Introduction

The extent of child and youth crime is a recurring concern in the societal debate,both in Sweden and elsewhere.This is also reflected in the growing international research interest in school violence, which has explored its prevalence, underlying mechanisms, and the significance it holds for those subjected to it (Turanovic&Siennick, 2022). However, there remains a gap in the literature concerning how teachers engage with, and can professionally respond to, school violence (McMahon,Peist, Davis, McConnell et al., 2020). In particular, there is a notable lack of studies exploring teachers’ own narratives about how they navigate interactions with violent children(Molefi, 2022). While educational research has addressed the agency of both students and teachers in educational settings(Häggström, 2022), there is stillalimited understanding of what happens when these forms of agency come into conflict with one another. This article seeks to address these gaps, which are both empirical and theoretical, by investigating teachers’ approaches to violent children and the dynamics that unfold at the intersection of student and teacher agency when school violence is discussed.

In order to situate this inquiry within a broader empirical context, we present a brief overview of recent Swedish data, which provides a concerning account of students’ exposure to violence. The most recent school survey on crimes, which is carried out every three years bytheNational Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet),shows that 45 percent of the students surveyed had been subjected to crimes such as theft, assault, threats, robbery, or sexual offences at least once during the previous twelve months, both in school and outside of it (Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, 2022).Similaralarming figures are also highlighted in Swedish media reports on the increase in gang criminality among children (Haglund, 2020), and the increased security threat posed by school attacks (Regeringskansliet[Government Offices], 2023). Altogether, this has prompted a series of actions.Among other things, the Swedish government has appointed a special investigator with the task of strengthening security in schools (Regeringskansliet[Government Offices], 2022). This investigation was undertaken with the aim of ensuring that children, students, teachers, headteachers, and other staff have a safe and secure educational and working environment.

School violence is also viewed as a significant problem globally (Moon et al., 2015; Reddy et al., 2024),and there has been a change in schools’ approaches towards violent behaviour over the years (Estrada, 2001;Estrada et al., 2012). School violence is now more likely to be treated as a criminal act, resulting in it becoming a police matter rather than a pedagogical problem, as it was before. The outcome is that the number of police reports on school violence has increased over the years (Estrada et al., 2012). However, there is no clear evidence that violence is in fact increasing. Rather, it is argued, school policies and norms are changing (Vainik& Kassman, 2018). This relates tothe school survey mentioned above, which in fact shows that the proportion of young victims of crime has remained relatively stable over time (Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, 2022).However, the occurrence of school attacks globally, amplified by alarming media narratives, has intensified both public and academic concern about the issue of school violence. Yet, teachers’ perspectives and coping strategies on this matter are still a relatively understudied area within the broader literature on school violence (McMahon,Peist, Davis, Bare et al., 2020; Tarablus & Yablon, 2023, 2024). Recent studies have shown that pervasive violence can have a strong influence on teachers’ subjectivities(Hernández Varona, 2023), impacting upon their perceptions of both their professional and individual selves (Skåland, 2016), as well as on students’ learning outcomes (Reddy et al., 2024).

Due to ethical and legal standards, gathering data about teachers’ experiences of violent students is a sensitive matter. In order to obtain high-quality data about their experiences, as well as their views on how schools and teachers should react to school violence, in this article,we explore teachers’ discussions in a teacher rebellion group (TRG) on Facebook. We are seeking to better understand howteachersreason about their roles as professionals when children are positioned as a threat, rather than as individuals with prospects for personal growth and learning.

Social media platforms are important to the professional lives of teachers because they are useful sites for obtaining new informal knowledge and development relating to the teaching profession, the work environment, and teachers’ responsibilities (BergvikenRensfeldtet al., 2018; Kelly & Antonio, 2016; Macià & García,2016). Facebook groups created by and intended for teachers as a professional group, such as the TRG, are thus common and are sites where teachers discuss professional matters such as school subjects, teaching methods, and professional conditions (Löfdahl Hultman et al., 2022). Through their posts, teachers share and discuss both public stories and personal experiences, thus making claims of professionalism while positioning themselves as professionals.

In this article, we focus on public and well-known stories, analysed as different versions of a formula story (Loseke, 2012), about children who are considered dangerous in different ways by their teachers. The study aims to explore the symbolic and emotional dimensions at play when teachers engage in discussions about the category of the “dangerous child” within the TRG. We use the concept of the formula story, together with the notion of agency, in our analysis of the following questions: How do teachers construct and position the category of the “dangerous child” in the TRG? In what ways do symbolic and emotional aspects shape these narratives, and how is agency attributed to both children and teachers?

The study has both practical and theoretical implications. It is important because it contributestoknowledge about how children are talked about by a professional group – teachers – who play a fundamental role in their everyday lives. The ways in which teachers refer to children in these contexts may have significant effects at a societal level, influencing the symbolic and emotional aspects of public and political discourses about children. Furthermore, studying the intersection between children and violence challenges our notions of innocent childhoods(Robinson, 2008), and thus also our theoretical approach to children as social actors, as well as teachers’ agency.

Literature Review

In the introduction, we emphasised research about school violence. However, if we wish to discuss notions of the dangerous child as a narrow matter for actors in school, we also need to address research about teachers and children as social beings acting with various degrees of agency. We begin with an understanding of agency as situated and relational (Gallagher, 2019;Priestley et al., 2015) and draw upon research addressing how teachers make claims of professionalism and use collegiality as a resource for empowerment and agency, as well as the field of child and childhood studies. We use these to explore recent thinking about how agency is constituted and can be understood.

