Constraint or Enactment: How Institutional Logics Shape Teachers' Classroom Discipline Practices

• In Event: 21020 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 20: School and Classroom Dynamics: Trust, Discipline, and the Pathways to Educational Flourishing

Abstract

The implementation of educational discipline faces micro-level obstacles, with classroom discipline serving as its core process. Through a case study approach, this paper examines ten teachers from Grades 10 and 11 at Weicheng High School and their classrooms to explore the patterns and institutional mechanisms of disciplinary actions in secondary school classrooms. The findings reveal that four institutional logics—performance logic, educational logic, exchange logic, and situational logic—collectively shape teachers’ disciplinary practices. These logics intersect pairwise, giving rise to four routinized disciplinary scripts: the blitz strike (dominated by performance and situational logics), the strong strike (guided by performance and educational logics), the feigned strike (driven by exchange and situational logics), and the guerrilla strike (shaped by exchange and educational logics). This study argues that institutional influence on teachers’ disciplinary actions operates not by rigidly "bounding" their behaviors or prescribing values, but by providing symbolic resources. Through processes of "translation" and "invocation," these resources activate teachers’ disciplinary practices. Consequently, the regulation of disciplinary systems should shift from "refinement" to "systematization."

Authors

• Zhiyong Zhu, Beijing Normal University

• Han Hao

• Zhu David Shengzhi, Capital Normal University