“You Can Try,But You Won’t Stop It. It’ll Always Be There”

Abstract

The role of schools in preventing violence among teenagers has been highlighted, as has the development of youth-led prevention initiatives. This article explores how young people’s views on violence influence their perceptions of its preventability, drawing on focus group discussions with 14- to 16-year-olds from six schools across the north of England. Young people view violence as a highly individualized phenomenon, and gender norms play an important role in shaping young people’s perceptions of the preventability of violence. The findings presented here suggest that school-based violence prevention must fundamentally address gender norms and expectations to challenge young people’s acceptance and tolerance of violence.

Keywords

gender violence education youth schools

Background

Violence among school-aged young people is a concern in different contexts in the global North and South. Evidence suggests that violence is routinely used by and against young people (Barter, McCarry, Berridge, & Evans, 2009; Burton, Kelly, Kitzinger, & Regan, 1998; McCarry, 2010; Prospero, 2006). A governmental report noted that 6% of 10- to 19-year-olds in the United Kingdom identified as belonging to a gang (Sharp, Aldridge, & Medina, 2004) and the most recent British Crime Survey indicates that 8% of 10- to 15-year-olds have experienced violence in the past year (Office for National Statistics, 2013). Close to a quarter of young people have experienced partner violence on more than one occasion (Barter et al., 2009). It is increasingly recognized that there is awareness of the need to implement evidence-based interventions aimed specifically at young people (e.g., Home Office, 2013). There are renewed calls from policy makers, activists, and educators in the United Kingdom to increase young people’s awareness of violence and there is increasing debate regarding the role of schools in promoting this awareness and developing prevention. The present article reports on young people’s views on violence, including the preventability of violence and their perspectives on what schools could do to prevent youth violence in and outside intimate relationships. A robust body of literature has emphasized the value of youth-led prevention initiatives (Brown & Winterton, 2010; Flutter, 2006) and a clear rights-based framework for seeking out young people’s views on matters which affect them exists (Office of the Children’s Commissioner, 2014; United Nations, 1989). The findings discussed here are based on a recent, regional study of young people’s understandings of violence, including factors which influence their acceptance of violence, and the justifications they make for the use of violence by young people (Sundaram, 2013; Sundaram, 2014a). This work has found that young people’s views on violence, including what is seen as problematic, are heavily mediated by their understandings of gender. Some forms of violence are viewed as unproblematic, or even acceptable and deserved, in different circumstances and this can be expected to influence what young people subsequently view as violence that is necessary to prevent, or not. Young people’s views on violence suggest that they may not see the necessity or feasibility of violence prevention as a “fact.” This article therefore seeks to address two central questions. First, how do young people’s views on violence relate to their perceptions of its preventability? Second, what are young people’s views on violence prevention, including the role of schools in this endeavor?

Violence Prevention and Schools

There is growing support for violence prevention to be based in schools from the public and voluntary sectors, as well as the United Kingdom government, which has recently recognized the role of frontline professionals, including teachers, in preventing violence and has pledged to identify new ways to educate children about healthy relationships (Home Office, 2013). Only little research exists about the prevalence and character of violence in U.K. schools themselves (e.g., Brown & Winterton, 2010). Extreme forms of violence such as murder are very rare, but lower level violence such as bullying, harassment, and cyber-bullying is increasingly common (Varnava, 2003). Indeed, in schools, violence is most often addressed in relation to bullying, disruptive and anti-social behavior, and the educational response has therefore been in terms of school-level discipline and behavior codes (e.g., Kyriacou, 2003). Youth violence more generally, including gang-related or criminal violence, is usually addressed in citizenship education, personal development (PD), or personal, social, and health education (PSHE) where conflict resolution, anger management, tolerance, and/or peaceful relationships are emphasized (Bickmore, 2001; Cremin, 2007; Davies, 2005; Harber & Sakade, 2009).

American literature notes that school-based violence prevention programs have increased in North America in response to the persisting problem of school violence. Evaluations of these programs show varying levels of success. They range from interventions that are targeted for particularly aggressive or disruptive children (Wilson & Lipsey, 2007) or youth-led programs that prioritize teaching about self-efficacy, empowerment, and conflict avoidance skills (Ozer, 2006; Zimmerman et al., 2011). Less agreement exists regarding universal prevention programs (aimed at all children within one educational setting); some meta-analyses suggest that programs with younger children or with children from lower socio-economic backgrounds are most effective in terms of altering behavior (Wilson & Lipsey, 2007), whereas others suggest that program effects are found at all levels of schooling and across a range of background characteristics (Hahn et al., 2007). Prevention programs using multiple formats and outputs have similarly shown varying effects (Foshee et al., 2005; Hahn et al., 2007; Wilson & Lipsey, 2007) with some studies suggesting that any changes to behavior were very temporary and that rates of violence actually increased in some schools with violence prevention programs (Artz, Riecken, MacIntyre, Lam, & Maczewski, 2000).

