Exploring shaming practices in classrooms: an ethnographic case study of a low-fee private school in an unauthorized colony in Delhi, India

Thesis

This thesis examines shame-based discipline in a low-fee private secondary school located in an “unauthorized” colony in Delhi, India. Using an ethnographic case-study design, I draw on one year of participant observation, 45 semi-structured interviews with students, teachers (including the principal) and parents, and participatory visual methods (student drawings, explanations, and student-led tours) to analyze (1) how shaming is enacted in everyday classroom interaction; (2) the cultural and relational routes through which shame travels across school and home; and (3) its cumulative impacts on adolescent well-being, participation, peer relations, trust, and motivation. The findings show that shaming is routinized as a classroom-management tool. Teachers use a repertoire of public practices— scolding, derogatory labels, performative punishments, academic comparison, and fear appeals—that work through reputational exposure and peer witnessing.

Shame is further amplified through home–school linkages (threats to involve parents and guilt-tripping through parental sacrifice), as well as through gendered and classed moral expectations that render particular bodies, voices, and futures “out of place.” Students describe predominantly harmful effects: humiliation and anxiety, strategic silence, withdrawal from participation, and strained peer relationships; repeated exposure also erodes trust in teachers and narrows motivation toward avoidance-driven compliance. While adults often rationalize shame as “tough love” and as necessary under high-pressure, underresourced conditions, the data suggest that it produces a brittle form of order—costly even when it appears effective in the short term. Conceptually, I argue that in this case, shame functions as a form of affective governance in everyday schooling: it produces order by organizing classroom emotions and reputational risk but undermines dignity and the relational conditions needed for learning and moral agency. The thesis concludes by outlining dignity-based alternatives and the institutional supports required to make them sustainable.

Authors: San San Wal, B

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-agkwabjvm
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Delhi; school discipline; shame; India; affective governance; adolescents; ethnography; participatory visual methods; low-fee private schools
• Subjects: Education