Advancing Culturally Relevant Discipline: An Ethnographic Microanalysis of Disciplinary Interactions With Black Students

Abstract

Culturally relevant discipline (CRD) has the potential to mitigate the disproportionate disciplining of Black students in American schools. Utilizing interaction ritual theory, this research uses ethnographic microanalysis to investigate nonverbal, paraverbal, and verbal communication in three student–teacher disciplinary interactions from one predominately Black high school. The analysis (a) provides the first microlevel empirical evidence of the success of culturally relevant discipline. Then it uses microinteractional evidence to resolve theoretical neglect and strengthen theoretical assertions of past CRD scholarship. It argues that (b) CRD can reinforce learning processes and (c) critical consciousness is a teacher prerequisite for CRD.

Keywords

culturally relevant pedagogy subjects African American students urban education school discipline

As it currently functions, discipline in American schools is unsuccessful. This is particularly true in urban schools, broadly defined, where scarce resources and top-down policies push some teachers to harsher and less just actions toward students. The vast overdisciplining of students from marginalized backgrounds, coupled with the negative outcomes associated with discipline, contribute to inequitable and inhumane schooling experiences. Most notably, students who are Black¹ are the most hyperdisciplined population in American schools. Despite this, there are still teachers who utilize disciplinary interactions (DIs) as an opportunity to forge positive relationships with their Black students. These teachers cast DIs as opportunities to enhance the quality of educational experience for students who are Black. Teachers who are able to use DIs to this end often engage in culturally relevant teaching and discipline (Ladson-Billings, 1994/2009; Weinstein et al., 2004).

This article microanalyzes three videoed DIs, two of which showcase advanced culturally relevant techniques and one of which showcases still-developing culturally relevant techniques. Through these microanalyses, the article evaluates the effectiveness of culturally relevant discipline (CRD) at an interactional level. The first vignette provides microlevel empirical evidence of the success of CRD. Then, using two additional vignettes, the article argues two major theoretical implications for CRD. First, culturally relevant pedagogy (in both theory and practice) pays attention to embracing all students as learners, but CRD (in both theory and practice) has not fully grappled with its role in the learning processes of students. This article addresses that tension. Second, while some discipline scholars have recognized the importance of a sociopolitical awareness of teachers, this article locates the Frierean conception of conscientização (Freire, 1970/2000) as a prerequisite for engaging in authentic culturally relevant DIs.

Discipline has rarely, if ever, been studied at this level. Although other scholars have utilized video-based data to examine disciplinary processes (Vavrus & Cole, 2002) or discipline in urban contexts (Kwok, 2019), none to the authors’ knowledge have studied discipline at the microinteractional level. As such, this is the first article to provide microlevel empirical evidence of CRD success. A microsociological perspective provides novel advancements to both the theory and practice of high quality, just disciplining of students.

The Literature: Defining and Contextualizing Discipline

Discipline is frequently overlooked as a central function of schools, even though, as Noguera (2008) argued, school discipline is “the primary means through which symbols of power and authority are perpetuated” (p. 96). It teaches students moral lessons about fairness, empathy, authority, and power, as well as sociopolitical lessons about who is disciplined, how, and for what reason. As Butchart (1998) wrote, “through classroom discipline, teachers enact social and moral relationships. The form of management enacted promotes particular social, moral, and political ends, usually unconsciously and unintentionally, but no less effectively” (p. 4). Put simply, discipline teaches students how the world works.

Although typically scholars of discipline focus on extreme sanctions like suspensions and expulsions that are usually passed down by the administrator, the discipline process—and the implicit sociopolitical lessons associated with it—actually begins with DIs in the classroom. As Diamond and Lewis (2019) explained in their qualitative analysis of discipline in a racially mixed school, “The fact is, most students are never suspended or expelled from school. However, all students have daily interactions with school staff in which their behavior is subject to regulation or they observe their peers being regulated” (p. 833). It is this daily regulation—or “DIs”—that make up the majority of what constitutes discipline in practice, though not the majority of what is studied in education research.

The discipline that occurs within the classroom setting is the focus of this research. Specifically, it focuses on the student–teacher DI. Although discipline is influenced by contextual forces, the interactional processes are the primary means through which community standards and implicit sociopolitical lessons are reinforced. The interactional focus also casts both students and teachers as interactional agents within this moment. Although Vavrus and Cole (2002) suggested the term “disciplinary moment” to capture a similar unit of analysis, the transition from language of “moment” to language of “interaction” more accurately represents the continuous and iterative process of classroom discipline: rarely does discipline happen in one specific moment but almost always is carried out over a series of interactions escalating to a disciplinary referral or sanction. Specifically, “DI” refers to any incident when a teacher addresses or controls a student’s behavior. The teacher’s relative power within the classroom often dictates the tone, length, and severity of a DI.

Importantly, teacher perception of student behavior, which is influenced by racial bias and culturally situated understandings of “appropriate” behavior, is likely the root for hyperdisciplining of Black students. Students who are Black are over 3 times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their White peers, even when holding constant rates of misbehavior and poverty (Skiba et al., 2011, 2014). Notably, however, the student–teacher relationship may be the space in which this hyperdisciplining begins. Skiba and colleagues (2011) found that students who are Black were over 2 times more likely to get an office referral from a teacher than their White peers (Skiba et al., 2011). Bryan et al. (2012) found that student race predicted English teachers’ referrals to school counselors for disruptive behavior. In their recent volume, Milner et al. (2019) argued that one of the major themes of discipline literature is the “centrality of the relationships between teachers and students” (p. 18). A focus on how teachers and students interact, then, illuminates potential causal mechanisms behind the hyperdisciplining of students who are Black.

Although the interactional focus provides a unique unit of analysis through which to interrogate discipline, interactions must be contextualized within larger cultural settings. The concentration of students who are Black within Black schools is one factor that influences how discipline is enacted between a student and teacher. The racial segregation of public schools is increasing (Glenn, 2011). Currently, the average student who is Black attends a school that is 29% White (Economic Policy Institute, 2013). In some metro areas, like Detroit and Washington D.C., the number is closer to 2% (Economic Policy Institute, 2013). Much of the hyperdisciplining of Black students actually originates from between school effects, rather than within school effects (Anderson & Ritter, 2017; Kinsler, 2011). In other words, the discipline gap is being propelled forward because policy-makers and educators attempt to control predominantly Black student bodies through suspensions and expulsions. The racial threat hypothesis is a sociological concept that suggests a higher proportion of individuals who are Black leads to a higher level of social control in predominantly Black spaces. In schools, the racial threat hypothesis means that predominantly Black schools rely on punitive measures disproportionate to the level of misbehavior displayed by students (Welch & Payne, 2010). Although students who are Black in predominantly White schools face unique discriminatory experiences (Lewis-McCoy, 2018), their disciplining does not account for the statistically observed disparities in discipline.