Teacher Agency and Claims of Professionalism

The concept of teacher agency focuses on teachers’ enactments of policies andpractices and stressesthe quality of individuals’ relations to their environment (Priestley et al., 2015). The framework presented by Priestleyet al.suggests that agency is something that people achieve through engagement with both the human and non-human aspects of their environment. This environment can limit individuals’ options, but through creativity and reflexivity,they can act counter to societal constraints. Much research based on this theory stresses that teachers, individually and jointly, act as autonomous professionals in challenging contexts. These challenges are often linked to the curriculum, policies, or school context.Additionally, certain personal, relational, and contextual factors have also been found to shape, support, or constrain teachers’ agency within their various organisational contexts (Biesta & Tedder, 2007;Hökkäet al., 2017).

Two studies illustrating in a more concrete way what the concept of teacher agency can help to make visible are those byChaabanet al.(2021)andEteläpeltoet al.(2013).Chaaban et al.’s (2021) study highlights the impact of personal, relational, and contextual spaces when different forms of teacher agency emerged among teacher educators in reaction to the Covid-19 crisis. Depending on the personal and professional challenges related to this crisis, different teachers enacted different forms of agency, including resistant, coping, resilient, and transformative agency. The emphasis in their study is on individuals as agents and their reactions to crises. It does not, however, foreground the collective or professional forms of conduct, which is precisely what we seek to do in our study by analysing how teachers speak about the violence and, we argue, construct a shared preparedness.Eteläpeltoet al. (2013), on the other hand, emphasise that power relationships and the distribution of authority in educational settings affect teachers’ agency. They stress the importance of analysing individual agency and social context separately, while still acknowledging that they are mutually interdependent. In our study, we examine structural factors, such as the professional tasks that teachers are required to do, the norms of the institution where they work, and the material and social resources available to them.

In other words, teacher agency is developed over time among individuals or groups and is dependent upon personal, relational, and contextual aspects. It is also closely linked to institutional norms and values (Priestley et al., 2015). This is why it is interesting to explore the various agencies emerging in TRGs, where personal values and institutional (professional) norms are discussed among teachers, and how this relates to the agency ascribed to children in the same forum. While previous studies on teacher agency have provided valuable and important insights for this analysis, many emphasise that teachers are able to find solutions and know how to act professionally, which tends to frame the challenges as manageable within the classroom. However, the issues raised in this article, and probably other related challenges as well, extend beyond the classroom and individual teachers’ actions. We argue that these are broader societal problems that may require intervention from actors beyond the teaching profession, albeit in combination with teachers’ professionalism and agency. However, we argue that the specific challenge posed by “the dangerous child” can be fruitfully examined from a safe distance in a collegial forum such as the TRG. This forum provides a secure space for teachers, and the use of the formula story enables them to position themselves without facing direct confrontation from colleagues or students in their own schools.

Children’s Agency

While teacher agency has been extensively studied and offers valuable insights into how educators navigate challenges professionally, it is equally important to consider children’s agency within these dynamics.Anew theoretical approach to social studies on children and childhood emerged during the 1980sas a critique of how children had previously been approached, in both research and society, as adults-in-becoming (Annerbäck & Sparrman, 2022).This new approach, the so-called child and childhood studies, treated children as active social actors (Esseret al., 2016; Gallagher, 2019) and entailed the idea that children are worthy of study in their own right. This led to an interest in how children act against social structures, challenging and changing them (Esseret al., 2016), which is essential for understanding the interactive, relational nature of teacher–student relationships and dynamics in educational settings. Initially, agency was understoodas the ability to act independently, and children’s agency was taken for granted, with all children being seen as actors. However, assumptions about children’s agency risk ignoring the ways in which some children are hindered by their contexts, and hence may fail to acknowledge how children’s agency can also be limited and conditional (Sutterlüty&Tisdall, 2019). However, during the last decade,theagency has been subjected to conceptual scrutiny and more critical thinking(Gallagher, 2019; James & Prout, 2015).

Some of the recent thinkers emphasise agency as ambivalent (Gallagher, 2019). Thus, agency is approached not as an intrinsic property, but rather as an effect of relationships (Esseret al., 2016), or ‘complex shifting social arrangements’ (Wyness, 2015).The starting point for this is the idea that children can inhabit different social positions as children, and that they act based on the conditions they experience in those positions (Esseret al., 2016).Agency is thus dependent upon the situation, and can fluctuate within the same situation (Annerbäck & Sparrman, 2022). Rather than the previous approach to agency, which saw it as the capacity to act independently, this perspective thus acknowledges a mutual dependence between actors, including the non-human(Gallagher, 2019).

This approach to agency is helpful in overcoming structures and norms that render children naturally dependent and powerless (Sutterlüty & Tisdall,2019). At the same time, it is impossible to ignore aspects such as power within the relationships in which agency is explored; for example, between the teacher and child, or between children. However, the benefit of treating children and adults as equal agents is that children’s agency can be explored and proved to be important, even in unexpected contexts, such as the TRG on Facebook (Bergnehr, 2019). Furthermore, while most research on children’s agency centres on the children themselves, this study explores teachers’ perceptions of children’s agency. By shifting the focus, we argue, it becomes possible to understand the relational dimensions in a new way.