Interestingly, teenage relationship violence has only recently been recognized in the United Kingdom, as occurring within or outside schools or as needing to be addressed by schools. This is despite mounting evidence that partner violence is pervasive among those below 16 years (e.g., Mariathasan, 2009). Furthermore, the U.K. government only recently reviewed its definition of domestic violence to include 16- and 17-year-olds (Home Office, 2012), perhaps contributing to a view that relationship violence among school-aged young people is not so widespread as to warrant concern. Historically, child safeguarding policy for U.K. schools has not recognized relationship violence in its definitions of child abuse or maltreatment (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2009b). Current governmental proposals to further reduce safeguarding guidance for schools across the United Kingdom exist, specifically to devolve safeguarding practices and decisions to individual teachers rather than maintaining or enhancing training and procedures to be consistently applied across all school settings (Department for Education [DfE], 2013). This will potentially require individual teachers to identify and respond to instances of relationship violence and further, relies on them to understand the dynamics underlying partner violence, including attempts to hide or deny abuse by the victim, and behaviors which seemingly justify or trivialize violence (and therefore might lead a teacher to think that there was no safeguarding issue to respond to). Effective violence prevention might therefore extend to teacher training and support to identify and respond to violence.

We know in the U.K. context, neither is youth violence declining more generally nor is violence within intimate partner relationships (e.g., Office for National Statistics, 2013). However, only few dedicated violence prevention programs exist in U.K. schools and few initiatives in the United Kingdom or elsewhere have drawn fundamentally on youth perspectives on prevention, or have utilized young people’s own understandings of violence in their design.

Gender in/and Violence Prevention

In 2000, the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) produced guidance for schools in England and Wales regarding sex education and domestic violence prevention. The objective of relationship education, which was inter alia to cover violence prevention, was identified as being to support young people’s development and “to develop the skills and understanding they need to live confident, healthy and independent lives” (DfEE, 2000, p. 3). Violence prevention was explicitly framed as the management of conflict and emphasized the personal and social skills young people should learn (DfEE, 2000). The lack of gender focus, including a recognition of the ways in which gendered identities and norms impact on decision making and choosing within relationships, has been criticized in governmental school inspections and evaluations of existing violence prevention work in schools (Maxwell, Chase, Warwick, & Aggleton, 2010; Ofsted, 2013; Showunmi, Ringrose, & Parkes, 2011). International organizations (e.g., Commission on the Status of Women (UN Women, 2014a; International Planned Parenthood Federation [IPPF], 2014) have also noted the need to recognize gender as a vital aspect of violence prevention, and the international End Violence Against Women Coalition (Dustin, 2013) has stated that gender education must be an integral aspect of relationships education.

Some notable exceptions to the gender-blind approach exist. These tend to be stand-alone initiatives which are developed by local authorities (e.g., Respect Yourself, Warwickshire County Council) or in collaboration with women’s rights organizations, charities or refuges, which have an explicitly feminist ethos. Recent curriculum packages designed by the Home Office (2013), End Violence Against Women Coalition (Cerise, 2011), and Womankind Worldwide (Maxwell et al., 2010) have addressed gender stereotyping as fundamental to include in teaching and learning resources about violence. Hester and Westmarland (2005) and Cerise (2011) have reviewed a number of U.K. violence prevention programs that prioritized a focus on gender equality and found that positive results in terms of young people critically reflecting on their experiences, feelings, and views about violence could be achieved. Their work suggests that a deeper understanding of the ways in which gender mediates young people’s relationship to different forms of violence is important to consider in preventive work. A number of scholars have noted that young people tend to be quite accepting of violence (in particular dating violence) in varying circumstances (Barter et al., 2009; Burton et al., 1998; McCarry, 2010; Prospero, 2006), but there is less knowledge about the reasons why young people tolerate, and even justify, violence (McCarry, 2010). Therefore, untangling the underlying causes must constitute a fundamental step in prevention, and it is argued here that an understanding of young people’s views on the preventability of violence is a key aspect of this.

Method

The findings discussed here are based on a regional study of young people’s views on interpersonal violence. The study comprised seventy 14- to 16-year-old pupils in six secondary schools across the north of England. It is argued that this particular age group will be cognitively and emotionally competent to discuss complex issues and thus to inform future violence prevention approaches. The sampling frame comprised all secondary schools in a specified region of England as detailed in annual school census data from 2010. Schools were purposively selected on the basis of intake in terms of gender, ethnic composition, faith status, and selectiveness to ensure that participants were drawn from a spread of contexts (Sandelowski, 1995). North American research has suggested that school context, including school size, urbanicity, and socio-economic composition, may explain variations in young people’s experiences of violence victimization (Schreck, Miller, & Gibson, 2003; Sheehan, Kim, & Galvin, 2004) and that ethnic differences in perceptions of domestic violence exist (Sorenson & Telles, 1991; Torres, 1991). Furthermore, children’s perceptions of what constitutes violence may differ by gender, social class, and ethnicity (Nair & Osman, 2013; Noguera, 1995; Osler, 2006). Maximum variation sampling, a purposive sampling technique which aims to sample for heterogeneity (Patton, 2002), was therefore used to allow for comparisons across school contexts and pupil characteristics to be made.

