Changing perspectives on corporal punishment in schools: Insights from Ugandan young people

Childhood. 2025 Oct 31;33(2):352-369. doi: 10.1177/09075682251392494. eCollection 2026 May.

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to decolonising ways in which corporal punishment has been understood and represented in Africa, through engaging with the complex views of young Ugandans about corporal punishment in schools. Conceptualising time as non-linear, and violence as a web of power, our analysis of longitudinal, mixed method data traces how physical punishment functioned to maintain the generational order, and as a regulatory practice in schools. While young people adopted critical standpoints against corporal punishment, structural conditions and violence in schools evoked feelings of insecurity, that could generate resistance to change. Our analysis problematises assumptions that legal bans alone will create meaningful change.

PMID:42058555 | PMC:PMC13124045 | DOI:10.1177/09075682251392494