Close
About
FAQ
Home
Collections
Login
USC Login
Register
0
Selected
Invert selection
Deselect all
Deselect all
Click here to refresh results
Click here to refresh results
USC
/
Digital Library
/
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
/
Enacting ideology: an examination of the connections between teacher ideology, classroom climate, and teacher interpretation of student behavior
(USC Thesis Other)
Enacting ideology: an examination of the connections between teacher ideology, classroom climate, and teacher interpretation of student behavior
PDF
Download
Share
Open document
Flip pages
Contact Us
Contact Us
Copy asset link
Request this asset
Transcript (if available)
Content
Running Head: TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR
1
ENACTING IDEOLOGY: AN EXAMINATION OF THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN
TEACHER IDEOLOGY, CLASSROOM CLIMATE, AND TEACHER INTERPRETATION
OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR
by
Everardo B. Carvajal
________________________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
May 2020
Copyright 2020 Everardo B. Carvajal
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 2
Dedication
This dissertation is dedicated to my family/mi familia.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 3
Acknowledgements
I remain indebted to the hard-working women and men who raised me and continue to educate
me in love and life. My mother Patricia’s undying encouragement and support ensured that I
always had options and unflinchingly supported every one of my crazy efforts, including the
current one. My grandparents, Benjamin and Frances, served as second parents and were
dedicated to ensuring soft landings for any of my missteps on the way. Thanks to my father
Everardo Sr. and stepmother Martha for their hard work, love, and support. Thank you to my
aunts, uncles, cousins, tios, tias and primos/a for their encouragement and the inspiration they all.
To the next generation in our family, I hope my journey finds some way to advance you on your
respective journeys.
To my wonderful wife Coral, and our children Sofia and Ben: Thank you for your hugs, warmth,
and encouragement and our awesome little family. I could have never finished this project
without their love, because of them, this project takes on added meaning. Thank you to my in-
laws who also encouraged my journey and championed in ways only they could.
A special thank you to my dissertation chair Dr. Julie Slayton who along this journey practiced
all of the great principles of a caring and dedicated educator and adviser. Thank you, Dr. Alan
Green and Dr. Reynaldo Baca for the thoughtful feedback and for taking on my project. I am
comforted by knowing your collective expertise and genuine care for education would never let
me go off-track.
Finally, thank you to my students inside the jail schools and in the “free world,” for teaching me
how to teach.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 4
Table of Contents
Dedication 2
Acknowledgements 3
List of Figures 6
Abstract 7
Chapter One: Introduction 8
Background of the Problem 8
Statement of the Problem 10
Purpose of the Study 11
Significance of the Study 11
Organization of the Study 12
Chapter Two: Literature Review 13
Ideology and Teacher Beliefs 14
Theoretical 15
Empirical 24
Classroom Climate 30
Theoretical 30
Empirical 33
Conceptual Framework 36
Neutral or Deficit Ideology 39
Control and Classroom Climate 45
Power and not controlling students 45
Teacher practices in a non-controlling environment 46
Climate and non-controlling practices 47
Conclusion 48
Chapter Three: Methods 49
Research Design 49
Sample Sites 50
Criterion 1 51
Participants 52
Criterion 1 52
Data Collection and Instruments/Protocol 52
Interviews 53
Collection of Documents and Artifacts 56
Data Analysis 56
Credibility and Trustworthiness 57
Ethics 59
Limitations and Delimitations 59
Limitations 59
Delimitations 60
Conclusion 60
Chapter Four: Findings 61
Case Study #1: Ms. Munisa 62
Finding 1 63
Theme 1: Affinity 64
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 5
Theme 2: Meritocracy 65
Theme 3: Context neutral mindset 68
Finding 2 71
Theme 1: Deficit Mindset 72
Theme 2: Classroom Climate 75
Theme 3: Power in the Classroom 78
Case Study #2: Mr. Kalani 81
Finding 1 82
Theme 1: Teacher aspirations for student success 83
Theme 2: Pedagogy of Poverty or Deficit Mindset 87
Finding 2 88
Theme 1: Classroom Climate 88
Theme 2: Power in the Classroom 92
Cross Case Analysis 99
Student Behavior 100
Aspirations for students 102
Low Expectations 104
Pedagogy 105
Power 106
Summary 108
Chapter Five: Discussion 110
Summary of Findings 110
Recommendations 112
Teacher Practice 113
Educational Policy 114
Future Research 115
References 113
Appendices 118
Appendix A: Pre-Observation Interview Protocol 118
Appendix B: Post-Observation Interview Protocol 121
Appendix C: Classroom Observation Protocol 121
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 6
List of Figures
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework 39
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 7
Abstract
Students in high poverty schools face many barriers to achievement, beliefs held by teachers
about the students they teach is one such barrier. To better understand how teachers’ beliefs
about students unfold in the classrooms in high poverty communities, this study developed
around two research questions: The first question was: How do teachers in high poverty schools
make sense of student behavior that takes place in the classroom? The second question was:
What do teachers in high poverty communities make sense of student behavior? Through
qualitative case studies of two chemistry teachers, both in the same urban, high poverty school
district, this study examined how teachers relied on those conscious and unconsciously expressed
beliefs to operate in the classroom. The data revealed teachers who wanted their students to
achieve but relied on meritocratic mindsets and deficit beliefs. In the classroom, both teachers
applied low-quality relationships and created environments for students to create their own
success or failure. The classroom climates developed around low-expectations and deficit beliefs
about students effectively placing the teachers on the periphery and students at the center of their
learning without the support for academic achievement.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 8
CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
Performance gaps between Latino and Black students and their White counterparts are
revealed time and again in reading, math, and dropout data ranging from the national level to the
local school district level (Kena et al., 2016). The persistence of these gaps suggests inherent
structural support for the performance differences (Kena et al., 2016). Moreover, the persistence
of these gaps demonstrates that great structural reform efforts have failed to guarantee
improvement for underperforming students. These efforts fail, in part, because they consistently
overlook the day-to-day operations of the educational system (Forte, 2010; Gay, 2007; Levin,
2000). I was interested in exploring one aspect of the day-to-day operations of the educational
system: the way the interaction between the teacher and his/her students shapes the students’
opportunities to learn. More specifically, I was interested in exploring how teachers’
interpretations of their students’ behaviors in their classrooms are shaped by the teachers’
conscious and unconscious beliefs and belief systems and play themselves out in their actions
and reactions. Thus, in the remainder of this chapter, I offer the background of the problem, the
statement of the problem, the purpose of the study, the significance of the study, and the
organization of the remainder of the dissertation.
Background of the Problem
Bartolomé (2008) asserts that teacher efforts to treat all students the same way only
serves those students who are already in dominant positions. She further argues that this
neutrality mindset suppresses growth opportunities for students in marginalized communities.
Consequently, teachers further marginalize students when they fail to recognize and prevent
other inherently harmful mindsets such as meritocratic, assimilationist, and deficit ideologies in
their classrooms (Bartolomé, 2008).
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 9
A variety of studies have demonstrated how teachers express their ideologies through
their words and actions (cf., Bartolomé, 2008; Milner, 2010). In some instances, they come
through in the expectations set for students (Bartolomé, 2008). In other cases, teachers enact
ideologies through disciplinary actions (Gregory et al., 2010; Hatt, 2012; Lewin, 2010). In her
case study of a kindergarten classroom, Hatt (2012) found that the teacher repeatedly recognized
misbehavior by Black boys and yet failed to acknowledge the same misconduct when expressed
by White boys. Relatedly, in a 14-year study of the disparate impacts of rigid views on
misbehavior and discipline, Wallace et al. (2008) found that Black, Hispanic, and American
Indian students were more likely to be sent to the office than White and Asian students.
However, in addition to the teachers’ ideological influence (Bartolomé, 2008) on student
learning and behavior, teachers and students are both embedded in a dynamic and invisible
context known as a classroom climate.
Teachers also enact their beliefs through classroom climates; classroom relationships and
the sense of community are imposed by a teacher to contour the classroom climate (Cohen et al.,
2009). The classroom climate calls attention to the psychological, social, and emotional spaces
created by its members or participants (Anderson, 1982; Matsumura et al., 2008; Thapa et al.,
2013). Some studies have found that academic engagement and student performance are driven,
at least in part, by the emotional climate (Reyes et al., 2012). In terms of learning motivation,
another study found that mastery orientation is dependent upon a positive social classroom
climate (Patrick et al., 2011). Classroom “norms, expectations, and belief systems” shape student
perception of the classroom climate (Thapa et al., 2013, p. 15). Thus, climate should be
understood as more than a simple extension of physical space; instead, the climate best captures
the complex and layered space filled with multiple unseen interpersonal influences ranging from
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 10
cognition (Reyes et al., 2012) to affect (Matsumura et al., 2008). In a positive classroom climate,
the teacher facilitates and ensures “respectful, caring relationships, cooperation, and emotional
safety” (Matsumura et al., 2008, p. 295). A poor classroom climate fosters the opposite sentiment
and culture (Brown & Medway, 2007).
My study was thus situated in the complex web of classroom climate and teacher
ideology. More specifically, this study occurred at the intersection of the level of classroom
relations and teacher mindset.
Statement of the Problem
Educational research has consistently found disparities in achievement, performance,
graduation, and dropout rates between students of color and their White counterparts (Kena et
al., 2016). Some reform efforts focus on school and classroom climate, while others emphasize
pedagogy (Cohen et al., 2009). A more penetrating way to impact those measures involves
teacher ideology, especially since teacher beliefs are the invisible and pervasive influence that
belies all classroom practices. Bartolomé (2008) calls this a methods fetish because the pursuit
presumes that teachers will begin with a pedagogical perspective beneficial to the students. My
study takes a cue from Bartolomé’s (2008) concludes that we know little about whether or how
teachers view and rationalize the existing social order in terms of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic
status, gender, and so on, and whether or not their views influence how they treat and teach
subordinated students. (p. xv)
My study sought to understand how teachers made sense of student behavior and how
teacher practices, beliefs, and norms were enacted based on their ideological views.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 11
Purpose of the Study
The study aimed to gain insight into how teachers made sense of student behaviors and how
those understandings influenced their approaches to students. The following research questions
drove my study:
1. How do teachers situated in high-poverty communities make meaning of the student
behavior that takes place in their classrooms?
2. What do teachers in high-poverty communities do as a result of their understanding of
that behavior?
To accomplish this, I used qualitative methods because the method was ideal for attaining rich,
thick descriptions (Creswell, 2014; Merriam & Tisdell, 2015; Patton, 2015) that will illuminate
data relevant to my research questions.
Significance of the Study
This project aimed to investigate an area that lacks a sufficient investigation so that I can
inform my practices. Key findings will be shared with educators to inform professional
development and classroom instruction. A comprehensive analysis of teacher ideology is beyond
the scope of this project; however, the current effort to investigate teacher ideology may yield a
site-level impact on educational equity by addressing the invisible links between classroom
practices and teacher ideology. Both the covert and overt influences of teacher ideology,
especially the negative features, are better mitigated by disentangling their consequences.
Finally, results from this study will inform local accountability initiatives to create
positive learning environments for students of color and students from low SES households. The
invisible entanglements of teacher ideologies impact the lives of students by subtly shaping the
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 12
contours of teacher-student classroom relationships. The results of this study may help counter
deductive classroom practices, thereby broadening the chances to redress public school inequity.
Organization of the Study
This chapter has outlined the key drivers of this project. Its significance relates to ongoing
problems in public education and its purpose outline the scope and possible uses for the findings.
Chapter two discusses the literature I drew on and presents the conceptual framework that
emerged as a result of the data analysis process. Chapter three explains the methodology and
how exactly my study drove data collection. Chapter four presents findings from classroom
observations, interviews, notes, and concludes with a cross-case analysis. Chapter five closes by
offering recommendations for practice, policy, and research.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 13
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
This literature review provides insights that enabled me to answer my research question.
Relevant research trends and concepts are identified, presented, and analyzed as they relate the
current study to existing bodies of research. Broadly conceived, the focus here is on teachers’
practice in high poverty, urban communities. Within this broader view, this project focused on a
construct, teacher ideology, that formed the basis of teachers ’ approach to their classroom
duties. Although teacher ideology has been studied in different contexts (e.g., Bartolomé, 2008;
Cox, 2015; Haberman, 1991; Valenzuela, 2010; Milner, 2010;), there are currently few studies
explicitly investigating the ways teachers’ ideology is revealed in the way teachers make sense of
student behavior. This study centered on that gap and explores the intersections of ideology and
practice to understand how teachers make meaning of student behavior in the classroom. The
theory of teacher ideology is a central component here because it offers a lens into how teachers
make meaning of student behavior. Thus, this section reviews the literature related to two
primary areas: teacher ideology and classroom climate. The research questions are as follows:
1. How do teachers situated in high-poverty communities make meaning of the student
behavior that takes place in their classrooms?
2. What do teachers in high-poverty communities do as a result of their understanding of
that behavior?
In the remaining chapter, I first present literature on ideology and then turn my attention to
classroom climate. I conclude the chapter with the original conceptual framework, as data
collection and analysis did not suggest a need for revision. My conceptual framework established
the research design, sampling, data collection, and analysis.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 14
Ideology and Teacher Beliefs
Beginning with the theoretical articles and ending with empirical pieces, this section
reviews the literature related to teacher ideology. Ideology was central to this study because
ideology is enmeshed in teachers’ schemas to filter opinions and beliefs about the world
(Bartolomé, 2008). From a socio-historical perspective, society’s power structure is replicated
and even maintained through various social manifestations. Some of those manifestations are
subconscious practices, while others are consciously practiced and even institutionalized. I begin
with Bartolomé (2008), who highlights the connection between society and the classroom
through a recount of legislative propositions in California and their related anti-immigrant and
assimilationist rhetoric. Bartolomé (2008) advances John Halcon’s (2001) claim that these
discriminatory propositions are created in the public sphere, and they ultimately filter through
mass media to children and parents through an unconscious or “uncritical embrace.” Whereas
Halcon’s (2001) argument focuses on how society’s harmful beliefs impact students, Bartolomé
(2008) goes further to include teachers and how they internalize popular ideas from the media
and uncritically institutionalize them through instructional practices. Parallel to Bartolomé’s
(2008) student-teacher focus, I next turn to Alexandra Cox (2015) who makes a case
characterizing the ideological underpinnings in the power structure between inmates and
correctional staff, only she is focused on how racist assumptions justify the juvenile justice
system’s power structure and its emphasis on inmate submission disguised as inmate
rehabilitation. In these ways, ideology as a system of beliefs influences one’s ability to define a
problem and its relevant solution. Next, I present Milner (2010), who demonstrates how beliefs
about students of color conflate student ability with student opportunity, so they are attributed
limited academic abilities in part by overlooking the influence of opportunity gaps. Furthermore,
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 15
ideology shapes much more than how one makes sense of problems and solutions. Ideology
influences whether one can perceive the existence of a problem. This means a teacher’s
perception has the potential to influence his/her/zir classroom practices whether those
perceptions are based in reality, or they are based on flawed assumptions.
In the following section, I present the work of Bartolomé (2008), Cox (2015), Delpit
(1988), and Haberman (1991) and Milner (2010) as they have written about the nature, impact,
and power of ideology. Next, I present the work of Valenzuela (2010), Hatt (2012), Rist (1970),
Ready and Wright (2011), and McKown and Weinstein (2007), whose studies can be unpacked
to show how ideology emerges through empirical analysis of classroom practices.
Theoretical
Lilia Bartolomé (2008) calls on researchers to study and uncover the ways that the
educational system is undergirded by hegemonic ideology. Bartolomé (2008) describes ideology
as “the framework of thought constructed and held by members of a society to justify or
rationalize an existing social order” (Bartolomé, 2008, p. xiii). Bartolomé (2008) claims that
instructional methodologies are fetishized, idealized, and universalized, all while perpetuating
the use of underlying problematic ideologies. Supporting the notion of a systemic problem,
Bartolomé (2008) argues that failure to adequately address teacher ideology in preparatory
programs maintains a system that perpetuates teachers’ bias towards these discriminatory
practices. She describes teachers as leaving these programs “having absorbed assimilationist,
white supremacist, and deficit views of non-white and low-income students” (Bartolomé, 2008,
p. xv), which in turn makes it easier to implement misinformed discriminatory and self-
validating practices that alienate the learner.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 16
As Bartolomé (2008) contends, whenever instructional practices are seen as strictly
technical and neutral, they fail to take account students’ “culture, history, language and values”
(Bartolomé, 2008, p. 176), it denies the learner’s humanity and thereby replicates society’s
asymmetric power structure in the form of student achievement or lack thereof. Thus,
Bartolomé’s (2008) solution to these educational inequities is to instruct non-white and low-
income students in a way that recognizes their culture and life experience as assets instead of
liabilities. Bartolomé (2008) refers to this approach as a humanizing pedagogy because it
recognizes individual learner differences while avoiding broad counterproductive assumptions
about student backgrounds, interests, and abilities.
