A Lifeworld of Difference: Perceptions of Positive Discipline Practices in Diverse Public Schools

• In Event: 35.077 - Pushing Beyond Zero: Issues in Zero-Tolerance School Discipline and Positive Discipline Alternatives

Abstract

Objectives:
Since the enactment of zero tolerance policies in the 1990s, research has focused with increasing intensity on the disproportionately numerous instances of suspensions and expulsions of male students of color. Positive discipline practices like restorative justice and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) seek to reduce the need for suspension by facilitating relationship-building, setting clear behavioral expectations, and maintaining a positive school climate. While these practices appear to reduce suspension rates overall, evidence suggests that they have not been able to curb racial disproportionality in school discipline (Tobin, Hawken & Frank, 2012). The purpose of this study is to understand, from the perspective of students, teachers and administrators, what it means to implement these practices fairly across diverse groups of students.

Conceptual Framework:
The study was framed by Habermas’s conception of “lifeworlds-based systems”. This lens allowed me to talk about the connection between a “system”, such as a particular discipline policy or model, and the lifeworld in which that system operates or, in extreme and undesirable cases, dictates transactions and relationships. Presuming that ethnically diverse schools with majority white teacher populations would require “culturally responsive discipline”, I drew from several theorists and studies (King, Harris-Murri & Artilles, 2006; Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, 2008; Monroe, 2005; Monroe, 2006) to focus Habermas’s theory specifically on what it would mean to build a healthy lifeworld in a multicultural school context.

Methods:
The study employed interviews with staff and students, participant-observation, and document analysis across three public secondary school sites in New York City. These schools share staff and student demographics, with majority white teachers and culturally and linguistically diverse students. All three sites share low suspension rates as compared to the citywide mean.

Findings and Significance:
Findings support the potential for positive discipline policies to reduce disproportionality as well as the need for suspension. The findings illustrated that, while all administrators in the study were implementing positive discipline practices in order to curb high suspension rates, only some of them made racial disproportionality an explicit focus of this endeavor. It is recommended that administrators who wish to reduce not only but suspension but racial disproportionality in discipline take the following steps: a) explicitly frame alternatives to suspension (for both staff and students) as efforts to stem disproportionality in school discipline, b) build an intentional school community that connects anti-racist disciplinary practices with the overall mission of the school, and c) encourage implementation in a systematic but flexible manner to respond to individual student needs.

Author

• Hilary Lustick, New York University