Impact of corporal punishment on learning and the ameliorating effects of the GirlsRead! intervention

• In Event: Catalysts for change or keepers of tradition? How school environments influence gender dynamics and impact education outcomes

Proposal

Corporal punishment in schools not only promotes the idea that violence is an acceptable phenomenon in our society (Greydanus et al 2003), but it can also interfere with students’ cognitive development and psychosocial wellbeing (Ogando Portela and Pells 2015). However, studies investigating the effects of corporal punishment on students’ outcomes rarely go beyond cross-sectional associations, mainly due to the lack of longitudinal data. Further, despite being prohibited by law in many countries, school corporal punishment continues to be used in practice (Gershoff 2017). Thus, it is important to investigate how to counter the negative effects of school corporal punishment. Using longitudinal data from a randomized controlled trial in Zambia, this paper will investigate whether experience of corporal punishment by teachers in school affects adolescent girls’ learning. It will also investigate whether an intervention that used e-readers and safe spaces to promote reading among adolescent girls, the GirlsRead! intervention, moderated the associations between school corporal punishment and girls’ literacy, numeracy and non-verbal cognitive skills. GirlsRead! was implemented in 2017-2018 in three districts in Zambia among adolescent girls in the last grade of primary school.

Authors

• Nachela Chelwa, Population Council

• Nicole Haberland, Population Council

• Erica Soler-Hampejsek