In order to confront the more significant problem of power dynamics, Bartolomé (2008)
assails the methods fetish as problematic because it enables a system of power to “justify and
rationalize an existing social order” (Bartolomé, 2008, p. xiii.). More specifically, Bartolomé
(2008) suggests that biased ideologies protect the status quo by perpetuating this asymmetric
power structure through unspoken ideologies as they inform school practices and ultimately
return full circle to influence society. Bartolomé (2008) articulates how even when one is
ignorant of his/her/zir hegemonic influence, he/she/ze still maintains those advantages since one
does not need to be conscious of his/her/zir advantage in order to obtain its benefits. Taken as a
whole, the system she identifies is structured in a way that is fed by the existing asymmetric
power structure, embedded with biased practices and results in educational practices that
reproduce the dominant power structure by overlooking legitimate barriers to subordinated
students’ academic achievement (Bartolomé, 2008).
Discussed through the lens of governmentality, Alexandra Cox (2015) describes ideology
as a linchpin, belying the juvenile justice system and its “racist assumptions about reformability”
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 17
(p. 23). Cox’s (2015) work originates in the social justice literature; however, her
characterization of the juvenile justice system’s ideological grounding resembles the way
Bartolomé (2008) presents the hegemonic practices another large public institution, the public
school system. In this way, both theorists identify the way assumptions based on ideology are
filtered into practices that replicate society’s asymmetric power structures (Bartolomé, 2008;
Cox, 2015). Cox’s theory is informed by two previous qualitative studies in which she
interviewed 39 juveniles and 70 correctional staff members between 2008 and 2012 (Cox, 2015.)
Adding to the breadth of her interviews, she participated in an unspecified number of policy
meetings and conducted in-depth facility-based observations of youth in the correctional system
(Cox, 2015). Cox presents a system that assumes the worst of minority youths’ “rationality,
choice, and individuality” and similar to Bartolomé’s (2008) point about the asymmetric
structural advantages and their inverse disadvantages “reveal the persistence of racialized forms
of social control” (Cox, 2015, p. 26, 29).
In a Foucauldian sense, the concept of governmentality refers to the way in which the
state exerts control over its populace, Cox (2015) posits another layer to this construct, she
focuses on its racialized underpinnings. In this piece, Cox (2015) analyzes the sentencing and
penal practices of the juvenile justice system to deconstruct how its behavioral interventions are
aimed at controlling juveniles presumed to lack among other things “rationality, choice and
individuality” (Cox, 2015, p. 26). In what she calls “responsibilizing practices,” Cox outlines the
ways the juvenile justice system categorizes, assesses, identifies problems, and assigns
culpability in ways that are informed by racialized governmentality. Cox identifies several key
assumptions that support the idea that minority youth are in need of training to better control
themselves in society. The problem with this, as Cox (2015) argues, is that the system’s racist
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 18
assumptions justify its existence while simultaneously failing to acknowledge the sentencing
system’s faults. In another parallel to Bartolomé’s (2008) argument about minority and low-
income schoolchildren, the system described by Cox (2015) is founded on assumptions that fail
to consider the upside to their backgrounds, culture, and experiences. Instead, youth are analyzed
for their “risk potential” and assigned to a governmental agency presumed to aptly train the
youth to self-regulate enough to regain their freedom from the institution. Thus, Cox describes a
powerful system whereby those in power, usually Whites, maintain a robust system that
anticipates moral and social deficiencies, deficiencies that conveniently help rationalize the
existence of hegemony and the practices of juvenile correctional rehabilitation.
In sync with Bartolomé’s (2008) own views, Cox’s (2015) argument similarly highlights
how systems of power are based on misinformed notions about Latino and African American
youth. However, unlike Bartolomé (2008), Cox (2015) explicitly identifies a more extensive
social force, the federal and state governments, to note how power is enacted through state-
imposed behavioral intervention programs. In this way, Cox (2015), like Bartolomé (2008),
presents ideas about race, responsibility, merit, and recognition as imbued with ideological bias,
yet the biases are masked by the façade of political neutrality. Thus implied, ideology influenced
how youth are characterized as needing punishment instead of needing guidance, support,
recognition, and respect. Cox (2015) has exposed a dilemma that has fundamentally relied on
systematically hidden yet powerfully influential disposition towards minority youth, mostly in
that they are in perpetual need of reform and punishment.
Martin Haberman (1991) argues that the pedagogy of poverty is undergirded by a system
of logic that conceives of teaching and learning in a way that disadvantages urban children and
minority youth. Although he does not use the term ideology, he denounces the pedagogy of
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 19
poverty in ways that would characterize an ideological basis in how teachers think about
teaching and learning, namely through perceived student ability (Haberman, 1991). This parallels
Bartolomé’s (2008) characterization of the function of ideology and similarly, Cox’s (2015)
description of the deficit bases by which the juvenile justice system implements behavioral
interventions. Also citing the achievement gap of urban low-income students, Haberman (1991)
argues, that as long as schoolteachers in low SES urban schools are not required to change their
pedagogical dispositions, the current disparity in student achievement will continue.
Fundamentally, his argument cites a similar solution to the aforementioned problem, mainly that
teachers and other members of society will need to recognize teaching and learning in a way that
approaches students through the lenses of teacher-student collaboration instead of student
deficiency.
Haberman (1991) argues that four primary logic structures frame the pedagogy of
poverty. They are (1) teachers, and students are engaged in different projects, one teaches, and
the other learns. (2) Teachers are ultimately the responsible agents while the students, being
learners, are the irresponsible agents. (3) Students must inevitably be ranked, and ultimately
some will be at the bottom while others are on top. Finally, (4) this is the idea that students must
be directed to focus on basic skills before they can learn other advanced or related skills
(Haberman, 1991). Haberman (1991) describes this ideology as “one where students can succeed
without becoming either involved or thoughtful (p. 292).
Haberman (1991) reflects on high poverty urban schools to make his case. He argues the
educational reform movement in high poverty schools has focused on improved outcomes and
performance instead of the teacher-student relational structures that are imbued with low
behavioral, academic, and intellectual expectations (Haberman, 1991). The driving mechanism
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 20
here is an authoritarian power structure within the pedagogy of poverty that conceives of
students as less than capable. The impact of this view is that youth are perceived to operate
somewhere in a binary spectrum of incapable at one end and unwilling to learn at the other.
Haberman (1991) describes the difference by describing how in authoritarian classrooms, a non-
compliant youth would be managed by norms of discipline and control, whereas a non-
authoritarian classroom, the teacher would only expect student behavior to change as a
consequence of willed decision-making. Pointing towards a positive pathway, Haberman (1991)
writes, “discipline and control [are really] consequences of effective teaching [rather than
prerequisites of learning]” (Haberman, 1991, para 19).
Lisa Delpit (1988) explores the skills versus process debate in education to expose it as
one distraction from the underlying issues concerning the education of children of color. She
cites the example of how researchers and educators pursue decontextualized and idealized
teaching methods while simultaneously masking how the entire debate is an exercise of power
within a system enacted in the classroom. Delpit (1988) coins the term “culture of power” to
describe the central explicit and implicit ideas and classroom practices that inherently lead to
“alienation and miscommunication” with poor students and students of color (p. 13). Delpit
(1988) argues that teachers express and enact power in the classroom through their pedagogical
explicit and implicit pedagogical practices. Further, she claims that the culture of power operates
in a way that it silences and limits dialogue about its existence to consequently to disadvantaged
students within the system. Thus, Delpit (1988) argues the solution is to provide a pathway for
alternate worldviews, which will only occur when students are taught to navigate about these
power systems.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 21
She presents five practices of power that occur in the classroom. (1) Issues of power are
enacted in the classroom. (2) There are codes or rules for participating in power, that operates as
a culture of power. (3) The rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the rules of the culture
that has power. (4) If you are not already a participant in the culture of power, being told
explicitly the rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier And (5), those with power are
frequently least aware of—or at least willing to acknowledge its existence. Those with less
power are often most aware of its existence. Her argument exposes how the discussion itself
about how to best teach poor children and students of color is an exercise of power that
circumvents those outside of the dominant culture, namely, educators of color, non-White and
low SES students. She argues that this power unfolds in the classroom in “ways of talking, ways
of writing, ways of dressing, and ways of interacting” (Delpit, 1988, p. 14). Delpit (1988)
suggests that the classroom will invariably reflect the values and practices of the dominant
culture so that students outside the culture of power must adopt the values in order to advance.
However, the subtext of her argument is that by uncritically adopting those value-laden practices,
students are forced to abandon their own values in circumstances when they conflict with those
of the culture of power. Further, this implies that students outside of the dominant culture of
power are forced to depend on the benevolence of some power broker of the dominant culture to
tell them how and what they should know (Delpit, 1988).
In Delpit’s (1988) example, she describes the difference in communication styles of a
Black child whose mother speaks explicitly so that the child is confused by a school environment
whereby the culture of power only implicitly expresses itself through expectations and rules.
This seemingly minor example appears to be what Delpit (1988) sees as a microcosm of the
power structure. The system resembles the way Bartolomé characterizes (2008) ideology as “the
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 22
framework of thought constructed…to justify or rationalize an existing social order” (Bartolomé,
2008, p. xiii). Only in Delpit’s (1988) argument, the framework of power is expressed as
ideology through a belief about the nature of education and expectations for non-White and poor
children to think and behave in the classroom. The consequence of resembles the asymmetric
power structure noted above, mostly the limited options presented to those not in the culture of
power; either subscribe to the ideology or independently interrogate and navigate the power
systems for themselves.
Angela Valenzuela (2010) describes subtractive schooling as a pedagogical approach that
aims to assimilate Latino students into the dominant culture instead of recognizing their pre-
existing culture and equal value. Valenzuela (2010) cites the relational role between teacher and
student as either authentic or aesthetic (Valenzuela, 2010). She describes authentic caring as a bi-
directional relationship, whereas aesthetic caring occurs describes a limited or superficial
concern for the student and their performance (Valenzuela, 2010). Latino students, she argues,
need authentic caring instead of assimilationist pedagogies or approaches centered on jettisoning
the students’ cultural capital (Valenzuela, 2010). Valenzuela (2010) argues that although the best
connections between teachers and students are fostered with a balance of authentic and aesthetic
caring, the most impactful connection is positively developed through authentic caring. She goes
on to describe authentic caring as having a sincere concern and interest for the student so as to
facilitate a connection based on several sincere connections. Authentic caring is conceived in
contrast to aesthetic caring, which reduces to caring about student performance to a practice that
fails to recognize and accept the student as a uniquely multidimensional child (Valenzuela,
2010). As she presents subtractive schooling, it is practiced through a system of values and
practices about what students need to be successful and how a misguided perception can function
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 23
in the way Cox (2015) argued that the rigid and narrow expectations serve to perpetuate existing
dominant systems.
In sync with Delpit’s (1988) description of power structures, Haberman’s (1991)
pedagogy of poverty and Cox’s (2015) responsible submission, Valenzuela’s (2010) argument
characterizes the teacher and student relationship in a way that reveals the influence of ideology,
especially as she explains how subtractive schooling is expressed through aesthetic caring to
subordinate student needs and concerns through assimilation. Again, Valenzuela’s (2010)
description of subtractive schooling also parallels the way power is expressed and obscured to
guide or misguide student achievement by way of ideological underpinnings. Those ideological
underpinnings are expressed as Valenzuela (2010) writes, “[students] are asked to value and
support …[a curriculum] that dismisses or derogates their language, culture, and
community…rather than building on students’ cultural, linguistic, and community based
knowledge” (p. 62). Inadvertently, she implies, students react in ways to this subtractive
approach by withdrawing and justifying how teachers rationalize their approaches to a lack of
student caring (Valenzuela, 2010). Thus, in Valenzuela’s (2010) view, the ideology of
Americanization unfolds through how teachers characterize, express, and enact expectations for
and about their students.
Richard Milner’s (2010) student-performance framework explicates the complex social
contexts that create opportunity gaps for students of color, whose consequences result in a lack
of diversity in achievement. The significance of this is its ability to distinguish between student
achievement and student opportunity. In other words, his framework balances the input and
output of student achievement so as to explain to the impact of opportunity and/or lack of it. The
power of this is that low achieving students, especially students of color and /or low SES, tend to
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 24
be identified as low ability. Instead, using Milner’s (2010) framework, student performance or
outcomes can be appropriately placed within the appropriate place within the system in which it
occurs, as an input whose output is skewed by opportunity gaps. Further, he argues that ignoring
the systemic problem only serves to perpetuate student opportunity gaps and feed the stereotypes
that minority and low SES students do not possess the ability to perform. Consequently, by
ignoring the opportunity gaps, and assuming that all opportunities are equal, the underlying bias
locates high performing White students as inherently smarter and better than students of color.
Milner (2010) outlines five trajectories to explain the lack of diversity among achieving students.
Another strength of this framework lies in its ability to extend the scope of analysis beyond
student achievement and simple inputs into the intangible yet real variables at the front end of the
issue, such as student opportunity. Furthermore, Milner (2010) is attacking a self-serving notion
that has historically been used to justify and exacerbate opportunity gaps for children of color.
Valenzuela (2010) challenges a similar position when she describes the superficial concern for
students as aesthetic caring (Valenzuela, 2010). By contrast, Milner (2010) argues that students
ought to be understood as recipients of mind-sets that ignore or downplay how resources and/or
lack of them go beyond the individual.
Empirical
Rist (1970) studied the first years of an inner-city school with all Black students, staff,
and teachers. In a kindergarten through eighth-grade school with nearly 900 students, he set out
to study how teacher expectations influenced the learning opportunities afforded to 57 children
in the classroom (Rist, 1970). The 3-year study analyzed reading groups in which the children
grouped and stratified ostensibly by values associated with social class. He found that teachers
ascribed and treated students in a way that linked the most preferential treatment with the highest
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 25
social class and reserved the poorest treatment for students they believed to exemplify the
characteristics of the lowest social class. Rist (1970) conducted interviews, formal and informal
observations. He began observations during kindergarten and concluded in the first half of the
students’ second-grade year. Formal observations included continuous and synchronous
handwritten notes of the classroom activity and relations, whereas informal observations only
included handwritten notes after leaving the classroom (Rist, 1970). The twist to Rist’s (1979)
study was that teachers grouped students strictly on social information gathered through formal
school documents and observation; so, student reading groups were not based on ability, they
were based on socioeconomic levels. Consequently, teachers treated each group based upon an
assumed ability associated with social class.
The study revealed how teacher beliefs about ability might be enmeshed within a
teacher’s ideological framework about social class and capability (Rist, 1970). The teacher
assigned value according to gradations of socioeconomic status based upon four pieces of
information: (1) pre-registration form, notice if student came from home that received public
welfare funds, (3) behavioral questionnaire and (4) any experiences with siblings. From this
information, in combination with a brief observation, teachers assigned students to reading
groups (Rist, 1970). This meant that preexisting conceptions about social income were used to
create stratified groups. In absence of information relevant task, reading, students were presumed
to possess higher skills because they possessed more of the desirable traits associated with the
desirable socioeconomic status (Rist, 1970). Furthermore, throughout the study, teachers
unwittingly altered their behavior to those perceived group levels so that only students with the
most desirable traits received the most desirable support, and the lower tiers each received
gradations of treatment below that. This article exemplifies Bartolomé’s (2008) definition of
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 26
ideology in that the teachers justified and rationalized the dominant social order into their student
expectations. The influence of ideology is further exemplified in Rist’s (1970) findings that even
when students were moved between groups, instead of relying strictly on reading ability, social
expectations influenced mobility so that a student moved levels up or down based upon
his/her/zir ability to conform with the teacher’s expectations for that group. For example, Rist
(1970) recalls a teacher who demoted a student reading level for failing to exemplify the
characteristics ascribed to that level; in one instance, a student could not keep his/her/zir desk
clean (1970). In reference to Delpit (1988), this study also indicates how the culture of power
was replicated through expectations of student ability based upon a teacher’s perception of the
dominant society’s acceptance. More clearly, the teacher’s expectations were based on her
perceptions of social desirability and associated with her perception of academic ability and, in
this sense, replicated the dominant culture’s criteria for academic ability with social desirability
(Rist, 1970). In this sense, Rist’s (1970) research ascertains one view of the mechanisms for
how beliefs and expectations are enacted into daily practices and, more importantly, how they
are linked ideologically with notions of the dominant social culture through exercises of power.
