Date of Award
Fall 9-2014
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (EdD)
Department
Education
First Advisor
Dr. Graham Weir
Second Advisor
Dr. Beth Kania-Gosche
Third Advisor
Dr. Sherrie Wisdom
Abstract
Discipline in schools exists so that there are guidelines to ensure safety and learning. Administrators and teachers give students consequences based upon discipline guidelines made by the school districts’ board of education. The discipline administered can be subjective. In a suburban mid-western school district, alarming trends in the amount of discipline referrals of male students both in the primary investigator’s middle school and in the other middle schools within the researched district were recognized. The purpose of this mixed methods study is to analyze and understand if gender discrepancies exist in discipline for middle school students among aspiring administrators, practicing administrators, and teachers. The qualitative data, on-line surveys, sent to every middle school teacher within the researched district, revealed a bias towards male students’ behaviors. Quantitative data from the researched school district’s archival data also showed that male students’ within the district received much more discipline and harsher consequences than female middle school students. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from students in the Educational Administration Master’s program at a Mid-Western University. One hundred-fifty aspiring administrators were blindly surveyed to analyze their responses of five gender specific vignettes. Each student received a vignette that was exactly the same except for the gender of the student’s involved. For each vignette, the number of times each consequence of warning, detention, in-school-suspension, and out of- school suspension was chosen for each gender of student represented in the disciplinary infraction described in the vignettes was tallied. Each vignette consequence iii showed differences in the assignment of the consequences by male and female aspiring administrators.
Recommended Citation
Lukefahr-Farrar, Jill, "Discrepancies in Discipline of Middle School Students by Gender: A Comparison of Principal Candidates’ Responses to Vignettes, and Teacher Perceptions" (2014). Dissertations. 423.
https://digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu/dissertations/423
Rights
Copyright 2014