GENDER BIAS, RESTORATIVE PRACTICE
As a large part of classroom management, discipline plays a key role in establishing the classroom environment. It is the structure that keeps the volume of the 30 kids at a reasonable level so that everyone can hear instructions. It is the system that expects students to end each class by cleaning up their area. Most importantly, discipline is what guides teachers’ actions when confronted with a conflict. Traditionally, this meant that when a student acts out, they were punished by the controlling authoritarian. The International Institute of Restorative Practices (IIRP) suggests that instead, the most effective approach to discipline is one where the authority figure (teacher) works with the students to process their behaviors. In both of these approaches, the assumption is that the teacher is the active authority figure maintaining control while working empathetically with the student. The teacher must find a balance between control and support.
The practice of discipline fails to consider that female teachers do not inherently know how to be authoritative. While the profession of teaching has always been dominated by women, the expectations placed on how they should approach problem solving comes from a patriarchal perspective. This social construct has raised women who are submissive to men, inherently empathetic, and who are taught to shrink away from conflict as a defense mechanism. So, while we enter into the caring profession of teaching, we are met with the struggle to maintain power in our own classrooms without having any idea what having power looks like.
However, as the school year started to roll out, I found myself confronted by the feeling that the two years of teaching before were repeating themselves. There was one class that I had at the very end of the day that I felt like I had lost all control over. I remember one day in particular in vivid detail. My students were sitting two to a table which was my most recent attempt to manage their out of control behavior. We were using tempera paint to create experiments in shades and tints. I was hovering around a table with two boys that loved to wander around the room, in hopes that my close vicinity would deter them from getting up. Despite the application of the proximity accommodation, I watched as one of the boys dipped his brush into the paint and placed a giant blue spot on the back of the other boy’s shirt as he was turned around. I stood there frozen in absolute anger as I watched the offending student smirk as he looked directly at me. The victim turned around and looked at me wide eyed, mouth agape. Later, when I asked the student what he had done that was wrong, he looked down at his shoes and mumbled, “I’m sorry” under his breath. As I stood there filled with frustration, I was surprised to find myself failing to express myself. responding with, “Thank you for apologizing, let’s start fresh next class.” And sending him back to homeroom. While the behaviors were not nearly as defiant as I had experienced before, I felt the familiar sense of blatant disregard for me as a teacher crawling under my skin. I realized at that moment that my struggle was never with the students, but a struggle with asserting my own authority.
My behavior stems from a long history of patriarchal conditioning that began in 3100BC and continues today. This structure gives men dominative power over women implying that there is a hierarchal structure that places men above women. Inadvertently, as this system has continued to persist over the years it has become so engrained that we fail to notice it sometimes.
Preliminary Literature Review
Throughout history, teachers have been expected to create and establish a classroom environment that is conducive to learning. Some believe that to maintain this environment, expectations of student behavior should be established early on and reinforced through discipline. A teacher’s hope is that by following this cycle of enforcement, discipline, and reinforcement the student will refrain from repeating the same offense twice. In “Defining Restorative” by Ted Wachtel presents an alternate cycle of discipline described as restorative practice. This alternate approach to discipline is defined by the use of participatory learning and decision making (1) Unlike punitive discipline where an authority figure punishes a student for their wrong doing by administering predetermined consequences, restorative practice is led by an authority figure whose main goal is to collaborate with students to devise a plan for making amends (4). Wachtel, the founder of the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP), synthesizes the work of a corrections researcher, Daniel Glaser and the thinking of criminologist, John Braithwaite to present the social discipline window as a supporting framework to restorative practices.
The social discipline window shown in Appendix A describes discipline as a balance between control and support. If you place emphasis on one more than the other, or fail to consider one completely then most likely the chances of the student doing the same thing is much higher. In this framework four basic approaches to discipline are used to create four quadrants that exist on an axis of control and support. The four approaches are punitive, restorative, neglectful, and permissive. Using the social discipline window to compare the four approaches we conclude that a restorative approach that is both high in support and control is the most sensical approach. Wachtel writes, “The fundamental unifying hypothesis of restorative practices is that human beings are happier, more cooperative and productive, and more likely to make positive changes in their behavior when those in positions of authority do things with them, rather than to them or for them.” (3) This suggests that the restorative framework relies on there being a “authority figure” in any situation it is used. Due to the difference in age, this means that in the educational setting it is expected that the teacher be the authority figure. It is the adult’s responsibility to be in control while also being supportive.