Beth Hatt (2012) conducted a yearlong ethnographic study of kindergarteners and
concluded that smartness operates as a tool for demarcating a person’s position relative to a
system of power. More clearly, Hatt (2012) argued that the concept of smartness was perceived
to be scientific and objective, yet she found several examples whereby a student’s relative
smartness maintained two social functions: social control and social positioning along racial and
class lines. In a semi-rural school, Hatt (2012) studied a classroom of working-class Latino,
White, and Black kindergarten students for one year by conducting interviews, observations, and
public document review. She conducted structured and unstructured interviews with teachers,
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 27
parents, and all students in the classroom from the second teacher workday to the end of 9
weeks. Hatt (2012) spent more than 865 hours in the classroom, wrote over 600 pages of field
notes, analyzed over 200 documents, and conducted 37 interviews. To maintain validity, she kept
a journal and regularly debriefed with other ethnographers, and her article openly stated her
positionality in terms of social class and race (Hatt, 2012).
Hatt’s (2012) study revealed how teachers used explicit and implicit language and
expectations to denote smartness while in effect demarcating and ascribing students’ cultural
capital; she referred to these practices as the hidden curriculum. However, Hatt (2012) also found
that those ascriptions only reflected the teachers’ ideology, and as students were categorized, it
operated as a form of power. Hatt (2012) explicitly aimed to extend the use of smartness beyond
ideology and into a practice, something she presented as she discovered the behavioral patterns
emerged as teachers defined who was and was not smart. Delpit’s (1988) notion of the culture of
power also helps unpack how Hatt (2012) described smartness as code for “maintaining a docile
body and modeling authority figures” (p. 19). These practices also echo Cox’s (2015) description
of how youth to were expected to responsibly and uncritically submit to those in power; in this
case, correctional officers. Hatt (2012) further suggested that this power was extensive since,
even if the student rejected the teacher’s categorization, the categorization of dumb was
demoralizing and led students to behave in ways that validated their teachers’ negative
preconceptions.
On another level, teachers perpetuated a cultural preference for one student over another
by evaluating the students according to perceived intelligence through the construct of smartness
(Hatt, 2012). This example is consistent with Delpit’s (1988) argument noting how classrooms
are local sites of power whereby the broader culture of power replicates the symmetry of
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 28
dominant social structures. Similarly, despite its subtext of scientific objectivity, smartness was
used to distinguish between subjective notions of social desirability while masking the teacher as
a locus of power (Hatt, 2012). Thus, the teacher’s ideology had the potential to empower or
disempower students based upon whichever end of the spectrum they were ascribed. In one
instance, she described how a teacher enacted this pattern along racial lines so that a Black
student was the recipient of extra attention despite a White child’s similar behavior (Hatt, 2012).
Ready and Wright (2011) measured teacher-student expectations as they compared to
students’ reading performance to investigate the accuracy of teacher perceptions of their
students. The study used nuanced data collection strategies to factor out the in-group differences
and allowed for variation in student characteristics (Ready & Wright, 2011). The strength of the
sample was revealed by its sample size; the study analyzed nearly 10,000 students and 700
schools. This large sample allowed the authors to discover a quantifiable pattern of teacher bias
(Ready & Wright, 2011). In the most aggregated form, the results indicated nearly half of the
teachers’ perceived differences were tied to actual differences (Ready & Wright, 2011). The
other roughly half of their perceptions were influenced by teacher bias by socio-demographic
subgroups (Ready & Wright, 2011).
Ready and Wright (2011) found that across race and gender, teachers’ expectations
revealed different systems of bias in perception of student cognitive abilities. For example, one
finding was that teachers overestimated the skill of girls (Ready & Wright, 2011). Another
finding was that teachers overestimated the ability of White compared to Latino children’s skills.
However, most significantly, the authors found low SES to be the strongest predictor of teacher
inaccuracy (Ready & Wright, 2011). This means, controlling for all other factors, the results
indicated that the teachers’ ability to accurately perceive student abilities varied according to
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 29
SES. More clearly, teacher accuracy was highest with high SES children and lowest with low
SES children. Although not addressed by the authors, Haberman’s (1991) pedagogy of poverty is
one possible explanation for this consistent disparity. Haberman’s (1991) empirical
demonstration of teacher perceptions indicates a teacher’s powerful influence to create and or
limit student realities based upon the teacher’s self-constructed frameworks. Historically, the
construct of smartness, or the students’ lack thereof would have been used to blame the already
subordinated students for their own deficiencies (Hatt, 2012). Finally, Ready and Wright’s
(2011) study revealed a wide gap in teacher judgment because they were only accurate judging
student ability half of the time, highlighting the vast impact of teacher misjudgment, they further
contend that the remaining half was influenced by biases in teacher perceptions.
As outlined above, Bartolomé’s (2008) view helps to understand how teacher ideology
centrally defines the breadth and depth of teacher perceptions and behavior. Further, as she
notes, the ignored hidden power of ideology has led many researchers to pursue the gilded
panacea of a universal and generalizable teaching strategy, all the while ignoring student
particularities. Cox (2015) helps to understand how social control in the juvenile correctional
institution offers a parallel glimpse of how power and ideology are used in the management of
poor and Non-White youth. As she argues, the justice systems parallels, with many
disadvantaged students of color, are rewarded for submission through a responsibilizing practice
of submission (Cox, 2015). She calls this practice an expression of governmentality, and it
parallels some teachers’ approach to teaching. In subtractive schooling, Valenzuela (2010) noted
how teachers want to narrowly focus on the students’ achievement without supporting the
multitude of variables required to achieve. This aligns with Haberman’s (1991) pedagogy of
poverty, which reveals how teachers’ underlying position towards teaching and students
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 30
ultimately gets expressed through their teaching strategies and how they rely upon assumptions
and misperception. Delpit (1988) argues that emphases on teaching and learning overlook
systems of power operate and underlie a student’s school experience. These power systems, such
as Haberman’s (1991) pedagogy of poverty, are enacted type of responsible submission (Cox,
2015) only to be overlooked in search of the universal methodological fix presented by
Bartolomé (2008). Simultaneously, or consequently, the teacher believes her position is to
subtract or retrain the perceived barriers to achievement, which are oftentimes confused and
infused with ideological bias and misperception, as described by Valenzuela (1992).
This literature sets the frame of reference for the role in teacher ideology by revealing the
breadth and dimension from which to draw data from teacher ideology as analyzed through
teacher beliefs, expectations, norms, and behavioral standards. Its strengths lie in its ability to lie
out the strands of ideology’s masked influence. Its limit is that it is insufficient to inform my
approach to addressing both research questions. Additionally, the preceding body of literature
does not give the rich context necessary to make the complex data useful. This is why the
following section discusses school climate, more particularly classroom climate.
Classroom Climate
In response to my second research question, this section is focused on the practices used
as a result of teachers’ understanding of student behavior. This means culturally relevant
instruction, classroom behavioral structure, and classroom instruction. As with the previous
section, I first present theoretical literature and then turn my attention to the empirical literature.
Theoretical
Valenzuela’s (1999) model for the relational quality of teachers and students contrasts
the concept of caring into two categories, authentic caring, and aesthetic caring. Aesthetic caring
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 31
emphasizes student performance and places little to no emphasis on the student-to-teacher
relationship quality (Valenzuela, 2010.). In contrast, authentic caring describes a high-quality
teacher-to-student relationship whose concern extends beyond the litany of measured and
quantified performance data and instead highlights a personal connection and investment on the
part of the teacher (Valenzuela, 2010). The frameworks of caring can be understood as genuine
versus superficial (Valenzuela, 2010). Though she writes about this strictly in terms of Mexican-
American youth, this analytical perspective can be extended to investigate the level of teacher
caring with any group of students. However, the lens’s analytical strength lies in its ability to
identify and conceptually unpack the mechanisms whereby seemingly caring teachers are prone
to overlook misidentify and thereby mismanage the educational project.
In a related study, the authors observed three effective novice teachers in the first 2 hours
of the first day of elementary school. Their inquiry sought an understanding of classroom
environments and student resilience (Bondy et al., 2007). They define the ideal learning
environment as a “positive psychological environment that support[s] student resilience and
achievement” (Bondy et al., 2007, p. 334). The findings reveal teachers were unexpectedly
practicing four explicit practices to support student resilience and achievement (Bondy et al.,
2007). Broadly, the findings can be categorized as psycho-socio elements: (1) developing
relationships, (2) establishing expectations, (3) insistence, and (4) communicating in culturally
responsive ways.
Previously, literature peripherally focused on the psycho-socio landscape of the
classroom environment. That is, instead of understanding the classroom as a to-be-conquered
teaching problem, teachers’ emphasis on students’ concerns relays demonstrates respect for
individual autonomy and the collective force of group autonomy (of the students) (Bondy et al.,
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 32
2007). In this sense, the power ought to be distributed amongst its respective collective origin.
An alternate characterization may identify this as a humanizing power structure where classroom
functions as space where learning is facilitated instead of authoritatively mandated in a way
where the teacher and student are on related but on two separate missions; one to teach and the
other to learn. Two underlying components comprise this view; they are a focus on the teacher-
student relationship and the other the establishment of classroom expectations (Bondy et al.,
2007).
Donetta Cothran and Catherine Ennis (1997) examined how teachers and students adapt
to perceptions of asymmetric power distribution in the classroom. More specifically, they studied
how teachers and students adapted to the perceived asymmetry and how the attempts to wrangle
power resulted in a shift away from instructional goals (Cothran & Ennis, 1997). Viewed within
the frame of conflicts of interest, Cothran and Ennis (1997) followed the teacher-student conflict
to investigate how students abandoned course concerns as they attempted to invoke their power
as a reaction perceived loss of power. Similarly, teachers became entrenched in real power
struggles over perceived loss of authority, and this shaped their approaches to teaching, student
relations, and learning (Cothran & Ennis, 1997). In other words, teachers believed that since they
could no longer rely on the authoritative institutional force of their inherent roles, they were now
responsible for acquiring the requisite power for learning by working with the students
cooperatively (Cothran & Ennis, 1997). This emphasis on classroom structure, more specifically,
the power over whom got to say what each person did significantly reduced the ability for all to
work in cooperation or collaboratively (Cothran & Ennis, 1997). Unfortunately, a limitation of
the study was that it was not clear how much experienced the teachers possessed and other
contextual factors that could have limited their interest in building relationships with their
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 33
students (Cothran & Ennis, 1997). For instance, social issues such as peer influence can deflect
student interest in participation, especially in classes like physical education. Although the
argument could be made that the physical education class in itself may have had less intrinsic or
extrinsic rewards to offer students, the same could be said about any given academic subject. An
item to note is how the authors identify culturally responsive educational curricula as a potential
solution to students’ lack of interest (Cothran & Ennis, 1997). Further, the resulting power
conflicts and their consequent behavior indicate the power dynamics of the psycho-socio
landscape and its tendency to divert emphases from previously determined objectives and into
increasingly disruptive battles over autonomy and recognition (Cothran & Ennis, 1997).
Empirical
Matsumura et al. (2008) conducted an empirical study that focused on the affective
component of classroom climate. In an effort to positively study the mechanisms leading to
positive and productive learning environments, the authors found pro-social student behavior and
learning to be best predicted by the amount of respect shown to students in the classroom and the
level of rigor to which students were held. The authors characterize the research trend up to this
point indicate that learning is especially effective with a blend of positive classroom climate and
academic demand (Matsumura et al., 2008). I assert that upon further analysis, these two
categories can be linked with power structures. In a highly demanding yet, low affectively
supportive environment, students are unlikely to be as effective learners as they are in highly
supportive ones (Matsumura et al., 2008). In part, that is because of this affective dimension and
learners’ environmentally supportive needs. This set of findings indicated how power structures
in the classroom play in other mechanisms such as respect and rigor. Either could be enforced by
a directive authority, however, neither produces the learning results more reliably or presumably
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 34
less reliably than a supportive classroom environment and an academically rigorous classroom
(Matsumura et al., 2008).
Heather Davis (2006) conducted a case study to analyze and extend current research on
the interpersonal patterns exhibited amongst students and teachers in efforts to complete
academic tasks. Her study added nuance to the way relations between students and teachers are
conceived to operate. Davis (2006) accomplished this by separating the teachers’ context from
the students’ context, and she described those to be mitigated by peer influence and the relational
quality. This means students’ ability to connect with their teachers ought to be viewed in light of
the quality of their relationship and further contextualized by the influence of students’ peers
(Davis, 2006). Her study supported and extended the research in adding breadth to both the
teachers’ and students’ contexts (Davis, 2006). For example, she articulated various norms and
resources related to learner-centered approaches that add to the dimensions of relations
traditionally discussed in the classroom context (Davis, 2006). This article highlights the
divergent directions of relations in the classroom and their interdependence and impact on
teaching and learning (Davis, 2006). Key here is the idea that focusing on the relational aspect of
the classroom is not necessarily a burden to learning; instead, it can be seen as fundamental to
learning (Davis, 2006). Further, by noting and addressing the overlapping context identified by
Davis (2006), the chance of learning dramatically increases.
This study examined perceived problem behavior and its relation to classroom climate
(O’Brennan et al., 2014). In a unique approach, this study attempted to locate the mechanisms of
influence that impacted how teachers perceived student behavior. The authors cite relative
availability of studies that analyzed either school climate or classroom climate; however, they
noted a shortage of research locating the classroom climate in relation to a greater context such
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 35
as school climate (O’Brennan et al., 2014). The quantitative data collection spoke to the strength
of this article, namely that it focused on 37 elementary schools and nearly 500 classrooms
(O’Brennan et al., 2014). However, this strength belied a weakness noted by the authors, namely,
its lack of direct observation data (O’Brennan et al., 2014). Thus, the study’s primary data source
was the teachers’ perceptions, and their perceptions could have been cross-referenced with
classroom observation for a stronger determination of the accuracy of their perceptions
(O’Brennan et al., 2014).
A teacher’s perception of students that was developed in the classroom appears to have
the most significant influence on how that teacher understands a student’s behavior (O’Brennan
et al. 2014). When compared to the broader environment of school climate, the authors found
classroom climate to be more closely correlated with a teacher’s perception of in-class student
behavior (O’Brennan et al., 2014). For example, in the case of positive or prosocial student
behavior, the study found that teachers’ perceptions were mostly influenced by their classroom
context. Positive behavioral perceptions were more closely related to the overall classrooms’
behavioral trend, whereas the converse correlated with teacher perceptions of classroom
behavior. This means an individual student was more likely to be perceived as displaying
prosocial behavior if her/his/zir class was perceived as having mostly prosocial behavior
(O’Brennan et al., 2014). Conversely, an individual student’s negative behavior was more likely
to be perceived as unfavorable if their overall class was perceived to be mostly misbehaving. A
further interesting note was how the Black and White student disparity was also correlated to the
classroom so that in classes with more perceived prosocial behavior revealed a narrow gap as
opposed to the classrooms with more perceived misbehavior. Though the authors did not state it,
the fact that the behavioral gap remained, albeit narrower, indicated a more fundamental
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 36
difference in that the behavioral gap persists. Given the significant role of teachers perceived
student behavioral patterns, this study is significant to my research in how it focused on the
classroom behavior in relation to a teacher’s perception of the school climate only to reveal that
the classroom more clearly influenced student behavior than any other factor. Perceptions of
classroom behavior thus have an influential role to play in the lives of students and schools.
These findings suggest the centrality and significance of understanding how teachers use and
modify their ideological bases as lenses into their perceptions of their students and classroom
behavior (O’Brennan et al., 2014).
Collectively, these articles identify and measure tangible variables of the classroom as
influenced by teacher ideology. Matsumura et al. (2008) measure and document the social
landscape of the classroom and how that is tied into classroom practices. Ideologically, a safe
presumption is that one who utilizes supportive practices subscribes to a student-centered belief
system; this also implies a related sense of interest in upholding positive practices in the psycho-
social environment. Taken further, teachers’ perceptions of students was largely influenced by
the behavior of their peers, and as previously discussed, those perceptions are filtered through
preexisting schemas (O’Brennan et al., 2014) Although students were cited as contributors to
classroom climate, as instructional leaders, teachers were seen as primary arbiters.
Conceptual Framework
Maxwell’s definition of conceptual framework calls for a systemic theoretical map that
explicitly identifies and relates critical ideas in order to portray a projected goal or research
intent (Maxwell, 2013). I drew from concepts and theorists discussed in my literature review in
order to develop the map that explicitly connects the ways teacher ideology impacts his or her
attitude student behavior. My project, as driven by the research questions, investigated ways that
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 37
teachers’ ideology was revealed by their practices within the scope of making meaning of and
responding to historically marginalized students’ behavior.
As described in figure 1, the interactions between the teacher and the student and student-
to-student-to-teacher interactions are the focus because these interactions create the social,
psychological, and affective norms that are called classroom climate (Matsumura et al., 2008).