Theoretical Framework

Within the various research fields, there has been a shift in understanding of both teacher and child agency, from being seen as static to being viewed as situated and relational. It is through these new perspectives that we approach our data. We employ the concept of formula stories, which are introduced in the next section. These offer a theoretical lens for understanding how narratives, whether about direct experiences or second-hand accounts, are used by teachers to make moral points and to position themselves in particular ways. For us, these stories serve as a way to identify moral reasoning and the degree to which agency is perceived as being enacted and constrained.

Stories about daily life are typically based on practical experience. In contrast, the formula story consists of a socially circulating narrative that is known to, and understood by, many people even though it has a relatively abstract character (Loseke, 2012). The moral, plot, and characters are well known, even when neither the teller nor the audiencehasany personal experience of what is being narrated. These stories are about unknown people and unknown worlds, but through their predictability and recognisability,they give us a hint about how the tellers and audiences understand the world.

Examples of a formula story, according to Loseke (2012), include stories about ‘the terrorist’, or ‘the abused child’. And the reason that many of us recognise them, even if we do not have personal experience of them, is that they are based on symbolic and emotional codes about how the world works, or should work. It is implicitly agreed that the terrorist is evil and does harm to good things in the world,and that the abused child is innocent and the victim of an evil perpetrator who transgresses norms and breaks laws about how a human should behave (Loseke, 2012). In the analysis of data in this study, we treat the narratives about ‘the dangerous child’ as a formula story. Many of the stories appearing in the TRG excerpts are not about personal experiences, and there is a consensus between the initial narrator, the one who starts a conversation, and the audience, those who comment and thus help to develop the story, that the story is about ‘the dangerous child’. Through their storytelling, teachers position themselves and ‘the dangerous child’ in ways that make emotions and morals visible. We therefore explore how, through employing different versions of the formula story, teachers position the various actors, such as themselves and their students, both in the posts and in the following comments. We also examine the ways in which they position themselves to their audience, which consists of the community members and themselves(Bamberg, 1997).

Posting on Facebook, the teachers share certain professional stories, while positioning themselves and their actions. While starting off from the relational approach to agency, we acknowledge that the positions and actions are described within a specific contextual framework, which has an impact on how agency is enacted(Priestley et al., 2015). As shown below, in teachers’ stories about school violence, multiple positionings are enacted as the plots unfold (Loseke, 2012). In brief, the concept of the formula story provides an analytical lens on the data that stresses symbolic and emotional aspects of the stories, while the concept of agency (analytically) emphasises how the teachers position themselves in the TRG and the children in the stories.

Methodology

The empirical material used in the study is part of a larger research project studying how Swedish teachers organise themselves into various rebellion groups on social media (see Löfdahl Hultman et al., 2022). The material for this article consists of teachers’ stories from one particular rebellion group on Facebook: The Teacher Rebellion. This is a privategroup for teachers and anyone who wants to take part in discussions about improving the working conditions of teachers. The group was founded in 2018, currently consists of16,001members (June 12, 2025), and is regulated by ten rules of behaviour. Among other things, these rules concern maintaining a friendly tone and not taking screenshots or sharing others’ posts on social media. The seven group administrators also have the power to reject posts and exclude members who behave inappropriately in relation to the rules (Löfdahl Hultman et al., 2022). To protect the teachers’ scope for action within the group, individuals from higher administrative positions, such as school leaders and principals,are excluded. Authors of posts may choose to remain anonymous. In most cases, the geographical location of the author is not specified. Other contextual details, such as the grade level and subject matter, are also frequently omitted.All the participating researchers have become members by being approved for entry into this closed Facebook group.The research project initially introduced our purpose and working methods and we are continuously making updates about our sustained presence through posts to the group (Georgalou, 2017).

As we started to search for recurring topics in the group’s posts, we found that many posts involved children in different ways. Due to events current at the time (2022), such as school killings, many of the stories turned out to involve children’s violence and threats, and questions concerning teachers’ strategies to cope with this. We therefore decided to focus on such events, and more broadly on events involving children, danger, and school. We applied a qualitative approach to the stories, acknowledging that they are socially situated actions (Mishler,2009) through which individuals make their position clear. As our qualitative, narrative approach indicates, our focus is more on the story itself – how it is constructed, used, and received – than on the prevalence of a phenomenon. For this article, we have selected a total of 25 narratives in which the main points concern how children can be dangerous in various ways. The article is structured to show how different types ofviolenceare enacted through this data. Another decision was to focus the data collection on the period from January to June 2022, given that the topic gained renewed relevance following a school attack that took place in a Swedish city in January of that year.

The posts we have analysed contain personal stories or stories about other people’s experiences of violence. The posts received both reactions and responses from other group members, and we noted these during the data collection in relation to each post. However, it was not possible to collect all the responses due to their large number.Posts can attract several hundred reactions and over a hundred replies.However, we gathered and closely examined all the responses to the narratives in the posts highlighted in the analysis. We have selected illustrative examples of posts that clarify the positions taken by teachers in the interaction. The data analysis is qualitative and was conducted manually without the use of technical tools. During our initial processing of the data, we identified the following categories: self-reported experiences of violence, violence between students, and news-media reported violence (e.g.,school shootings). During the later processing, we went through the material and chose examples from each group. We also studied the comments under each selected post. We have used examples in the analysis to discuss the overall notion, or positioning, of what we callthe dangerous child.