In each school, two focus groups were conducted with small groups comprising five to seven pupils each. Existing research with young people suggests that variations may occur in views expressed about sensitive topics, such as relationships, depending on the gender mix in the discussion group (e.g., Strange, Forrest, & Oakley, 2003). Mixed-sex and single-sex focus groups were therefore used as a means to explore young people’s views on interpersonal violence and to uncover the ways in which they understand the causes of violence and, therefore, avenues for prevention. Mixed-sex groups were conducted in the co-educational schools and single-sex groups were conducted in the all-boys and all-girls schools (see Table 1 for a list of schools and their characteristics). The use of focus groups can help to identify group norms and can shed light on social processes (O’Kane, 2008) occurring inside and out of school, both of which are vital to understanding young people’s views on violence as a behavior and the potential role of schools in preventing it.

Table 1.

Characteristics of Sample Schools (Faith, Gender, Socioeconomic, and Ethnic Mix).

School Name	Faith Status	Gender Composition	Deprivation Status	Ethnic Composition
Butterfield Grammar School	None	Single-sex boys	Low	88% White British
Saint Nicholas College (R)	Roman Catholic	Mixed sex	Medium	81% White British
Saint John’s School	Church of England	Mixed sex	Low	66% White British
Sydney School for Girls	None	Single-sex girls	High	84% White British
Weeping Willow Boys School (R)	None	Single-sex boys	High	1% White British
Fishergate Girls School	None	Single-sex girls	Medium–High	1% White British

Note. Deprivation status is defined by the following publicly available information: (a) Percentage of students within the school who are eligible for free school meals. This is a commonly accepted indicator of pupil deprivation in the United Kingdom. (b) IDACI scores which indicate area-level deprivation. The IDACI score for each pupil does not relate directly to his or her individual family circumstances but is a proxy measure based on his or her local area. IDACI = Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index.

R= replacement school

Within the focus groups, statements, vignettes, and photographs depicting violent situations were used to stimulate discussion. In previous research on violence among young people, participants have only been presented with vignettes depicting dating violence. It was of particular interest in this study to examine whether the same discourses are used to analyze other forms of violence by men and the role of expected gender behavior in mediating these understandings. A range of scenarios depicting emotional, verbal, and physical violence within and outside of intimate partner relationships were therefore used in the present study. Details of the methods used, as well as the instruments developed for and used in this study, have been reported on elsewhere (Sundaram, 2013; Sundaram, 2014a). Participants were explicitly asked about whether violence was preventable and what the role of schools in preventing violence might be. Views on the preventability of violence and the role of school emerged also organically as specific pictures, statements, and scenarios about emotional, physical, and sexual violence were discussed.

Prior to obtaining permission from sample schools to speak with their pupils, a covering letter explaining the aims and scope of the study and written consent forms were sent to parents of all Year 10 pupils in each school. Only pupils whose parents had given consent for their participation were entered into the sample from which focus group participants were selected. The vast majority (98%) of parents across all schools had given their consent, so it is unlikely that selection bias occurred at this stage of sampling. Form teachers were asked to select participants at random from their class registers with parameters regarding group size and gender composition being specified in advance. In pilot research for this study, pupils were asked to volunteer for participation in focus groups. This resulted in a very low participation rate and led to a change of sampling strategy for the present study. The pupils themselves were given information about the purpose of the study and what their participation entailed. Pupils who had been selected for focus group participation were asked to sign consent forms ahead of the discussions and they were informed that their participation was entirely voluntary and offered the opportunity to withdraw at that stage. The final sample population was diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and faith background. Variation occurred within most school settings, as well as between school settings.

All focus groups were audiotaped with the explicit consent of the participants. Data were transcribed and color-coded around key themes of analysis, using template analysis (Newby, 2010). The research questions were used as the initial template by which data were coded and additional themes emerged through in-depth coding. These included definitions of violence, justifications given for violence, contradictions in discourses around violence, and the role of schools in preventing violence. The primary focus of the study was to explore how young people make sense of violence and the underlying factors which characterize this process. As Holstein and Gubrium (1998) have noted, a desire to understand the way in which the “life world is produced and experienced by its members” necessitates a phenomenological approach to analyze and interpret young people’s narratives about violence (p. 138). Narratives tell us how people make sense of the world, how they act in the world, and how they expect others to act in the world (Chase, 2005; Franzosi, 1998; Sundaram, 2014a). Thus, thinking about young people’s narratives “not simply as a form of text but as a mode of thought” (Bruner, 1997, p. 64) allowed an exploration of how and why young people think about different forms of violence in particular ways. This was particularly useful for highlighting how normative assumptions about gender organize the views of young people in relation to violence and its preventability.

