Discipline Management Practices and Students’ Discipline: A Case of Private Secondary Schools in Kasangati Town Council, Wakiso District, Uganda

Abstract

The centrality of student discipline and its management in the success of educational processes cannot be over emphasised. Although various student discipline managements practices have been employed world over, including Uganda, related studies have mostly overlooked student leaders’ perspectives in favour of those of administrators and teachers. This study, which involved student leaders in addition to teachers, examined the relationship between student discipline management practices and student discipline at private secondary schools in Kasangati Town Council, Wakiso District, Uganda. A focus group discussion guide and a closed-ended questionnaire, respectively, were utilised to gather data from a sample of 113 teachers and 46 student leaders, randomly chosen from 4 private secondary schools. Using census inquiry, discipline management teachers from the four schools were interviewed. A sequential explanatory study design using a mixed-methods paradigm was employed. Pearson's product-moment correlation analysis was performed to examine the hypotheses. Qualitative data were examined using content analysis. The findings revealed a statistically significant association between: guidance and counselling and student discipline (r = 0.539, p = 0.006), parental involvement and student discipline (r = 0.499, p = 0.009), and the administration of punishments and student discipline (r = 0.381, p = 0.003). Similar findings emerged from the qualitative findings. They demonstrated that in the schools under study, student discipline management practices support student discipline. The study offers managers of private secondary schools advice to: implement a systematic strategy to involve parents in the management of the critical transition of adolescents from childhood to adulthood; encourage deterrent punishments with a positive behavioural impact; and to set up regular refresher programmes to retool teachers in contemporary ways of guidance and counselling.