Race and Gender Influences in Classroom Discipline

• In Event: Confronting and Countering Racism, Sexism, and Discipline Patterns in Early Childhood and Elementary Education Contexts

Abstract

There is great inconsistency around school discipline. Despite students of various backgrounds exhibiting similar behaviors, African American and Hispanic students are more often suspended or expelled than their peers (Arcia, 2007; Mendez & Knoff, 2003; Skiba et al., 2011; Wallace, Goodkind, Wallace, & Bachman, 2008). Scholars determined that teachers tend to place a strong emphasis on controlling behaviors of African American students (Mendez, Knoff, & Ferron, 2002; Neal, 2014; Richart, Brooks, & Soler, M., 2003; Skiba, Michael, Nardo, & Peterson, 2002) and are more likely to issue severe punishments (Neal, 2014; Monroe, 2005). Disciplinary inequities between 2000-2010 also indicate that students of color, specifically African Americans, were referred most often for subjective offenses like disrespect of authority, threatening, and disobedience, as well as suspended and expelled when compared to other student groups (Eitle & Eitle, 2004; Lewis, Butler, Bonner, & Joubert, 2010; Skiba et al., 2002; Townsend, 2000). Such variability can contribute to classroom discipline inequities, especially when certain student groups are repeatedly represented in school discipline.
This study incorporated tenants of symbolic interaction and sociocultural theory as a guide for understanding teachers’ and students’ making sense of classroom disciplinary moments. Through direct observation, conversational interviewing, and stimulated video recall interviews the researcher entered the classroom lives of boys of color in an urban school district charter school, in which all teachers were also of color. The study documents the construction of classroom tensions between teachers and students in real time. Results reveal classroom disciplinary moments were co-constructed, negotiable, and often transpired with teachers and students responding to very different stimuli.

In spite of cultural congruence, African American teachers of African American and Latino students singled out students, often issuing severe and inconsistent sanctions to students. Findings also indicate that classroom disciplinary moments between teachers and students are greatly influenced by intra- and inter-personal factors; and, therefore can be considered malleable. Reported is that misbehavior is a ubiquitous notion in classroom everyday life whereby a teacher’s internalized oppression can result in unfair treatment of students. A framework for teachers’ and students’ interpretative meaning making processes is provided. A newly discovered structure of the interactional aspects of classroom disciplinary moments is also discussed.

Given there is very little prior research that considers students’ and teachers’ perceptions of live classroom discipline acts from moment-to-moment, and the high representation of students of color in school discipline, this is an area that requires further investigation. Studying the viewpoint and perspectives of students and teachers around the co-construction of racialized classroom disciplinary moments is necessary for understanding the range of variables that may shape perceptions of what appears to be aberrant classroom behavior. These methodological tools and theoretical frameworks could be employed by practitioners as pathways to better understand the impact of teacher-student classroom interactions and the co-construction of classroom disciplinary moments.

Author

• Rebecca A. Neal, Arizona State University