The conceptual framework, as presented, was the final version, and it suggests that the teacher is
the primary influence of the classroom climate though students contribute through their
participation in the established climate. However, another factor that has the potential to
influence the climate is peer-to-peer relationships, especially as they impact a teacher’s attempts
to manage the climate (Davis, 2006). Peer to peer relationships are powerful enough to
potentially alter the culture of an entire classroom (Davis, 2006). This exemplar signifies just one
of several ways that teacher ideology overtly or covertly manifests into classroom practices
whereby students may be prompted to behave in ways that run counter to their educational
success and advancement. In these ways, teacher-student and student-student relations set the
climate that will either nurture or stifle the student’s chances of academic success.
More specifically, I assert that the teacher is ideologically positioned, and that position
sets the behaviors, expectations, and classroom climate. He or she either brings the ideological
perspective that students need to be controlled or that they do not need to be controlled. Within
this notion of control, the conceptual framework was designed to analyze how teachers
understand students’ behavior relative to students needing to be controlled. The teacher’s
ideological position is reflected in how he/she/ze envisions the students in terms of their
capacity, culture, etc. A teacher’s ideological positions are not always expressed, nor might they
be reflected upon. There are countless ways that ideology could influence a teacher’s classroom
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 38
practices. In fact, it is possible to express and proclaim one view about students, and their
behavior yet holds an unexpressed contradictory ideological view. In other words, it appears
possible that one could envision him/herself to stand for a principle at one end of the control
spectrum, yet in the classroom enact practices that run counter to stated beliefs. I argue that the
teacher’s position is reflected in the teacher’s practices in the classroom. The situatedness of the
teacher and students within a control-oriented environment emphasizes behavioral submission
and subtractive tendencies. When a teacher believes that students need to be controlled, he/she/ze
will display or enact controlling, authoritarian, and/or subtractive practices. On the other hand,
when the teacher does not believe that the students need to be controlled, the teacher ascribes
assets to the students, assets in dessert of autonomy, exploration, and support. Thus, he/she/ze
will enact non-controlling, additive, and authoritative practices. A teacher’s assessment of
student behavior influences not only what and how he/she/ze teaches the students, but also how
he/she/ze establishes and enforces behavior expectations. Classroom climate is the context for
and product of day-to-day teacher-student interaction. I discuss each of these components in
further detail below. I first describe what it looks like when a teacher holds a neutral or deficit
ideology about his or her students and how that ideology is likely is expressed in their classroom
practices. I then shift my attention to the types of beliefs associated with asset ideology before
setting forth exemplars of teacher behaviors associated with asset ideology.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 39
Figure 1. Conceptual Framework.
Neutral or Deficit Teacher Ideology
Despite efforts at impartiality towards students, teachers draw upon frameworks of belief
and experiences to inform their classroom practices (Bartolomé, 2008). This means despite
efforts to conduct class in with impartiality; teachers will draw from their unique experiences and
circumstances. This is not to say that a teacher’s background and cognitive frameworks
determine his/her/zir practices. Instead, it is to say that a teacher’s beliefs about students’
abilities can latently undermine the teacher-student relationship, classroom climate, and,
consequently, student learning. Further, a teacher’s inability to mitigate he/she/ze problematic
beliefs creates a teacher-based system that subverts student power, especially students of color
and students from low SES households. Moreover, ideological awareness and interventions do
not guarantee an optimal classroom climate, as it has been well documented that teacher
neutrality and teacher empathy both have the potential to perpetuate systemic biases by masking
underlying assumptions about students and their potential (Bartolomé, 2008).
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 40
Bartolomé (2008) presents teacher neutrality is a way to understand the “obscured
discriminatory practices towards subordinated students” (p. ix). This suggests a teacher may
believe him/her/zirself to be impartial towards students; however, whether intentional or
unintentional, this belief is not the same thing as being impartial, especially the belief is derived
without engaging in the critical reflective practice associated with impartiality. Further, this
construct obscures the difficulty of attaining complete impartiality, mostly because of the way
human belief always comes from some sort of bias. More clearly, her argument suggests that
presumed impartiality feeds the types of systemic beliefs that treating students similarly is the
same as being fair and equitable (Bartolomé, 2008).
On a larger scale, this presumed impartiality systematically hides practices and
unconscious beliefs that teachers use to assess behavior to make assumptions about student
ability and overall (or academic) potential (Bartolomé). Smartness is a label that clearly
exemplifies this practice. Hatt’s (2012) notes the term being put to service as an objective marker
of student ability in a way that disregards or minimizes the term’s subjective use. Hatt’s (2012)
study found that “smartness was used as a mechanism of control and social positioning along
racial and class lines” (p. 1). In my experience, judgments and labels become a means for
teachers to decide how to engage student behavior. For instance, a student deemed smart may be
given opportunities to comport within the teacher’s concept of acceptable classroom behavior
while a student not identified as smart may be assumed to lack the potential to operate within the
teacher’s boundaries of acceptability. In this sense, the designation appears more likely to reflect
the teacher’s ideological position more than it reflects the student’s intelligence, abilities, and/or
potential.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 41
Smartness is a crucial exemplar for the subtle ways that teacher ideology can influence
classroom practices and student behavior and classroom climate. As a label, smartness is a term
used to describe a student’s present-day abilities and future potential. Smart students are believed
to possess present-day abilities and future potential while students not recognized as smart are
designated as having a fixed and or static ability and potential. Despite the term’s perceived
objectivity, Hatt (2012) found smartness to be used in ways that ran antithetical to their widely
extolled sense of objectivity. The problem is not one of semantics; the problem appears to be
how the term may be used as an arbitrary placeholder to demarcate student’s abilities and
potential based on ways that are more indicative of the teacher’s ideology than they are about the
student’s capacities. More specifically, this practice separates and labels students capable or
incapable based on tenuous and harmful prejudices and biases. This use of smartness is powerful
and has far-reaching consequents since it attempts to define and categorizes students’ present
circumstances, and by extension, their futures. In Hatt’s (2012) study, low SES students and
students of color disproportionately experienced the greatest disadvantages.
An important delineation is that teacher awareness is not enough to mitigate the influence
of harmful ideology. For example, I have seen some teachers attempt to counter uneven
academic performance by promoting identical treatment students in the classroom. This approach
relies on problematic assumptions. For instance, whereas equality suggests each person deserves
the same, equity recognizes that students often have individual and non-apparent barriers to their
academic achievement, genuine equality may call for explicitly differential treatment of students.
Power and controlling students. Whereas the previous section discussed the practice
and effects of teacher neutrality, this section will extend that focus to discuss the types of
explanations and conclusions teachers draw from their student’s behavior. The types of
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 42
conclusions teachers draw impacts how he or she cultivates relationships with students. The
different conclusions about students will lead teachers towards variegated practices. For
example, a teacher may interpret a student’s behavior negatively yet hold optimism about their
ability to comport with classroom norms. On the other hand, a teacher could interpret student
behavior negatively and conclude that the student does not have the potential to comport within
behavioral norms. Thus, as I will attempt to explain this section, the way teachers make sense of
student behavior can be explained by linking their ideological position, to their beliefs about
students, which is also linked with his or her views on power in the classroom. I will articulate
how teacher ideology relates to interpretations about students and further aligns with notions of
power, race, and SES using the work of Richard Milner (2010), Lisa Delpit (1988), and
Alexandra Cox (2015).
Teacher ideology and student labeling refer to phenomena that can be understood within
a greater context of assumptions about student abilities. The opportunity gaps framework
enriches the context by allowing us to see how a concept such as smartness is consistent with a
theme of views regarding the abilities of students of color and low SES communities.
Collectively, the explanations serve as ready-made explanations for interpreting the behavior of
students of color and low SES households. This is not to suggest a coordinated and conscious
effort against students of color and low SES households; only, it is to underscore Bartolomé’s
(2008) conclusion regarding the nature of ideology and how public opinion includes teachers,
those who work closest with these same students.
Hatt’s (2012) study on smartness revealed one particular tool used to demarcate student ability
under the facade of objectivity subjectively. The opportunity gap framework draws on extended
belief systems to delineate prejudiced strands of thought used to explain away disparities in
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 43
academic achievement (Milner, 2010). These beliefs exemplify Bartolomé’s (2008) argument
illuminating the destructive and subtle influence of teacher ideology, especially as it is
perpetuated by the practice of classroom neutrality.
Collectively, these beliefs about students are myopically focused on student deficits,
especially unsubstantiated and prejudiced assumptions instead of student strengths. Such narrow
emphases fail to recognize the many variables of a student’s lives, especially the truism that all
students have both strengths and weaknesses and that learning capacity is generally not fixed.
These beliefs are problematic because they are likely false, but also because they inform and
foreshadow a relationship style enacted by the classroom teacher. In other words, judging a
student from a mostly deficit perspective is excessively narrow and may be a pretext for lower
expectations and less classroom support. These practices lend themselves to creating a self-
fulfilling prophecy whereby preconceived notions are affirmed and thereby justify teacher
practices. I will next discuss how teachers rely on beliefs about student behavior and the ability
to remediate with power and control in the classroom.
As mentioned earlier, teacher ideology, beliefs about student abilities, and the way
teachers make sense of student behavior all coalesce around the teachers respond to their beliefs
and perceptions about student abilities. Power and control are approaches that teachers may be
tempted to use to mitigate a student’s non-comportment with teacher expectations for behavior
or academic achievement. Lisa Delpit’s (1988) article on power refers to the relational dynamic
and relative influence of determining norms, standards, expectations, and the consequences for
deviation (Delpit, 1988). For example, Hatt’s (2012) argument highlighted asymmetric power by
teacher labeling and demarcating in-group and out-group such as subjectively determining
student smartness under the pretense of objectivity. By categorizing and labeling student abilities
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 44
and student potential, teachers exercise power to control to force student growth, either
behaviorally, academically, or both. This unilateral approach suggests that a teacher must believe
in their personal ability to control student learning, to control student behavior, and to solely
identify the needs and limits of their students. In sum, this underscores Delpit’s (1988) case that
students are not taught the larger social power structure, and they are ultimately left out of the
discussion of what is best for their education.
Although the example comes out of literature on the juvenile justice system, the practice
of responsible submission replicates that of a high-control classroom. Cox’s (2015) study found
Black and poor children in the juvenile justice system to be managed by a power structure that
rewards forfeiture of their agency in favor of their submission to a system of powerful
correctional guards and staff (Cox, 2015). In the sense where powerful teachers make up the
classroom rules, determine who follows them and what should happen, the example in the justice
system is not a stretch. Even further, the rationale for the asymmetric power structure parallels
those mentioned above in Milner’s (2010) explanatory framework and Delpit’s (1988) charge of
the hidden role of power in the classroom. Cox (2015) argues that the hegemonic structure of
that system operates in a way that sees juvenile behavior as representative of an inherent lack of
development so that their presumed under-development euphemistically masks the requirements
that youth are primarily seen as unable to behave and or learn according to customs or norms.
In light of the above discussion, power and hegemony are not always explicit and expressed by
teachers; they occur through teachers’ assumptions, expectations, double standards, and a variety
of other classroom practices.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 45
Control and Classroom Climate
The classroom is a primary point of analysis since this is where most of the teacher-
student interaction occurs. Classroom climate refers to the affective a character of the classroom,
rather, how students feel, how, if so, are those feelings are recognized and or acknowledged by
the teacher and between students (Matsumura et al., 2008). Climate is influenced by the teacher’s
social interactions, such as modeling and behavioral reinforcement. Climate set through the
teachers’ actions, and words and students contribute to the climate in how they approach the
teachers’ various expressions of power through teaching practices. In an environment where the
teacher feels like they need to control students, one would expect to observe low levels of
respect, lack of trust, and a focus on the teacher as the sole possessor of knowledge and by
implication, the person that ought to possess the highest power. Additionally, one is likely to find
negative student-student behavior, disciplinary/behavioral harshness, teacher inconsistency, and
unspoken rules (Matsumura et al., 2008). Throughout the classroom, one could also expect to see
a low level of student care for each other, lack of care for the instruction, and competitive instead
of a collaborative ethos. Overall, a classroom with these characteristics can be considered low
quality because the deficit perspective is central, and teacher expectations predispose the teacher
to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Power and not controlling students. As mentioned above, ideology is expressed
through teacher practices; this is why ideology is a significant starting point of analysis. When a
teacher’s ideological position favors all learners, one can expect students to be at the center, and
for evaluation to consist of a wide range of metrics from which to recognize various student
strengths. In classrooms where the teacher does not feel like they need to control students,
learners are likely to be perceived with complexity and nuance rather than monolithic. For
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 46
example, instead of labeling students with simplistic binaries like smart/dumb, students are likely
to be evaluated using multiple means to recognize a balance of strengths and weaknesses (Hatt,
2012). Acknowledging student potential for growth means students would be perceived within
an empowering context. For example, students may be seen as needing support instead of lower
performance standards. Alternatively, students would be seen as responsible, and their mistakes
would be attributed situationally rather than being seen as inherent to the students’ nature.
In terms of power, this type of environment is one that recognizes shared power between
teachers and students. Opinions, ideas, and discussions are understood to be shared and valuable,
whether they are from the teacher or the student. Moreover, this is the type of environment where
student feedback is recognized, solicited, and addressed in daily practice. Summarily, in such a
classroom, one could expect to see explicit discussion and acknowledgment of the power
structure so that asymmetric power structures are mitigated to be inclusive for all in the
environment.
Teacher practices in a non-controlling environment. In a classroom where students are
not understood to need to be controlled, they are seen as responsible and capable. Students seen
this way will also be attributed positive traits and considered smart and capable, in circumstances
where teachers assume ability based upon appearance or social capital, these determinations
could be made off of subjectively determined merit. Generally, this is also the type of
environment where teachers practice authoritative or democratic forms of leadership.
Authoritative methods will consider the needs and wants of the students, perhaps even as
expressed by the student, something foreign to the authoritarian approach. This means that a
students’ or class’ needs are addressed as they arise in the course of instruction instead of being
dismissed or only determined by the view of the teacher. Teachers will trust their students, and
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 47
they will also build students’ capacity for being trustworthy. Opportunities for growth were
expected to feature when teachers did not see the need to control students. Consequently, the
practices would encourage student learning by the continued development of strengths and
weaknesses instead of being narrowly focused on correcting students’ presumed deficiencies.
Climate and non-controlling practices. In the case of a teacher that fosters a positive
classroom climate, Matsumura et al. (2008) define a positive classroom climate as one that
“promotes respectful, caring relationships, cooperation, and emotional safety” (p. 295). Further,
they analyze the climate in terms of teacher-student relations and student-student relationships,
thereby casting a more robust sense of the relational qualities in the classroom (Matsumura et al.,
2008). This notion of a positive classroom climate aligns with Haberman’s (1991) views about
good teaching, namely that in positive climates, when teachers focus on relations with students,
the teachers are not likely to attempt to control academic performance or behavior in the
classroom. Teachers cull their influence from having established interactions based on mutual
respect and influence, as opposed to asymmetric power and demands, the type of behavior one
would expect from an authoritarian teacher.
In a positive climate, trustworthiness would be attributed to students, and students would
be assumed to possess the knowledge and that knowledge would be recognized and valued.
Student behavior in this environment ought to be positive overall since students would be
receiving support, encouragement, and empowerment through feedback. Deviations from the
norm are likely to be seen as episodic so that deviation from the norms may be interpreted as a
need for future practice instead of in need of remediation. One could expect to see responsibility
as a fundamental expectation, whereas in a controlling climate, responsibilizing practices may be
a keystone of the classroom operations.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 48
Conclusion
My conceptual framework is drawn from a combination of literature on teacher ideology
and classroom climate. I argue that teacher ideology about low-income students and students of
color are expressed through teacher practices; these practices reflect ideas about their students’
capabilities and intelligence. Consequently, these beliefs influence the classroom climate because
teachers rely upon judgments about students to determine how they ought to work with or
control students in their classrooms. Thus, the teacher’s power and control can mask his or her
bias so that his or her perceptions of his or her students’ needs do not genuinely reflect students’
intelligence and capabilities. I now turn to chapter 3, in which I will present my research
methods.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 49
CHAPTER THREE: METHODS
This chapter outlines the research design and data collection methods used to answer the
research questions. Through the collection of qualitative data, this study investigated teacher
pedagogy and classroom climate to understand the subtle but nuanced way that teachers’
ideologies are embedded in how they make sense of student behavior. The following research
questions guided the study: (1) How do teachers situated in high-poverty communities make
meaning of the student behavior that takes place in their classrooms? (2) What do teachers in
high-poverty communities do as a result of their understanding of that behavior? In other words,
the study I sought insight into how teacher ideology influenced their relational approach to
students in the classroom.
