Violence and the moral order in contemporary schooling: A discursive analysis

Abstract

A major strength of qualitative research is its capacity to re-theorise a particular field through examining the discursive constructions that underpin a particular body of research. The empirical research literature construes student violence generally, but bullying in particular, as a psychosocial problem arising from individual and family pathologies. In this article, drawing on the work of Foucault and Butler, we engage in a discursive analysis of the bullying discourse as it appears in the literature and in teachers' and students' commentaries on incidents of bullying. A discursive analysis enables us to ask whether there is some limitation or inherent problem in the conceptual configur..