Research question/objective

Starting from a social justice perspective within the field of leadership (Shields 2007, 2010) this paper aims to contribute in understanding various conceptions of leadership in relation to violent cases at a Swedish boarding school.  More specifically the paper asks the following question: How do leaders in various positions describe their responsibilities as leaders in relation to violent cases that took place at a Swedish boarding school?

Methodological framework:

The paper is based on a Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) (1992, 2000, 2001) of different educational and media documents concerning cases of violence at a boarding Swedish schools. This analysis involves following three dimensions: (a) text analysis (description), (b) processing anal- sis (interpretation), and (c) social analysis (explanation). In our study, these dimensions correspond to our research questions.

The expected conclusions/results

This study shows that school violence is perceived both as a public or a private matter. When school violence is conceived as a private matter, the leaders point out the necessity of protecting and honoring the privacy of the school. In these cases pupils’ education is considered as a private good and therefore the competency to deal with violent acts is considered as a “family” outside the governance of the public
Based on the libertarian conception of childhood. On the contrary when the school violence is described as a public matter, the leaders claims for government intervention to protect the rights of children as stipulated in Swedish national steering documents and in national and international legislation on children’s rights.

This result of the study indicates that systemic violence at the boarding school in question can be interpreted as a part of a socialization culture of privileged classes aiming to educate leaders that can maintain and reproduce power positions and privileges in the Swedish society. Four different discourses of child violence emerged in the analysis, namely: (1) violence is created because some few people break the rule, (2) the victims of violence don’t behave properly, (3) boy scams happen but are harmless, and (4) because quarrels are part of family (the private) life. The study provides with examples of a hidden curriculum that endorses leadership models that are not compatible with the development of democracy and diversity in the Swedish society. Taken account that a considerable percentage of boarding school students will have power positions in different areas of the Swedish society in the future, it is important to reflect on the possibilities for democratic, and hence non-violent, socialization the models of leadership presented in this study promote.