The study is part of a project that has been reviewed by the local ethical board at Karlstad University in Sweden (LöfdahlHultmanet al., 2022).Members of the TRG are regularly reminded of the presence of the researchers. The information that we posted to the group also emphasises that teachers who do not wish to be included in the study are able to contact the PI, who ensures that these teachers’ posts are not subjected to analysis. When presenting our analyses and results, we have used the posts from the TRG,some of which were posted under the teachers’ real names and others anonymously.Real names of participants, cities, and schools have not been used in this study, in order to protect the members as far as possible, in accordance with established practices for handling such sources(Georgalou, 2017).In addition,all the posts have been translated from Swedish into English.

Results

We now introduce some different versions of the formula story aboutthe dangerous child. This story may not be generalisable to everybody. However, it is generalisable to its specific audience, which is the community members of the Facebook group The Teacher Rebellion (TRG).The versions differ in the sense that there are varying degrees of seriousness in the stories,ranging from implicit threats to murder. This is how the types have been grouped. However, the boundaries between them are not entirely fixed,and they sometimes overlap.There are at least three symbolic codes that are taken for granted when these stories are told and interpreted within the forum, as highlighted below.

The Offending Child 

The following is an example from the group we call the offending child. With the term ‘offending’, we are referring to actions that potentially break laws, rules, or social norms, and often cause harm. The highlighted post attracted two reactions and ten comments. Judging by these reactions and comments, the post did not engage very many members. However, it is an example from our data that touches upon a current, socially relevant, and widely discussed topic.

Example 1.

Hi all teachers – I want to explore how this works in other schools. We wonder how your schools relate to students taking photographs of teachers (and/or students)? Has your schoolreported any students to the police? Discussions concerning [what is] allowed/not allowed should be avoided as the laws have determined this. Thank you for answering! (Anonymous group member TRG)

Typically, in this version of the formula story, children are positioned as malicious because they are secretly taking photos of their teachers, something that is often described as an action of offensive photography. This group member positions teachers as potential victims for public shaming or blaming in contexts outside the classroom. The post implicitly suggests a united front whereby schools should protect staff by reporting all children who take photos of their teachers to the police. This stance refers to the symbolic code that some children are no longer innocent but instead are potentially dangerous to teachers’ professional authority and integrity. It suggests that teachers need to agree on a strict policy based on legal principles rather than trust. The post stresses the potential risk that children will achieve a threatening kind of agency and become actors who take control of classrooms in ways that are emotionally stressful and violating for teachers. The answer to this threat refers to collegial forms of professionalism in the ambition to combine all teachers into a united front, as well as organisational forms of professionalism based on laws and paragraphs(Evetts, 2011).

Here, the offending child is presented as someone who challenges teacher agency through inappropriate and illegal actions. The post evokes both reactions and emotions, especially when, in the comments, it is discovered that the original post concerns a child photographing teachers’ body parts. The responses to the post suggest various ways of dealing with situations similar to the one described, which in turn indicate several approaches to how a teacher can and should handle the offending child.While most claim not to have reported incidents of offensive photography to the police, they have taken other actions in their professional roles as teachers.This suggests a different stance, whereby the act is considered inappropriate but something that can be resolved through the employment of professional and pedagogical tools within the context of the school(Odenbringet al.,2016).While one of the replies explains that a similar situation would normally lead to a warning when it happens the first time, and the second time to a conversation between the student, guardian, teacher, and headmaster, other replies indicate a more closed stance whereit is proposed that both the offending child and children as a collective should be regulated.One teacher, based on their own experiences, promotes school bans on mobile phones and iPads. Another presents a more individual and temporary punishment for the child, such as not allowing them to take part in certain activities for a week.

Judging by this post and its comments, the act of secretly photographing teachers and other students is dealt with in what we can guess to be a different way than if it had been practised by an adult.Altogether, the replies to this post indicate a contextual approach, rather than a legal one, in how to deal with this issue, wheredifferent aspects of the context – such as power asymmetries (how punishments are distributed and how children are able to respond), material (to use/remove materials such as iPads), and professional (individual and collective teacher strategies to deal with the problem) – become important for how the offending child is said to be dealt with.

The Threatening Child

The threatening child version of the formula story about dangerous children involves stories about actions intended to cause physical or psychological harm, fear, or a sense of danger. The following example stems from a post made by a group member who linkedto a news article published by one of the largest Swedish daily newspapers. It was entitled: ‘The teachers’ stories: he strangled me’. The group member making this post also added: ‘Working as a teacher has become dangerous. Almost as dangerous as a firefighter or police officer. More dangerous than being a healthcare worker. What’s gone wrong? Why haven’t our unions reacted before we ended up here?!’ (Non-anonymous group member TRG).

This post received 40 emoji reactions,ranging from crying to angry emojis,and 35 comments in which other membersshared their experiences and discussedpotential reasons for what might have ‘gone wrong’. The following example is one of the replies to the original post.It contains many of the points also made in other comments and thus illustrates the breadth of how the issue is discussed in relation to the original post.The comment is not anonymous and received eight reactions, including thumbs up, sad emojis, and emojis hugging a heart.