Findings

The following section discusses young people’s views on the preventability of violence and the role of schools in tackling youth violence. Focus group data revealed that overall, young people remain skeptical regarding whether violence can be prevented at all and (therefore) about the role of schools in preventing violence within and outside intimate relationships. However, across all schools in the study, some young people did refer to the potential of schools to reduce violence. It became clear through discussions that the majority of young people favored a punitive approach to reducing violence and that this reactive stance was closely linked to a view that violence was natural and therefore unpreventable. Some young people did suggest avenues for violence prevention after having stated that violence was unpreventable, revealing contradictions around their understandings of violence, as well as deeply internalized notions of violence and aggression as natural aspects of the human (male) condition. In this article, data are presented using pseudonyms (chosen by the researcher) to preserve the anonymity of participants and schools (the key characteristics of sample schools are described in Table 1). Generally speaking, there were no variations in young people’s views on whether violence could be prevented according to the ethnic or socio-economic composition or the faith status of the school. Findings are not reported in terms of class or ethnicity unless exceptional views were expressed. The themes presented here developed from views expressed by the majority of participants within each of the focus groups, as well as across the entire sample. The selected quotations aim to illustrate patterns in views held across gender and school settings.

Can Violence Be Prevented?

Violence as preventable

Violence was seen as preventable by a number of young people in the study. Occasionally, this was directly expressed (“I think it’s [stopping violence] mostly about willpower” Mary, SN) but the preventability of violence was most frequently expressed in terms of addressing the emotional and psychological needs of perpetrators, or in terms of strengthening punishments meted out for violence.

Perpetrators as “victims”

Perpetrators of violence were discursively constructed as victims and their use of violence, while not condoned, was justified or excused in this way. Violence was narrated as a response to pent-up emotions, and perpetrators were viewed as needing counseling or opportunities to “talk about it” as a means of preventing future violent acts.

Chris (SN):

Some people get mood changes, they just turn angry and snap. They might have anger problems.

Aisha (FG):

I think the best way to sort out anything [prevent men from being aggressive] is to talk about it, because when you talk about it, it makes it light inside as well.

Fatima (FG):

You should give them support saying, okay, you have done it [been violent], it’s gone now, you can’t change it. You can change your future now because everyone makes mistakes, like nobody’s perfect.

This narrative drew on individualized understandings of violence which located its cause in the psychological makeup or state of perpetrators (Burgess & Draper, 1989; Dutton & Starzomski, 1993). Perpetrators of violence were thus viewed as having particular personality characteristics or specific background circumstances which, together with learned behavior, produce intense anger, aggression, and violence (Jasinski, 2001). In this account, violence prevention should therefore seek to understand these underlying emotions and offer alternatives for would-be perpetrators to express, release, and liberate themselves from these emotions. This might be achieved through counseling or another form of psychological support.

Perpetrators of violence were also excused through a perceived lack of education about violence as an unacceptable or negative behavior. Young people argued that prevention was achievable through more information or courses about violence and its effects.

Jamal (WW):

People aren’t educated, like, they ain’t got a course or anything against violence and they don’t teach about violence.

Vicky (SN):

[information could be given about] how, like if you don’t realize how violent you’ve been, then how far it could go, think how they could hurt someone.

Farah (FG):

Or if you make them feel how they would feel in that situation [if they were victimized].

A narrative of “helping the perpetrator” was maintained so while violence was viewed as preventable, the perpetrator was not held entirely accountable for their behavior. This discourse represented a shift away from viewing individual pathology as responsible for producing violent behavior, and placed the onus on institutions or authorities to educate people about what constitutes violence and its impact on victims. While the excerpts above suggest that a gender-neutral image of a violence perpetrator was held, young people did draw on internalized expectations of appropriate male behavior to excuse violence. Their narratives around violence as preventable if more support and help is given to perpetrators were based on the assumption of perpetrators being male, and this assumption was also clear from the preceding context of the discussion (the association of violence with men was discussed also earlier in this article).

Finally, (male) perpetrators of violence were also viewed as victims of entrenched and highly policed expectations of masculinity (Connell, 1995; Kimmel, Hearn, & Connell, 2005). Violence was thus seen as preventable if these expectations could be challenged. Young people, and boys in particular, expressed reluctance in relation to the expectation that they should engage in violence.

Saira (FG):

[some boys are violent because] that is like getting competitive thing that guys do though. They want to be better than the other guy, they want to be more stronger, they want to have most girls.

