Date of Award
12-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
International Family and Community Studies
Committee Chair/Advisor
Dr. Natallia Sianko
Committee Member
Dr. Mark Small
Committee Member
Dr. Bonnie Holaday
Committee Member
Dr. Susan Limber
Abstract
This study investigates how Egypt’s School Discipline Bylaws (SDB), issued between 2014 and 2024, construct the language of discipline, children’s rights, and school governance. Using a Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis (CADA) combined with interpretive Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the research identifies child-rights terminology within the five Bylaw versions, examines its relationship to the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and traces how these linguistic patterns change over time. The analysis also explores the discursive framing of discipline, sanctions, and agency, alongside a rubric-based evaluation of the SDB’s alignment with CRC principles of protection, participation, and non-discrimination.
Findings show that protection-related vocabulary is consistently the most prominent and procedurally developed across all versions, reflecting a strong institutional emphasis on safeguarding and violence prevention. Participation-related terminology appears more modestly and remains largely symbolic, with few mechanisms that enable students to exercise meaningful influence. Non-discrimination language demonstrates intermittent growth but continues to function primarily as an ethical expectation rather than an operational requirement. Discursively, the Bylaws shift toward professional and therapeutic understandings of discipline. Agency remains predominantly adult-centered, with limited but emerging references to students as actors within tightly managed structures. Overall, the SDB exhibits strong discursive alignment with CRC protection principles, but only partial alignment with participation and non-discrimination, indicating areas where future policy development can further support children’s rights in educational settings.
Recommended Citation
Hassan, Noha Ekram, "School Discipline Bylaws in Egypt: An Analysis of the Framing of Children’s Rights in Education (2014–2024)" (2025). All Dissertations. 4122.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/4122