Conference Agenda

This paper presents a new phase in a longitudinal research project that originally investigated the life experiences of girls who committed physical violence during adolescence. The first phase (Faldet, 2013) involved in-depth interviews with 13 girls aged 13 to 18 who had committed violence against peers and teachers. Ten years later, eight of the same women were re-interviewed (Faldet & Skrefsrud, 2026, in press), focusing on how they now understand their past—particularly how school functioned as a supportive or exclusionary arena, shaping their self-understanding and life trajectories.

Building on insights from this study, the current phase shifts attention to schools by exploring how teachers experience and respond to girls who display disruptive, acting-out, or aggressive behaviours. Research on youth violence and behavioural problems has largely centred on boys, while girls who engage in externalising behaviours often fall outside dominant explanatory frameworks (Chesney-Lind & Irwin, 2008; Arnell, 2017). These behaviours tend to contradict expectations of femininity and are often interpreted as deviant, unstable, or problematic (Henriksen, 2021; Natland, 2007), contributing to a relative invisibility of acting-out girls in institutional responses and policy frameworks (Henriksen, 2021; Larsson et al., 2024).

Despite complex life situations and accumulated vulnerabilities, these girls are not always recognised as students in need of contextualised support. Instead, they risk being met with disciplinary sanctions or individualising and pathologising explanations, where behaviour is understood as personal deficit rather than as situated within social and institutional contexts (Henriksen & Bengtsson, 2018). Such framings may obscure young people’s perspectives and limit their recognition as agents in their own educational trajectories (Bunting & Moshuus, 2017; Faldet, 2013).

This paper argues for the need to understand how teachers make sense of these students—both through professional discourse and daily interaction. The aim of the study is twofold:

1. to examine how teachers perceive and work with girls displaying externalising behaviour in school settings, and
2. to explore how teachers assess structural conditions and institutional cultures as shaping their scope of action and strategies.

The research questions guiding the study are:

• How do teachers experience and understand acting-out behaviours among girls in school?
• What professional strategies and relational practices do they use in working with these students?
• How do institutional conditions (e.g., policy, leadership, resources) shape teachers’ interpretations and responses?

The project draws on educational sociology, sociocultural theory, and research on teacher professionalism. Sociocultural perspectives (Rogoff, 2003; Vygotsky, 1978) emphasise how teachers’ interpretations and actions are embedded in institutional and relational contexts. The concept of symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1990) helps illuminate how schools may reproduce exclusionary norms through seemingly neutral practices. Girls who challenge dominant expectations risk marginalisation not only due to their actions, but also because of how those actions are interpreted within institutional logics.

In this context, it is relevant to highlight the insights of Bunting and Moshuus (2017), who argue that school dropout cannot be reduced to either individual vulnerability or systemic failure. Rather, disengagement emerges from the interplay between young people’s experiences and broader structures. This view is transferable to the current study: teachers’ understandings of girls with acting-out behaviour must be situated within frameworks that account for both student agency and structural constraint.

Together, these perspectives support analysis of how teachers navigate tensions between professional judgment, relational ethics, and institutional expectations when working with students who challenge behavioural norms. In doing so, the paper seeks to expand the discourse on inclusive education by placing teacher subjectivity, institutional constraint, and normative assumptions at the centre. It invites discussion on the emotional and ethical labour involved in supporting students whose behaviour disrupts both cultural expectations and professional routines.

In Brazil, the 1988 Federal Constitution recognises leisure as a social right; however, its implementation remains marked by structural inequalities and weak institutionalisation within public policies (Silveira, et al, 2022). Although legally guaranteed, access to and enjoyment of leisure are shaped by markers such as gender, race, class, generation, and disability, producing unequal conditions and widening disparities among social groups (Pereira, 2019). For women, these inequalities are exacerbated by the burden of domestic labour and by feelings of insecurity in public spaces (Bonalume e Isayama (2018). From an early age, girls are socialised under restrictions on mobility and heightened bodily surveillance, constraints that intensify in territories with high rates of gender-based violence (Rodriguez e Martinez, 2024). Brazilian studies indicate that 98% of women feel afraid when going out at night, and the majority have experienced some form of aggression. Violence, therefore, operates as a structural element that inhibits women’s leisure (Galvão 2025).