Example 2.

The most shocking thing is that it’s descending in age. It’s no longer the tough teenagers with attitude. I’m quite a big guy who does martial arts and I work in the military, but I’ve been threatened with a knife by a year three student, my life has been threatened by a student in preschool class, and [there have been] attempts to beat me up (that’s where my combat training came in handy) by 3 or 4 students over the year. I’m not so worried about myself, but I can fully understand that others might feel insecure. I know colleagues who choose to close their eyes if something happens because they’re afraid to intervene with students. (Non-anonymous group member TRG)

The children mentioned in the original post, and in the replies, are positioned as physically threatening and the teachers position themselves as having a high-risk profession by comparing themselves with police officers, firefighters, healthcare workers, and soldiers. The three symbolic codes of children, violence, and professionalism are interwoven in this second example. The children are described as threatening actors in a violent society where teachers need resourcesto protect themselves. Emotions of fear and disappointment become a natural consequence of the plot in this story. As teachers lack the necessary resources to protect themselves, in contrast to police officers or soldiers, and lack support from their unions, they have lost any sense of agency when confronted with a threatening child. This lack of control makes it impossible to make any professional claims, and colleagues are described as evasive in threatening situations.

The above reply to the original post describes exposure to various threats on several occasions by children in different age categories. The threatening child is hence no longer tied to a particular age category, ‘tough teenagers with attitude’, which is made clear several times throughout the post. It is the ‘shocking’ fact that the violence extends further down the age-groups that creates a starting point for the discussion that follows, which is about the perceived vulnerability of teachers,and argues that today all children are potentially dangerous.

The teacher agency described in the above excerpt appears to be very limited in relation to an environment involving a threatening child, and the teacher describes several resources that can be used to counteract this constraint (Priestley et al., 2015).Mastering martial arts and having certain physical attributes (being ‘big’) are two resources that emerge as important in an assemblage where teacher agency can be enacted. This illustrates that dealing with a threatening child is not so much about the teaching profession as it is about personal knowledge and attributes beyond the professional.Furthermore, in the excerpt, this teacher’s agency is both dependent upon and enactedin relation to other teachers, their lack of ability to act, and the children(Gallagher, 2019).The story indicates a form of situated agencyin which the threatening child’s actions seem to reduce, condition, and limit the scope of teachers’ action, i.e. closing their eyes when something happens, instead of intervening. In contrast to the offending child, who can more easily be dealt with through restrictions, the threatening child therefore enacts a counter image in which it is instead the teachers’ actions that are limited.

The Physically Violent Child

The next version of the dangerous child is characterised by testimonies about children who use physical violence in school.Byphysical violence, we mean instances where children’s physical actions cause injury, harm, or damage to teachers or to the locations/materials.This excerpt was posted by an anonymous member. It clearly struck a chord with readers as it received 486 reactions of various kinds, such as sad and crying faces, and hearts, as well as 137 comments.

Example 3.

Today,I received my first slap on the cheek from a student. A slap on my left cheek. The student went completely crazy in the classroom, totallydemolishing it. The assistant couldn’t understand why the student was acting out. The assistant met up with meand, as we opened the door, the student came running straight at me, swinging a metal handle from my office chair, [which they had] demolished. The handle misses my face and hits the door, resulting in a huge notch in the door. The handle is taken care of by the assistant, and I walk into the classroom and ask carefully ‘but what’s happening?’ The student turns around, runs forward, and slaps me on my left cheek with an open hand and screams ‘whore’. I contact the guardians and headmaster. One of the guardians calls me back and when I explain the situation and say that she should pick her child up, she says: ‘Damn, the headmaster needs to hire competent staff. I’m getting stressed out just because you’re reaching out. Do your job!’ This term, the student has been expelledseveral timesfor hittingother students, demolishing interiors, and hitting the assistants. And I agree with the mother, I don’t have the competence to take care of this student, none of us at the workplace have. We’re an elementary school; the student is enrolled in a special teaching group with few students and many staff. But the adopted premises, and knowledge about how to take care of students with that behaviour, are lacking. I reported it to social services, I’ve been writing other reports, reported it to the union and protection officer.I’ve requested that we on the staff receive guidance from a psychologist (finally, we have done since April), asked for a self-defence course, and education like residential care homes, but nothing happens. I don’t know how I’ll be able to work! I’ve been working as a teacher formanyyears, I’m experienced. Tomorrow I’m staying home from work! (Anonymous group member TRG)

In this story, the child is positioned as extremely violent towards both other students and the staff, throwing things, spitting, and insulting the teacher. The teacherand the assistantare positioned as victims of violence and insults, not just from the child but also from the guardian. Furthermore, the teacher position itself has been abandoned by actors with responsibilities. The headmaster is described as passive or even incompetent, both the union and the safety representative are absent, and there seems to be no response to the teacher’s various reports from officials.The teacher presents possible solutions to the problem, includingthe desire for a self-defence course and education similar to that provided in residential care homes. However,it seems that these have not been heard,which, judging by the post, has led to a sense of despair.

All three symbolic codes of children, violence, and professionalism are involved as the image of the physically violent child is shaped in this example. This makes the story part of the “social problem genre” (Loseke, 2012, p.260), in which sympathy for the victim is an integrated part of the emotional system.This is also evident in the responses to the post, which vary from suggestions to report the incident to the police, seek counselling support, or that the teacher should stay at home, to replies aimed at providing emotional support and encouragement.Some reflect upon this child’s presence in the classroom and at school, and while some argue that a special form of education is needed, others suggest that the child should be placed in an institution.

