Concerns over skyrocketing school disciplinary rates have driven the search for alternative methods to address disruptive student behavior. Restorative disciplinary practices are a promising option for our nation's schools. This investigation explores the willingness of educators to adopt restorative discipline by analyzing survey data from the Northwest Justice Forum Pre-Training on Restorative Justice in Schools. Data analysis was conducted using the Theory of Planned Behavior as a model for understanding and predicting future behavior--in this instance, willingness to be contacted for more information or willingness to participate in a future study. A concurrent review of the participant's school disciplinary policies demonstrated how participant views are reflected in practice. The analysis suggested that the respondent's attitude significantly predicted intention, and both attitude and intention predicted behavior. Furthermore, the policy review confirmed that restorative discipline is largely absent and cautioned that there may be misconceptions about its use.

Maintaining a safe and orderly learning environment in schools is fundamental to the greater goals of education, but determining optimal disciplinary responses to student misbehavior is often complicated. While there is an abundance of research that speaks to the negative impact of exclusionary discipline (e.g., suspension, expulsion or any other disciplinary response that removes a student from the traditional classroom setting) on student behavioral and academic outcomes, there is an absence of work that examines if, when, and to what extent a student is actually better off receiving non-exclusionary dispositions. Using multivariate regression analysis on a unique dataset from an urban Texas school district, this study directly compares the impact of exclusionary vs. non-exclusionary discipline on student outcomes (controlling for student characteristics, school characteristics, and offense type). Additionally, the study examines the extent to which offense type influences the relationship between disposition and student outcomes. The study’s findings suggest that a student is generally worse off in terms of academic progress and risk of future offenses when she/he receives an exclusionary disposition for any disciplinary infraction. The impact of exclusion, however, was shown to vary by student offense. / text

ABSTRACT Before 1994 corporal punishment was the main discipline strategy implemented in schools. Since then legislation has been passed, which resulted in corporal punishment being made illegal. The majority of educators strongly opposed this change in the national discipline policy as they felt it left them powerless in terms of disciplining their learners. In 2000 a national programme on discipline strategies was embarked on and many of the results were incorporated in the booklet titled “Alternatives to Corporal Punishment: The Learning Experience.” This booklet formed part of the National Department of Education’s discipline policy. It contains guidelines for implementing alternative strategies to corporal punishment in an effort to remediate problems with discipline. It also gives examples of disciplinary action for dealing with misconduct. The objective of this research was to establish what educators’ perceptions of the Department of Education’s alternative methods to corporal punishment are after they had exposure to it by means of a workshop. The research also aimed to explore underlying reasons for the educators’ perceptions. The sample of sixty-four educators used for this purpose came from various school contexts from traditional ex-model C schools to historically disadvantaged schools. The data in this study was obtained by means of a structured questionnaire, which was administered to the educators that attended the workshop on the Department of Education’s Discipline policy. In view of the fact that there are no existing instruments in use to explore the objectives of this research, it was necessary to develop a questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of both open-ended questions, which required a more qualitative approach as well as close-ended questions, which were more quantitative in nature. The results obtained from this study showed that the majority of the respondents who attended the workshop agreed with the discipline policy proposed by the Department of Education. However, there was a significant discrepancy between the educators’ perceptions of the policy and whether they felt it could be successfully implemented in their schools. The main reasons for this was that the respondents felt that the Department of Education and educator training institutions do not provide educators with adequate discipline training and support. Furthermore, the findings of this study demonstrated that the respondents are experiencing a state of learned helplessness where they feel the discipline problems they are faced with are beyond their control.

