Abstract Book of the 9th International Conference on Research in Education, Teaching and Learning
Year: 2025
DOI:
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Managing Multiple Identities: Exploring The Interplay of Gender and Other Social Identities in Facilitating a Gendered Nature of Violence in Secondary Schooling in Sierra
O’bai Conteh, Regina Mamidy Yillah, Anais Bash-Taqi, Augustus Osborne
ABSTRACT:
This paper, which is based on my PhD research at Lancaster University, explores how school-related violence has exacerbated intersecting inequalities in secondary schools, thereby contributing to the production of differential schooling experiences and learning outcomes for girls in post-conflict Sierra Leone. The discourse on the gendered nature of violence in secondary schooling in Sierra Leone provides a substantive insight into girls’ school experiences. However, gender violence in Sierra Leone does not operate in isolation, it has always had complex ways of interacting with other social inequalities – such as social class, ethic-traditions and location – that continue to perpetuate gender-differentiated schooling experiences and outcomes. Therefore, I use an intersectional lens to provide a more coherent understanding of social identities in school and an analytical framework to understand the interplay of these identities in sustaining and promoting school-related violence. I draw on my extensive data set, which was generated through individual interviews, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and Participant Observations in 4 secondary schools. I will illustrate the ways in which gender interacts in complex ways with other social identities to produce differentiated experiences of school-related violence in secondary schooling in Sierra Leone. I will argue that violence in school is a process to sustain gender inequalities.
keywords: Gender, Ethic-traditions, Schooling, Intersectionality, Violence in School, Inequality, Experiences, Outcomes