Relational Trust: An Ethnographic Look at Staff and Students’ Relationships in an After School Program

• In Event: 435 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 07. Extracurricular Schooling

Abstract

Within sociology of education, the topic of school discipline begins within the conversation about peer culture and norms, particularly with the work of Coleman (1966) and Durkheim’s (1959) notion of anomie. At the epicenter of this topic is the argument over “oppositional culture,” which states that students of color do not see themselves in an academic culture (Ogbu, 1978). A growing body of work counters such claims in favor of closely examining structures of schooling, such as tracking, that can create opposition (Harris, 2011; Sutherland, 1995; Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey, 1998; Tyson, 2011). Very little literature exists to depict the micro-interactions between students and teachers in daily situations involving potential disciplinary moments, let alone interactions among staff members themselves.

One way of understanding the nature of school discipline is through examining staff relationships. Relational trust (Bryk and Schneider, 2002) is a construct for measuring elements of staff dynamics. While it is clear that discipline is important because it creates a healthy and safe school climate for learning (National School Climate Council), discipline is unfairly meted, particularly in terms of racial disproportionalities of suspensions (Skiba, Michael, Nardo, and Peterson, 2002; Fenning and Rose, 2007; Skiba, et al., 2011; Gregory, Skiba, and Noguera, 2010; Losen and Skiba, 2010). What remains unknown is how staff relationships with one another (defined as relational trust) influence student discipline and student-teacher relationships. This article examines the role of relational trust among a small staff within an after school program and how staff dynamics influence relationships with students.

Author

• Jessica Lipschultz, New York University