This applied dissertation presented a mixed method design to gain a broader perspective of the perceptions of classroom management practitioners within a particular school district. Many teachers, or practitioners, experience issues with classroom management because of their understanding of strategies they use. Because of the researcher’s position within the education system, it was recognized practitioners are mandated to utilize specific classroom management strategies. As such, the study was designed to glean the perceptions of these practitioners in relation to the misunderstandings and mandates related to the strategies dealt with on a daily basis. The perspectives gleaned afforded opportunities to generate statistical data. The last question presented to the study participants allowed each participant to express his or her ideas, related to the questionnaire or otherwise, in any way they saw fit. The analysis of the study took into consideration the open response comments as they pertained to the statistical data generated. Findings revealed the most favorable, as well as most effective, strategies as perceived by actual practitioners. Practitioners also expressed their opinions indicating their displeasure regarding mandated classroom management strategies commonly referred to as Office Referrals. Practitioners indicated they perceived revoking student privileges, placing students in time-out areas, and utilizing counseling services as more effective when choosing strategies relative to managing their classrooms.

High occurrences of student incivilities are a growing concern in the K-12 education system. This problem may be directly impacted by systems thinking and inconsistent school policy enforcement. At a local high school, this problem affected student learning outcomes and teacher-student interpersonal relationships. The purpose of this case study was to explore the perceptions of teachers and administrators regarding consistency in discipline policies and practices, as well as student incivilities as they related to Senge's 5 disciplines. The conceptual framework for this study was Senge's 5 disciplines of organizational learning: systems thinking, mental models, team learning, shared vision, and personal mastery. Using a case study design and responsive interviews, data from discipline procedure documents and data on student incivilities were collected from 9 teachers in Grades 9-12, as well as 2 administrators. The data were analyzed using Hatch's interpretive method. Findings indicated discipline policies and practices were ineffective and inconsistent, due to poor systemic communication structures and lack of classroom management. A recommendation was made to implement systemic classroom management policies and Positive Behavior Intervention and Support trainings. Positive social change occurs when administrators and teachers implement the systemic policies and trainings identified in this study in order to motivate students to change their patterns of incivility and, as a result, focus on learning.

In this study, I examine the extent to which students’ rights to free speech and expression were violated in response to the nationwide school walkouts that took place during the spring of 2018. Students hold the right to political speech and expression under the landmark Supreme Court Case, Tinker v. Des Moines (1969). However, the rights students maintain to participate in protest during school hours is somewhat unclear. Using a two-pronged case study analysis, I explore the question of student rights and potential violations in the face of protest through examining school disciplinary responses alongside disciplinary policy and disciplinary policy in the context of Tinker. Findings highlight a widespread gap in school and district-level policy specific to protest or other types of political expression and the need for such policy when protecting the rights students hold under Tinker.

This study explored how the discursive practices of government education systemic discipline policy shape the behaviour of Aboriginal primary school students in an urban education district in Western Australia. First, this study conducted a Foucauldian genealogical discourse analysis of the historical and contemporary discursive forces that shaped systemic discipline policy in Western Australian government schools between 1983 and 1998 to uncover changing discursive practices within the institution. This period represented a most turbulent era of systemic discipline policy development within the institution. The analysis of the historical and contemporary discursive forces that shaped policy during this period revealed nine major and consistent discursive practices. Secondly, the study conducted a Foucauldian genealogical discourse analysis into the perspectives of key interest groups of students, parents and Education Department employees in an urban Aboriginal community on discipline policy in Education Department primary schools during the period from 2000 to 2001; and the influence of these policies on the behaviour of Aboriginal students in primary schools. The analysis was accomplished using Foucault's method of genealogy through a tactical use of subjugated knowledges. A cross section of the Aboriginal community was interviewed to examine issues of consultation, suspension and exclusion, institutional organisation and discourse. The study revealed that there are minimal consistent conceptual underpinnings to the development of Education Department discipline policy between 1983 and 1998. What is clear through the nine discursive practices that emerged during the first part of the study is a strengthened recentralising pattern of regulation, in response to the influence of a neo-liberal doctrine that commodifies students in a network of accountability mechanisms driven by the market-state economy. Evidence from both genealogical analyses in this study confirms that the increasing psychologisation of the classroom is contributing towards the pathologisation of Aboriginal student behaviour. It is apparent from the findings in this study that Aboriginal students regularly display Aboriginality-as-resistance type behaviours in response to school discipline regimes. The daily tension for these students at school is the maintenance of their Aboriginality in the face of school policy that disregards many of their regular cultural and behavioural practices, or regimes of truth, that are socially acceptable at home and in their community but threaten the 'good order' of the institution when brought to school. This study found that teachers and principals are ensnared in a web of governmentality with their ability to manoeuvre within the constraints of systemic discipline policy extremely limited. The consequence of this web of governmentality is that those doing the governing in the school are simultaneously the prisoner and the gaoler, and in effect the principle of their own subjection. Also revealed were the obscure and dividing discursive practices of discipline regimes that contribute to the epistemic violence enacted upon Noongar students in primary schools through technologies of power.

