School, gender and indiscipline

By analyzing literature, it is possible to say that the academic approach of the relationship between indiscipline and gender in Brazil was initially associated to the attempt of understanding differentiated academic performance between girls and boys in school, a theme that at the time already had some tradition, especially in countries such as the United States, England, France and Canada (^{Carvalho, 2003}).

In this sense, pioneer studies conducted by ^{Brito (2004}), ^{Carvalho (2001}, 2003, 2004a, 2007), Matos and Vasconcelos (2015), ^{Rodrigues (2009}) and ^{Silva et al. (1999}), among others, sought to understand the school mechanisms that contributed to school failure, predominantly of boys, ultimately trailed the path to a more specific discussion concerning the relations of girls and boys with school rules and on the way that relation would be influenced by gender stereotypes present in society, at school, and among teachers.

In research of Brazilian dissertations and thesis that focused on this performance difference, ^{Carvalho (2012}) claims that it is possible to identify, based on the studies, the existence of a certain homogeneity in school culture, especially in the initial years of elementary school, concerning several aspects: a) teachers tend to attribute to undisciplined behavior the main reason for boys’ difficulty in school; b) teachers attribute the origin of the indiscipline problems among students to their families, as if the school was neutral in the process of building masculinity and femininity; c) authors of studies could not always keep a critical distance from the opinions and stereotypes produced by the interviewed teachers, usually based on polarity and hierarchy between male and female. When they were able to overcome these issues, they managed to notice the permanent rupture, the co-existence of the opposites and the need for diversifying male and female, intersecting them with differences in class, local culture, which multiplies the perceptions of the forms of being a girl and a boy in the school environment.

More recently, however, we have been watching the development of academic production approaching this relation between indiscipline and gender as the specific subject matter of analysis. These are articles that have been sought to analyze discipline behavior of girls, focusing on the analysis of rule-breaking by them inside teaching establishments. Overall, it is possible to state that this academic interest for the theme derives basically from two findings: 1) the deterministic link established between indiscipline and masculinity is fragile, only reproducing gender stereotypes, leading to a generalized perception that girls do not break school rules; 2) there is in schools a growing perception that the behavior of girls would be undergoing changes in the past few years, and what, in basic terms, they would be moving from the category of mere spectators to the leading roles of indiscipline.

In this group of studies, there are investigations such as the ones conducted by ^{Moreira and Santos (2002}), ^{Vargas (2008}), ^{Neves (2008}), ^{Prodócimo (2010}) and Santos (2007). It would be impossible to provide a detailed and complete report of these studies in the scope of an article. However, it worth highlighting two of these studies for providing the context for the types of conclusions that have already been extracted from the results of these investigations.

The first example of a study on the theme is the one developed by ^{Moreira and Santos (2002}) entitled Indisciplina na escola: uma questão de gênero? [T.N.: Indiscipline at school: a question of gender?] The authors problematize the inter-relation between indiscipline and gender and examine the disciplinary sanctions imposed on girls and boys in school. To them, this problematization is important, since it helps understanding how the standardizing practices and disciplinary sanctions may converge to producing and defining certain behavior patterns as being specifically male or female. For conducting the research, the authors sought to analyze the acts considered indiscipline in male and female students of the 9th grade of a state school in the municipality of Presidente Prudente, state of São Paulo. To do that, they used diversified research instruments, such as observations, interviews and analysis of occurrence records.²

The results produced allowed the authors to identify that school tends to reproduce the inequalities based on gender differences. The institution uses practices based on hegemonic standards of femininity and masculinity, creating different treatment in light of behaviors of students. One of these practices was identified in the occurrence log, where the authors found different treatment afforded by the school to girls when imposing any sort of sanction on them. They found that, for the same behavior, girls tended to be more severely punished than boys, since more was expected from them than from boys, behaviors such as obedience and commitment, attributes considered eminently feminine.