The physically violent child clearly evokes strong emotions andis described as a faceless danger in the classroom, who completely prevents the teacher from using normal professional procedures and makes the teacher into a victim who fears being beaten, or even killed. On the one hand, the child in this story does not appear to be an actor who achieves any kind of agency. The narrative of the child’s anger and rage signals a sense of lack of power, a kind of lack of competence, and even non-agency. Reinforcements in the description, such as the child going ‘completely crazy’ and that ‘no one could understand why the child got so angry’, constitute this child as a person completely without limits or control. The child’s actions do not match the adult norms and expectations about children’s actions that generally characterise either the school context or society at large.

On the other hand, by stepping outside of conventional patterns and norms, acting in unexpected ways, and breaking established patterns of relationships – i.e. student/teacher – and reconfiguring these, this child can be seen as enacting a type of inventive agency whereby unexpected eruptions cause trouble in a situation containing elements of risk(Gallagher, 2019). The spatial, material conditions are decisive for the type of agency that is enacted in the post: the door, the metal handle that is thrown, the office chair that breaks. Likewise, the embodied expressions, body language, verbal speech, and bodily actions are important reinforcements of how the child’s power to act is expressed in the post. The physically violent child is a threat to teacher agency in many ways,and the teacher describes a feeling of having lost all sense of control and agency,and perhaps even hope for the child involved in the situation. Hence, this story signals a power asymmetry, in which the child’s potential to act is both enabled and limited, both in the situation and beyond. The post does not recount what happened to the child afterwards; rather, the following reasoning includes demands on the adult world to (re)act in a situation described as hopeless.

The Danger-to-Life Child 

This version of the formula story about the dangerous child carries a high degree of seriousness because it typically involves children who kill others at school, making it an undeniably sensitive and emotionally charged topic. This post in the TRG refers to reports in the national media about a child who killed teachers at a school in Sweden in 2022. Several posts are related to this act of violence.Some involve information about similar acts of violence in Sweden, others express sadness and feelings of increased insecurity in their roles as teachers. A post describing distaste at going to work after such an event received 223 reactions, mostly sad emojis, and 69 comments.School attacks with a fatal outcome are thus a topic that both affects the group and creates commitment.The entry below is one in a series of entries concerning the incident in Sweden in 2022. The postreceived 32 reactions, such as crying faces, thumbs up, hearts, and 32 comments.

Example 4.

I just wanted to open up a discussion around the increased violence and lack of security in today’s schools by considering the awful deed yesterday in [city name]. What do you think one should do? I’ve seen the violence of children for myself, even the young ones in elementary and middle schools, so I can only imagine how unpleasant the situation must be for teachers in high schools who are exposed to aggressive students. I understand that this is a sensitive subject at the moment and of course I don’t want to be disrespectful to the victims, but I really think that these deeds are a wakeup call for the entire school system and that we should do something about the fact that teachers are being killed in our country because it’s incomprehensible that this is actually something that’s going on. (Non-anonymous post on TRG)

The children in this example are positioned as extremely violent, even as killers, and the teachers as victims. The teacher writing the post positions the teacher audience as potential future victims of lethal violence and as colleagues who need to wake up and start to discuss this matter. Obviously, this story involves all three code systems about children, violence, and the teaching profession in a way that evokes stronger emotions than in the previous cases. The position of a child asamurderer is extremely complex because it is the polar opposite of views of children as innocent(Robinson, 2008), and this activates emotional codes of many kinds, such as sadness, fear, and agony. When adding the code system of (teacher) professionalism, based on the idea of an adult with professional authority and control in school, the complexity becomes overwhelming.

This post does not offer any solutions or advice about what needs to be done in order to avoid these kinds of tragedies inthefuture, nor does it suggest any ways to restore teachers’ professional authority in situations that risk escalating into deadly violence. However, the post challenges colleagues to discuss this sensitive subject.

The comments following the post offer solutions of various kinds. When reasoning around the ‘reality’ that students are now bringing weapons to school, one non-anonymous group member writes: ‘Students should not be allowed to bring backpacks from home but keep all they need in school […] or you can have guards at all schools and metal detectors […] less freedomand less space for knives, weapons, axes, etc. to be taken into the school grounds, simply’ (Non-anonymous group member). On the same topic, another non-anonymous group member writes that schools should ‘putup cameras in public spaces like hallways and schoolyards […]this is a measure that would have an immediate effect on the safety and order of the schools’ (Non-anonymousgroup member).

In contrast to most of the previous examples, these comments are not based on the threat of a real child from the teachers’ everyday life, but the threat of thepotentially life-threateningchild. This assemblage, in which elements such as the school, risks, the child, teachers, and weapons take up various permutations,enactswhat could be major consequences for the entire group of children because the suggested solutions offer pre-emptive measures that will affect everyone. From this point of view, and although theoretical, the danger-to-life child could be seen as imbued with a strong sense of agency.

A third, quite different, suggestion was proposed by yet another teacher in the group. This suggestion takes a different and more proactive approach to the problems of experiences of increased threat from deadly school violence raised in the original post: ‘What should be done immediately is to incorporate child and adolescent psychiatry and social services into schools, as a natural part.Then students and families can get help immediately, before the problems escalate’ (Non-anonymousgroup member).