Tim (BG):

The root of the problem is, it’s all like the [other] students’ fault, it’s not the two people who fight but it’s everyone else’s because if you imagine you are stuck in the middle with, like, someone you hate and there is a massive circle there is no way of getting out and if you do walk away you will be called a pussy and things like that and you will be abused. You know, you are being pushed to each other, then someone pushes the other person at you, and you know he hits you and it hurts, it’s just, it’s everyone else’s fault really.

Arthur (BG):

I think if people are having a fight no one really wants to get involved so no one will go, oh stop, it’s wrong. You just wouldn’t do that because you don’t want to get involved and it’s seen as like, if someone said that, you would probably be seen as someone who is scared and like a wuss, or something like that.

However, they simultaneously admitted to encouraging fights between peers for excitement and entertainment, thus underscoring the pressure to conform to particular expectations for masculinity and indeed, the internalization of those expectations.

The power of punishment

Violence was also seen as preventable through harsher punishment of violent behavior. Young people talked about the need for more police to patrol public spaces and for information about the consequences of being violent (e.g., prison sentences) to be made widely available. They thus adopted a criminological perspective on violence, rather than connecting it to gender or to normative expectations for male behavior in particular. Violence was viewed as a behavior that was carried out by individuals who were classed as deviant in some way (Clinard & Meier, 2011) as alcoholics, thugs, or “chavs.” Violence prevention was thus framed in terms of measures that would be taken against deviants or criminals.

Lauren (SN):

[what could be done to prevent violence] More police on the street

Connor (BG):

If there are police about to issue, like, proper verbal warnings and then a few times afterwards they could get, like, fined or something like that or just something like to really make them stop.

Faisal (WW):

Police officers came into our school and they were just telling us about how to prevent it and about the consequences of our actions maybe and how many years we could get in prison.

Vicky (SN):

[what could be done to prevent violence] Information could be given out about how long you can get in prison if you, like, get found out.

The criminalized view on violence as “one-off” incidents perpetrated by individual men bolstered a narrative of violence as an individualized and pathologized phenomenon, reminiscent of historical interpretations that violence was carried out by “a few, sick men” (Hamner & Maynard, 1987). This discourse silenced the role of structural factors, gender norms more generally, or masculinity(ies) specifically, in producing violent behavior.

Contradictions emerged in teenagers’ accounts of violence as preventable through harsher punishment. On one hand, they endorsed a punitive approach to dealing with violent behavior, but they simultaneously voiced some skepticism about the feasibility of preventing widespread violence. This doubt was articulated particularly in relation to the potential role of schools in addressing youth violence, as will be discussed in the following section.

Violence as unpreventable

The majority of young people strongly argued that violence is not preventable. This view was also articulated by young people who had previously stated that violence could be prevented, revealing internalized and entrenched contradictions in their beliefs about the causes of violence, the use of violence, and attitudes toward violence.

Victims as responsible

The first explanation for violence as unpreventable was located with the perceived culpability of the victim. This discourse was used particularly in relation to domestic violence, where attempts to prevent or punish domestic violence were “thwarted” by the failure of the victim to leave their (her) abuser. The behavior of the victim was thus seen as reproducing a cycle of violence and posing an insurmountable barrier to prevention work.

Steph (SN):

How could you stop [relationship violence] because if, it depends if the woman, like, wants to leave the man. But if she doesn’t, if she wants to stay with him, then she’ll probably just carry on getting hurt so there’s nothing you can do about it.

Kamal (BG):

You can’t stop it and like it needs to stop, but it keeps happening like if a person keeps ringing the police and if that person keeps like coming back and hitting that person then you could tell the person, like move away from that person, but if they won’t . . .

Rob (SN):

You could try [to stop domestic violence] but you won’t do anything to it, because it happens.

While young people in the study were not explicitly using victim-blaming discourse in this regard, by constituting victims as deserving of violence or of having provoked violence for example, they did construct victims as partly responsible for continuing violence against them. Violence was constructed as unpreventable unless the victim’s behavior changed. Previous research (e.g., Bryant & Spencer, 2003) has suggested that among young adults, gender differences in victim blaming occur, such that men are more likely than women to hold female victims of domestic violence responsible. The views of the young people in the current study did not reflect such a gendered attribution of blame, and girls were no less likely to construct victims as culpable.

The power of nature

The second major framework for viewing violence as unpreventable focused on the power of nature in producing violence. Violence was alternately narrated as located in human nature (hormones, genes) and as simply a pervasive aspect of the human condition (World Health Organization, 2002).

Ben (BG):

I don’t know if they can stop people because I mean, hormones are hormones and they can’t change that really.

Grace (SN):

I think violence is just like a drug because of people’s reactions.

Josh (SN):

You can try and stop it but like there’s no guarantee of actually doing and stopping it. Because most of the things in everyday life are around violence.

Mohammed (WW):

The violence will never stop . . . Because it’s gone on for so many years or something like that. It’s like a daily routine and nearly everyone is violent.

