"The Role of School Minority Composition In Determining Teacher Perceptions of Schoolwide Misbehavior"
April 20, 2018
UCI Student Center Woods Cove
Presenter: Jacob Kepins
Title: The Role of School Minority Composition In Determining Teacher Perceptions of Schoolwide Misbehavior
Contextual characteristics of schools are often taken as exogenous and antecedent in research into the disparities in discipline gaps between students of color and White students. Much research has shown that students of color are subject to lowered behavioral and academic expectations (Wright, 2015; McGrady & Reynolds, 2013; Downey & Pribesh, 2004) which can lead to divergent outcomes (Gregory, Skiba & Noguera, 2010). However, much of the extant research fails to capture how school context - specifically, minority composition - affects teacher perceptions of schoolwide student behavior, which is linked to classroom disciplinary practices (Mitchell, Bradshaw & Leaf, 2010). This paper uses a nationally representative sample of public high school teachers to ascertain the degree to which schools with varying percentages of Black and Hispanic students are seen as being disorderly compared to schools with varying percentages of White students. Additionally this paper investigates the role that teacher race/ethnicity plays in predicting these perceptions. We find significant effects of both minority composition and teacher race/ethnicity in determining perceptions of misbehavior.