It is worth mentioning that this sort of disproportionality in punishment has been broadly studied, for example, in the United States, a country where sanctions such as expelling and suspension of students are generally allowed, originating precise quantitative information on individuals who are the most frequent targets thereof. We can mention, as an example, the report Exclusionary school discipline: An issue brief and review of the literature, published by Danfeng Soto--Vigil ^{Koon (2013}), which indicated that black boys and girls were prone to being suspended due to disciplinary infractions and receive severe punishment, such as suspension from school, more than other students. Another example is the article Girls behaving badly? Race, gender, and subjective evaluation in the discipline of African American girls, published by ^{Morris and Perry (2017}), which identifies that male black students were more prone to being punished than white male students and that black girls were more prone than other girls to being called out for infractions, disruptive and aggressive behavior. In both cases, this disproportionality is supposedly explained by expectations and negative stereotypes reproduced in school around black children, especially black girls.

^{Moreira and Santos (2002}) also notice that teachers mostly attribute girls indiscipline to matters relative to sexuality, emphasizing they would generally be in groups talking about dating and they would be very “forward”, i.e., liked to show off to others, and to that effect, they would tend to use their sex appeal. I.e., the school was supposedly reinforcing gender stereotypes, demanding more from girls behaviors like silence, dedication to studying and discipline and, especially, demanding them to postpone their sexuality and to have, at school, an asexual behavior. Therefore, girls would be doubly questioned in case of breaking school rules, in a process very similar to what studies on female criminality have as a double deviation punishment.³ I.e., girls would be more severely punished because they committed a double deviation, breaking school rules and also social expectations for their gender. Therefore, Moreira and Santos (2002) call attention to the construction of femininity and masculinity profiles in school, comprehending this institution as one of the social dimensions responsible for production and reproduction of gender-based inequality.

Another example of a Brazilian study on the theme was published by ^{Neves (2008}) in his Masters’ dissertation - As meninas de agora estão piores do que os meninos: gênero, conflito e violência na escola. [T.N.: Girls now are doing worse than boys: gender, conflict and violence at school]. The research started based on the assumption that speech causes significant change in the behavior of girls in the school environment and that girls are doing worse than boys regarding discipline. The study was conducted in a state school located in Northern São Paulo and its core subject matter was analyzing the behavior of some girls in elementary school II considered violent by their teachers. For conducting an empirical investigation, several data collection instruments were employed, such as observation, questionnaires, meetings with female student groups and semi-structured interviews.

Among the several results produced by the research, was identified that indeed, the researched girls, as a practice, engaged in violent conduct at school. As for boys, even those considered undisciplined, they tend to use more dialog as a way of resolving conflict, to the extent they seemed to notice the lethality rate is higher among them when they engaged in confrontation. However, the study found that fights involving girls were not usually related to romantic involvement with boys, as frequently disseminated at the school. Fights usually happened as means of reestablishing lost reputation or breaking a certain gender invisibility ceiling at school. This restoration happened, for example, in the case of gossip around school, which almost invariable targeted girls. Gossip (rumors) have the purported power to cause tension by exposing the private life of students and publicly challenging their reputations, especially on matters of sex life and romantic relationships. The authors underscored that it was especially in the domestic and school environment that girls developed this practice of using violence as means of establishing and restoring order, individuality and dignity. To do that, they used at school the same practices they observed at home by their parents: attacking using force or curse words. They highlight, moreover, that fighting played the role to break a certain gender invisibility ceiling at school and, in that sense, girls learned from boys how to become popular and be recognized at school: being involved in fights that always count on a large and captive audience.

Finally, the author concludes that aggression practiced by girls in the school environment challenge the history task of education new generations, but, at the same time, they operate as means of resisting to gender stereotypes that insist in defining girls as fragile, peaceful and lacking the ability to break the rules. We highlight, however, that these aggressions ultimately reproduced part of these stereotypes that compose male hegemony by reinforcing the idea that violence is the best way to resolve conflict.

Therefore, the results of these and other studies lead us to conclude that, despite the persistence of certain pictures built around the behavior of girls in school and in society, there seems to be a portion of girls that break with the gender stereotypes based on submission, docility, fragility, attributes which are “mandatory” for them. Therefore, one could raise the hypothesis that there is a movement toward challenging the gender standards among girls, especially by these rule- -breaking girls, trying to become visible in both the school and social environment. It is not possible to say there is a political, intentional and organized movement, but there is a day-to-day movement of paradigm-shifting relative to social and gender roles. In this sense, we highlight in this article, the relevance of investigating the perceptions students have of the participation of girls and boys in episodes of indiscipline and violence in school. By conducting this study, we expect to contribute to the debate on the indiscipline and gender interface, still little explored in the academia. We point out that what moves us the most, specifically, are perceptions that students have of the disciplinary conduct of girls. However, provided gender is a relational concept and considering the scientific need for comparison, data referring to girls were produced and analyzed in comparison to data on boys (^{Scott, 1990}). Consequently, seeking to meet the goal of capturing the perceptions of students on indiscipline primarily by girls, we conducted a research seeking to reconcile the qualitative and quantitative approach, thus mixing different instruments for collecting data. That is what we will pass to present in the section addressing the methodological path of the research.