Jack (BG):

Do you know how, like, the Romans before they used to have gladiators and everything and they just had, like a lust for violence, it’s the same with all of us.

The biological inevitability of violence was emphasized in this account and young people drew on neurological, psychological, and historical perspectives to excuse violence and construct it as unpreventable (e.g., Gurian, 2002). Gender expectations were not explicitly mentioned in relation to men’s use of violence but masculinity and/or “male” attributes were conceptualized as a natural force which drives (some) men to be violent.

Ali (WW):

I think that’s the way they [boys] are . . . I think boys get more frustrated at these kind of situations than girls do.

Grace (SN):

But it’s like when you see men like walk up to each other and men like punch each other on the arm for a bit, so you can see they don’t mind being punched.

Ben (SN):

Men just hit each other to try and prove that they’re hard you know . . . who’s the tougher sort of.

Arthur (BG):

I think he would be more likely to go a bit more violent on her than her going violent on him. I think that mainly it’s because men are probably more aggressive sort of people [in response to vignette about relationship violence between teenagers]

The following section will explore young people’s views on the perceived role and potential of schools in addressing violence among teenagers.

What Can Schools Do to Prevent Violence?

Broadly speaking, the role of schools in relation to preventing violence is viewed in two ways: Schools can do nothing and schools can do something (but the latter is seen primarily in reactive rather than pro-active terms). In both perspectives, violence is fundamentally seen as unpreventable, hence the focus on punitive responses to violence when schools are perceived as being able to do something.

Schools (can) do nothing

Not surprisingly, young people’s views on the role of schools in preventing violence were linked to their views on whether violence is preventable or not. More notably perhaps, in both cases, school was viewed as doing very little. This was varyingly described as schools “won’t” do anything or as schools “can’t” do anything. When violence was viewed as potentially preventable, schools were often perceived as doing nothing to address violence because teachers do not want to get involved, because violence is not taken seriously, or because schools have given up on trying to prevent such a widespread phenomenon.

Erik (BG):

It’s stupid here [at school] you get a detention for forgetting your planner but you get a verbal warning for fighting.

Sufiya (FG):

But at schools they’d be like, oh, I can’t be arsed with this stuff [violence, fighting].

Joe (BG):

I once saw this on a program and there was this fight going on and these two guys were really going to punch each other really hard and some teachers were just standing back because they were too scared to get in and just break up the violence. I’m not sure if it’s to do with schools rules or just the teachers not thinking it’s their place but even so, they should have done something there.

When violence was viewed as unpreventable, the discourse of schools “can’t” do anything was used. Even if teachers were able to punish offenders within school grounds, there was a view that violence would take place or continue outside of school and so the preventive potential of schools was limited.

Tariq (WW):

Maybe in schools you can stop it . . . the teachers . . . but not outside school.

Rob (BG):

In schools, you could give them like a really bad punishment but mmm and that would probably deter them from it but I am not sure that it would completely put a stop to it.

Sohrab (BG):

There’s so much violence around, that it would be pretty difficult [for schools] to try and stop it. It would be nice if they could but I don’t think it’s possible.

Stan (BG):

I don’t think there is a way in schools to put an end to it because teachers can’t just watch every single [fight].

Schools (can) do something

When concrete suggestions were made for what schools could do to prevent violence, these were primarily put forward as a reaction to violence rather than as a means of preventing of violence. Punitive approaches were most commonly suggested, with harsher punishments for using violence, including suspension or exclusion, or contact to parents being proposed as deterrents. None of these suggestions reflected an understanding or recognition of violence as a gendered phenomenon.

Janet (SN):

If someone’s being violent, like, take them away from everyone else.

Patrick (BG):

Maybe harsher punishments [are needed for violence] . . . punishments need to be much more severe, for example, calling their parents or suspension or something like that.

Vijay (WW):

Teachers just tell them [a violent pair in school] off and then just sometimes like exclude them.

Punishments outside the school setting were also emphasized as a means of deterring perpetrators from using violence again. These frequently included information about prison sentences, visits from police officers in schools and the involvement of youth club leaders to talk to young people about the consequences of violence (albeit for the lives of the perpetrators rather than impacts on the victim).

Waqas (WW):

They did “Prison? Me, no way” . . . that was about violence and how to stop it and all that . . . police officers came into our school and they were just telling us about how to prevent it and about the consequences of our actions maybe and how many years we could get in prison.

Tamara (FG):

Maybe if someone actually come and talk to them, like, say if they had a youth club thing and talk about violence.

