Disciplinary cases at high schools: An analysis of decisions of disciplinary committees

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the records of secondary education institutions’ disciplinary committee decisions, and to put forth the reasons why high school students are punished, and which punishments are given. The distribution of these punishments in terms of students’ grade, school type and gender is also explored in the study. In this qualitative case study, the data were collected through document analysis. The study group of the study consists of nine high schools located in a district of a province in the Aegean region of Turkey. The data in the study consist of 384 disciplinary cases recorded in the disciplinary board minute books and e-school between 2016-2020 years. Content analysis was performed on the data. In the 384 disciplinary cases registered in schools, the most frequent punishment is condemnation. The disciplinary punishments are mostly concentrated on male students by gender, in 9th grade students by grade level, and in vocational and technical high school types by school type.