It is important to note that a “predominantly Black school” is not synonymous with an “urban school,” though the two are frequently conflated. The newest race and place trends actually show wealthy and White individuals moving back to urban centers, thereby pushing out families and individuals who are economically marginalized or from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds (Badger et al., 2019). Interestingly, these residential patterns upsets the typical “Black = inner city” equation that many researchers and educators still utilize. Milner (2012a) outlines three theoretical terms for urban schools that captures this nuance: urban intensive, urban emergent, and urban characteristic. The term “urban intensive” is used to describe schools in the largest metropolitan areas, with the corresponding population density and infrastructure concerns. “Urban emergent” refers to metropolitan areas of less than a million that may have fewer resources overall but fewer problems arising from extreme density. Finally, “urban characteristic” is used for schools who are not in major metropolitan areas but may be experiencing demographic shifts or economic changes that characterize larger urban spaces. Predominantly Black schools, with the corresponding racial threat and structural assault historically assigned to them, can be found in any three of these urban spaces.

Despite the structural marginalization that many predominantly Black schools face, there are students and teachers who carve out successful relationships, even within high control settings. Although high-quality interactions will never completely override institutional and societal racism, certain teachers engage in the disciplining of Black students in ways that do not humiliate and ostracize students. What are they doing? How do successful teachers discipline students in a predominantly Black school? This article argues that during a successful DI, teachers engage in culturally relevant practices through which the student and teacher become physically and rhythmically entrained in ways that lead to positive outcomes such as solidarity.

The Conceptual Framework: The Cultural Relevance Movement

Interactional analyses should be understood within the cultural relevance education movement. This study is highly influenced by Gloria Ladson-Billings’s (1994/2009) seminal concept of cultural relevant pedagogy. Building off the work of scholars like Gay (1993), Mohatt and Erickson (1981), and others, Ladson-Billings made the concept popular in the 1990s by arguing that “culturally relevant teaching is a pedagogy that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes” (p. 20). In her seminal book, The Dreamkeepers, she closely studied the practices and philosophies of eight highly successful teachers of students who are African American. She found that these teachers (a) embraced all students as learners, (b) were flexible in their understanding of how knowledge is constructed, and (c) stressed collective responsibility and rewards. Central to all conceptions of cultural relevance in education, either Ladson-Billings’s or other scholars’, is the recognition that “the classroom [can be] a site of social change” (Aronson & Laughter, 2016, p. 164).

Weinstein et al. (2004) are often credited with applying cultural relevance to discipline. They argue that “culturally relevant classroom management (CRCM)” has five attributes: “(a) recognition of one’s own ethnocentrism and biases; (b) knowledge of students’ cultural backgrounds; (c) understanding of the broader social, economic, and political context of our educational system; (d) ability and willingness to use culturally appropriate classroom management strategies; and (e) commitment to building caring classroom communities” (p. 27). Other scholars have suggested similar concepts, including Lustick’s (2017) “culturally responsive discipline” and Gregory and Mosely’s (2004) “culturally relevant discipline.” Regardless of the term utilized, all of these scholars emphasize that this type of discipline relies on a teacher’s self-reflection and/or behavioral change. Lustick (2017), for example, suggests that educators must actively address racism. Bondy et al. (2007), who examined how novice teachers enacted CRCM on the first day of school, highlighted certain teacher behaviors (i.e., the pedagogical and relationship-building techniques) that promoted CRCM in a classroom. Milner and Tenore (2010), after deeply studying two successful teachers with different racial backgrounds, found that while both teachers employed CRCM in unique ways, a common trend was that both “grant[ed] students entry into teachers’ world” (p. 596). In other words, both teachers valued sharing, either verbally or behaviorally, parts of their lives to humanize their relationships with their students. Relationship-building is central to almost any theory or practice of culturally relevant discipline. In fact, almost all culturally relevant discipline scholars stress the importance of high-quality student–teacher relationships and/or loving environments (e.g., Bondy et al., 2007; Brown, 2004; Weinstein et al., 2004).

However, many scholars of discipline have missed a crucial component of Ladson-Billings’ seminal conception of culturally relevant teaching: embracing all students as learners. That is, when teachers embrace all students as learners, students receive positive messages about who they are within the classroom and are more likely to feel connected and a sense of belonging with school. Although scholars of culturally relevant pedagogy have taken up this crucial component of Ladson’s conceptualizing, discipline scholars have thus far neglected it. By understanding the interactional microdynamics of culturally relevant DIs, this article argues that truly culturally relevant DIs, where teachers exhibit high levels of critical consciousness, play an important role in shaping students’ perceptions of their value as learners.

Study Context: The Story of Local High School

This study interrogates how two teachers at a predominately Black school utilized culturally relevant disciplinary techniques. Administrators from Local High School (LHS), a predominately Black school in the metropolitan Midwest, invited the authors into the building in 2014 to study how race and racial bias were impacting the school culture. The study was named Cogenerating a Community of Trust, Respect, and Responsibility and is a collaborative, ongoing, and multifaceted project aimed at “transformative knowledge construction” (Milner, 2012b). It focuses predominantly on LHS, though it is important to understand the wider community dynamics.

The larger metropolitan area, which would be considered “urban emergent” (Milner, 2012a), is highly segregated along racial lines and has seen much racial unrest in recent years. The small municipality which LHS serves has seen overall population decline in the last four decades (U.S. Census, 2018). Currently, 35,000 people live there, roughly 50% White, 40% Black, and 5% Asian. Ethnographically, while the Black population is predominantly poor to middle-class, the White population in the surrounding community is middle-class to wealthy. U.S. Census data confirms this: Whites in the community have a 9% poverty rate, while Blacks have a 20% poverty rate. There is a residential segregation in the municipality, with much of the White population living close to a prestigious university and much of the Black population living north of the main thoroughfare.

Founded in 1919 and housed in a 1930s building, LHS is the only public high school that serves the municipality. LHS currently has roughly 700 students. It is around 90% Black and two thirds free or reduced-price lunch. At the beginning of the study, many teachers in the building voiced frustrations at both administration’s seeming inaction to disciplining students and at student behavior. Although the vast majority of teachers were dedicated to the school community, the overall teacher culture was one of frustration and stress (Marcucci & Elmesky, under review). The school frequently relied on punitive and normative social control measures (Marcucci & Elmesky, 2016).