Using terms fromtheSkolverket[Swedish National Agency for Education](2022), which are also well established in Swedish schools, this comment involves proposals for supportive measures,work that is part of everyday school activities and ongoing,rather than the more preventive measures proposed in the first two comments,whicharemore about generally identifying and targeting risks in school practices. The preventive approachinvolves restrictive measures that will affect children as a collective, to limit them as a group, while the promotional approach suggests measures that will affect individual children, measures that are designed to help, rather than stop or limit, the children who are in need of support.Both approaches indicate that it is possible to stop the danger-to-life child through school measures reaching beyond the teaching profession, but that these measures require efforts from elsewhere and other professions, human and non-human actors, cameras, guardians, metal detectors, psychologists, counsellors, etc. Althoughthe comments reveal two widely different approaches to the same problem, they both contain perspectives that shift the responsibility for a “danger to life child”, which is not regarded as a matter for teachers.

Discussion

In the results section, above, we have retold different versions of the formula story (Loseke, 2012) aboutthe dangerous childas described in the TRG on Facebook. We have stressed the various positions taken by the teachers and given to the children they discuss.Beginning with our overall take on agency, which involves an interest not so much in what agencyis, but rather in what itdoes, we have also analysed how different forms of agency, both teachers’ and children’s, emerge when these stories are told and the various emotions involved in the stories, such as sadness, frustration, and solitude. In the following, we discuss how the ‘negotiation of agency’ illustrated so far might influence teachers’ views of themselves and their profession, as well as their views of children in Swedish schools.

One argument we have presented is that it is necessary to understand and acknowledge non-conventional forms of agency in order to analyse the concept of the dangerous child. Up until now, we argue, the concept of teacher agency has generally been associated with something that is normatively good. Teachers who achieve professional agency are in control of the situation based on their experience, their colleagues, their relationships, and their interpretations of institutional norms and values. The ideal is teachers who are capable of handling contextual challenges and developing transformative forms of agency that will also make them strong professionals in the future (Leijenet al., 2019).

Likewise, it has traditionally been assumed that children’s agency is inevitably positive(Tisdall & Punch, 2012) and associated with norms such as freedom, competence, and autonomy (Annerbäck & Sparrman, 2022; Gallagher, 2019;Sutterlüty& Tisdall, 2019). However, the way in which children’s agency has traditionally been approached risks ignoring how some children are substantially constrained by their contexts, such as the school and other conditions. The Swedish school system,like those in other countries, requires children to have discipline, sit still, and listen to adults,such as teachers. Prevalent practices and discourses thus emphasise the normative student as silent and still (Kirby, 2019), saluting, in Gallagher’s (2019) words, a routine agency where bodies act in ways that develop and reproduce traditional conventions and norms. As shown in the results section, the various types ofdangerous child fall outside of such established norms of agency, and this has a range of consequences for both teachers and children. As we have seen, the types of unexpected agency both reinforce and challenge teachers’ professional agency in new ways; for example, through both successful and unsuccessful teacher management and control of violent situations.

The results presented in this article illustrate that teachers seem to experience a lack of agency when they have to deal with more serious kinds of school violence. In contrast to Chaaban et al.’s (2021) study, the teachers in this study did not enact different forms of agency, such as coping,resistance, or resilient agency. Rather, they expressed a need for otherprofessions to step intotheschool to solve the problem of dangerous children in the classroom, as well as frustration at not knowing what to do, either as individuals or as a collective of professionals.

Furthermore, we argue that, through adopting the concept of the formula story, the analysis in this article has enabled a wider understanding of how symbolic and emotional systems are involved in the social negotiation of agency. That is to say, it is not only aspects specific to teachers and schools, orsymbolic codes relating to children, violence, and professionalism that are at stake when agency is enacted.The type of invented child agency (Gallagher, 2019) described by the teachers in the TRG both reinforces and challenges our traditional views of children, such as how a child should behave, what a child should know and be capable of, and childhood innocence, in light of which the dangerous child is perceived as a threat to the moral social order (Robinson, 2008), as well as to teacher agency.This, together with the recurring representations of teachers’ roles as insufficient, collectively conveys an impression of a rather dark contemporary childhood, with children being described as out of control,and where the dangerous child can be found in all age categories. This challenges the normative perception of children’s agency as inherently positive (Sutterlüty& Tisdall, 2019). Instead, as illustrated in the teachers’ narratives, some students, whether intentionally or otherwise, enact a situated form of ‘dark agency’ within the school context through the use of violence or threats. This form of agency is enacted through a meshwork of events, bodies, materials such as mobile phones, and elements of the physical environment. It disrupts the typical power asymmetries found in classrooms, thereby challenging adult authority and the balance between teacher (adult) and child agency. Moreover, dark agency is frequently reinforced through the various iterations of the formula story, which may be counterproductive in light ofwhat we imagine to bethe actual intentions of the post writers.