Preschool special education students lack of personal-social skills is affecting their kindergarten readiness and placing them at risk for exposure to school discipline in a large school district in the Southeastern United States. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the relationship between the quality of school discipline policies and personal-social skills of preschool special education students within the focus district. Ecological systems theory provided the framework for the study. Data collection included archived personal-social skills scores, as measured by the Battelle Developmental Inventory 2 (BDI 2), of 354 preschool special education students. Four trained educators rated the effectiveness of the schools' discipline policies using the Teaching and Guidance Policies Essentials Checklist (TAGPEC). Findings from simple linear regression analysis indicated no significant relationship between the TAGPEC ratings and students' BDI 2 scores. An ANCOVA was used to compare BDI 2 scores of students in Title I and non-Title I schools (n = 96 students per group) while conrolling for TAGPEC ratings, but results showed no statistically significant differences. The average quality of the discipline policies was rated as inadequate overall. Findings may be used by district administrators to improve the quality of current discipline policies. A policy recommendation was developed to encourage effective discipline policies and create a supportive school environment to promote positive social behaviors of all students, including the youngest and most vulnerable.

School safety is widely recognized as an ongoing problem in United States public schools. Guided by the New Right, the school safety problem has been framed as an issue of school crime, violence, and student misbehavior that is best mitigated by zero tolerance policies. This stance has emerged as an agenda that has proven disproportionately detrimental to poor urban students of color who have experienced unforeseen levels of punishment since the Gun Free Schools Act of 1994 endorsed zero tolerance. Despite mounting evidence that zero tolerance approaches to discipline do little to deter school crime and violence or make schools safe, little ground has been gained in interrupting the ideology, policies, practices, and discourses of the zero tolerance agenda. The dissertation study theorizes and explores how ideology, cultural-politics, and discourse foster the tendency for policy creation and codification to legitimize the New Right's official knowledge of zero tolerance ideology and policy as a panacea for the school safety problem. To accomplish this, I conducted an ethnographic content analysis of codes of student conduct to examine the imbued ideologies, discourses, and policy changes that emerge from the cultural politics of managing school discipline over the last 15 years. Through this process, I lend empirical credence to the concepts of net-widening and net-deepening. With these guiding concepts, I push the field beyond the zero tolerance discourse on school safety and discipline to establish a generative alternative to understanding school discipline policies called the school discipline net framework. The results of the study establish a precedent for thinking more deeply and creatively about the perils and possibilities of school discipline policies. Major findings include the identification of several school policy changes that make the discipline experience both increasingly likely and potentially more punitive for students. Finally, through substantiating the school discipline net as a framework for discoursing, researching, guiding policy creation, and recognizing and locating sites of agency, this work establishes that it is indeed possible to engage issues critical in the field in ways that can transfer into the highly politicized school policy context dominated by New Right ideologies and discourses. / Urban Education

This study focuses on the role of educators in the establishment and maintenance of effective discipline in the school and classroom. In a mainly qualitative investigation, empirical data from three secondary schools in the Nkangala region of the Mpumalanga Province were collected by means of focus group and individual interviews as well as observation. These data were analysed in accordance with accepted procedures for qualitative data processing. The study confirmed most of the views found in the existing body of knowledge on school discipline. In the dissertation, detailed attention is paid to the disciplinary problems those educators who were interviewed, experienced, the perceived origin of those problems and suggested solutions. The rights and duties of educators in regard to the management of discipline were also considered. To conclude the study, eight strategies to promote the establishment and maintenance of discipline in secondary schools were proposed. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Educational Management)