How school-built factors and organisational dimensions contribute to bodily exposure, degrading treatment and bullying in school changing rooms

Abstract

This paper explores how school-built factors and organisational dimensions contribute to bodily exposure, degrading treatment and bullying in school changing rooms. The findings in this study stem from an ethnographic research project exploring the relations between school bullying and the institutional context of schooling. The project focuses on the perspectives of teachers and pupils from pre-school class up to grade eight (i.e. approx. ages 5–15). In this particular study, we focus on participant observations and semi-structured interviews conducted at three elementary schools and one lower secondary school in Sweden. Analysis of the data was guided by constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014) [Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Sage]. Findings reveal how the changing room was a vulnerable and unsafe space associated with an ever-present fear of experiencing bodily exposure, degrading treatment, and bullying. Our findings illuminate how social-ecological elements such as the physical design of the space and organisational factors such as staffing and scheduling can both increase and decrease the risk of experiencing bodily exposure, degrading treatment, and bullying in the changing room. This demonstrates that much more consideration needs to be given to how social interactions and experiences within school changing rooms are influenced by school-built factors and the ways in which they are organised within the different social-ecological systems beyond the microsystem setting.