Research Design
The goal for this study was to understand how teachers’ ideologies reflect in their
approaches to students. A qualitative case study was an effective way to answer research
questions that involved belief systems and expressions because data generated would be more
aligned with the type of analysis required. Teacher ideology can be a subtle yet influential
feature of instruction and the classroom environment (Bartolomé, 2008). Ideologies’ hidden
nature made a qualitative case study useful to tease out the hidden influences of classroom
practices. For example, teachers’ beliefs about themselves, their students, and beliefs about
classroom learning are best understood by analyses of deep systemic thinking, as yielded from
interviews, observations, and analysis of the learning environment.
Merriam and Tisdell (2015) note two critical characteristics of a case study as (1) rich
with description and analysis and (2) the unit of analysis is finite or as they describe, “bounded”
(p. 39). In terms of the former, a rich description data set requires a variety of sources in order to
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 50
understand the layers of a phenomenon or process (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). For the latter,
Merriam and Tisdell (2015) describe a case study as bound by studying unique instances, in this
project, the two teachers and their classrooms represent two distinct cases of teachers and
classrooms. The study was limited to two cases, which allowed for a more in-depth, more careful
exploration of the relationships between teachers and students.
I assert that since student behavior occurred as a response to the classroom climate, the
teachers were the units of analysis. I studied how two teachers approached their classes in
underserved communities that were generally comprised of low-income Black and Latino
students. The teachers were studied as a unit instead of as representative of all teachers.
In order to access teacher ideology, I examined the classroom climate. I examined the
classroom climate set by the teachers because it set the preconditions for student-teacher
interaction and shaped the students’ and teachers’ subsequent interactions. By analyzing the
teachers’ ideology and classroom climate, I sought insight into the ways teachers made sense of
student behavior. This approach suggested a connection between teacher ideology and classroom
climate. Thus, a case study allowed me to unravel strands of actions and thoughts within the
bounded unit of classroom teachers.
Sample Sites
The sampling strategy relied on purposeful selection and network sampling. Given the
two-teacher sample size, purposeful sampling is most appropriate to avoid the “variability in
results from…random samples” (Maxwell, 2013, p. 97). As Maxwell (2013) posits, purposeful
sampling is best suited for testing specific ideas related to particular questions; otherwise,
random sampling could lead to studying participants in classrooms outside of the scope of
interest. I relied on purposeful sampling to select both sites and participants in order to identify
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 51
information-rich cases that position me to be able to answer my research questions (Creswell,
2013).
I first identified several possible schools meeting the stated criterion using publicly
available education data, in alignment with my conceptual framework, and I happened to know
an area administrator that worked with several of the schools. I asked for his recommendation
about which school might be approached about conducting a study at their site. Several days
later, he shared an email address and recommended that I reach out to the principal regarding my
study request.
Criterion 1. The criterion was that the school was a public middle school or high school
reporting at least 50% of the students receiving or qualify for free/reduced lunch and comprised
of at least 50% Black, Latino students as measured by race/ethnicity in the California
Department of Education’s database on student demographics. I was interested in schools that
had reported these statistics in at least one of the two previous years before the study. I sent the
email recruitment script (Appendix D) to the school principal once I received her information
from the area administrator, and he recommended that I reach out. The principal replied with a
meeting request. After presenting my research question and purpose of my study and the iStar
information sheet to the principal, she agreed to allow my research on campus if the teachers she
recommended were interested in participating. However, she shared participation would be
entirely up to the individual teachers. The principal had three teachers in mind, though she
encouraged me to approach the first two, and she would only refer me to the third teacher if
either of the two declined to participate. The two chemistry teachers agreed to participate, so
there was no need to approach the third teacher who happened to be a history teacher. On the
same day as our meeting, the principal sent me to their respective classrooms back to back about
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 52
20 minutes apart. Both teachers were available and in their respective classrooms since there as
an assembly that morning. At our meetings, I presented the same information in addition to the
consent material I just shared with the principal.
Participants
Criterion 1. I sought credentialed teachers with a minimum of 3 to 5 years of teaching
experience. I also sought teachers who delivered direct instruction in assigned classrooms. I was
open to teachers of any core academic classes such as science, math, history, or English. I set out
to observe teachers whose students were at least 25% Black and/or Latino. Given the
composition of the school, approximately 87% identified as Latino; most classes would meet the
preferred threshold for the classroom make up. As suggested by Bogdan and Biklen (2011), I
organized information in advance to explain: (1) why the site was chosen for study, (2) what
activities would occur at the site during the research study, (3) if the study would be disruptive,
(4) how the data would be used (5) what the school would get out of participating.
Both participants were well established veteran teachers, and each had been with the school for
years. Once both teachers agreed to the study, we identified a tentative interview date, and I
verified their teaching credentials with the California Teaching Commission’s web look-up
system. The pre-observation interviews were scheduled to occur just before observations began.
Data Collection and Instruments/Protocols
My research questions are based on the interaction of thoughts, beliefs, and behavior in
the classroom. The questions led to my data collection plan, consisting of in-class observations,
interviews, and collection of related documents. Interviews differed from observations in their
emphasis on first-hand explanations instead of the researcher’s interpretations (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2015), in this case, me. Observations are significant because they offer a window into
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 53
routinized behavior and practices (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015), and they give context to teacher
interviews. An audio recorder captured teacher pre and post-observation interviews, reflections,
and classroom observations. All recordings were transcribed by a professional service and used
as data. Note-taking helped to record thoughts on the process, environment, and the subjects’
practices at times when digital equipment was unavailable such as during the observations.
Interviews
This study attempted to conduct a total of 4 formal interviews, with one before the
observations and a follow up after observations concluded. I was only able to conduct a post-
observation interview for Ms. Munisa as Mr. Kalani needed to leave home on the day we had
scheduled to conclude. He offered the interview several weeks later, once school was in summer
break. I drove to meet him at the spot, a local coffee shop, but he never appeared, nor did he
answer phone calls or emails. Thus, this study only contains three formal interviews. Interviews
elicited thoughts and opinions relevant to classroom practices. As Michael Patton (2007) writes,
interviews find out “things we cannot directly observe” (p. 340). Each interview was
approximately 45 minutes in length. This time does not include informal teacher interviews; I
was able to conduct two informal interviews of Ms. Munisa during the data collection period,
both lasted approximately 10 minutes and occurred before her students arrived to class. I
collected field notes during interviews to flag responses for later review whenever they appeared
to align with the research questions and conceptual framework. The notes were used as data
during analysis to capture my thoughts along with important ideas relative to the subject and
research questions.
My research questions investigated teacher ideology and teacher practices as a result of
their ideology. I used a semi-structured interview (appendix A) before observations and an
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 54
unstructured (appendix B) protocol after the observations. Structured interview questions
enabled me to get specific data related to my conceptual framework by investigating the
intersection of teacher ideology and classroom climate to understand the unspoken or
subconscious influences that underlie how teachers make sense of classroom behavior.
Unstructured questions provided the flexibility for me to ask for clarification, elaboration, and
for the participant to explain the observations and thereby enriched the data in ways that depend
upon the teacher (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). This flexibility allowed me to ask follow up
questions where the teacher’s decision to act or not act in response to a student was unclear. For
instance, during Ms. Munisa’s unstructured interview, I was able to dig deeper into behaviors,
decisions, and practices when to help understand the reasons behind seeming contradictions.
Ms. Munisa’s interviews were conducted in her classroom, including the informal ones.
Mr. Kalani’s interview was conducted in the counselor’s office since he found it more preferable
and convenient for his other obligations. The counseling offices were near the main
administration building and offered an additional layer of privacy from staff and students
because of their limited access. I worked to establish a partnership during the interviews by
explaining that I was looking to gain insight into the teacher’s perspective. I asked for permission
to audio record teachers and informed them of what to expect from the interview process, again
reiterating that the participation was voluntary and that they maintained the option to withdrawal
at any time without penalty or advance notice. Once the interviews concluded, I informed the
participants that they could receive the transcripts if they wish and that I may reach out to them
later in case there were unclear ideas that arose from the interview.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 55
Observations
Observations offered first-hand glimpses into teacher practices, and they also provided
the opportunity to check interview data against classroom practices to yield additional data.
Michael Quinn Patton (2014) suggests that observation carries the power to reveal the unseen in
a way that both allows more insight but also raises more questions. I conducted observations
with such an aim; the classroom was analyzed as a central hub of teacher-student interaction.
During my observations, I monitored the teachers’ choice of words, the teachers’
communication styles, the teachers’ classroom behavior (including non-verbal cues), the
teachers’ assignments, and the students’ peer-peer classroom behavior. Observations provided a
rich context to record social issues, student interactions, spontaneous interactions, language, and
meanings, along with non-verbal communication (Patton, 2014). I documented the behavior,
communication, and overall physical and social environment of these interactions. In this
capacity, my approach aligned with Bogdan and Biklen’s (2007) suggestion to taking copious
notes during the earlier observations and tapering into recurring themes after they appear
throughout several observations
Observations both teachers occurred on the same days since Ms. Munisa’s class was
observed during the second period while Mr. Kalani’s sixth period was observed. Six
consecutive days of observations were scheduled. However, Mr. Kalani was unable to participate
on the third day of observations, and we were unable to make up the observation because of
scheduling conflicts, I observed his class one less time than Ms. Munisa’s. The five observations
contained more than enough data to be useful in analysis. Observations occurred for the length of
the period, which varied by 9 minutes; however, on two occasions, I was allowed access to the
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 56
class early and meet with Ms. Munisa. During the observations, I recorded and wrote field notes
with observer comments.
I used an observation protocol (appendix C) to collect field notes and a classroom map
(appendix D) to mark attendance, seating arrangement, demographic information, teacher and
student movement. My observations focused on how teachers identify, understand, and respond
to student behavior in the classroom. My focus during the observations was guided by the design
of my conceptual framework, especially relating teacher beliefs unfolding in the classroom.
Collection of Documents and Artifacts
Before the interviews and observations, I collected some documents such as assignments,
schedules, and a map of the school. Additionally, I took notes on the expressed and unexpressed
messages, as they appeared in the classroom through design and posters or, conversely, the lack
of décor and posters. For instance, one teacher’s walls were mostly bare, and this data aligned
with his view of his role in the classroom. As such, they informed the classroom climate,
whether explicitly emphasized in class or implicitly expressed in class. I did not take photos of
the classrooms as I did not take my phone into the classroom.
Data Analysis
Data analysis began while I collected data as I took written notes and made audio
recordings in the spaces of following or preceding interviews and observations. I followed an
overarching step process indicated in Creswell’s (2013) text, beginning with (1) organizing all of
the data in preparation for analysis, (2) reading all of the data, and (3) coding all of the data into
categories and labels. In line with (1), I organized the data according to the teacher, and in the
order, it was collected, so that each teacher. I transcribed all of the observation data into digital
documents so that all of the data became electronically accessible for analysis and coding, also
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 57
electronically. For (2), I read the data in sequence, and I read one teacher’s data at a time until
completing one teacher’s data set. Teacher interviews were my starting point for each teacher so
that my analysis for each teacher developed out of a firm understanding of the teacher’s
interview data. Afterward, classroom observations for each teacher were analyzed one at a time
until they were all completed. Mr. Kalani’s data was not thoroughly analyzed until Ms. Munisa’s
was mined to form some preliminary conclusions. In terms of (3) coding, for each of the
interviews, I began by coding the interviews, then proceeded to axial coding. Saldaña (2009) saw
coding as assigning a symbolic attribute to a portion of data. I used multiple phases of coding,
first and second cycles, as they are presented by Saldaña (2009). Whereas the first cycle of
coding was approached as a data-sorting phase, the second cycle as an organizing phase, though
each phase does exclusively neither (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Saldaña, 2009). The first cycle
relied on empirical and a priori codes while the second phase coding relied on analytic codes. I
used a priori coding to organize data on classroom observations into a codebook.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
Given my role as the primary research instrument, I implemented systems in line with
Merriam and Tisdell (2015) to ensure an accurate representation of data and participants.
Triangulation was a primary tool, as I used it to cross-reference data from observations and
pre/post interviews (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). Pre-observation interviews were checked against
classroom observations. Post-observation interviews were checked against both the classroom
observations and the pre-observation interview. Further, time did not permit the opportunity for
participants to review transcripts for each interview (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015).
Triangulation, as defined by Maxwell (2013), involves cross-examining multiple data sources
“to build coherent justification for themes” (p. 201). This study cross-referenced field notes with
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 58
data collected during interviews and classroom observations in order to establish the accuracy of
themes and assertions. More specifically, after coding and analyzing, I made preliminary
conclusions about the directions of the data. Then, I sought out data that was antithetical to other
collected data in order to disprove my assertion. Instead of discovering a significant flaw, I
discovered that Interview data aligned with classroom practices for students, even in cases where
teacher beliefs ran counter to their stated intent.
Reflexivity, as a tool to support credibility and trustworthiness, helps ensure a practice of
internal reflection for the researcher to engage with accurate perceptions (Creswell, 2013;
Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). My background was similar to those of the students I observed. I am
an educator and administrator who has attended public schools and always qualified for free and
reduced lunch. My K-12 education, in addition to my university preparation, led me to form
strong views about the proper nature, purpose, and methods of schooling, especially students
from low SES communities. I am a person of color, and I have strong beliefs about the history of
inequity in education and social capital/social opportunity. During interviews, I cautiously
recorded notes on the teacher’s perceptions and perspectives so as not to impose my personal
views on their characterizations and explanations. I asked clarifying questions to ensure the
interviewee articulated complete thoughts not to assume and/or assign intention to the teachers.
Some of the clarifying questions asked the participant what they meant to say, while other
clarifying questions prompted the subjects to share examples of the circumstances. Additionally,
I remained mindful of my biases when recording notes on observations to anchor my observation
in the classroom behavior instead of my personal prescriptive beliefs. I wrote down observer
comments in order to reference the classroom activities with teacher behavior.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 59
Ethics
Established protocols and practices guided ethical research conduct for both observations
and interviews. In terms of behavior and data management, my study was guided by the
university Institutional Review Board policies on vulnerable populations in addition to the
customary practices of ethical researchers found in Creswell (2013) and Merriam and Tisdell
(2015). Participants were offered copies of several of the documents, including the participation
waiver, IRB recruitment document, and upon the request, a copy of the final study. Ethical data
analysis (Creswell, 2013) was followed by efforts to ensure accurately reported findings.
Pseudonyms replaced actual names to protect school and participant identities for each teacher
and student (Creswell, 2013). Raw data and materials will be kept in a secure location for a
period of 5 to 10 years before being discarded (Sieber, 1998). Participants were told that their
participation was voluntary and that at any time and without notice, they may have withdrawn,
Limitations and Delimitations
Limitations
One of the primary limitations of this study is considered a feature of qualitative studies,
generalizability (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). This term refers to whether the findings apply to
other circumstances (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). This limitation coincides with the narrow scope
of the study, two teachers. However, as noted by Maxwell (2013), strict generalizability does not
limit the study’s generalizability because the findings could be useful for similar circumstances
and or similar contexts. Further, as noted by Merriam and Tisdell (2015), the goal of qualitative
studies is not generalizability; instead, its goal is to understand or explain a particular
phenomenon. Another type of limitation associated with my study was my ability to elicit
explicit beliefs, thoughts, or actions because participants always have a choice of their preferred
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 60
mode of study. Another limitation was how I was unable to conduct the same number of
observations and interviews for each of the subjects because of their additional responsibilities
inside and outside of school. Mr. Kalani’s withdrawal from the study before the final interview
was inconsistent with his interactions throughout the study.
Delimitations
Several delimitations mark this study. My biases and beliefs have influenced the design,
instruments, data collection, and analysis. Although I did my best to account for these biases,
there remains a possibility that it happened on some level or some way that I could not control.
Also, I had limited time to conduct data collection through observations and interviews. The
challenge of a full calendar led to an uneven number of interviews and observations between
teachers. Interviews and observations occurred during a short time frame and may have
influenced how teachers and students responded to me being in their classroom. Finally, I was
limited in my proficiency prioritizing data during the classroom observations. During some
observations, while I was busy writing down the classroom activities, that I was unable to
capture all of the concurrent teacher and student verbiage.
Conclusion
This chapter has framed out the methods used to generate ideas from the literature,
teaching staff, students, and community as they relate to this study and its participants. This
chapter began with an emphasis on research design and sampling. The chapter further continued
to note credibility and trustworthiness, only to conclude with limitations and delimitations. In the
next chapter, I will present the findings elicited from the interviews and observations as they
related to the guiding research questions.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 61
CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS
This study was undertaken to explore how teacher beliefs about students and their
behavior affect the classroom in low SES schools and communities. The conceptual framework
guiding this dissertation suggested teachers’ ideology would drive their classroom practices and
possibly influence the students’ peer relationships. The following chapter presents findings that
highlight views and practices of two high school teachers as their classes were observed over
multiple visits. The chapter concludes with a cross-case analysis, connecting the findings from
one case to the other.
