Disparate Child Discipline: Differences in Classroom Behavior Management Based on Teacher Experience

• In Event: 4240 - Power and Inequality in the Lives of Children and Youth

Abstract

This study examines how experienced and novice elementary school teachers use discipline in their classrooms as a means of social control. It adds to literature on inequalities within school discipline, considering how teacher demographics contribute to the over-disciplining of students. Drawing on five months of ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in a public elementary school comparing experienced and novice Kindergarten and fourth grade teachers, I find that novice teachers are more likely than experienced teachers to apply punitive control in their classrooms. As a result, novice teachers reinforce the hidden curriculum of conformity in their classrooms more frequently than experienced teachers. Given an educational context in the United States in which inexperienced teachers are more likely to teach disadvantaged students, teacher placement may contribute to the over-disciplining of minority and low-income students – students who already experience higher rates of discipline compared to their peers.

Author

• Maritza Mestre Steele, Indiana University