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In such contexts, fear and the constant threat of violence reorganise the ways in which cities are used, constraining mobility, schedules, and opportunities for social interaction. Although leisure, as a social right, is not the formal justification for extending children’s time in school, activities such as sports, dance, and artistic expression are among the most common in Brazilian school-based extracurricular programmes. Conceived as cultural practices that enable the enjoyment and experience of leisure, these activities are promoted by public policies such as “Segundo Tempo”, “Mais Educação” and, more recently, the “Escola em Tempo Integral” programme, which are primarily directed towards peripheral areas and contexts of social vulnerability. Positioned at the intersection of: 1) leisure practices offered in public schools; 2) urban peripheries; and 3) territories with high incidence of gender-based violence, this research seeks to understand how girls in a southern Brazilian city negotiate their access to leisure within extracurricular school activities.

The empirical material produced in schools revealed how gendered pedagogies regulate the presence and bodies of girls in leisure activities. The episodes narrated by participants illuminate how gender norms and mechanisms of surveillance are internalised by pupils living in territories marked by violence. For these girls, the visibility of the female body is associated with the risk of violence, which ultimately places the responsibility for their own safety upon them.

In interviews and focus groups, the students reported that certain types of clothing were considered inappropriate because they could provoke gazes, comments, or harassment—not only from male peers but also from teachers. Even in the absence of boys, the mere presence of male figures or the proximity to spaces connected to the external environment of the school produced discomfort. This reveals a gendered pedagogy that teaches girls self-censorship and self-control as forms of protection. Any failure to attend to such precautions is perceived by them as behaviour that could result in the victim being held responsible for the violence experienced. This logic of blame is also reflected in their strategies for navigating the territory: although they state that they are not afraid to walk alone, they avoid dark or poorly frequented places, demonstrating the naturalisation of self-protection practices.

Girls learn, from an early age, to interpret risks and to self-regulate through their clothing choices, routes, and the times at which they circulate. In this process, violence ceases to be an occasional event and becomes a permanent mechanism for regulating conduct, limiting girls’ access to leisure both in school and in other public spaces (Silva, Meyer, Riegel, 2021). Gendered pedagogies thus produce inequalities by attributing to girls the responsibility for their own safety, while boys’ behaviour remains largely unexamined.

This study is a case study of Finnish boys’ group (N=8) whose members were identified as having an exceptionally high level of challenges in life management and schooling. The challenges manifested themselves in substance abuse, harassment, and violence. During basic education these boys participated in a number of interventions at the individual level, but these did not have any impact on the functioning of the boys' group as a collective. Such young people are not a phenomenon limited to Finland; comparable profiles of at-risk-youth exhibiting similar patterns of disengagement in schools have been reported in studies from various international contexts (e.g., Galassi et al.,1997; Chen & He, 2024; Luthar & Ansary, 2005).

The theoretical framework for the study is built on William Damon's (2008) definition of purpose in life. Purpose is understood as a key component of a positive youth development and consists of three dimensions: (1) purpose is a goal that makes one’s life meaningful; (2) purpose is pursued with perseverance; and (3) purpose contributes to society (Damon et al., 2003; Damon, 2008).

We argue that the participants of this study can be identified as disengaged or non-purposeful (Damon, 2008) young men at least at the time of their basic education (Viljanen & Kuusisto, 2024a).

This paper aims to study how do these young men understand and interpret the development of their life purposes five years after the basic education. Previous research in Finland has examined the purpose formation processes only within predominantly female samples (Viljanen & Kuusisto, 2024b).

Education and teachers have a role in youth development since adolescents spend a large part of their waking hours at school. Moreover, such rebellious and disengaged young people tend to pose the greatest pedagogical challenges and contribute most significantly to teachers’ workload and strain (e.g., Cohen-Azaria, 2025; Velez et al., 2020).

This study contributes knowledge of young males’ purpose processes and reflections on their school years, the support they got, what kind of caring and support they would have needed and how (or whether) did they find their purpose in life. The presentation further describes the structure and content of the four‑week intervention and examines how the participating boys reflected on its perceived effects later in life.