Corporal punishment in schools has been among the most prevalent forms of ritualized violence against children and youth in the modern era. While today most states formally prohibit the practice, the custom of striking or ‘chastising’ pupils for alleged disciplinary infractions is still common around the globe. In recent decades, neuroscientists and child psychologists have demonstrated that the physical punishment of children has adverse consequences on the brain development and mental health of children into adulthood. Contemporary children’s rights advocates have drawn attention to these studies and invoked international instruments such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to argue for the abolition of caning, strapping, and other forms of physical punishment in the classroom.
Even as the physical punishment of children and youth has been the object of growing study within the health sciences and law, its historical dimensions have been relatively unexamined. While there is a large body of historical literature on the corporal punishment of adults, historians have done little empirical work on the school as a site of violence. As a result, the socio-legal structures, discursive features, and historically contingent aspects of corporal punishment in schools have remained understudied.
For a workshop and special issue of The History of Education Review, we invite contributions that investigate the social, legal, and/or political aspects of corporal punishment in schools in historical perspective, as well as campaigns to abolish the practice within humanitarian and rights-based frameworks. This workshop and special issue will be the first dedicated specially to the history of corporal punishment in schools. They will adopt a unique comparative and transnational perspective that integrates several methodologies heretofore applied in isolation.
The aims are:
- To create a transnational and comparative forum where national and regional case studies in the history of education can be brought into productive dialogue.
- To bring into conversation scholars across a range of disciplines (e.g, history, educational research and policy, law, psychology), while arguing for the unique contribution of a historical approach to the topic.
- To deepen our understanding of how historical practices and attitudes to physical punishment have influenced contemporary policy and legislation.
Abstracts of 300 to 350 words along with a brief research CV should be emailed to marco.duranti@sydney.edu.au with ‘special issue abstract’ in the heading.
Deadline for abstract: 28 February 2026
The workshop will be held on 6 July 2026 at the University of Sydney. This will be a hybrid workshop.
Deadline for article manuscript: 31 December 2026
Expected special issue publication date: 2027
Please note that not all workshop papers may be published.
Journal Information: Scopus journal Q1, H-index 10
List of Topic Areas
- Corporal punishment in schools,
- Physical punishment of children and youth,
- School discipline,
- Children’s rights
Submissions Information
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/herv
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see here: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/her
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Key Deadlines
Closing date for abstract submission: 28/02/2026
Email for abstract submissions: marco.duranti@sydney.edu.au
Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 01/08/2026.
Closing date for manuscripts submission: 31/12/2026
For more details refer here