However, a minority of young people did propose pro-active approaches to violence prevention. These included role-play workshops, videos which depicted the impacts of violence for the victims, guest lectures by ex-offenders and victims, information posters in their classrooms, and more teaching about national and local anti-violence campaigns. One group of young people even suggested that more researchers might work with their school to raise awareness about youth violence and prevention. Past research indicates that even young children express a clear view that violent behavior should be punished consistently and harshly, to effectively reduce it (Affonso, Shibuya, & Frueh, 2007). Despite resignation to the inevitability of violence being expressed by young people in the current study, they also expressed dissatisfaction with the perceived inconsistency in school responses to violent behavior.

Discussion

What Do Young People Think of Violence and Why Does It Matter?

The majority of young people viewed violence as essentially unpreventable; violence was understood as embedded into “human nature,” varyingly narrated as an essential aspect of (male) bodies, or as produced by psychological or neurological triggers. The notion that men are innately more aggressive (“they can’t help it”), are quicker to get angry, and need to be educated out of their natural predisposition to use violence reflects deeply held understandings of how men as a class (Delphy, 1988) “should” and “do” behave. The culpability of the perpetrator was not consistently addressed by young people; at times, their status as victims who are need of support was highlighted. The conceptualization of masculinity as a static set of innate attributes of male bodies has implications for teaching young people to reject and resist violence (as perpetrators, bystanders, and victims). Viewing violence as essentially unpreventable reinforces a symptom-based, reactive approach to tackling violence and conceptualizes violence narrowly at the level of individuals (or particular groups of individuals). This view also has implications for the perceived potential of schools to prevent violence. Schools were therefore generally perceived as entirely powerless, or they were reduced to meting out harsher punishments to perpetrators to signal the school’s stance against it.

We need to know what factors influence young people’s views on violence in different circumstances to effectively address and destabilize these underlying assumptions. The findings discussed here suggest that beliefs around masculinity, perceived justifications or reasons for using violence, and attitudes toward victims of violence are important aspects to tackle. This study suggests that all of these factors are heavily shaped by gender expectations and, therefore, that making gender norms explicit with young people and working with them to challenge and critique these is an important element of violence prevention. Recent work suggests that young people very rarely see violence in dichotomous terms as wholly “right” or “wrong,” and that their views on violence exist on a more complex continuum which is influenced by gendered expectations around victim–perpetrator relationships, assumed contexts of violence, and circumstances preceding the violence among others (Sundaram, 2014a, 2014b). Past research similarly indicates the necessity for young people to understand issues of gender and power for them to view violence as preventable and for violence prevention to be effective (McCarry, 2010; Reed, Raj, Miller, & Silverman, 2010; Van de Veur, Vrethem, Titley, & Tóth, 2007; World Health Organization, 2009). As Donovan and Hester (2008) have noted, the choices young people make about sex, love, and relationships are shaped by beliefs and expectations around gender and sexuality in a given culture or society; they are not simply “individualised decisions based on what might be termed ‘healthy choices’” (p. 279).

Contextual factors influencing young people’s understandings of violence must also be considered in developing violence prevention for schools (Sundaram, 2013), and this should form a fundamental component of education about healthy relationships (DfEE, 2000; Home Office, 2013). This also clearly concerns child safeguarding which is firmly located within the remit of schools (DfE, 2013). A failure to explicitly recognize gender as underlying violence will result in a continued focus on (and understanding of) violence as an individual(ized) choice. Current school-based prevention models concentrating on gender-blind behavior management and conflict resolution will thus be maintained. Given the mounting attention being given to sex and relationships education (SRE) in the United Kingdom and the British government’s call to cover violence prevention as a key aspect of SRE (DfEE, 2000), it is imperative that we learn more about the factors that need to be challenged in developing prevention initiatives that result in attitudinal and behavioral change.

The majority of violence prevention work in schools has neglected to prioritize gender as central to young people’s understandings of what constitutes violence, their attitudes toward violence, and their acceptance of violence. Indeed, overt resistance to a focus on gender in violence prevention among youth has been expressed by some (Langhinrichsen-Rohling & Capaldi, 2012). There are notable exceptions (Cerise, 2011; Coy, Thiara, & Kelly, 2011; Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2009a; Dusenbury, Falco, Lake, Brannigan, & Bosworth, 1997; Ellis, 2004; Hester & Westmarland, 2005; Maxwell et al., 2010) and these have emphasized the importance of promoting gender equality as a whole-school, cross-curricular approach to address youth violence. Furthermore, existing evidence indicates that acceptance of violence against women, in particular, is best challenged if a gendered analysis is prioritized in schools (Coy et al., 2011; Ellis, 2004; Mahoney & Shaughnessy, 2007). International research, campaigning and non-governmental work has suggested that violence prevention programs should be based on knowledge about the root causes of violence at the individual, community, and societal or structural level (e.g., Butchart, Phinney, Check, & Villaveces, 2004; De Koker, Matthews, Zuch, Bastien, & Mason-Jones, 2013; Girl Effect, 2014; UN Women, 2014b; World Health Organization, 2014).