On the basis of the overall results of this study, we ask ourselves:Doesteacher and child agency, as a concept, need to be challenged? AdoptingEteläpeltoet al.’s (2013) clear distinction between individual agency and social context, defining them as interdependent but mutually constitutive analytical units, might open up new ways of reasoning. Perhaps the challenges discussed in the TRG should not be regarded as a problem for teachers and students, even though they are situated in the classroom. Perhaps it is the broader social context that should be the focus of discussion? If so, the concept of teacher agency is too centred around teachers, as individuals and a professional group, and therefore tends to draw attention away from other prevalent aspects of the social context. The same applies to normative interpretations of children’s agency and the family.

The main challenges described by the teachers in the TRG seem to have been shaped beyond the reach of schools and teachers; thus, we cannot expect teachers to achieve a kind of ‘super-agency’, as we define it, to deal with these types of problems by themselves. Even if they did, it would not solve the problem.Therefore, we argue that dealing with a structural challenge in our society, such as school violence, must involve more than just the institution of school. The thought of making too many demands on one profession, assigning them the power and tools to achieve ‘super-agency’, is frightening. What, then, is at risk of taking place in relation to children’s agency, including its darker forms?

Conclusion

A major conclusion is that there are three symbolic codes – regarding children, violence, and professionalism – at stake when the teachers in the TRG position themselves and children in relation to school violence.Firstly,childrenare not normally dangerous, but something has happened in society that makes some children violent or threatening in different ways. According to many, this is a new phenomenon, or at least that so many children are now violent. Secondly,violenceis a growing problem in our society, and this is publicly discussed in terms of gang criminality, domestic violence, and war, and specifically discussed in terms of school shootings and violence in schools in the USA and Northern Europe. Thirdly, teachers are normallyprofessionalswith authority and control over what happens in school, but when children are perceived as dangerous, teachers become victims who are afraid and lack control.

As we have shown, different versions of the formula story are constituted through narratives and images in which the child is positioned as offending, threatening, physically violent, or even as a danger to life. In the results section, where we describe how children are positioned and how teachers position themselves, we have illustrated how the codes are woven together in complex ways when agency is enacted (or not) in the interaction between teachers and children. Thus, we offer a theoretical contribution by arguing for the need to rethink teachers’ agency, children’s agency, and the entanglement between them.

One conclusion that we draw about teacher professionalism is that the authority of teachers is deeply questioned when violence becomes a part of classroom management.Another conclusion is that these stories, as they are told in the TRG, raise concerns about the polarisation of children’s and teachers’ perspectives around aspects related to school violence, and potentially even issues beyond it. An urgent matter for schools, in Sweden and elsewhere, is to address the potential gaps between teachers and children in school and act in ways that close such gaps in order to re-establish a healthy balance between children’s and teachers’ agency. Beyond the implications for society at large, where the issue must be addressed from multiple angles and employing diverse resources, we may also need to rethink teacher professionalism in relation to children. This involves acknowledgingchildren’ssituated, sometimes conflicted, actions and experiences.A step in this direction could be to create more spaces where these tensions can be critically explored and navigated with sensitivity to power dynamics and ethical complexities, while respecting both teachers’ and children’s agency. In practice,this could include safe forums for dialogue between teachers and students. In teacher education, it could mean incorporating more critical discussions and sessions to prepare future teachers for managing violence thoughtfully and ethically.

Recommendations 

Teachers’ perspectives and coping strategies are a relatively understudied area within the broader literature on school violence,which needs to be further explored in the future (McMahon,Peist, Davis, Bare et al., 2020; Tarablus & Yablon, 2023, 2024). It is especially important because studies have shown that school violence can have an impact on teachers’ perceptions of both their professional and individual selves (Skåland, 2016). In conclusion, there is a clear need for more qualitative, interdisciplinary research on school violence, research that includes and critically engages with both teachers’ and children’s perspectives. Given the sensitive nature of the topic, it is equally important to develop innovative and ethically responsible methodologies that can capture the lived experiences and voices of all those involved.

Limitations

This study is limited to what teachers write on Facebook and to the references they use in the rebellion group. The formula narrative about dangerous children is a social construction that is shaped by a mixture of media reports, personal views, and experiences, as well as other sources in social media. This means that they are fictive in one sense; however, they are written by teachers who are engaged in their profession and use their private time to discuss and reflect upon these issues. The conclusions they draw are very likely to have consequences for how they (and other adults) think and act as teachers when they meet their students (children).

Lastly, studying school violence through Facebook offers distinct advantages. It enables the exploration of a sensitive topic via authentic expressions and provides access to diverse perspectives and voices that emerge through interactions, including responses and reactions to posts. However, as with any such data, there are limitations. For example, the group provides limited information about users’ backgrounds and professional roles. As noted in the methods section, the group is large and includes many teachers, but not all members actively contribute, which inevitably affects the study’s generalisability.

Ethics Statements

This study is part of a project that has been reviewed by the local ethical board at Karlstad University in Sweden.Group members of the TRG are continuously reminded of the presence of the researchers. The information posted to the group also emphasises that teachers who do not wish to be included in the study are able to contact the PI, who ensures that these teachers’ posts are not subjected to analysis.

Conflict of Interest

No conflicts of interest were reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council under [Grant 2020-03144].

Generative AI Statement

No generative AI or AI-supported technologies have been used during the work on the article.

Authorship Contribution Statement

Annerbäck, as the corresponding author, has had the overall responsibility for submitting the article. Both Annerbäck and Löfgren have worked with the data acquisition, conceptualization, design, analysis, and writing the manuscript.

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