Daniel Buckmaster in his article, “From the Eradication of Tolerance to the Restoration of School Community: Exploring Restorative Practices as a Reform Framework for Ethical School Discipline” further explains that, “Control is defined by having influence over an individual or situation. The amount of control that an educator has with a situation is in direct relationship to how much the educator restrains the student or influences outcomes” (3) Buckmaster’s definition of control implies that a teacher’s relationship with a student is inherently hierarchal due to the fact that it identifies the educator as the person in power over the student, no matter what approach you take.
It then makes sense that the social discipline window aligns each approach with a different response of power as seen in Appendix B. When teachers use a punitive approach, they are choosing authoritarian power to maintain a high sense of control. On the other hand, if teachers use a permissive approach, they are choosing to use paternalistic power to maintain a high sense of support. The window also presents the reality of a neglectful educator that chooses not to use power or be supportive. This reinforces that the ideal approach is restorative practice because as Buckmaster says, “restorative responses seek to devise discipline with students from a place of inclusion.” (4)
When I use the restorative framework to reevaluate my struggles in discipline it would provide me with a simple solution. My tendency as a teacher is to be permissive. The permissive style uses paternal power which in the educational setting suggests that teachers act as parents and make discipline decisions based off their belief that they know what is best for the student. While this is done from a genuine place of concern for their wellbeing, it allows the majority of the control to be in the hands of the students and not the teacher. The permissive teacher is far more likely to accept a lower quality of work and behavior in favor of maintaining a caring relationship with the student with the hope of self-regulation coming naturally. Therefore the conclusion would be that I need to shift my approach from a position of low control to high control. However, what Buckmaster and Wachtel fail to consider is that female teachers who have been socialized within the system of patriarchy have a compromised concept of control and power. Buckmaster himself writes that restorative practice reminds teachers that they play a crucial role in a students moral development. He cites Covalskie by pointing out that “A conscious is developed through one’s understanding of who they are and their relationship with others.” (4) We must remember that teachers were once students and children as well. As young females are developing their own conscious, they are told that what is right and wrong differs from boys. The point that I would like to investigate is how the female perception of self inhibits a teachers ability to approach discipline from an assertive position.
• In-person Ranked Surveys: apply the concept of individuation to evaluate on a scale of 1 – 10 how they define their unique characteristics.
• Narrative Inquiry: This data will then be the guide to the interview where I will gather the teacher’s personal narrative of an experience that had when they struggled to be assertive, confident, expressive or ambitious in their teaching.
• Layered analysis: I aim to understand how oppressive structures of patriarchy within society influence and challenge a female teacher’s approach to discipline.
Appendix A
Appendix B
References
Wachtel, T. (n.d.). Defining Restorative. Retrieved 1991, from https://www.iirp.edu/restorative-practices/defining-restorative/
Buckmaster, D. (2016). From the Eradication of Tolerance to the Restoration of School Community: Exploring Restorative Practices as A Reform Framework for Ethical School Discipline. Values and Ethics in Educational Administration, 12(3), 1–8.
A Critical Reflective Analysis on the Implicit Gender Bias of Restorative Practice
Megan Whitney
Pennsylvania State University
Problem Statement
The purpose of this action research project is to determine how most teachers describe their disciplinary practice using an electronic multiple-choice survey to gather preliminary quantitative data. This survey will be created using the Restorative Practice’s social discipline window to define the four basic approaches to discipline: Punitive, neglectful, permissive, and restorative. I will then use the collected data to facilitate in-person surveys and interviews with 4 female teachers that identified themselves as permissive. I will use a ranking style survey apply the concept of individuation to evaluate on a scale of 1 – 10 how they define their unique characteristics. This data will then be the guide to the interview where I will gather the teacher’s personal narrative of an experience that had when they struggled to be assertive, confident, expressive or ambitious in their teaching. Using a layered analysis, I aim to understand how oppressive structures of patriarchy within society influence and challenge a female teacher’s approach to discipline.