Despite this, two individuals stood out as positive and popular teachers. Mr. Anderson and Mr. Baines² both participated in a yearlong teacher-researcher residency which was hosted at a prestigious, Midwestern university and included a weeklong summer workshop to learn research skills, as well as a commitment to classroom videoing over the course of the 2016–2017 school year. Both Mr. Anderson and Mr. Baines are young, White male teachers and are popular with their students. During a focus group in Spring 2015, one student said: “[Mr. Baines] is the coolest man I ever met,” while another student followed up with:

I can just relate to Mr. Baines . . . sometimes; I don’t even go to [first period]. I just go in and I talk to Mr. Baines. I had him for [study hall]—he made us cookies and stuff. He’s talking about our lives with us. It’s somebody we can kind of vent to if we wanted to.

Mr. Anderson is similarly well-respected among students at LHS. In a one-on-one interview, one student described Mr. Anderson as “one of the best teachers I’ve ever had . . . he was really understanding . . . [he] understands that . . . you have . . . fifteen other teachers and all this other stuff going on.” Neither Mr. Anderson nor Mr. Baines would claim to be perfect teachers with perfect classroom management. In fact, they often engage in critical self-reflection and have changed their classroom management approaches in recent years. However, despite this room for improvement, they are popular teachers among both students and administration. Their classrooms can be studied for the interactional and theoretical implications of culturally relevant DIs with Black students.

Interestingly, while LHS is predominantly Black, Mr. Anderson’s and Mr. Baines’s videoed classes range from 22% to 62% Black. In LHS (as well as many schools across the nation), honors classes tend to have disproportionately low representation of Black students. Mr. Anderson’s and Mr. Baines’s classes are no exception. This unique context—of relatively diverse classes in a predominately Black school in a segregated local community—provides the ethnographic backdrop to the interaction analyses presented here. The fact that both teachers chose to have their honors classes videoed (as well as their similar demographic backgrounds) is a limitation of the data collection.

The Analytical Framework: Interaction Ritual Chains

Both the theoretical framework and methodological orientation stem from the fore-fronting of interaction. Randall Collins’s (2004) interaction ritual chains offer one theoretical view to understand interactional patterns more generally. Interaction ritual chains theory defines an interaction ritual as any time “participants develop a mutual focus of attention and become entrained in each other’s bodily micro-rhythms and emotions” (p. 46). Although laypeople understand the word “ritual” as a formalized (and at times religious) action like a wedding or funeral, Collins uses the term “ritual” to refer to most interpersonal interactions. This includes informal interactions that take place on a daily basis, which he refers to as natural rituals.

Interactions produce short-term and long-term emotions. In interaction rituals with no power differential, the actors have equal opportunity to set the mood and gain what Collins refers to as emotional energy (EE) and group solidarity.³ Positive, successful rituals generate high EE, a long-term emotional state associated with “confidence and enthusiasm for social interaction” (p. 108). Failed interactions lead to low levels of EE, including long-term feelings of depression and detachment from the group. In a ritual with a power differential between actors (i.e., a student and teacher), these same outcomes are true; however, the individual with more power sets the emotional tone of the interaction. For students, “power rituals have serious emotional consequences” (Collins, 2004, p. 114). In other words, teachers have a unique capacity not only to set the short-term mood of a DI but also to foster long-term EE in students. A student’s EE has implications for their attachment to school, their identity as a learner, their peer relationships, and their overall mental health (Snell & Lefstein, 2018). If a student has high EE—in part because of a series of successful DIs—they would theoretically have stronger attachment to that classroom environment and the school overall. If a student has low EE—in part because of a series of failed DIs—they could theoretically distance themselves from the school and academic achievement in general.

Interaction rituals produce high levels of EE when individuals become rhythmically, physically, and emotionally synchronized with each other. This synchronization—or what Collins calls entrainment—is measured at the 10th of a second. Collins argues that one beat of human consciousness lasts about 0.2 seconds. Although 1 second may seem a short duration, it actually is five “beats of consciousness,” which can seem like a long, awkward silence in a conversation. In a high-quality interaction (one which produces high EE), the individuals find a rhythm of communication—often with pauses in talk lasting less than a beat of consciousness—and may even unconsciously mimic each other’s body language. This rhythmic and physical entrainment is a key indicator that emotional entrainment is taking place and that individuals are generating high levels of EE through the interaction.

Microanalyses of interactions are relevant not only to the immediate environment but for the broader societal lessons that can be learned. More specifically, deeply studying an interaction provides insights regarding the agency of individuals involved in that interaction as well as the social, cultural, political and psychological forces at the mesolevel and macrolevel that set the stage for that interaction. An interaction can be validly studied as a unit if—and only if—context is considered. Context includes both the immediate classroom and school, but also macrosystemic forces that shape policies, institutions, and psychological processes.

Methods

Individual interactions are important in that they can reveal insights about the environments in which they are nested. The hyperdisciplining of students who are Black is the result of forces nested on many levels of society: student–teacher interactions are nested within school-level factors, which are nested within neighborhood-level forces, which are nested within the American macroculture. Frederick Erickson’s (1992) ethnographic microanalysis of social interaction offers a methodological orientation through which researchers can attend to the 10th-of-a-second microdynamics of an interaction contextualized within larger mesolevel (school and neighborhood) forces and macrolevel (national or global hegemonic) forces.

Ethnographic microanalysis inherently takes an ecological approach to social interactions. As Bloome and Golden (1982) write,

Microanalytic approaches focus on smaller units of context, such as that of a classroom, and examine the patterns of behavior of individuals in these smaller contextual units. Microanalytical approaches are often based on the underlying assumptions (1) that smaller units of context are embedded in larger units of context-i.e., show-and-tell time is embedded in a classroom, which is embedded in a school, which is embedded in a community/ ideological context and (2) that such smaller units of context can be “pulled out” of the larger contexts in which they are embedded without a loss of integrity. (pp. 208–209)

Bloome and Golden contend that microanalysis of interaction provides an authentic, valid way to understand both the local processes of the immediate context but also the larger social processes of communities and even nations. In other words, social interaction is nested within other environments and is a lens through which to study those larger social contexts. Ethnographic microanalysis of social interaction, therefore, can reveal fundamental truths about how humans relate to each other in certain nested, ecological environments.

The aim of ethnographic microanalysis of social interaction is “of specifying and describing those local processes that produce outcomes in educational settings” and to do so with rigorous attention to detail (Erickson, 1992, p. 204). DIs—and all types of interactions—occur too quickly, too unconsciously, and in too great detail to be deeply analyzed via memory. Instead, ethnographic microanalysis relies on video-derived data. Not only does video-derived data allow for attention to unconscious microactions, it also allows for an iterative analytic process.

