Educator-directed violence (EDV) in South African schools is a cause for concern. The phenomenon cuts across all nine provinces in South Africa, impacting teaching and learning. Moreover, EDV is forever increasing despite the implementation of mitigation strategies in schools. The numerous reported cases of educator-directed violence in schools highlight that there are dire consequences of the aggressive act, which entail loss of educators lives in the school setting, while in some cases the educators are attacked when home by learners. In learners threatening educators in the school settings, they mention resolving issues with educators when they are with their gang members, and indeed such threats are acted upon, as these learners know where educators reside; these lead to serious injury or death of educators. The main research question that guides this research is, what are educators' experiences with educator-directed violence (EDV) at secondary schools in Soweto, Gauteng, South Africa? Identity, social learning, and ecological systems theories are the theoretical foundations for this research. This qualitative phenomenological research study included 100 purposively selected educators from eight secondary schools in Soweto, Gauteng, South Africa. Open-ended questionnaires and unstructured interview schedules were employed to gather data. Findings state that there are no efficient measures of violence in the selected secondary schools, which highlights the prevalence of the phenomena. Moreover, educators are neither informed nor empowered to know what to do when faced with EDV or where to report the experiences. Findings highlight that the School Management Team (SMT) is the greatest measure in handling EDV cases, as they hold disciplinary cases; unfortunately, these have limited recourse for the victim and perpetrators, and as such, EDV still prevails. Furthermore, law enforcement is one of the measures in cases of criminality; however, they are not consistent in their availability. These findings illustrate that, despite the precautions put in place by the Department of Education, educator-directed violence is on the rise in classrooms in Soweto. We recommend that the Department of Education (DoE) review its approaches to addressing EDV in schools and that educators obtain systematic education to better their capacities and violence-mitigation strategies. Finally, some policies must be changed to reduce violent incidents, and better mechanisms for dealing with repeat offenders must be implemented.

Keywords: Aggression, Soweto, bystander educators, exclusion, experiences, inclusion, marginalization, perpetrator, victim, violence.