However, gender did not feature explicitly in young people’s narratives about why youth, boys in particular, might use violence and therefore, was not present in their discussions about how violence might be prevented in and by schools. Their conceptualization of violence likely reflects representations put forward in media coverage of violence, anti-violence, and crime campaigns, and educational policies on violence—which rarely deal with gender or masculinity explicitly as a socially constructed role or set of behaviors. The gender of the most likely perpetrators of violence usually remains unspoken and certainly is not problematized; violence is usually framed as an offense by individuals, rather than as a pervasive, gender-based phenomenon. We gain a better understanding of why violence is viewed as unpreventable when we begin to explore the complex ways in which young people understand violence. This includes the notion that violence is natural, acceptable, or justifiable (and therefore not necessarily in need of prevention) in some circumstances. Violence is seen as an essential, rather than socially produced, quality of (male) bodies and avenues for prevention are therefore perceived as limited. Within education, violence is usually dealt with through conflict management or resolution and is covered by anti-social behavior or bullying policies. This “gender-blind” (UN Women, 2014) conceptualization of violence has significant implications for schools in considering how to develop and target anti-violence curricula.

This study has some limitations in terms of generalizability or external validity. Despite purposively selecting a heterogeneous sample which encompassed a diverse range of schools in terms of sex, socio-demographic and ethnic composition, as well as faith status, the total sample comprised a small percentage of all schools in the region. Strong patterns emerged in young people’s views on violence across the different schools, which suggest that the significant role of gender in shaping their understandings was not specific to some individuals or groups of individuals within select schools. Further research might seek to elicit more specifically whether differences in understandings of violence can be established across ethnic or socio-demographic groups. Although the present study did include young people from varying backgrounds in this regard, the overall sample size was not sufficiently large to be able to conduct this level of analysis.

Conclusions and Future Directions

In the United Kingdom, school-based violence prevention has tended to take a reactive or punitive approach (with some notable exceptions) rather than explicitly naming the root causes of violence and using these as a starting point for work with young people. The fundamental role of gender in young people’s understandings, normalization, and acceptance of violence has often been overlooked or dealt with superficially (although, again, exceptions do exist; see De Koker et al., 2013). Contradictions remain in young people’s understandings of and attitudes toward violence. On one hand, they think of violence as “exciting” and this pertains to young men in particular. On the other hand, they express reluctance to engage with violence and talk relatively openly about the homophobic and misogynistic bullying they experience if they do not show willingness to fight (Sundaram, 2013; Sundaram, 2014b). Young people talk about violence as being deserved on one hand (McCarry, 2010; Sundaram, 2013) but here, talk negatively about perpetrators of violence, naming them varyingly as deviant, psychologically unstable, and uneducated. The teenagers in this study talked despondently of schools not being able to, or not being willing to do anything sustainable to prevent violence on one hand, but articulated a strong desire for schools to take a more active and punitive stance toward perpetrators of violence on the other.

Common to the range of narratives put forward by young people in this study was a notable absence of the recognition of gender norms and expectations in producing and perpetuating violence among young men in particular. Gender roles did not appear to feature explicitly in teenagers’ understandings of the causes of violence and when gender was occasionally mentioned, it is done so in a normalizing way. In other words, particular “male” attributes which are connected to violence were seen as “natural” or innate characteristics of men which cause them to behave in certain ways. This lack of understanding of the link between gender and violence is significant in teaching young people about violence prevention. Their dominant narratives about violence as unpreventable, violence as natural, violence as a (bad) way of expressing negative emotions, and the perceived culpability of some victims all pose considerable challenges in terms of teaching young people that violence is not simply a pervasive aspect of the human condition (World Health Organization, 2002) and that it is preventable. Schools have a key role to play in shifting violence prevention from a primarily reactive stance to a pro-active one and the role of education in tackling youth violence and teenage relationship abuse is increasingly recognized. Compensatory pedagogy has been suggested as one means of developing gender equality among school-aged young people, by focusing on encouraging behaviors, attitudes, and identities that are usually discouraged by traditional gender stereotypes (Van de Veur et al., 2007). The findings of this study suggest that a vital aspect of effective anti-violence education is the inclusion of gender education, including compensatory pedagogy which enables young people to recognize and reject restrictive gender norms, expectations, and identities.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was conducted with financial support from the Society for Educational Studies (Small Grant award).

Author Biography

Vanita Sundaram, PhD, is a senior lecturer in education, University of York, UK. Her current research focuses on adolescent violence, sex and relationships education, and diversity and/in schools. She has written about gender inequalities in education, gender-based violence among adults and young people, violence as a public health problem, and inclusive education. She is the author of Preventing Youth Violence: Rethinking the Role of Gender in Schools (Palgrave Macmillan). She is active in the gender and education community, working with professional stakeholders and academic colleagues (e.g., as a member of the Gender and Education Association Executive Committee) to achieve impact.

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