Mid-Western Educational Research Association. Discipline With Emotion: Exploring the Influence of Teacher Tone on Elementary Students' Perceptions of and Responses to Teacher Authority

• In Event: The Consortium of State and Regional Educational Research Associations: Distinguished Paper Session 2

Abstract

Popular preventative discipline programs often provide guidelines for ideal disciplinary interactions, emphasizing teachers’ use of a “neutral,” “soft,” “warm,” and/or “loving” tone of voice during student discipline. Yet a long line of scholarship on black teacher pedagogy (Delpit, 1996; Foster, 1991, 1997; Gordson, 1998; Irvine & Fraser, 1998; Monroe & Obidah, 2004; Patterson, Mickelson, Hester, & Wyrick, 2011; Ware, 2006) has found that some African American teachers effectively use a direct, assertive, and strict disciplinary tone in the context of trusting relationships to communicate high expectations and concern. Through experiments, interviews, and observations, the current study explored how elementary students perceived and responded to the strict tone aspect of this “tough love” discipline style. Based on the study’s findings, I argue that programs that deem just one mode of communication acceptable may in fact be needlessly excluding diverse teaching styles and disregarding the cultural assets of the teachers who use them.

Author

• Sarah Elizabeth Cashdollar, University of Chicago