Data come from classroom videoing of Mr. Anderson and Mr. Baines. The main videoed sessions were regular class periods; however, they were supplemented by a small number of sessions where the class or a small group of students reflected on video footage (as recommended in Derry et al., 2007). Both teachers were compensated for their time and effort. Mr. Anderson chose to have videos taken during Fall 2016 in an Honors Literature and Composition 1 (a course aimed at ninth graders). Nine class periods were videoed, and four video reflection sessions between researchers, students, and Mr. Anderson took place (one whole-class, three small groups). As the reflection sessions were not typical classroom time, they were not reviewed and coded for DIs. In total, Mr. Anderson has 6 hr and 39 min of classroom time filmed and included in this analysis. Mr. Baines teaches Latin and chose to have his Latin III class videoed over the same time frame. In addition to his Latin III students, there were three independent studies students in the room during that period. Two were taking Latin IV and one taking AP Latin. Seven of his class periods were recorded. During three of the seven, the class engaged in video reflection sessions (all whole-class). Again, these video reflection sessions were not included in the analysis because of their atypical nature. A total of 5 hr and 47 min of Mr. Baines’s classroom time is included.

After all videoing was completed, the entire video corpus was viewed, and every DI was identified. Through this step, the operational definition of DI was revised. Then every DI was reviewed and inductive coding was used to identify patterns. This “systematic review” (Snell, 2011) is not presented in this study but is helpful to mention because it informed the selection process for the vignettes in this study. In over 6½ hr of classroom video, Mr. Anderson has 218 DIs. In over 5½ hr of classroom video, Mr. Baines has 189 DIs. Of the 407 DIs identified during the systematic review, some praised a desirable behavior while others addressed an undesirable behavior. In Mr. Anderson’s class, 91.5% of the DIs addressing undesirable behavior were aimed at Black students. In Mr. Baines’s class, 71.4% of the DIs addressing undesirable behavior were aimed at Black students.

The three vignettes used to anchor this analysis were chosen out of the collection of DIs with students who are Black. Vignettes were strategically chosen—based on their typicality or atypicality—to microanalyze. This part of the analysis attended to the two issues that Erickson (1992) identifies as “crucial” in ethnographic microanalysis of social interaction: “(1) identifying the full range of variation in the organization of interaction in whatever setting, network, or community one is studying and (2) establishing the typicality and atypicality (relative frequency of occurrence) of various event types and modes of interaction organization” (p. 206). All three vignettes are chosen because they represent typical DIs that address a negative behavior. This type of DIs was common throughout the corpus; however, these vignettes were selected because they highlight theoretical advancements to the understanding of culturally relevant DIs with students who are Black.

Results

Vignette 1: “Turn Off the RiRi”

In Mr. Baines’s classroom, students sit at short hexagonal tables in groups of three to four. The chairs are small—ones that you would more likely see in an elementary school classroom. When Mr. Baines uses the smart board, some students have to turn their chairs to see. One of the walls has large windows, next to which is a worn-out but comfy green armchair that students sometimes sit in. The walls are covered in posters about Latin and Rome. On one day, Mr. Baines was setting up the next part of an activity, as some students were chatting on-task and some were chatting off-task. Tyson, a student who is both Black and male, started playing a Rihanna song from his phone (see Table 1). The music was quiet, though Tyson started bobbing his head (somewhat facetiously while smiling at the student next to him). Mr. Baines looked up and smiled, saying “Turn that off!” loudly and with some theatricality. Mr. Baines and Tyson had a playful back-and-forth exchange, overlapping with each other’s speech very slightly. Tyson then said with equal dramatization, “I gotta turn off the RiRi?!” to which the other students laugh. Mr. Baines laughed and said, “Yeah, turn off the RiRi.” Tyson then began to turn off the music, as Mr. Baines, smiling, added “Turn off the RiRi, Ty-RiRi.”

Table 1.

Video Clip of Mr. Baines on December 2, 2016.

Time	Mr. B’s actions	Tyson’s actions
37:57.9	Using phone to set up smart board.	Places phone down on desk after turning music on his phone.
38:00.7	Using phone to set up smart board.	Picks up paper relevant to the class activity and looks up at Mr. B.
38:04.6		Turns head to student on his right. Starts bouncing his body to the music, smiling at the other student.
38:07.4	Still looking down at his phone, he says “Let’s do this one.” [in reference to the class activity]
38:10.9	Head turns toward the music, smiling.“Turn that off!” [0.8-s pause]
38:12.6	“Get that outta here—”	Grabs phone and makes a surprised face theatrically says, “I gotta turn off the RiRi?!” [other students laugh]
38:14.7	Nodding slightly and pushing head forward, “yeah, turn off the RiRi.”Laughs quietly.
38:17.4	Smiling, looks down at his phone, “turn off the RiRi, Ty-RiRi.”	Tyson turns off the music on his phone.

This particular interaction is contextualized within their longer student–teacher relationship. Mr. Baines might not have engaged with Tyson in this way if he did not have a positive relationship with him overall. Tyson had been in Mr. Baines’s classes for multiple years. He called Mr. Baines “energetic and innovative” and, on the last day of his senior year, walked up and hugged Mr. Baines goodbye. Tyson was older than most of the students in the class and had a distinctly confident, calm way of being. He was at times reserved in the class videos, though could be playful particularly when interacting with two female students who are Black in the class. In this interaction, for example, he started playing the music and bobbing his head while looking at Cherie, one of the female students who is Black. Tyson also took on leadership roles at times. For example, during one whole-class video reflection, he was a leader when the conversation turned to race relations in LHS.

Mr. Baines relies on a history of positive interactions to respond to Tyson. Their back and forth exchange is rhythmic in nature, with each playing off of the other’s performance. Such conversational rhythm is what Collins (2004) calls entrainment. Rhythmic entrainment refers to the turn-taking patterns of a conversation. Collins writes, “The key turn-taking rules are as follows: one person speaks at a time; when the turn is finished, another person speaks” (p 67). He even argues that the ideal gap between speakers is less than a 10th of a second. When speakers become entrained with each other, their positive EE is replenished. As individuals tend to gravitate toward what feels good for them, they will return to the interactions where they effectively entrained with the other person. Entrainment can also occur when individuals start unconsciously mimicking each other’s body movements. When Tyson says “I gotta turn off the RiRi?!” with some animation and theatricality, he slightly pushes his head forward and makes exaggerated facial expressions. Mr. Baines copies that movement—of slightly pushing his head forward and making exaggerated, emotional facial expression. Rather than Tyson’s theatrical shocked expression, Mr. Baines makes an exaggerated anger expression. Both the parallel body movement and the rhythmic turn-taking in Mr. Baines and Tyson’s DI suggests that they are entraining with each other. Collins argues that entrainment is a crucial microindicator in interaction rituals.

