School discipline as a correlate of violent behaviours in government bilingual high school Etoug Ebe Yaounde

Abstract

The purpose of students discipline in school is to cultivate right behaviour which will enhance effective learning as well as enable the school as a production unit to attain her set objectives. This study sets out to examine association between guidance school discipline and students violent behaviours in selected secondary schools in Yaounde VI sub-division, case of GBHS Etoug-Ebe Yaounde. With the context of this study, the Psychoanalytic theory and the Person-Centred Theory were used to support our arguments. The main research instruments used in data collection was the questionnaire. The simple random sampling and the purposive sampling techniques were employed to select a sample of 193 teachers for the study during the period of 20th September to the 19th of November 2021. The statistical tool used in data analysis was the spearman rank correlation and the following results were obtained per hypothesis. In the first hypothesis, the p-value < 0.05 with correlation coefficient of 0.537; indicating that teachers’ characteristics influence students’ violent behaviours by 53.7 percent. In the second hypothesis the p-value <0.05 with correlation coefficient of 0.737; indicating that counsellor quality influences students’ violent behaviours by 73.7 percent. The third hypothesis has a p-value <0.05 with correlation coefficient of 0.541; indicating that availability of counseling facilities influences students discipline by 54.1 percent. In the fourth hypothesis the p-value <0.05 with correlation coefficient of 0.632; indicating that Quality of Counseling Sessions influences students discipline by 63.2 percent. Based on these, we reject the null hypothesis and retain the alternative hypothesis which holds that there is a significant relationship between Quality of Counselling Sessions and students’ violent behaviours in the secondary schools. The acceptance of all alternative hypothesis permits us accept the main research alternative hypothesis which states that school discipline significantly affects students’ violent behaviours in the secondary school. Based on the findings of this study, recommendations were made to stakeholders in this domain.