What causes high rates of suspensions, especially for students of color? Growing evidence points to racial bias. For instance, laboratory experiments find that teachers are more likely to knit together a series of misbehaviors as a pattern, to view a student who misbehaves as a troublemaker, and to punish them more severely, if the student is Black as compared with White.
Okonofua, J. A., Goyer, J. P., Lindsay, C. A., Haugabrook, J., & Walton, G. M. (2022). A Scalable Empathic-Mindset Intervention Reduces Group Disparities in School Suspensions. Sciences Advances, 8 (12), 1-10.
There is increasing concern about rising discipline citations in K–12 schools and a lack of means to reduce them. A brief intervention aimed at encouraging an empathic mindset about discipline halved student suspension rates over an academic year. The authors found this intervention, an online exercise, can be delivered at near-zero marginal cost to large samples of teachers and students.
Okonofua, J. A., Panunesku, D., & Walton, G. M., (2016). Brief Intervention to Encourage Empathic Discipline Cuts Suspension Rates in Half among Adolescents. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113 (19) 5221-5226.
This study investigates the ability of a brief empathy-inducing intervention to improve the implicit bias of pre-service teachers, as measured by an Implicit Association Test. The authors found empathy intervention statistically significant at decreasing the implicit bias of White female pre-service teachers toward Black individuals.
Whitford, D. K., & Emerson, A. M. (2019). Empathy intervention to reduce implicit bias in preservice teachers. Psychological Reports, 122(2), 670–688.
The authors of this article suggest; to ensure individuals with disabilities are more fully integrated into school curriculum and American society, schools must revise their instructional narratives and adopt more inclusive and representative resources. The authors identify recommendations to support more inclusive school environments.
Kishore, N., & Cooper, C. "Setting Up a Disability-Inclusive Curriculum." Edutopia, (2022).
The authors explore the critical role that teachers’ attitudes, beliefs, and practices play in fortifying students’ investment in learning. They examine the new findings on “teacher mindsets” and profile schools at the forefront of efforts to shift adult perceptions and practices in ways that strengthen students’ view of themselves as learners and their motivation to learn.
FutureEd, (2019).
School suspension and expulsion are important forms of punishment that disproportionately affect Black students, with long-term consequences for educational attainment and other indicators of wellbeing. Prior research identifies three mechanisms that help account for racial disparities in suspension and expulsion: between-school sorting, differences in student behaviors, and differences in the treatment and support of students with similar behaviors. The authors extend this literature by (1) comparing the contributions of these three mechanisms in a single study, (2) assessing behavior and school composition when children enter kindergarten and before most are exposed to school discipline, and (3) using both teacher and parent reports of student behaviors.
J. Owens, S. S. McLanahan, Unpacking the Drivers of Racial Disparities in School Suspension and Expulsion. Soc. Forces 98, 1548–1577 (2020).