This dissertation is a qualitative study of two high school chemistry teachers. The school
was located a short distance from urban city center and the local community was a high-density
area, mixed commercial and residential properties abutted the school on all sides. Both teachers
taught 10th grade students, though there were one or two repeating students in each class. They
taught in the same high school, a large high school in the inner-city. Ms. Munisa, an immigrant
originally from Iran, arranged her room for grouping, and students were allowed to choose their
groups, which became permanent afterwards. This grouping strategy reflected Ms. Munisa’s
approach to the classroom in that she did not exert much effort attempting to regulate students in
the classroom. Mr. Kalani was also an immigrant, originally from Vietnam. He approached the
classroom exerting more control over student behavior, and he was responsible for assigning
groups and seats. I began with pre-observation interviews, followed by 5 or 6 hour-long
classroom observations conducted over the course of a week. The study concluded with a post
interview for Ms. Munisa. Mr. Kalani was unavailable for a post-observation interview.
I present the findings and themes of each teacher individually and follow-up with a cross
case analysis at the end of the chapter. Data in this chapter address the following research
questions: How do teachers in high poverty schools make sense of student behavior that takes
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 62
place in the classroom? What do teachers in high poverty schools do as a result of the way they
make sense of student behavior?
Case Study 1: Ms. Munisa
Ms. Munisa taught 10th grade chemistry, had 27 years of international teaching
experience, and, at the time of the interviews, had spent nine years working at the same school.
Ms. Munisa taught five periods per day and was assigned one period for preparation. Her school
was situated in a large metropolitan area, adjacent to the city center. Class lengths varied
depending on the days of the week; classes ran 58 or 49 minutes to accommodate advisory twice
per week.
On census day of the 2016–2017 school year, 1,200 students were enrolled: 87.9% of
identified as Latino. The remaining students were Native American (.5%), Asian (4%), Black
(2.5%), Filipino (3.5%), Pacific Islander (.1%), and White (1.1%). Almost all (96.8%) students
qualified for free or reduced-price meals and 29% were English learners. A majority of Ms.
Munisa’s students identified as Latino/Hispanic.
In the classroom, Ms. Munisa arranged tables for students to sit in groups, and there were
enough tables to accommodate nine groups. Most tables had at least one person present
throughout the observations. The class did not have the most up-to-date technological resources,
but Ms. Munisa used a mix of whiteboard and projector to supplement audio/visual for difficult
concepts.
The remaining section of Chapter Four present findings that connect to the research
questions as they relate to Ms. Munisa:
This study utilized Bartolomé’s (2008) conceptualization of teacher ideologies to analyze
practices towards students. The conceptual framework identified three overlapping and mutually
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 63
influential concepts: teacher ideology, classroom practices, and classroom climate. Data from
interviews and observations revealed multiple themes, as Ms. Munisa’s practices were embedded
with judgments about student behavior and, consequently, connected to her classroom practices.
Ms. Munisa expressed a belief in her students’ ability to achieve, yet she also held beliefs about
student behavior that unfolded in a low-quality relational approach and an unsupportive poor
climate. The findings are categorized into two sets of themes: the first relates to ideology while
the second relates to classroom practices and climate.
Finding 1: Teacher Mindset
Ms. Munisa saw herself reflected in her students. She believed that her students faced the
same of barriers to upward mobility. Her identification with their challenges was the basis of an
affinity towards her students. She held that her students were capable of overcoming their
circumstances because she overcame her own. However, as Ms. Munisa saw it, only a self-help
ethos would ensure student success. This self-help approach relied on a meritocratic mindset: a
view that located students as the sole cause for either success or failure, effectively factoring out
other influential factors.
Ms. Munisa’s approach was based on an affinity for her students. She connected her
immigrant experience with her student’s circumstances. She saw her own professional success as
an example of effort overcoming all obstacles. Similarly, she envisioned the same opportunity
for her students. This view of effort relied on her holding a meritocratic mindset so that student
success or failure was the sole responsibility of the student.
Theme 1: Affinity. Ms. Munisa saw herself in her students. She connected with their
situation as she described her experience immigrating with few resources and two young
children. This experience fed Ms. Munisa’s belief that her challenges were overcome with raw
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 64
effort. Her personal success also fed her belief that her students could be successful, except their
success would be determined only by their effort, and, conversely, any failure to succeed would
find students equally at fault. Just as she saw her circumstances, school was the only way
students could advance their socioeconomic position.
Drawing on her own immigrant experience, Ms. Munisa characterized her students’
challenges, largely along socioeconomic lines just as she had faced socioeconomic challenges
when she first came to the United States. To Ms. Munisa, not having resources at home meant
high stress and financial insecurity. She believed these conditions impacted student achievement.
She said,
I keep telling the kids that I came here with two kids, two suitcases, and they ran out of
their clothes in six months because they were growing, and then, if there was an
education, I had to work hard to adjust here too. But if I weren’t educated, it would have
been really, really hard for us, and I don’t know where my kids would have been.
Especially for, as they call it, brown people like us, the only way up because we don’t
have parents to leave the store or the house or this or that.
Above, Ms. Munisa articulated her first-hand account of the socioeconomic realities as an
immigrant in the United States: “I came here with two kids, two suitcases and they ran out of
their clothes in six months.” She also highlighted the realities of not having the capital of
established family to count on for support: “I don’t know where my kids would have been, I
don’t know where my kids would have been. Especially for, as they call it, brown people like us,
the only way up because we don’t have parents to leave the store or the house or this or that.”
She shared her experience to show students that she genuinely understood their challenges. Her
statements also expressed how she saw herself as a successful testament to a pathway in which
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 65
she met the challenges and succeeded, as an immigrant, mother, and professional. Further, Ms.
Munisa’s thoughts on their common skin color added a shared layer of burden they faced not just
as immigrants, but also as immigrants of color. This general common ground was expressed as a
general affinity towards her students.
Theme 2: Meritocracy. Further insight into Ms. Munisa’s mindset came from her
articulation of meritocratic beliefs (Milner, 2010). Her belief that effort and hard work would
overcome all obstacles and negative circumstances is consistent with meritocratic thinking. For
example, Ms. Munisa communicated her perspective when prompted to explain how her mindset
played out in class she said, “I can’t do it, and they have to step up. They have to work. They are
capable. They have to try to find their potential. I know that there are, everybody has baggage,
but we have to overcome.”
This statement demonstrates that Ms. Munisa saw student effort and motivation as
something students had to bring to class, as she said, “I can’t do it,” referring to student effort as
outside of her role. In meritocratic thinking, effort and hard work are seen as sole drivers of
change as if student motivation occurred in a vacuum. For Ms. Munisa, it meant that she did not
influence student effort. This mindset is reflective of underlying expectations that students
should show up ready to achieve. And, when they did not, students had to “try to find their [own]
potential” and cultivate it independently. She believed that students sometimes let the “baggage,”
or outside of school circumstances get in their way as she said, “I know that there are. Everybody
has baggage, but we have to overcome.” Here, she suggested that the obstacles that students
faced outside of the classroom should not be used as excuses to not do the work of learning in
her classroom. This is more evidence of a meritocratic perspective because she demonstrated
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 66
another belief connecting students’ equal capabilities in the classroom irrespective of the
circumstances they faced outside of it.
In another example of meritocratic mindset, Ms. Munisa spoke about student challenges
as if students actively chose not to move forward from trauma and challenges. Her view saw
personal responsibility at the center of student performance, especially individual choice as a key
component of the meritocratic mindset. Student success is associated within the binary of effort
or the lack of it (Milner, 2010). Ms. Munisa connected her idea of high expectations with this
meritocratic view of personal responsibility. She said,
Many of our students have been through traumas to get here. Many of them, we have
students, there are students who have to work every afternoon and weekends to help
parents to pay rent. So, these are the various. If you are doing all this, then I don’t lower
the expectation for them. I just tell them that, “You better step up.” We all have to,
otherwise, it would be a disservice. I truly believe that it’s a disservice to a student to
lower their expectation.
Ms. Munisa again spoke of her students’ challenging circumstances in reference to trauma and
SES. She implied that students struggle with classroom achievement and effort because of their
particular circumstances. Citing students’ socioeconomic statuses and their implications, Ms.
Munisa saw her students as not “stepping up” whenever they did not achieve in the classroom.
Ms. Munisa did not demonstrate ability to identify students’ strengths despite having
deep knowledge of their particular hardships and of their responsibilities outside of the
classroom. This emphasis on student effort as it relates to meritocratic mindset viewed student
success or failure within the framework that hard-working students get what they deserve,
implying that those without must not have used the requisite amount of effort.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 67
Ms. Munisa’s meritocracy mindset was also observed in the classroom as she often
engaged with students in ways that demonstrated her belief that effort and hard work would
overcome all obstacles and negative circumstances. Thus, she held that students needed to “step
up.” Ms. Munisa seemed to see lack of effort as the key problem leading to students’ low-
quality work or poor understanding. In one example, the following dialogue occurred as Ms.
Munisa stood front and center before her students and told them she would ask questions related
to the previous assignment.
D: Write that down, calcium, carbon calcite.
D: Just like in your soda.
D: So, decompose it and with gas, you get?
S: That’s long.
D: I know it’s long but I’m pushing you.
Ms. Munisa commanded students to “Write that down,” and this kind of practice is in line with
Milner’s (2010) description of a meritocracy mindset and the belief that effort would overcome
all. Here, Ms. Munisa told students to write down the expression for the chemical compound
“calcium, carbon calcite,” and then cited an everyday item for students to connect: “your soda.”
There was no dialogue, explanation or break down of each component. Ms. Munisa simply told
students to write down the compound, and, before she could assess their knowledge, she cited a
soda, instead of asking them for examples to help them comprehend
Although the soda example may have been attempt to elaborate for her students, Ms.
Munisa’s reference failed to articulate the technical relationships in order to fulfill the area of the
assignment: chemical reactions. Moreover, before allowing time for students to process, she
punctuated her explanation with a question, “you get?” When a student replied, “that’s long,”
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 68
Ms. Munisa understood the student comment as resistance to required effort. Consequently, Ms.
Munisa retorted, “I’m pushing you.” This exchange captured a common teaching disposition
demonstrated by Ms. Munisa: whenever students were challenged by classwork, she viewed
students’ difficulties through a narrow lens. Through this narrow lens Ms. Munisa failed to
consider whether her teaching was the problem. Yet, as occurred in the brief exchange, Ms.
Munisa viewed student effort within a narrow lens, and, in the classroom, she failed to make note
of positive effort while easily identifying and misidentifying the lack of it.
Theme 3: Context neutral mindset. Whereas a meritocracy mindset, as explained
above, is associated with the belief that effort overcomes all, the context neutral mindset does not
recognize the impact of what Milner (2010) calls “social contexts of teaching and learning”
(p. 15). Social context and opportunity structures could include elements such as physical
environments to students’ cumulative stress of home life. Ms. Munisa’s context neutral mindset
was expressed in how she discussed her students and some of their challenging home lives, yet
she did not connect these circumstances to possibility that students arrived at class already taxed
by social contexts which draw from their potential to perform in the classroom. For example,
during the first interview Ms. Munisa shared her students tended to live in very challenging
circumstances, such as with disabled parents, financial obligations, or with parents with tenuous
immigration statuses. Despite this first-hand knowledge and decades of experience working with
students of similar communities, she did not appear to hold beliefs that would delineate these
factors as influential on the classroom.
One example of her insight was expressed when asked about the difference between high
and low performing students. Ms. Munisa shared,
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 69
They behave differently because the low achievers they are either very quiet or they
become disruptive, and the low achievers that probably means they don’t have good
study habits. That, in elementary school, when the mother sits next to you and make sure
that you get the pencil and you do the homework and that makes a huge, huge, difference.
That’s the beginning of everything. Then the kids they don’t have the study habits they
don’t get caught, they fall in the crack.
Here, Ms. Munisa described the difference between low achieving and high achieving students in
behavioral terms such as “very quiet,” “disruptive,” or “don’t have good study habits,” yet she
did not connect these behaviors to other conditions potentially affecting students. In her words,
low performing students had poor behavior and lacked either communication skills or study
habits. In this sense, she did not connect indicators outside of personal ability like fatigue or
stress. Instead, she attributed different performance to limited ability of low performing students,
failing to note how it would be possible for higher performing students to excel.
Despite her knowledge very personal student challenges, Ms. Munisa blamed poor
performance on the students. In her reference to the “mother sitting down,” she again
demonstrated a context neutral mindset that did not consider that parents working to support a
household may have limited opportunity to “sit next to them in elementary.” Taken as a whole,
the quotes above revealed a subtle subtext of a mindset that fails to account for the implications
of SES as related to students in a large urban inner-city school. Milner’s (2010) description of
“context neutral” helps understand how Ms. Munisa could know the deep and personal
circumstances of students but at the same time not know to the associated impacts and
consequences for students, teachers, and the classroom.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 70
In another instance, Ms. Munisa was 11 minutes into class and students were seated in
groups. Students were supposed to be reviewing homework from the previous night, but it
appeared that a portion of students had not completed the assignment as several appeared to be
copying from one another. Ms. Munisa dismissed key contextual activity and attempted to have
students focus on their academic assignment and disregard they maladaptive approaches.
T: Gentlemen, should we start our warmup?
Ss: [No response to teacher.]
T: Everybody is a little…
S: [Mock concern over possible weapon being found on campus. Students
facetiously mock concern about not feeling comfortable.]
T: [Reminds students that last year there was a threat and that the school comes to
protect its students.]
In the midst of several layers of disruption or activity, Ms. Munisa dismissed or downplayed the
students’ emotional concerns: “Should we start our warm-up?” Her request to complete the
assignment was met by a general unsettledness. Ms. Munisa then mentioned a rumor that been
spread about the possibly finding a student on campus with weapons.
Her approach to the situation was to tell the students “don’t be antsy.” However, students
seemed to have reasons to feel nervous, as a stranger was observing them, rumors were that a
student with a weapon was found on campus, and they had not done the homework. These were
the environmental features that affected students, yet Ms. Munisa was encouraging them to
ignore the tension and work in spite of it. In this instance, the teacher’s personal dismissal of the
students’ context manifested in her suggestion that student also ignore the context of their
environment.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 71
Finding 2: Classroom Practices
In the classroom, Ms. Munisa engaged in few high-quality interactions with students, yet
she clearly wanted her students to succeed. However, she conducted class in a way that saw
herself outside the sphere of influence on quality learning. In this way, she did not maximize her
role in creating a quality learning environment. She saw students as needing to be “pushed,” but
she believed they alone were responsible for seeking their success.
Ms. Munisa’s deficit mindset was largely influenced by a deficit perspective about her
students so that she mostly saw the challenges students brought to class. This deficit lens
influence extended beyond a belief and actively shaped her teaching practice. As she envisioned
success as something students were responsible for attaining, she did not take on a role in
creating and sustaining environments for students to succeed. As a consequence, her classroom
practices relied on low-quality, surface-level interactions and superficial supports. This finding
aligns with the conceptual framework in that Ms. Munisa’s ideology was enacted in her
classroom approach and consequently shaped the classroom climate without explicitly setting out
to do as much.
Theme 1: Deficit mindset. Ms. Munisa’s pedagogy reflected low expectations and a
deficit mindset. This connection of ideology to instructional practice aligns with the conceptual
framework in addition to resembling Milner’s (2010) opportunity gap framework. The following
instances reflect Ms. Munisa’s overall low expectations and deficit approach in the classroom.
The first instance exemplifies Ms. Munisa’s low instructional expectations, the second instance
exemplified her low expectations for student behavior.
Observation notes revealed that Ms. Munisa demonstrated low effort towards nurturing
academic success. Assignments were given without impactful instructions, and her guidance was
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 72
low quality because it came across as disorganized and scattered. In one instance, student groups
were tasked to launch a rocket, but she failed to guide them to successfully propel the rocket. Ms.
Munisa gave only brief instructions for constructing the rocket, and then focused on protecting
the materials. As she explained, “I bought these only because of these tubes, and they have to be
protected. Do not damage. Protect, rinse clean and use again later.” She continued, “If damaged,
you pay me $66.00. Let’s get to work.”
The teacher explained the value of the material, but she failed to emphasize and connect
the principles of combustion to the physical launch. Observer notes record her minimalistic
verbal instructions, so building was confusing for the students, as the complicated task involved
precise measurements of volume and ratio in addition to calculated placement of the rocket’s fins
and base. As noted during observation, some students asked each other for clarification, and their
faces showed confusion, but they quickly began to figure out the assignment by asking questions
of each other. Students relied on each other more than the teacher in order to overcome
challenges.
When not at her desk, Ms. Munisa circled the class and looked over students’ shoulders.
