practices on sexual violence and sexual relationships involving girls in three districts of Kenya, Ghana and Mozambique. Through deploying an analytical framework of positioning within multiple discursive sites, we argue that although the dichotomy…

Every day, girls and boys around the world face many forms of physical, sexual and psychological violence in and around schools. On too many occasions, such violence is tolerated by societies and institutions, including schools, and it is these forms of violence that contribute to the alarming numbers of girls and boys being excluded from schools…

This article addresses the issue of harm in the research process. While researchers seek to conduct research that minimises harm, this paper argues that approaches adopted often create new forms of harm. This proposition is examined through drawing on Bourdieu's ideas about symbolic violence and poststructural theories of identity, to critically…

Drawing on data from an empirical study of children's engagements with violence in South Africa, this article explores children's talk about violence in their neighbourhood. Violence entered into children's daily lives in many forms, repelling and disempowering them. At the same time, violence could attract, when it was understood as a form of…

This paper examines how young people living in a violent neighbourhood construct understandings about danger, violence and safety. Reporting findings from a qualitative study that investigated these issues with 8-14 year olds in a South African neighbourhood, the paper identifies how young people attempted to stay safe through reliance on adult…