Educational Researcher

Liu, Jing; Penner, Emily K.; Gao, Wenjing

doi: 10.3102/0013189x231179649pmid: N/A

Teachers’ sensemaking of student behavior determines whether students get in trouble and are formally disciplined. Status categories, such as race, can influence perceptions of student culpability, but the degree to which teachers’ initial identification of student misbehavior exacerbates racial disproportionality in discipline receipt is unknown. This study provides the first systematic documentation of teachers’ use of office discipline referrals (ODRs) in a large, diverse urban school district in California that specifies the identity of both the referred and referring individuals in all ODRs. We identify teachers exhibiting extensive referring behavior, or the top 5% referrers, based on the number of ODRs they make in a given year and evaluate their contributions to disciplinary disparities. We find that “top referrers” effectively double the racial gaps in ODRs for both Black-White and Hispanic-White comparisons. These gaps are mainly driven by higher numbers of ODRs issued for Black and Hispanic students due to interpersonal offences and defiance and also partially convert to racial gaps in suspensions. Both the level and racial compositions of the school sites where top referrers serve and their personal traits seem to explain some of their frequent referring behavior. Targeting supports and interventions to top referrers might afford an important opportunity to reduce racial disciplinary gaps.

Weddle, Hayley; Lockton, Marie; Datnow, Amanda

doi: 10.3102/0013189x231187372pmid: N/A

Recent research has examined the influential role coaches may play in supporting teachers’ collective capacity building for instructional improvement. While emerging research is promising, much remains to be learned about collaborative approaches to coaching, particularly in schools with the greatest opportunity gaps. We draw on extensive longitudinal qualitative data to explore a collaborative approach to coaching in urban middle schools under pressure to improve math outcomes. Findings reveal key coaching strategies to promote teacher team capacity building, including fostering student-centered discussion and collaborative relationships, tailoring capacity-building opportunities to provide access for all teachers, and negotiating across teachers and leaders to support improvement efforts. This work was complicated by conflicting expectations between leaders and teachers as well as challenges with addressing teachers’ misconceptions about math content in group settings. These findings reflect the need for ongoing capacity building that supports coaches as they attend to group dynamics and accountability pressures.

Dunn, Alyssa Hadley

doi: 10.3102/0013189x231174804pmid: N/A

In this manuscript, I argue that narratives of self-care for educators in the midst of pandemic teaching are a form of gaslighting, supported and exacerbated by a neoliberal school system that reinforces individualist, White-normed conceptions of teaching and learning. To make this argument, I use several excerpts from practicing teachers’ writing to illustrate the deep sense of frustration and betrayal that teachers felt when inundated with self-care messages without regard for more systemic support and change.

Sobti, Neha; Welsh, Richard O.

doi: 10.3102/0013189x231191448pmid: N/A

Persistent racial disparities in students’ disciplinary outcomes have been one of the most concerning educational policy and equity topics for decades. Despite the hypervisibility of Black students in school discipline conversations, research and practice evade a focus on anti-Black racism. In this essay, we draw from Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit) to present a theoretical framework that researchers and educational stakeholders can use to specify, study, and understand antiblackness in school discipline. We outline and discuss six interrelated theoretical constructs of the Antiblackness in School Discipline framework: (a) “Trading Away the Black,” (b) “Whites as Propertied,” (c) Intersecting Blackness, (d) Racial Neoliberalism, (e) La Petite Misère, and (f) Internalized Racism. Examples of studies providing empirical support for these theoretical tenets are also discussed, and suggestions for utilizing this framework in scholarship, policy, and practice are also offered.

Hunter, Seth B.

doi: 10.3102/0013189x231189273pmid: N/A

Principals can affect several consequential schooling processes and outcomes. However, their effectiveness varies substantially and is distributed across schools inequitably, underscoring the importance of effective principal professional development (PPD), which begins by using needs assessments to inform PPD content. A researcher-practitioner partnership assessed principal needs via monthly teacher surveys about specific teacher evaluation skills. While internal consistencies were high, test-rest reliabilities were low, implying that reports regarding the quality of specific principal practices may fluctuate substantially over short periods, potentially hampering the design of effective PPD.

Bastian, Kevin C.; Fuller, Sarah C.

doi: 10.3102/0013189x231187890pmid: N/A

Using 7 years of administrative data from North Carolina public schools (NCPS), we track changes in teacher and principal attrition and mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic and assess how attrition is related to characteristics of educators and schools. We find that educator attrition and mobility increased sharply between Fall 2020 and Fall 2022. Data from the pandemic period indicate that educators of color and more effective educators have experienced larger increases in attrition than their White and less effective peers. Gaps in teacher attrition have narrowed between schools educating many versus few historically marginalized students.