How Do Teachers Cultivate Student Respect During the Middle School Years?

• In Event: Creating Good Human Beings: New Perspectives on Cultivating Ethical Character in EL Education Middle Schools

Abstract

EL Education is designed to teach students to respect all members of their school community. Teachers model and practice respect and build relationships with families that value their voices (EL Education, 2018). By definition, individuals show respect by demonstrating that they view others as having inherent worth or value (Lickona, 2009), regardless of differences in physical appearance, culture, and background. Showing respect for others is deeply infused within the practices and culture of EL Education schools. EL Education schools embed prosocial skills into their classroom structure (e.g., Crew) and enact curriculum to raise issues related to respect (e.g. books with a social justice theme). Despite the integration of respect into EL Education, little is known about if and how it works.

In this paper, we address three research questions: 1) Do students at EL Education report themselves as more respectful than those in comparison schools? 2) To what extent does teacher caring, purpose, and agency contribute to students’ development of respect? 3) What practices are used to cultivate respect in EL Education versus comparison classrooms according to students, teachers, and parents?

The team surveyed 244 5th and 6th grade students at 5 EL Education and 4 comparison schools at three time points: fall (baseline), winter (January-March), and spring (April-June). Half of the students were female; the majority were Black (45%), White (35%), or Latinx (16%).

In fall and spring, students rated respect on a 1 to 5 scale for six statements such as, “I respect the values of people from different cultures.” In winter, students reported on their school experiences (relationships with teachers, sense of purpose, agency) using the Teacher Caring subscale of the Tripod (Ferguson, 2008), the Youth Purpose Survey (Bundick, et al., 2006) and the Student Engagement Measure (Reeve & Tseng, 2011). Also, we conducted 31 student interviews, 9 focus groups, 6 teacher interviews, and 6 parent interviews involving questions such as, “Can you tell me about ways that your teachers teach respect at your school?”

We used a concurrent, convergent mixed methods design to understand the cultivation of respect in EL Education and comparison schools. The first two research questions used quantitative data. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we examined: 1) the relation between EL Education and respect (controlling for baseline respect), and 2) the classroom experiences (teacher caring, purpose, agency) that related to gains in student respect in one year.

There were no significant differences in student respect between EL Education and comparison schools. However, in testing the EL Education theory of change, findings indicate that teacher caring was significantly and positively predictive of growth in student respect (β = .35; p < .05). Purpose and agency did not relate to respect.

Analyses for the third research question are underway. To explore classroom practices designed to teach respect, we use grounded-theory analysis (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) and maintain rigor by using an audit trail. Coders are blind to condition. Findings will advance knowledge on how teachers support the development of respect in middle school youth.

Authors

• Lia E. Sandilos, Lehigh University

• Sara E. Rimm-Kaufman, University of Virginia

• Celine I Thompson, University of Virginia