Building Blocks of Difference: How Inequalities are (Re)Produced through Disciplinary Practices and Interactions in Preschool

[摘要] Much policy research suggests preschool undermines educational inequalities, especially gender, race, and social class disparities in educational outcomes. Using data from ethnographic observations in three preschools (nine classrooms total) and interviews with preschool educators observed, this dissertation examines how disciplinary practices and disciplinary interactions in preschool classrooms construct and perpetuate social inequalities. In the second Chapter of my dissertation (published in Sociology of Education 2017) I find that heteronormativity permeates preschool classrooms where teachers construct and occasionally disrupt gendered sexuality in many ways, and children reproduce and sometimes resist these identities and norms in their daily play. Across the three preschools I observed, heteronormativity shaped teachers’ delineation of behaviors as appropriate or in need of discipline. Teachers’ approaches to gendered sexual socialization also affected their response to children’s behaviors such as heterosexual romantic play (kissing and relationships), bodily displays, and bodily consent. This work demonstrates how children begin to make sense of heteronormativity and the rules associated with sexuality through interactions with their teachers and peers in preschool.The third Chapter of my dissertation examines how disciplinary practices and disciplinary interactions operate in racialized, classed, and gendered ways, in preschool. Discipline inequality, especially experiences of exclusionary discipline, have long-term effects on educational outcomes. In this Chapter, I find preschool teachers’ perceptions of students’ misbehavior vary by students’ intersectional social statuses despite that most children’s self-regulation and behavioral skills are at similar stages developmentally in preschool. My data suggest that race, class, and gender compositions of preschool classrooms matter for students’ experiences of discipline inequalities. I found that preschool teachers provided more monitoring and discipline to girls from low-socioeconomic backgrounds when they were in classrooms that were mostly middle-class; middle-class black boys received more monitoring and discipline than their peers when they were in classrooms that were majority white, but that also had a significant proportion of black students; and I found equitable discipline in classrooms that were predominately non-white but racially diverse in the proportions of students from non-white subgroups, and that exclusively served low-SES students.The fourth Chapter of this dissertation examines how the ;;gender-neutral” developmental tenet, ;;follow the child”, guides the organizational logic and gender substructure of preschool classrooms. I argue that teachers assume a gendered child, and therefore ;;follow” a boy or a girl, resulting in preschool teachers ;;following the gendered child.” I find that in preschool, boys perceived behavioral ;;needs” are accommodated and receive less disciplinary responses from teachers, while girls receive increased disciplinary intervention for their behaviors. My data suggest that preschool teachers foster a masculine learning environment in which teachers implement gendered curricular accommodations (e.g., wrestling, gun play, and heavy work) aimed at fostering, rather than curbing, boys perceived unchangeable behavioral needs such as roughhousing and physical play. Additionally, I find that there is gender inequality in the distribution of resources in preschool classrooms. I argue that ;;following the child” results in teachers utilizing gendered practices which differentially prepare boys and girls for kindergarten, and may be at odds with the learning environments and expectations placed on boys in primary and secondary years of schooling. Taken collectively, the chapters of my dissertation provide qualitative data on how preschool disciplinary practices and disciplinary interactions construct and enforce unequal organizational arrangements for boys and girls in schooling.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] preschool

[关键词] school discipline;preschool;inequality;Sociology;Social Sciences;Sociology