“I’m Not Mad at Him, I’m Mad at the System”: Teachers’ Sensemaking of Student Behavior

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 21. School Organizational Policies, Programming, and Processes

Abstract

Drawing on neo-institutional theory, this paper examines how teachers interpret student behavior and discipline by drawing upon competing institutional logics. Using in-depth interviews with 66 current and former teachers in two urban districts in the Northeast, I analyze how teachers make sense of student behavior and disciplinary policy in the context of turnover and organizational strain. Although interview protocols did not directly ask about discipline, teachers consistently raised concerns about student behavior. Importantly, most did not frame behavioral issues as individual student failings. Instead, they saw these challenges as consequences of systemic school and district dynamics that enabled or exacerbated behavioral problems. I argue that teachers draw on two competing institutional logics: a logic of control, which emphasizes order, consequences, and authority, and a logic of care, which emphasizes more holistic understandings of students and the system’s failure to meet their needs. Logics of control appeared when teachers framed behavioral problems as stemming from weakened disciplinary systems and insufficient administrative enforcement. In contrast, teachers drew upon logics of care in attributing student behavior to inadequate social, emotional, and academic supports and placing blame on leadership or school policy and practice rather than students themselves. These logics were not mutually exclusive; rather, teachers navigated ambiguity as restorative reforms coexisted with historically dominant punitive models. By centering teachers’ sensemaking, this study illuminates how competing logics shape teaching practice and contribute to professional strain. These tensions generate institutional “turmoil” that may help explain patterns of teacher demoralization and turnover. More broadly, the findings demonstrate how teachers mediate between formal policy and everyday practice, revealing how broader societal tensions over the purposes of schooling play out in schools.

Author

• Macy Lyn Brammer, Brown University