Exploring Teachers’ Use and Perceptions of Soft Exclusionary Discipline in Kindergarten

• In Event: Soft exclusions, hard solutions: Examining the precursors to and solutions for exclusionary discipline in early childhood

Abstract

Intro: Recent research, policy, and practice efforts have been made to eliminate persistent racial inequities in school discipline from preschool onward. However, the spectrum of exclusionary discipline practices children experience beyond suspension and expulsion has been scarcely acknowledged or examined (Sabol et al., 2021). “Soft exclusionary discipline” refers to practices across the exclusionary discipline spectrum, including any adult responses to children that reduce or prevent their engagement in learning opportunities (Wymer et al., 2020). In the present study, we examine the frequency of a broad range of soft exclusionary discipline strategies, as well as teacher ratings of their utility within kindergarten classrooms. In addition, we explore associations between soft exclusion and teacher and classroom ecological factors that have been associated with expulsion risk in prior studies.
Method: We drew data from a larger, observational study of early learning conducted during the 2017-18 and 2019-20 school years. All participants were kindergarten teachers. Detailed demographics are provided in Table 1.
Teachers completed online surveys each spring on their use and perceptions of various discipline strategies and demographic information about their classrooms. We adapted survey items from the Teacher Strategies Questionnaire (Webster-Stratton et al., 2001) to ask teachers to rate the frequency with which they used a range of soft exclusionary practices (see Figure 1 for items) in their classroom, as well as how useful they found each practice. All teachers (n = 181) responded to questions about seven different exclusionary responses; teachers who participated during the 2019-20 school year (n = 72) responded to eight additional items that were added later in the study to examine soft exclusion in further nuance.
We calculated descriptive statistics for frequency and utility ratings for each of the 15 soft exclusion items. In addition, we explored linear correlations between soft exclusion items and teacher and classroom factors.
Results: Frequencies are presented in Figure 1. Though average ratings fell within the rarely to sometimes range, around 40% of kindergarten teachers reported using the majority of soft exclusionary strategies half the time or more. Regarding usefulness, teachers rated the majority of the strategies as somewhat non-useful or neutral (neither useful or non-useful) on average. We found small to moderate correlations (.20-.38) between frequency and utility ratings of soft exclusionary responses and contextual factors including teacher age, years of experience, symptoms of burnout, and average classroom income-to-needs ratio. Results of regression models further exploring associations between soft exclusionary items and classroom ecological factors will be reported in the final presentation.
Discussion: These results expand understanding of soft exclusion in the early years of school, adding to a growing body of literature that demonstrates the importance of considering the full spectrum of exclusion in research, policy, and practice initiatives to better understand and eliminate discipline inequities and improve early learning experiences (e.g., Williford et al., 2021; Wymer et al., 2022).

Authors

• Maria Accavitti, Brown University
  Presenting Author

• Pilar Alamos, University of Virginia - Charlottesville

• Kelsey Ann Clayback, University of Virginia - Charlottesville

• Amanda P Williford, University of Virginia - Charlottesville