Whenever she engaged with students during these rotations, she mostly asked students whether
they had completed a task, or she told them to get on task, which are transactional level
interactions. Ms. Munisa’s effort towards student learning seemed to carry an expectation that
the students were responsible for the learning, and she was responsible for the teaching, as she
stated students do not turn their work in because “they don’t care, or they were absent.”
Expressed in this way, her attitude towards student learning revealed a dichotomy that either
students cared or they did not, which oversimplifies the spectrum of student interest and ability.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 73
This approach also fails to recognize the teacher is at the center of the knowledge and is
responsible for supporting the learning of all students and not only the ones who “care.”
Her approach did not involve critical thinking in that students were not provided the types
of scaffolding, sequencing, and explanations that could support continued and long-term
learning. Instead, Ms. Munisa’s approach involved low-quality explanations, little instructional
effort, and little scaffolding to support mastery. This is significant because it ties into Milner’s
(2010) discussion of deficit mindset and the ways and reasons a teacher fails to create a
challenging learning environment based on low expectations of students. Ms. Munisa’s low
expectations for her students shaped the classroom climate just as her ideology about the roles of
students and teachers shaped her instructional practices in the classroom.
Ms. Munisa did not structure classroom time and did note guide with prompts and
questions. Haphazardness was most clearly displayed in her use of confusing language as she
sought to guide or cue learners towards the task of the moment. Further, each day of the
observation, students were consistently confused because they could not hear or process the
teacher’s guidance over peers talking or the unclear explanations. When students were able to
hear the teacher, and the class quieted to focus, prompts were unclear or otherwise poorly
prepared to string student learning towards the daily objective. For example, Ms. Munisa began
class one day by clapping twice and then saying “Okay, let’s do warm up.” Then, within four
minutes of telling students to begin the warmup, she cold called students while they were
supposed to be doing the warmup.
D: You know what changes surface area means?
S: No response
D: Felicia, are you with me?
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 74
S: Yes.
S2: Dana, do you know what surface area is?
S2: No response
D: If you want to increase, what do you need to do?
S3: Break it up.
D: Grind it up you raise surface area.
D: Is crushing going to increase reaction?
In the dialogue, the teacher began cold calling students without a warning or advance notice.
This surprised the students, as indicated by their lack of responses other than the simple “yes”
when a student was asked “are you with me?” Further, the phrasing of the first question was
unclear and students were either unable or unwilling to ask the teacher to clarify. For example,
the question may have been construed as asking about “meaning of a surface area,” or it could
have been about “changing surface area.”
When the second student was unable to answer the question, Ms. Munisa asked a
conceptually more intricate question, and the teacher’s question: “If you want to increase, what
do you need to do?” The question was ambiguous, and students were unable or unwilling to
answer. Had Ms. Munisa been more attuned to her students, she may have discerned that her
questions were going unanswered, and she might have re-taught the content. This example best
illustrated how Ms. Munisa did not effectively guide students through tasks and assignments,
and, as a result, students were unable to follow along and engage in the content and the
classroom discussion. The result was a minimally supportive learning environment.
This interaction further demonstrated indifference towards student needs such as a need
for proper transitions, attentiveness to timing, and precise explanations. Instead, Ms. Munisa
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 75
inadvertently placed her students in a disadvantaged position. This example of Ms. Munisa’s
deficit mindset resembles Milner’s (2010) framework and minimal curricular expectations in that
her classroom practices were not aligned to foster for rigor and critical engagement. This
example also aligns with the conceptual framework in that ideology and its power unfold through
instructional decisions and practices. Here, the teacher’s power to enact and power to withhold
support or structure created a classroom climate that was unsupportive, but, more significantly, it
obscured a potential factor impeding student achievement so that in the mind of the teacher, lack
of achievement is only the fault of the student.
Theme 2: Classroom climate. Ms. Munisa’s classroom climate demonstrated low
quality interactions between students and in the student-teacher relationship. The conceptual
framework delineated how the influence of classroom relationships extends beyond participants
to their surrounding communities. Matsumura et al. (2008) conducted research and found further
support for the connection between teacher-student interactions and their relation to ways that
students relate and connect with each other. Matsumura et al. also found disrespectful teacher-
student patterns to be associated with a harmful or poor relationship between students. The
parallel occurred in Ms. Munisa’s class, as the disrespect came in the form of calling out students
during class for being absent or not having completed an assignment. The practice of
embarrassing students took several forms. At least three times, she made remarks about her not
expecting students to do work for the class. The following is one instance.
T: Do you remember doing this Friday, and I said, if you didn’t finish, I would
collect on Monday?
S1: I’m going to be honest, Ms., I didn’t do it.
T: I know you didn’t.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 76
S1: What’s that supposed to mean?
T: [No response, T continues to neighboring table]
The student volunteered to share aloud that she did not complete the assigned work after having
additional days to do so. However, the student’s decision to expose herself and her failure to
complete the assignment was met with a sarcasm in Ms. Munisa’s dismissive, “I know you
didn’t.” Ms. Munisa opted for a non-instructive comment by openly expressing her low
expectations of this student. The student’s request for clarification of the teacher’s retort also
demonstrated a model for effective communication, but she was ignored and dismissed.
In this instance, a student was seemingly equipped to communicate her needs and
requests, yet the teacher sent a message to the student and the class that she would not be
responsive to a student need: respect, in this case. This example of low-quality classroom
relations occurred within a set communication styles that negatively affected those in the class,
both the students, and the teacher.
In another instance of an unsupportive classroom climate, Ms. Munisa embarrassed a
different student when a peer came to his defense. At the start of a class, a student walked in
approximately 10 minutes after the bell rang. Ms. Munisa stopped the class to question the
student as he walked in and toward his seat.
T: Where were you?
S1: Don’t put him out like that.
S2: I can tell you separately.
T: Unintelligible
S2: Yeah, I have excuses. You just don’t know because I bring them to Ms. Vale.
T: [No response. Repositions to work with a group.]
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 77
Ms. Munisa shifted her focus by calling attention to the late male student, thereby diverting
attention and disrupting the entire class to focus on the tardy student. The teacher embarrassed
the student by asking for his whereabouts. Ms. Munisa could have spoken with the student in
private as she did at least with one other student during the course of the observations. Further, a
student leapt to his defense and told the teacher, effectively, to not embarrass the student: “Don’t
put him out like that.” When Student 2 suggested speaking in private, the teacher responded but
it was inaudible to the observer. Student 2 then went on to explain that there were legitimate
reasons for his tardiness and that he had been in contact with the school counselor, who was
aware of the reasons. Again, this dialogue occurred in front of the class, during the beginning of
a class period while students were supposed to be working. This example shows the lack of
support Ms. Munisa provides. In the case of the protective peer, the example also revealed the
impact of peer support in cases where support could not be expected from the teacher.
Theme 3: Power in the classroom. Ms. Munisa did not provide the structural classroom
conditions to support student learning. This theme connects to the conceptual framework in how
the classroom is shaped by teacher practices and how these practices are expressions of power
and ideology. Traditional notions of control, power exerted by the teacher to direct student
behavior, are played out when the teacher manages the classroom tightly, micromanages how
students spend their time, and directs students to engage in specific tasks (Delpit, 1998;
Haberman, 1991). In Ms. Munisa’s case, power and control were exerted through lack of
structure and direction. She did not provide adequate structure and direction so that students
would be able to engage intellectually in either critical or creative thinking.
One way Ms. Munisa failed to guide her students was by repeatedly offering confusing
explanations. For example, in each of the six classroom observations, her attempts to clarify
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 78
student confusion left them more confused and dependent on their peers to understand what was
expected of them. This type of explanation extended to individual assignments as well. Ms.
Munisa’s class worked on a rocket assignment throughout the six observations, and, during this
time, students were given only verbal instructions and no written instructions for how to manage
and sequence their effort. In this way, students received minimal guidance for how to be
successful.
In addition, Ms. Munisa did not structure or use classroom time to support student growth
and learning. Her practice lacked two key routines: class opening and class closure, as her start
and end of class routines were equally haphazard during each of the six observations. The class
ended to her surprise, and they began with each day without guidance for how students were
expected to use their time in class. Her claim to understand the challenges faced by her students
appeared to justify her minimal effort working with them, which is consistent with Haberman’s
(1991) concept of the pedagogy of poverty.
In the classroom Ms. Munisa’s, practices closely mirrored Haberman’s (1991) pedagogy
of poverty. The classroom is a location for students wherein students arrive and demonstrate
their promise of success. Ms. Munisa indicated during the first interview, “I don’t lower the
expectation for them. I just tell them that, ‘You better step up.’” Here Ms. Munisa dissociated
herself from the obligation to actively instruct when she asks students to “step it up” as she waits
for them to figure out what and how they are to learn. Her approach resembled an internalization
of Haberman’s (1991) idea that “Teaching is what teachers do. Learning is what students do” (p.
83). Ms. Munisa’s perceived schism between teaching and learning was reflected in the
classroom as she appeared to withhold support so that few instructions were given throughout all
six observations.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 79
Ms. Munisa’s visits to groups did not emphasize instruction. The following quotes are
taken from various days throughout the observations “Jimmy, sit down and do work,” “I don’t
think you know what you are doing,” “when you going to start,” “[did] you do them all.” These
excerpts provide insight into Ms. Munisa’s perception of power and how it was her job to apply
pressure to students to work. This sentiment further demonstrates the pedagogy of poverty as the
teacher expected “the appropriate behavior is being taught and learned” (Haberman, 1991,
p. 291) so long as students obey the teacher. In sum, Ms. Munisa’s ideology was enacted as a
form of power. Although it was exerted in the form of over control, it was fashioned around her
recusal from engaging with students in ways that they needed. She was prepared to meet student
needs as she saw fit, not as they needed, which is a position of privilege and power.
Ms. Munisa’s beliefs about student behavior and the pathways to success were consistent
throughout her classroom implementations. Her judgments about how to become successful also
fed into beliefs about who was responsible for student success. In her classroom, that burden was
on the student. Despite her expressed support for her students, she also disavowed a more
substantive role in providing the type of classroom environment that led to student success.
Consequently, Ms. Munisa facilitated a low-quality relational approach and a negative classroom
climate.
Case Study 2: Mr. Kalani
Mr. Kalani taught chemistry for all grade levels, but the observed class consisted of
mostly 10th graders. Mr. Kalani has worked in the same district for 17 years, but at only two
schools. He valued longevity at a school and shared that he preferred to be at the same school so
that his former students could reach out. He was assigned five teaching periods per day, and one
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 80
of his periods was unassigned to prepare for his classes. Mr. Kalani taught at the same school as
Ms. Munisa.
Mr. Kalani arranged tables for students to sit in groups, though he assigned groups and
tables so that students utilized the tables nearest to the whiteboard and the teacher’s desk. His
class consistently contained approximately 25. His classroom’s walls had only two posters. The
classroom did not have up-to-date technological resources, and Mr. Munisa used a mix of fewer
than a classroom set of laptops, a whiteboard, and a projector which was used during
observations to demonstrate tasks requiring internet use.
The following section identifies themes and findings revealed in data collected
observations and interviews with Mr. Kalani. The themes and findings are organized in response
to the research questions and separated findings on teacher ideology from findings based on
teacher practice, though both are deeply interrelated. Generally, Mr. Kalani interpreted student
behavior as a demonstration of student willingness and ability to learn. He used this
interpretation to determine his level of effort and commitment to the students. Based on his
assessment of students’ ability to learn and achieve, he continued his measurements by
measuring their success by his own aspirations for them. Mr. Kalani relied on a deficit mindset
so that, any time a student failed to perform, he interpreted the primary cause as something
related to the student. In the classroom, his beliefs unfolded as Mr. Kalani allocated time and
effort in a way that reinforced his belief that student learning was largely the responsibility of the
student and by failing to use his power to positively influence the learning environment.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 81
Finding 1Teacher Mindset
Mr. Kalani entered the classroom with a belief that academic success was the most prized
way that a student could be successful. Within that view, he saw students’ behavior as a primary
measure or signal of their desire and willingness to learn. Although he held a fixed view of
students’ behavior, it was complicated by a belief that students were capable yet unlikely to
achieve academic success.
The first finding is organized into two themes. The first theme discusses Mr. Kalani’s
approach towards fostering student success by connecting his classroom practices to his beliefs
about what should be counted as success. The first theme identifies the ways that Mr. Kalani
observed success and how central these were to his approach with students. The second finding
identifies data from his practices that aligned with mindsets associated with replicating systemic
inequities in schools.
Theme 1: Teacher aspirations for student success. Mr. Kalani determined classroom
student success through a narrow, institution-centered model of success. He prioritized success in
two primary domains as indicated in observations and interviews: academic and economic
achievements. In this way, the basis for his classroom relationships reflected a style that
Valenzuela (2010) termed aesthetic caring. Despite his knowledge of students’ non-academic life
circumstances and challenging home lives, Mr. Kalani continued to highly value the
institutionally prescribed measure of success. For instance, he recounted a recent impromptu
meeting with a former student. The graduate lived near the high school campus where he and Mr.
Kalani crossed paths one morning.
He lives right across here. He worked 10 to 6 am. I thought he was going to college, but
he got a girlfriend, got her pregnant, and one thing lead to another. The girlfriend’s living
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 82
with her mother. He’s living with his mother, and he’s responsible in that he supports the
kid. But he’s not going to where I’d wish him to go to. Instead of making $10.75, I want
him making $30 an hour. He can do that, but lack of education’s not going to allow him. I
went over, look here, I went over the make our life calculations. I went over his age, how
much he makes, this whole thing, and went over…we do the subtraction. How much he’s
making total. We [went] over taxes a little bit. And the taxes and take home and then start
subtracting all the thing[s] that they need in life. The point here was that, look, I know
some of you are struggling, but, if you don’t do anything with this, whatever education
we try provide here, you’re gonna suffer a lot more.
Mr. Kalani’s account of a former student encapsulated his approach when he revealed
disappointment with the student’s wage and failure to attend college. As he shared during a pre-
observation interview, “instead of making $10.75, I want him making $30 an hour.” He
dismissed the young man’s effort in favor of his own aspirations for the student: “I want him
making $30 an hour”“ and “he’s not going to where I’d wish him to go.” In Mr. Kalani’s mind,
the narrow institutional metric for student success was the only acceptable level of success. Mr.
Kalani’s dismissed the student’s accomplishments and his level of responsibility. Such was
indicated in his statement, “he’s responsible in that he supports the kid. But he’s not going to
where I’d wish.”
Mr. Kalani could have commended the student on positive aspects, such as his being
employed and providing for his child. However, Mr. Kalani failed to recognize the student’s
responsible behavior, which is the characteristic that is advantageous in any endeavor. Mr.
Kalani recounted the circumstance with disappointment. Viewed together, Mr. Kalani’s caring
focused on a narrow sense of success to the exclusion of positive attributes. Mr. Kalani’s
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 83
ideology was reflected in this example, as it demonstrated how his beliefs about achievement
directly influenced the nature and quality of his student interaction. That is, Mr. Kalani’s
conception of student success appeared to have prevented him from recognizing a student’s
strengths and promise.
Mr. Kalani further exemplified his view in light of his stated desire to provide students an
education more impactful than one focused on his particular discipline of chemistry. He shared
that his approach aimed at the students’ lifelong pursuits. His view may give the impression of
Valenzuela’s (2010) authentic caring, but, when given the opportunity to recognize students in
holistic terms, Mr. Kalani determined student capability in line with the school’s institutional
success. For example, Mr. Kalani shared
I’m more like chemistry is not really important in overall scheme of things. It’s important
for your education, yes, but not overall scheme of things. Some of the stuff I teach in
here, you’ll never use it in life. However, the education I’m providing you—not just
about chemistry but about how to learn work ethics, how to work hard, how to network,
how to look at things in a different way—those things will last you through life. To me, is
holistic approach rather than just one.
Mr. Kalani claimed a holistic perspective, “overall scheme of things,” which would have been a
perspective that may account for the student’s psychological, emotional and social well-being.
However, as noted in the excerpt above, Mr. Kalani characterized “holistic” as taking into
account traits aligned more closely with the academic and economic success: “work ethics, how
to work hard, how to network, how to look at things in a different way.” In this instance and his
run-in with a former student marked key points where Mr. Kalani had centered his assessment of
the student’s success and being holistic against the teacher’s terms and conditions.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 84
Mr. Kalani’s aesthetic caring closely resembled contempt, as his overall instructional
approach involved circling the classroom providing feedback in a condescending manner. The
first 10 minutes of his class were structured whereby he explained the requirements for the
assignment, and the remainder of each period was allocated for independent student work.
Students were largely unsupported despite Mr. Kalani’s physical presence at each table
throughout the period. He spoke to and visited groups, but his engagement relied on sarcasm and
focused on student errors or disengagement. This pattern of relation occurred multiple times
daily and during each of the five classroom observations. One such interaction concerned the
student’s social responsibility statement, which was supposed to describe the policy for the
student’s fictitious soap company:
T: Half hour [into class now], you [a]bout to do something?