Context
When you research the most popular interview questions to ask teachers you will often find one that question that shows up on every list. In interviews, evaluations, and observations you asked to identify one part of your teaching that you struggle with. As someone who has answered this question and asked it, I can say that most of the time the response from most teachers is the same, “Discipline.” As a large part of classroom management, discipline plays a key role in establishing the classroom environment. It is the structure that keeps the volume of the 30 kids at a reasonable level so that everyone can hear instructions. It is the system that expects students to end each class by cleaning up their area. Most importantly, discipline is what guides teachers’ actions when confronted with a conflict. Traditionally, this meant that when a student acts out, they were punished by the controlling authoritarian. The International Institute of Restorative Practices (IIRP) suggests that instead, the most effective approach to discipline is one where the authority figure (teacher) works with the students to process their behaviors. In both of these approaches, the assumption is that the teacher is the active authority figure maintaining control while working empathetically with the student. The teacher must find a balance between control and support.
The practice of discipline fails to consider that female teachers do not inherently know how to be authoritative. While the profession of teaching has always been dominated by women, the expectations placed on how they should approach problem solving comes from a patriarchal perspective. This social construct has raised women who are submissive to men, inherently empathetic, and who are taught to shrink away from conflict as a defense mechanism. So, while we enter into the caring profession of teaching, we are met with the struggle to maintain power in our own classrooms without having any idea what having power looks like.
Background
When I was hired to teach 6th grade I was thrilled. The alternative program that I had spent the last two years teaching had been more than difficult. Our program was described as a transitional school. We were contracted by a public-school district to take the students who had been suspended, expelled, or had repeatedly caused behavior issues and work to improve the way they acted so they could return to the general classroom again. It proved to be difficult work as fights broke out every day and being cursed out was normal. I struggled to create relationships with my students and to maintain any sense of discipline in my classroom. I constantly left school filled with the feeling that there was nothing that I could do the change my reality. I accepted that the students would never comply and taught from a place of unease created by the feeling of being completely disregarded as an authority figure. At my new position, I finally had a budget that was more than $100, I had a classroom that was twice as big with four sinks, and most importantly I was teaching the general public. I believed I would be free from the emotional struggles brought on by disrespectful students. I had everything that I needed to become the best teacher I could be.However, as the school year started to roll out, I found myself confronted by the feeling that the two years of teaching before were repeating themselves. There was one class that I had at the very end of the day that I felt like I had lost all control over. I remember one day in particular in vivid detail. My students were sitting two to a table which was my most recent attempt to manage their out of control behavior. We were using tempera paint to create experiments in shades and tints. I was hovering around a table with two boys that loved to wander around the room, in hopes that my close vicinity would deter them from getting up. Despite the application of the proximity accommodation, I watched as one of the boys dipped his brush into the paint and placed a giant blue spot on the back of the other boy’s shirt as he was turned around. I stood there frozen in absolute anger as I watched the offending student smirk as he looked directly at me. The victim turned around and looked at me wide eyed, mouth agape. Later, when I asked the student what he had done that was wrong, he looked down at his shoes and mumbled, “I’m sorry” under his breath. As I stood there filled with frustration, I was surprised to find myself failing to express myself. responding with, “Thank you for apologizing, let’s start fresh next class.” And sending him back to homeroom. While the behaviors were not nearly as defiant as I had experienced before, I felt the familiar sense of blatant disregard for me as a teacher crawling under my skin. I realized at that moment that my struggle was never with the students, but a struggle with asserting my own authority.
My behavior stems from a long history of patriarchal conditioning that began in 3100BC and continues today. This structure gives men dominative power over women implying that there is a hierarchal structure that places men above women. Inadvertently, as this system has continued to persist over the years it has become so engrained that we fail to notice it sometimes.
Preliminary Literature Review
Throughout history, teachers have been expected to create and establish a classroom environment that is conducive to learning. Some believe that to maintain this environment, expectations of student behavior should be established early on and reinforced through discipline. A teacher’s hope is that by following this cycle of enforcement, discipline, and reinforcement the student will refrain from repeating the same offense twice. In “Defining Restorative” by Ted Wachtel presents an alternate cycle of discipline described as restorative practice. This alternate approach to discipline is defined by the use of participatory learning and decision making (1) Unlike punitive discipline where an authority figure punishes a student for their wrong doing by administering predetermined consequences, restorative practice is led by an authority figure whose main goal is to collaborate with students to devise a plan for making amends (4). Wachtel, the founder of the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP), synthesizes the work of a corrections researcher, Daniel Glaser and the thinking of criminologist, John Braithwaite to present the social discipline window as a supporting framework to restorative practices.