Efficient and efficacious entrainment (i.e., how quickly and well actors become entrained with each other) is mediated by cultural patterns of communication. When teachers engage in culturally relevant language, entrainment and positive emotional energy can be a result. Verbal and nonverbal patterns of communication are often culturally learned, meaning that certain communicative patterns may be more likely to be found in certain racial and gender groups. However, neither race, gender, nor their intersections (Crenshaw, 1989) are the main factors in defining communication. For example, both Mr. Anderson and Mr. Baines are White males of a similar age and have very different verbal and nonverbal communication styles. The same is true for students, of course. Students from similar racial backgrounds may have different communication styles they use during a DI, as personality, geographic origin, native language, and other factors play a large part in developing an individual’s communication pattern. That said, race and gender also shape communicative patterns. Students’ culturally situated verbal or nonverbal communication patterns may be deemed more or less appropriate by teachers and, in turn, disciplined more. For example, a teacher who is White and female may hold more similar culturally learned communicative patterns to her students who are White and female. Therefore, during a DI, the White, female student can anticipate and entrain more quickly with the teacher, thereby generating solidarity more quickly and more effectively. This repeated entrainment and buildup of solidarity creates long-term positive EE for the student and teacher.

This is not to say, of course, that cross-racial student–teacher relationships cannot be successful. On the contrary, as this vignette shows, teachers who are White can engage in critically conscious, culturally relevant language—for example, Mr. Baines is using Tyson’s phrase “RiRi” for the popular singer, Rihanna. Monroe and Obidah (2004) discussed how teachers’ use of colloquial expressions can help strengthen the bond between teacher and student:

Use of linguistic and colloquial student expressions as classroom management tools enables teachers to build cultural bridges between students’ home and school lives . . . the teacher’s culturally responsive management style [can] serve as a mechanism by which [a teacher] promoted and reaffirmed solidarity with her students. (p. 263)

Monroe and Obidah argued that colloquial expressions as a classroom management tool can build up solidarity between teacher and student. Understood through the lens of interaction ritual chains, it could be argued that these colloquial expressions facilitate entrainment and thus lead to higher EE and solidarity.

That being said, Mr. Baines’s use of the word “RiRi” is complicated. He does it in reaction to Tyson’s use of the word. In an interview reflecting on this interaction, Mr. Baines highlights the socially sophisticated way that he engaged with the word “RiRi.” He said that he was “not appropriating the language and not doing it in a way where you are making fun of the language. You are making fun of yourself . . . And that can be kind of tricky to do.” At times when teachers who are White adopt colloquial expressions of their Black students, it can not only seem disingenuous but also racist. Mr. Baines argues that it can seem like the teacher is mocking the students’ culture, rather than themselves. Mr. Baines has mastered the art of authentically engaging with some of his students’ colloquial expressions, and this vignette provides an important example of how culturally relevant language facilitates effective and efficient DIs, via rhythmic and physical entrainment. High-quality interactions—ones that are culturally relevant to the point of producing EE—can create school environments in which students feel welcome and prepared to engage in cognitively and emotionally challenging learning tasks. This radical resetting of the tone of schooling can occur within milliseconds and, yet, has practical and far reaching impacts on the lives of students. Rather than schooling as a marginalizing and alienating experience, schooling (and the disciplinary process specifically) becomes an inclusive and humanizing experience.

Vignette 2: “Anything Going On?”

The traditionally defined culturally relevant DIs, like “Turn off the RiRi,” are powerful, and this analysis offers microlevel evidence of the success of culturally relevant discipline: Tyson and Mr. Baines, using a shared cultural referent, physically and rhythmically entrain, suggesting that they generate positive EE and solidarity from the culturally relevant DI. However, this analysis also attends to an area of theoretical neglect: the relationship between discipline—and culturally relevant discipline specifically—and learning. In Ladson-Billings’s seminal conception of culturally relevant pedagogy, one of her central theses is that successful teachers of African American students embrace all students as learners. When scholars adapted cultural relevance to discipline, they neglected discussing how discipline serves as a mechanism or barrier to learning. Although future analysis must continue to explore this area, this article argues that traditional discipline distances students from schools, thereby negatively impacting the learning processes of students. We use the vignette highlighted here to argue that authentic CRD facilitates both academic learning and social–emotional learning. It does so by indirectly (by strengthening the bond between student and school and so encouraging academic engagement) and directly (by facilitating social–emotional lessons).

For the sake of continuity within the ethnographic narrative, the second vignette also focuses on the same relationship highlighted in Vignette 1—Mr. Baines and Tyson. One day about 3 weeks prior to the interaction described above (see Table 2), Mr. Baines was transitioning the class to a team-based vocabulary exercise. Some students had already started moving to where they were supposed to be when Mr. Baines briefly interrupts himself to ask Tyson to put his phone away. Tyson was wearing headphones, so Mr. Baines leans over a desk and taps Tyson on the shoulder three times, in quick succession, so as to gain his attention. At that point, Tyson looks up from his phone and starts looking at what the other students are doing. About 6 min later, Mr. Baines later walks up to Tyson and says “Tyson, can you put your phone away? You haven’t really learned anything since you got here . . . anything going on?” He then adds, “would you rather study on your own?”. Unfortunately, this follow-up interaction is off camera, but can be heard via the microphoned Mr. Baines as he sets up an independent activity for Tyson.

Table 2.

Video Clip of Mr. Baines on November 11, 2016.

