Examining the Impact of a "No Excuses" Discipline Approach in Charter Schools

• In Event: Perceptions of Curriculum in the Lives of Teachers

Abstract

Using positioning theory as an analytic tool, this qualitative study of twenty, charter school teachers in the Northeast investigates how their schools’ use of a “no excuses” discipline system comes to shape teachers’ views of their students, themselves and the larger purpose of learning and teaching within these buildings. We find a number of competing narratives with teachers being positioned both as passive enforcers of the discipline system and autonomous overseers implementing discipline as they chose. Students are positioning in similarly complex ways – as both passive beings unaware of “what is best for them” and powerful potential deviants, needing constant oversight. Finally, through this positioning, instruction became a tool for control and compliance rather than creativity and critical thinking.

Authors

• Julianna E. Kershen, The University of Oklahoma

• Jennie Weiner, University of Connecticut