Race and Teachers' Differential Decision-Making About Students' Behavior: Results from a Name Experiment
Date
2022-07-26
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Abstract
School discipline outcomes for Black students are disproportionately worse compared to their peers. In the aggregate, Black students are disproportionately sent to the principal’s office for behavior deemed problematic; however, extant research demonstrates that Black students do not misbehave more than their peers. Differential treatment of Black students may occur in any or all parts of the classroom discipline process, including teachers’ surveillance of the classroom, interpretation of behavior, and whether referral is necessary. This dissertation addressed teachers’ differential characterization and likelihood of referral to the principal for Black students compared to White students and investigated the role of teachers’ beliefs about inequality, multicultural efficacy, and social-emotional competence in differential decision-making using a name experiment that manipulated students’ implied race. Teachers (n = 320) were asked to read hypothetical vignettes of students’ compliant, inattentive, withdrawn, hyperactive, and aggressive behavior. Student race was manipulated by the use of stereotypically Black and White names (or no name control). Teachers were randomly assigned to rate behavioral vignettes for hypothetical students with either stereotypical Black, stereotypical White, or no name (control) and asked to characterize the behavior and rate their likelihood of referring the student to the principal. This dissertation study focused on differential treatment of Black students at the teacher-referral level. Teachers are charged with managing students’ behavior in the classroom and are also the primary source of school discipline referrals. Relations among teachers’ self-reported beliefs about inequality, multicultural efficacy, and social-emotional competence as predictors of teachers’ ratings were examined. Across analyses, results indicate no differential characterization of Black students’ behavior and no differences in likelihood of referral, compared to White and control conditions. For this sample of teachers, social-emotional competence fully mediated teachers’ beliefs about inequality to their characterization of students’ behavior regardless of implied race; however, it did not predict or mediate teachers’ beliefs about inequality and their likelihood of referring students to the principal. Multicultural efficacy did not predict or mediate this relationship for this sample of teachers. Findings are discussed in the context of continued efforts to study teachers’ differential decision-making via replication, overlapping and novel study designs.
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school discipline disparities, social-emotional competence, teachers, differential evaluation, multicultural efficacy, racial bias