Time	Mr. B’s actions	Tyson’s actions
40:38.2	“Tyson, you’ll be on team blue” [standing in the left of the frame, a few feet away from the student.]Points at student.	Seated at desk, with back to camera. Head looking down (presumably at his phone, given Mr. B’s request).
40:40.7	“Tyson, can you get that phone away?”Takes one step toward Tyson. Leads over desk and taps student’s shoulder three times in 0.9 s.
40:43.2	“And you’ll be on team blue.”Stands up and takes three steps backwards, pointing at student when saying the word “you’ll.”	Lifts head and looks toward Mr. B. Removes headphones. Turns and looks right.
44:03.9	Turns around and looks at Tyson.“Tyson, what are you doing? What are you doing right now?”Takes a step toward Tyson.	On phone at his desk [he had been given instructions to join his team on the side of the room]
44:34.2	Stands next to Tyson.	Puts phone down. Looks at board where activity is taking place.[verbal response inaudible].
44:35.9	“Do you know what team you’re on?”	[verbal response inaudible].
44:38.1	“Cool. So let’s get over by the uhh—bring your binder and get over by the blue team.”Points at board, then points at binder.
44:50.1	Takes three steps toward the main activity.	Closes his binder, phone, and portable charger and walks toward the blue team then off camera.
45:58.7	Starts walking to Tyson.	[off camera and inaudible]
46:00.6	[off camera]“Tyson, can you put your phone away?”
46:03.1	[off camera]“you haven’t really learned anything since you got here. You ok?”
46:06.3	[off camera]Responds to another student’s question
46:12.3	[off camera]“Anything going on?”
46:13.3	[off camera]Silence or responds to another student’s question
46:31.2	[off camera]“Ya wanna, would you rather study on your own?”
46:33.9	[off camera]“Okay, here lemme get uhhhh—let’s see, where’s your binder?”[2.2-s pause]“Do you wanna do uh, uhh, Do you wanna do like Quizle on your phone?’
46.43.4	[off camera]“Okay, cool—
46:45.5	[off camera]“Okay, whatever you need. Would you rather do it on your laptop or on your phone?	“My laptop”
46:48.4	[off camera]“Okay, cool. That works. You can do, like um, the scatter game or something. Those are good. Thanks, Tyson.”	Walks through camera shot toward desk. Looks at game over his shoulder as he walks.

This interaction shows elements of embracing Tyson as a learner. Mr. Baines does not assume that Tyson is on his phone because of disinterest or apathy toward the learning material, but rather because of some external factor. He expresses concern that “You haven’t really learned anything since you got here” and asks Tyson if he would rather work individually. His use of the word “learned” focuses in on Mr. Baines’s concern: that Tyson is missing out on learning time. Mr. Baines then redirects Tyson’s time to a pedagogical activity that Tyson seems prepared to engage with in that moment. In doing so, Mr. Baines communicates his trust that Tyson wants to be learning; he does not invoke a deficit perspective about Tyson as a learner. In a predominately Black school but a predominately White class, affirming that Tyson has the right and desire to be there—and also implicitly communicating that Tyson normally does learn while in class—is an important interactional practice. Mr. Baines is (perhaps unconsciously) countering the macrolevel and mesolevel forces within an education system that devalues students who are Black and often labels them as troublemakers. Mr. Baines’ actions critically push back against such narratives and affirm Tyson as an engaged learner. Hence, this DI is one social process that Mr. Baines is utilizing to embrace Tyson as a learner.

In this interaction, Mr. Baines held Tyson accountable to the expectation of the classroom (no phones unless directly relevant to the activity) but recognized that Tyson might need an alternative pedagogical activity in that moment to stay engaged. Through asking “anything going on?,” Mr. Baines recognizes external factors that might impact Tyson during Mr. Baines’s class. This is particularly relevant for students from traditionally marginalized backgrounds—a racial, socioeconomic, or gender background for instance—that may experience more stressors in their lives as a result of their identities (for more information, see adverse childhood experiences [ACES] at Public Health Management Corporation, 2013). For example, Tyson is more exposed to interpersonal discrimination than his White peers in this class. Mr. Baines should not lower expectations for Tyson—and he does not in this interaction. Instead, Mr. Baines holds Tyson accountable to the behavioral norm (no phones out) and to engaging in the academic material (redirecting him to an individualized activity). When teachers like Mr. Baines take conscious and self-reflective care to use DIs to both reinforce relationships and communicate an embracing attitude, students like Tyson can then carry around that positive EE to employ in other moments of his school day. These high stores of positive EE may mitigate some of the forces that push students like Tyson away from school. In her ethnography, Ann Arnett Ferguson (2000) discusses how school practices cause disidentification from academics for some boys who are African American and encourage, “many African American boys to actively distance and separate themselves from school as a desirable and authoritative object of identification” (p. 97). In Ferguson’s analysis, the students who were labeled “troublemakers” were also those African American boys who disidentified with school. Ferguson argues that discipline creates a situation where African American boys feel alienated from schooling and undervalued as learners. The disidentification from school can be alleviated by positive, caring interactions.

Of course, caring and culturally relevant student–teacher interactions alone will not change the endemic racism within American schools. But it can be one small act of radicalism—radical caring for students who are Black, particularly in moments of perceived misbehavior—that begins to disrupt the typical, racialized and gendered patterns of student–teacher interaction. This radical caring reverberates outward to more distant social systems—like the school or neighborhood—and subtly shifts those wider cultures over time. Mr. Baines communication of an ethos of caring and valuation of Tyson as an engaged learner is critical and should be reckoned with in a fully fleshed out theory of culturally relevant discipline.

Vignette 3: “If You’re Worried About Working . . .”

Although Mr. Baines is able to utilize disciplinary moments to both connect with his students through shared symbols or pop culture references (e.g., Rihanna) as well as to facilitate different learning processes, Mr. Anderson is at the beginning of his transition to CRD. He shows signs and uses language that indicates he is beginning the mind-set shift, although microinteractional evidence suggests he still is struggling. Despite his popularity with both teachers and students, Mr. Anderson is in the process of obtaining “critical consciousness” (conscientização; see Freire, 1970/2000). Critical consciousness “refers to learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (Freire, 1970/2000, p. 35). In other words, Mr. Anderson is still in the process of learning how the social and political world works within the context of his school—and his part in contributing to it. Scholars have highlighted the importance of “understanding of the broader social, economic, and political context of our educational system” (Weinstein et al., 2004, p. 27) or “understand[ing] the Self in relation to Others” (Milner & Tenore, 2010, p. 595) as one component of culturally relevant classroom management. This analysis argues for placing critical consciousness (as Freire conceptualizes) in direct conversation with culturally relevant classroom management.

Compared with other classrooms in the building, Mr. Anderson’s is quite large. The desks in his classroom are set up in a u-shape, facing the smart board. At either end of the u-shape, there are multiple rows of desk, giving a bit of a haphazard feeling to individuals walking in the door. Students sometimes pushed around the desks slightly to sit closer to friends, but Mr. Anderson seemed unconcerned. There is a large amount of empty space in the middle of the U and on the side of the classroom, where Mr. Anderson’s desk is positioned. The entire back wall is full of windows, though most of the time the shades were drawn. Mr. Anderson has piles of books on one table in the far corner of the room, and posters hanging on the other side.