The social discipline window shown in Appendix A describes discipline as a balance between control and support. If you place emphasis on one more than the other, or fail to consider one completely then most likely the chances of the student doing the same thing is much higher. In this framework four basic approaches to discipline are used to create four quadrants that exist on an axis of control and support. The four approaches are punitive, restorative, neglectful, and permissive. Using the social discipline window to compare the four approaches we conclude that a restorative approach that is both high in support and control is the most sensical approach. Wachtel writes, “The fundamental unifying hypothesis of restorative practices is that human beings are happier, more cooperative and productive, and more likely to make positive changes in their behavior when those in positions of authority do things with them, rather than to them or for them.” (3) This suggests that the restorative framework relies on there being a “authority figure” in any situation it is used. Due to the difference in age, this means that in the educational setting it is expected that the teacher be the authority figure. It is the adult’s responsibility to be in control while also being supportive.
Daniel Buckmaster in his article, “From the Eradication of Tolerance to the Restoration of School Community: Exploring Restorative Practices as a Reform Framework for Ethical School Discipline” further explains that, “Control is defined by having influence over an individual or situation. The amount of control that an educator has with a situation is in direct relationship to how much the educator restrains the student or influences outcomes” (3) Buckmaster’s definition of control implies that a teacher’s relationship with a student is inherently hierarchal due to the fact that it identifies the educator as the person in power over the student, no matter what approach you take.
It then makes sense that the social discipline window aligns each approach with a different response of power as seen in Appendix B. When teachers use a punitive approach, they are choosing authoritarian power to maintain a high sense of control. On the other hand, if teachers use a permissive approach, they are choosing to use paternalistic power to maintain a high sense of support. The window also presents the reality of a neglectful educator that chooses not to use power or be supportive. This reinforces that the ideal approach is restorative practice because as Buckmaster says, “restorative responses seek to devise discipline with students from a place of inclusion.” (4)
When I use the restorative framework to reevaluate my struggles in discipline it would provide me with a simple solution. My tendency as a teacher is to be permissive. The permissive style uses paternal power which in the educational setting suggests that teachers act as parents and make discipline decisions based off their belief that they know what is best for the student. While this is done from a genuine place of concern for their wellbeing, it allows the majority of the control to be in the hands of the students and not the teacher. The permissive teacher is far more likely to accept a lower quality of work and behavior in favor of maintaining a caring relationship with the student with the hope of self-regulation coming naturally. Therefore the conclusion would be that I need to shift my approach from a position of low control to high control. However, what Buckmaster and Wachtel fail to consider is that female teachers who have been socialized within the system of patriarchy have a compromised concept of control and power. Buckmaster himself writes that restorative practice reminds teachers that they play a crucial role in a students moral development. He cites Covalskie by pointing out that “A conscious is developed through one’s understanding of who they are and their relationship with others.” (4) We must remember that teachers were once students and children as well. As young females are developing their own conscious, they are told that what is right and wrong differs from boys. The point that I would like to investigate is how the female perception of self inhibits a teachers ability to approach discipline from an assertive position.
Significance of the Study
This study will extend our understanding of the challenges that face female teachers by sharing their stories. These narratives will deepen our understanding the link between discipline and the patriarchal structure. It will shed light on the tension created by the expectation of teachers to be authoritative and female teachers who are expected to be socially permissive. This will encourage teachers and administrators to reevaluate their expectations and allow all teachers to successfully apply restorative practice within their own schools.
Methodology
• Electronic Multiple-Choice Survey: This survey will be created using the Restorative Practice’s social discipline window to define the four basic approaches to discipline: Punitive, neglectful, permissive, and restorative. • In-person Ranked Surveys: apply the concept of individuation to evaluate on a scale of 1 – 10 how they define their unique characteristics.
• Narrative Inquiry: This data will then be the guide to the interview where I will gather the teacher’s personal narrative of an experience that had when they struggled to be assertive, confident, expressive or ambitious in their teaching.
• Layered analysis: I aim to understand how oppressive structures of patriarchy within society influence and challenge a female teacher’s approach to discipline.
Appendix A
Appendix B
References
Wachtel, T. (n.d.). Defining Restorative. Retrieved 1991, from https://www.iirp.edu/restorative-practices/defining-restorative/
Buckmaster, D. (2016). From the Eradication of Tolerance to the Restoration of School Community: Exploring Restorative Practices as A Reform Framework for Ethical School Discipline. Values and Ethics in Educational Administration, 12(3), 1–8.
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