The methodological research path

The school selected for conducting the research is located in the outskirts of the city of Belo Horizonte (MG), an area that encompasses social contrasts, i.e., unfavored sectors and medium- -income/intellectualized sectors of the social extracts. The school was mid-size and had 550 students enrolled in grades 1 through 9 of elementary school in 2018. In total, 167 students enrolled in 8th and 9th grade classes answered the quantitative instruments of the research and 24 participated in the interviews.⁴ The option to work with students from the 8th and 9th grades was due to the fact that national and international research indicate this is the phase when schools face the most indiscipline problems (^{Estrela, 1992}; ^{Silva, 2007}). Of the 167 students enrolled in 2018, the year when the research was conducted, 90 (53.9%) are female and 77 (46.1%) are male. Regarding ages, 58 (35%) were 13 years old, 68 (41%) were 14, 15 (9%) were 15 and 4 (2%) were 16, 2 (1%) students aged 17 and 20 (12%) could not or did not wish to answer. Regarding race/skin color, 41 (25%) self-identified as white, 19 (11%) as black, 70 (42%) mixed-race, 7 (4%) native-Brazilian, 7 (4%) as yellow and 23 (14%) did not answer the question regarding skin color or rate.

In this study, perceptions of students were analyzed by combining the qualitative and quantitative data, for expanding and triangulating the information available (^{Bruggemann & Parpinelli, 2008}). Therefore, the following instruments were used for collecting data:

Results and discussion

Final considerations

Despite the impact and recurrence in the school environment, lack of discipline still has little visibility in academic studies, rarely constituting a specific object of analysis. What has been even less explored is the relation between indiscipline and the matter of gender and/or sex of students, especially indiscipline by girls in schools. In this sense, we consider this work has contributed to minimize an important gap in the academia and confirmed both the relevance and the potential to investigate the relationship between indiscipline and gender.

In conclusion, we highlight, as the most relevant result of this work, having identified that thinking that the conducts of girls and boys in schools follow a rigid standard based only on social gender-based expectations is a mistake, since we have identified a multiplicity of behaviors by boys and girls toward school rules.

Therefore, although, according to the perception of students, boys are the main actors in classroom indiscipline behavior, the differences between them and girls were not so significant in most of the behaviors analyzed. As established by ^{Moreira and Santos (2002}), ^{Vargas (2008}), ^{Neves (2008}) and ^{Prodócimo et al. (2010}), girls also break school rules, even if, as we established, in a lower proportion than boys. That means saying that, to some extent, girls would be acting opposite to social gender-based expectations that would require from them a modest, docile and submissive behavior both in society and at school. It worth noting, however, that according to the testimony of some students, girls who break social gender expectations can be negatively perceived by their classmates. That fact has led us to raise the possibility of a double deviation phenomenon existing in the investigated school, provided that, to the spectators, these girls break, at once, school rules and social gender roles assigned to them (^{Matos & Machado, 2012}).

Finally, we highlight this study does present some limitations. First, we indicate the research refers to a restricted number of students, which prevents any generalization of its results. In this sense, it would be relevant building investigations involving a higher number of subjects for allowing for broader comparisons between schools and students of different sociocultural profiles. It seems to us that the instruments built and adapted by this investigation served that purpose very well. Furthermore, we faced difficulty in working on the intersectionality between indiscipline and variables such as skin color/race, religion and social class, especially due to the reduced number of participants in the research, which would demand using statistical techniques for, for example, comparing and testing differences and relations between variables. In the next stages of the research, we will increase the depth of our analysis by using more sophisticated statistical techniques, using a factorial analysis for identifying the psychometric properties of the instruments. These are some of the challenges that may be posed to this important field of study.