One day, as Mr. Anderson was welcoming students into his class and monitoring the hallway, Daniella, a female student who is African American, approached him (see Table 3). Her tone of voice and facial expression indicated that she was frustrated and upset. She was asking to leave to go to the library, and she finally says “I don’t wanna be in here, Mr. A. I really dislike your class.” Mr. A pauses then responds, “It’s gonna be ok.” To which Daniella responds, “No it’s not, I’m not getting no work done.” After a few more verbal exchanges, including Mr. Anderson insisting he was a week behind on grading and that they would work together that day, Daniella goes to sit down, still upset. About 5 min later, Mr. Anderson is trying to settle the class to give instructions and start the period. Daniella is sitting in between two girls, all three of whom are talking while Mr. Anderson is giving instructions. Mr. Anderson waits silently for 4 s before specifically addressing Daniella, saying “If you’re worried about getting work done, maybe you should sit somewhere else.” Although he and another student tell her she can go sit on the other side of the classroom, Daniella stays in her original seat for the remainder of the class period, switching between working on the individual assignment and talking with her friends.

Table 3.

Video Clip of Mr. Anderson on December 5, 2016.

Time	Mr. A’s actions	Daniella’s actions
3:09.2	Stands in doorway. Holds door handle with right hand, so door is open about 45°. Face turned toward the hallway.	Stands up from desk. Enters video view on left.
3:12.5	Finishes sentence to another student walking in room. Makes eye contact with Daniella. Head leans into the room, while body stays in the door way.	Makes eye contact with Mr. A, continues walking toward him.[inaudible question.]
3:13.8	“It’s on the board.” [responding to Daniella’s question].
3:14.4	[0.9-s pause]	Stops in front of Mr. A.
3:15.3	“I’m gonna tell you the same time I tell everyone else.”	Overlaps speech with Mr. A.“Start reading the book?”
3:18.0		“Cause I wanna go to the library”
3:19.5	“The library’s closed.” Slightly shaking his head and raising eyebrows.	[Freezes for 0.8-s after Mr. A’s comment]
3:21.0		Head falls to the right. Starts turning away from Mr. A.
3:21.6	Body stays still. Eye gaze follows her face.	“I don’t wanna be in here, Mr. A.”Turns body away from Mr. A.
3:24.0		Looks back at Mr. A’s face.“I really dislike your class. And it’s not because—it’s not because [inaudible]. I just can’t [inaudible].”
3:27.9	[1.9-s pause]. Body stays still. Eye gaze looks into classroom.	Starts walking toward the door. Takes a step next to Mr. A to look out of the hallway.
3:29.8	“Uhhhh, it’s gonna be ok.”Looks out to hallway.[1.0-s pause in conversation]
3:31.8	Takes one step into the hallway. Looks at Daniella.	“No, it’s not. I’m not getting no work done.”Takes a step back into classroom. Looks at Mr. A.
3:33.8	“It’s gonna be alright.” Leans forward slightly.	Turns away from Mr. A.
3:34.9		“How is that alright?”
	“I’m like a week behind on grading stuff and [emphasis] we’re gonna work together on some stuff today. It’ll be fine. I need you to wait.”	Walks away while Mr. A is talking.
8:12.2	Waits silently. Looking at students.	Chats with two friends on either side of her.
8:18.7	Gestures hand toward Daniella.“If you’re worried about getting work done, maybe you should sit somewhere else.”	Stops talking. Looks at Mr. A, with her chin resting on her hand.
8:21.0	Holds arm outstretched. Waits silently.
8:22.3		“I don’t know where to sit.”
8:23.5	As he starts gesturing to the other side of the room, “You can sit, like’ over the—”[Another student interrupts and says “you can sit over here.”]

At first glance, Mr. Anderson seems to respond to Daniella’s off task behavior by embracing her concerns as a learner. He recognized that she is stressed about her grade and the amount of work she has left in his class, which may be motivating her earlier desire to leave the classroom. When he says, “If you’re worried about getting work done, maybe you should sit somewhere else,” he both recognizes her agency as a learner (choosing to sit somewhere else, to make her surroundings less distracting) and her desire to do well in his class. Her off-task talking does not divert him from her earlier concern (presumably communicated as a desire to leave because of stress) that she is not doing well in his class.

However, there are microinteractional factors (both verbal and nonverbal) that indicate that Mr. Anderson is not using this DI in the most culturally relevant ways. First is Mr. Anderson’s use of the word “if.” He says, “If you’re worried about getting work done . . .,” which implies that there is a question of whether she is actually concerned about learning. With this small word, he subtly and likely unconsciously expresses some doubt in Daniella’s commitment to learning.

Second is Mr. Anderson’s body language. In the initial interaction, Mr. Anderson positions himself in the doorway of the class, with Daniella either trying to push past him or walk away from him. Mr. Anderson never fully positions his body toward Daniella, though this could be because he also is monitoring the hallway at the time. In the follow-up interaction, Mr. Anderson’s body remains turned away from Daniella, though his head faces her. As Daniella’s and Mr. Anderson’s bodies remained misaligned during the interactions, there is less opportunity to become physically entrained. Finally, in addition to their lack of physical entrainment, Mr. Anderson and Daniella do not show evidence of rhythmic entrainment. They never completely find a rhythm in their conversation—at times, they overlap speech, and at other times, there are pauses over 1.5 seconds. Each beat of human consciousness is about 0.2 seconds, so a pause that is 1.9 seconds (their longest) is actually nine beats of consciousness. These are long, awkward pauses in conversations. This lack of physical and rhythmic entrainment indicates that neither Mr. Anderson nor Daniella generate EE or solidarity from this interaction. Although more evidence would be needed, one could argue that a series of similarly failed interactions will have long-term implications for Daniella’s performance in the English class and possibly also impact her overall feelings toward school. Certainly, Daniella’s statement, “I don’t wanna be in here, Mr. A. I really dislike your class” illustrates that, at the very least, she does not feel connected to Mr. Anderson’s classroom.

It is important to acknowledge that Mr. Anderson does recognize and validate Daniella’s emotions and concerns, even though this attempt is not sufficient for them to develop mutual entrainment. In this moment, Daniella is able to freely express a desire to leave his class and strongly state her feelings. This statement is an example of Mr. Anderson and Daniella’s documented history of holding open and emotional exchanges. In a different videoed classroom interaction, Daniella’s eyes tear up after Mr. Anderson makes a joke that unintentionally hurts her feelings. When he recognizes that she is upset, Mr. Anderson immediately apologizes to Daniella and later even voluntarily brings up the incident during a small-group reflection, where he expresses regret and embarrassment. Not all students would cry or verbalize their emotions to their teachers, nor would all teachers apologize to a student after hurting their feelings. Mr. Anderson and Daniella’s relationship, therefore, is complicated: close but at times challenging.

The microanalytic evidence suggests that Mr. Anderson values building rapport with his Black students but is still struggling with enacting high-quality, culturally relevant disciplining of Black students. Mr. Anderson’s self-reflection supports this fact as well. In an interview a year after the classroom videoing, Mr. Anderson argued that it was the students with “discipline problems” that he felt the closest to:

I didn’t really connect with my White students ‘cause I had previously had so few of them.’ And I felt like they didn’t need me. I felt like the system worked for them . . . kids I have some discipline problems with also were the ones that were, ya know, the funniest. We would have, ya know, inside jokes, like [a student] was not easy to keep on track all the time but we have much more of a relationship . . . but we had a great rapport. We just kinda bumped heads sometimes.

Mr. Anderson communicates an understanding of the structural and material benefits that White students receive from schooling (“the system worked for them”). This is a critical piece of both culturally relevant education and conscientização. However, interestingly, he juxtaposes “White students” with “kids I have some discipline problems with.” In that same response, he goes on to list students with whom he has “good relationships” because of behavioral and academic struggles, all of whom are Black. This indicates that Mr. Anderson may be unconsciously associating Black students and misbehavior. Unconscious associations—or implicit bias, as social psychologists call it—has begun to be empirically connected with the hyperdisciplining of Black students and teacher interactions with marginalized students in general (Okonofua & Eberhardt, 2015; Gilliam et al., 2016; Marcucci, 2020). At the same time, despite potential implicit bias, Mr. Anderson uses DIs as relationship-building moments. Alhough there is no evidence in this video corpus of him using DIs to embrace students who are Black as learners, there is evidence of Mr. Anderson employing DIs to build up rapport with students who are Black. Even this interaction with Daniella, though not on a whole successful, shows an example of his relationship-building efforts.

Implications for Culturally Relevant Discipline

This analysis has both empirical and theoretical implications for culturally relevant discipline. Before reviewing the theory, it is worth reiterating the unique empirical contributions this analysis makes. It is one of the first of its kind to provide empirical support at the microinteractional level that culturally relevant DIs can generate EE and solidarity for both the student and the teacher. Vignette 1 (“turn off the RiRi”) highlights how student and teacher can efficiently and effectively entrain when teachers judiciously deploy culturally relevant colloquial expressions in their DIs with students who are Black. This entrainment leads to higher EE and all of the positive outcomes linked with successful interactions.

This analysis also attends to some areas of the theory of CRD. First, it argues that CRD facilitates learning processes both indirectly and directly. In Ladson-Billings’s conception of culturally relevant teaching, she argued that teachers must embrace all students as learners. When adapted to discipline, the theory of cultural relevance lost this component. Discipline, however, is both a moment of social-emotional learning in and of itself and also supportive of academic learning. CRD can (a) strengthen students’ identification with the school and positively impact academic experience and/or (b) act as an example in communicating empathetically and respectfully with others, a key feature of social-emotional learning. Mr. Baines (and, in part, Mr. Anderson) shows us that scholars should expand conceptions of CRD to include DIs that embrace students who are Black as learners. Although this article offers an important first step, further analytical work will be necessary to fully understand the relationship between CRD and learning processes.

Second, this analysis shows that conscientização of the teacher is a necessary prerequisite for culturally relevant discipline (and culturally relevant teaching in general). Mr. Anderson, who is on the path to obtaining critical consciousness, does not fully or successfully engage in a culturally relevant DI with Daniella. His struggle—documented at the microanalytic level—suggests that teachers need to have a full understanding of how the school system works at multiple nested levels to benefit White students. Both Mr. Baines and Mr. Anderson are empathetic toward their students, but their understandings of the macrostructural forces surrounding Black students’ identities as learners diverge. This empirical finding supports theoretical arguments by Weinstein et al. (2004), Milner and Tenore (2010), and Lustick (2017). In their own ways, the previous research argue that CRD requires an understanding of sociocultural and political contexts of schooling. This analysis supports previous theoretical work by offering empirical evidence via Vignette 3 (“If you’re worried about working . . . ”). There are many teachers like Mr. Anderson, who work in predominantly Black schools with a basic awareness of White privilege but who require a more advanced critical consciousness to engage fully in culturally relevant practices. However, school districts must enact policies to create spaces for radical self-reflection for teachers. In such spaces, teachers can start to become more conscious of the unconscious practices they engage in during DIs with students who are Black and ultimately work toward enacting CRD.

Conclusion

The teachers and students featured in this analysis utilize DIs, to varying degrees of success, to interrupt the dominant racialized forces working on students who are Black in American schools. To the authors’ knowledge, neither CRD nor the discipline gap has been studied at a microinteractional level. The microanalysis of culturally relevant discipline highlights how student–teacher interactions can be units of social change—ones that reverberate outward toward more distally related systems like schools, communities, and even larger cultural spheres. There may be a sense that how human beings interact is so specific, so local, that analyses of specific interactions are irrelevant to everyone but those involved. On the contrary, we gain cultural, social, and political insights by deeply analyzing specific interactions. Some of those lessons are undeniably local—they tell us about the immediate actors and environments. But some of them also teach us about broader American cultural processes, such as how racialized power systems are perpetuated or disrupted on a day-to-day basis.

This research provides empirical evidence at the interactional level that CRD can be successful for students who are Black. If discipline can be conceived and enacted in new ways (i.e., restorative practices) and the role of teachers’ critical consciousness can be considered, this research argues that DIs will generate solidarity in ways that create a greater affinity with schools for students who are Black and help them feel supported as learners in classrooms. When conceived of broadly, CRD not only speaks to the potential of DIs to embrace all students as learners but also to the power of DIs becoming a resource for students and teachers to form relationships and ultimately create more just classroom environments.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This publication was supported in part by funds from the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in Saint Louis.

ORCID iD

Olivia Marcucci

Notes

Author Biographies

Olivia Marcucci, PhD, is an assistant professor in the clinical faculty at Johns Hopkins University School of Education. Her research and teaching focuses on racial equity in American schools, with a primary focus on cultural and social processes involved in or disurptive to the school-to-prison pipeline.

Rowhea Elmesky, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Education at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on integrating meso and micro level understandings about how resources and schema from social fields outside of the classroom shape events that unfold within the classroom.

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