T: How you gonna donate soap to fish?
S: The money.
T: Ohhh.
In the quotation, it was unclear if the teacher was speaking to one student or the entire group.
Regardless, the teacher walked up to the table by first noting how much of the class had lapsed,
which was approximately half of a period. At the time of the verbalization, observation notes
indicate that Mr. Kalani visited the table two times prior at approximately 10-minute intervals.
Thus, half the class time had passed before he directly engaged the students. Mr. Kalani did not
offer to help during any of the previous visits, and hi substantive feedback was transmitted with
sarcasm and condescension. Further, the teacher merely replied with a protracted and sarcastic
“Ohhh.” The language exchanged was terse. This was a typical exchange with students and
limited more in-depth connections for students and teacher to connect.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 85
As a type of caring, this was largely aesthetic, as Mr. Kalani failed to connect with his
students. This example highlighted Mr. Kalani’s enactment of his conception of success and the
ways his ideas of success drove his approach to his students and his approach towards the
responsibilities of teaching.
Theme 2: Pedagogy of poverty or deficit mindset. Mr. Kalani understood unproductive
student behavior as a reflection of students as lacking, which he believed prevented them from
performing well in school. He believed that this was a key feature that explained why students
failed to advance academically. His approach was in line with Haberman’s (1991) pedagogy of
poverty in his focus on the tasks of teaching whereby Mr. Kalani would perform as the authority
of classroom behavior and activity, but students were responsible for their learning. For example,
in response to a question about how he decided to channel his time and attention, he shared he
expected to see a level effort to work with the student:
Solely on the effort of the kids. If the kids try hard, I’ll be here whenever they want it.
Early, late, whatever. If the kid says, “You know what? I don’t care,” it’s tough for me to
spend time and effort to help them. I do a little bit, try and change the way of thinking,
and, if they don’t change the way of thinking after a while, I say okay, that’s it. Because I
have to strategically use my time.
Above, Mr. Kalani explained how effort was the sole factor used to assess which students to
work with. In his words, the teacher placed responsibility on the student to show that he/she was
ready to learn in order for the teacher to exert his own effort. Mr. Kalani implied that he expected
students to enter the classroom eager to engage in whichever task they were told. For example,
he saw students claiming to not care as a barrier and that he would have to “change the way of
thinking” in order to engage in teaching and learning. This view of students implied that students
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 86
were expected to attend school free of their other unique needs, and that he expected their lives
outside of school to be set aside as obstacles to learning, further suggesting that student obstacles
could be overcome by their will alone.
Mr. Kalani’s quotation aligned with several of Haberman’s (1991) tenets of the pedagogy
of poverty and reflected the view that teaching was the domain of the teacher and learning the
domain of the student, so students were responsible for showing up ready to learn. The teacher
saw his role as giving a “personal nudge, possibly several nudges” and that he would “try a little
bit…to change thinking.” In this way, struggling students were left to self-regulate to a point
where they would be accepted by the teacher. Mr. Kalani further gave away his idea of deserving
students when he claimed that he had “to use my time strategically.” This “strategically”
suggests it would have been a waste of time to work with students who would not meet his
academic expectations. Mr. Kalani’s beliefs in the distinct and separate roles for students and
teachers drove his practices and relationships, as his beliefs guided whom and how he would
help.
While Mr. Kalani saw effort as a primary tool to assess his use of time and attention, he
also saw himself as having to choose between two groups: those ready to engage in learning and
those in need of additional support. Again, this attitude aligned with several of Haberman’s
(1991) syllogisms within the pedagogy of poverty, yet it most closely aligned with a belief that
low performing students were simply a feature of any classroom, suggesting acceptance that
some students were not deserving of effort. This mode of thought, in practice and in his mind,
absolved him from the responsibility of meaningfully fostering a classroom climate to support all
students:
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 87
There’s a lot of focus on … a lot of effort on the kids who are not performing well. To
me, that’s a disservice to the kids who are performing well. Because, by taking the time
away from those kids to address the disciplinary problems, I’m not guiding the rest of the
kids who go to higher level. Like go to college. Somebody said they just need a nudge to
keep that grade up. And you start by that…and if I don’t have time to put in that nudge
for them to go to college, I’m doing them a greater disservice.
Mr. Kalani viewed the time spent with lower performing students as a “disservice” to the others
and in competition with his responsibility for higher performing students. His words suggest that
a teacher ought to focus on serving those primed to succeed academically, further leaving behind
those students in need of ongoing support. He was against “taking time away from kids…who
will go to higher level…like college.”
This dichotomous posturing situated the neediest students at odds with Mr. Kalani’s view
of who was more deserving of his time. For example, he viewed underperforming students in
behavioral terms, as he used “disciplinary problems” to refer to underperforming students. This
binary disregarded Mr. Kalani’s responsibility to the neediest students. Mr. Kalani saw a narrow
sense of success so that only those who “go higher level…like college” were worthy of their
teacher’s preparation. Mr. Kalani not only accepted failure as a feature of his classroom, but he
suggested that, sometimes, student learn “more the second time.” His attitude further positions
student failure (with minimal teacher intervention) as an accepted feature of the school system,
which directly coincided with Haberman’s (1991) pedagogy of poverty. Here, Mr. Kalani’s
ideology, his beliefs about which students deserve supports and the nature of those supports, can
be seen unfolding in the classroom to justify his low effort in partnering with students to attain
success and achievement.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 88
Finding 2: Classroom Practices
Mr. Kalani provided low effort instruction, engaged in low-quality interactions, and
fostered a climate that replicated and reinforced his expectations. His low expectations
manifested in the classroom through sarcasm and racialized talk. To support students, he visited
groups regularly. To regulate their off-task behavior, he used threats, intimidation, and insulting
language.
This finding is organized into two themes, the first theme notes Mr. Kalani’s classroom
climate and connects his low effort to the overall negativity in the classroom climate. The second
theme connects Mr. Kalani’s effort to manage student behavior through controlling practices.
Mr. Kalani approached the classroom with ideas about student behavior that influenced how he
conducted his class. His beliefs about student effort suggested that he withheld instruction,
support, and encouragement unless students showed him that they would be capable of achieving
success. Throughout his interactions, Mr. Kalani held low standards for student interactions and
provided low-quality support for students. This finding aligns with the conceptual framework in
that Mr. Kalani’s classroom practices reflected his ideology in that his low expectations for
students defined his relations with them and the classroom climate at-large. His lack of decorum
in the classroom also demonstrated low expectations for himself so that he approached students
and the class with disrespect without fear of being held to account.
Theme 1: Classroom climate. Mr. Kalani’s classroom climate was predominantly
negative, as his classroom tended to rely on several features that Matsumura et al. (2008)
identified as elements of poor-quality learning environments. The patterns observed in the study
resembled the classroom whereby the teacher’s low quality and disrespectful relationship with
students mirrored the way that students related to each other (Matsumura et al., 2008). Mr.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 89
Kalani’s use of stereotypes were observed several times throughout the observations. In one
instance, to justify his use of the term “ghetto,” the teacher took to the white board to defend his
use of the concept from the contested stance taken by the only African American young lady in
class.
T: You got to live in ghetto to pay that much.
T: Ghetto pays more [walks towards whiteboard at front of class]
S: [Listening to teacher]
T: [Wrote: Eggs $2.00 for12 Eggs]
T: If you use three eggs for 12 cupcakes (inaudible).
In this case, Mr. Kalani invoked the lack of fresh grocers and the high prices paid by some local
residents, as he said, “You got to live in ghetto.” More significantly, Mr. Kalani implied that
people lacked intelligence for shopping in those stores. The student was attentive and attempting
to make sense of the teacher’s remark as he used mathematics to substantiate his claim that items
in the “ghetto” were more expensive. The teacher never spoke about how the term would be
received by the only African American female in class. Also, the teacher shifted attention from
the student’s offense at the term to a mathematical issue for which he could rationalize the term’s
use: “If you use 3 eggs for 12 cupcakes.” The behaved as if his use of the term took priority over
the student’s offense, reflecting a classroom climate of disrespect.
In another example of the climate, within a 10-minute span of the first day of classroom
observations, Mr. Kalani engaged in unwelcoming behavior resembling the negative climates
noted by Matsumura et al. (2008). Mr. Kalani only conducted brief segments of group instruction
at the beginning of class, and it was during one such moment on the first day of observations that
he teased two separate students and joked about a school shooter being at the door prior to the
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 90
dialogue below. Students wrote notes as the teacher finished explaining details of the
assignment.
T: [Any] question[s]?
Class: [No response]
T: Everybody come here look at bad poster.
T: Boo, get over here.
T: [Asked group] What grade you think he gets?
S1: Fail.
T: This is what they did.
S2: Good.
T: Good? Yeah, that’s why we live in the ghetto, low standard.
Mr. Kalani oscillated between doling out inappropriate remarks to individuals and to the entire
class. During each of the five observations, students did not usually ask clarifying questions
when prompted following his mini-lesson. When no one responded, Mr. Kalani invited the class
“Come here look at bad poster.” He dismissively called the work “bad.” It was unclear if
students were wondering if Mr. Kalani would disparage their work to later classes. Finally, once
Student 1 said “fail” and Student 2 said “good,” Mr. Kalani’s claimed that “We live in the
ghetto,” which results in “low standards.” It was unclear whom he referenced when Mr. Kalani
used the term “we.” Again, as in an earlier example, he failed to identify the communities as
having needs and described them as deficient.
Matsumura et al. (2008) noted how teacher-student relationships shaped student-to-
student relationships. Mr. Kalani’s classroom replicated these features. In one case, a very
specific term used by Mr. Kalani could be heard as a disparaging assessment of a student’s fit for
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 91
the school. This occurrence was replicated on a more granular level when the specific verbiage
used by the teacher was repeated by another student towards the same student. The female
African American female who contested the teacher’s use of “ghetto” found herself on the
receiving end of the term from one of her peers in her group. Here was an observable transfer of
Mr. Kalani’s language being embraced at table 3 and used to target in the same manner as the
teacher.
S1: Hey, hey. Sit down, shh. You guys always argue and get nothing done.
S2: I should slap the fuck out of you, AK.
AK: I had to go to CVS for (illegible) instead of nails.
S2: What have you done? [Observer notes: S2 Raised her voice and dropped f-words
gratuitously.]
AK: You’re too damn ghetto to be at this school.
Student 1 began speaking to the others in the group trying to discourage their bickering, but
further noting the group’s lack of progress on the assignment. Student 2 proceeded with the
cursing and verbalized what could have been perceived as a threat, “slap the fuck out of you,”
within audible distance of Mr. Kalani. AK presumably explained why he could not do Student 2
a favor and began a string of curses to which the student stated, “You’re too damn ghetto to be at
this school.” AK engaged in the use of the pejorative in the same way Mr. Kalani did in a
different instance. In this case AK not only used the term ghetto as a pejorative, he indicated that
the student did not fit the school.
Thus, with one concept, the negative and disrespectful classroom climate between the
student-and teacher could be connected between students with a direct link of the term “ghetto”
in a way that closely resembled Matsumura et al.’s findings. This example resembles a feature of
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 92
the conceptual framework whereby student-teacher relationships can be seen impacting student-
student relationships. In this case, the same language, was used from one student to cast the other
as unworthy of being a part of the school. It is unclear whether the student used the term because
Mr. Kalani’s used of the term, but the correlation of negativity between students resembles the
teacher’s style of peer relations and resembles conceptual design in its characterization of student
influence in classroom climate.
Theme 2: Power in the classroom. Although Mr. Kalani saw himself as authoritative,
his emphasis on the subtle influences of power occurred throughout the observations and
revealed a contrary positionality. Delpit (1988) framed several ways in which power was enacted
in the classroom, and more importantly, how students are disempowered by the unspoken and
under-recognized structure. Several of these aspects were observed during observations of Mr.
Kalani’s instruction. One instance presented an escalation of contested power between a student
and the teacher through combinations of direct and indirect communication to a point where the
teacher suggested he would meet a student’s physical aggression with his own. The female
student called over to the teacher from a nearby table.
S: Mister, get over here.
T: I have to help all students.
S: Can I have my phone back now?
T: Yes, you can.
T: [To table 8] What’s up?
S: You make me wanna slap [you].
T: Slap me, I slap back.
S: (Inaudible)
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 93
T: Okay, follow me outside.
S: No, I don’t wanna get locked out.
The student called on Mr. Kalani in an antagonistic way even though she softened the demand to
“get over here” with a preceding “mister.” Mr. Kalani responded to the student’s request by
indirectly signaling that he had other students to help to help. This subtle battle escalated further
once the student was more direct with her request, and she asked, “Can I have my phone back
now” to which the teacher replied, “Yes you can.” This linguistic nuance was the only
expectation Mr. Kalani held to his students. Cursing, name-calling and other demeaning
classroom language was accepted, but, because it was one of his peeves, Mr. Kalani would reply
with sarcasm to requests that began with “Can I” instead of “May I.”
Frustrated, the student blamed the teacher for her desire to slap him. Mr. Kalani replied,
“Slap me, I slap back,” indicating that he would resort to physical violence against a minor
student to reset the power scheme if interrupted by a student. In a somewhat final move, the
teacher told the student to follow him outside, so that this could ensue, but the student refused,
citing the Mr. Kalani’s ploy to lock her out of the classroom once she stepped outside. A caring
and respectful classroom environment, like those described by Matsumura at al. (2008) would
not have fed into an escalating power struggle.
In another demonstration of the classroom climate, Mr. Kalani’s stance towards his
students resembled the practices of power posited by Cox (2015). The resemblance factors in as
Mr. Kalani’s students were expected to conduct themselves with responsible submission or to
self-regulate in a way acceptable to him. One instance was his decision to give detention to his
entire class over attempt to confiscate a phone from a female student.
T: Ms. Wallace, do something or get out.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 94
T: Give it to me otherwise, give it up.
S1: I wasn’t doing anything.
T: You want me to call Mom?
T: Longer we talk, longer we gonna be here.
T: No bargain, you want Mom or you to pick it up?
T: If you don’t agree, do I need to call someone?
T: I’ll do it, everything gonna go to hell.
Class: Give it to him, he’ll give it back.
S2: You guys can’t force her.
T: Okay, extra 5 minutes for everyone.
T: (Picks up phone from student)
S1: Don’t snatch it out of my hand.
T: I didn’t snatch it.
T: Sorry about that.
S2: That’s bullshit.
Class: Adriana shut up.
T: Okay, are we ready to go or what?
T: Okay add 10 minutes, I do it before. I forget, I get so old I forget.
In his initial approach, Mr. Kalani issued the student an ultimatum to leave the classroom for
work, but he simultaneously realized that she was using her cell phone in class. In a second
threat, Mr. Kalani asked her to comply before the third threat bringing the whole class “longer
we gonna be here.” He proceeded with a threat four times before telling the entire class they
would stay late because of this student. The pressure now was widespread as a chorus of several
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 95
students told the student “Give it to him, he’ll give it back.” Student 1 claimed the teacher
snatched the phone from her hand, to which Student 2 said loudly “That’s bullshit.” Capping the
escalation between the student and the teacher along with the associated peer pressure, Mr.
Kalani extended the detention to 10 minutes without clearly expressing why.
Implied throughout the dialogue in all directions was that Mr. Kalani would have the
final say and he decided the outcomes, whether they were warranted or not. Responsible
submission, as described by Cox (2015) was going to be the only way Mr. Kalani moved
forward. Thus, in the face of more student passive aggression, he exaggerated a concern about
his age and memory as he extended the time for class detention. The negative climate conducted
by Mr. Kalani was largely challenged by his attempts the low levels of respect maintained in his
classroom. Once he attempted to use his authority, he lacked the respect to use it effectively, so
his challenges were not isolated. They were also tied to the style of relations occurring
throughout the class.
Mr. Kalani saw the classroom as a place where students needed to prove to him that they
were serious about learning. This approach burdened students to show their worthiness of
support and encouragement. Until students showed signs that they would be successful, Mr.
Kalani held low standards in terms of the quality interactions with students. Along with his low-
quality interpersonal relations, he also provided low-quality support to students in the classroom.
Further, his consistent use of insulting sarcasm, humiliation, and stereotypes revealed the extent
of his power, he created an environment where disrespectful talk in the classroom was passed off
as banter or, as he referred in an interview, “abrasive.” Mr. Kalani’s behavior in the classroom,
aligns with the conceptual framework whereby the negative climate and disrespectful language
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 96
were supported by if not born from his ideology, more specifically, from low expectations in the
classroom.
Cross-Case Analysis
This study developed from an interest in what Bartolomé (2008) described as “[T]he
unacknowledged discriminatory ideologies and practices…facing subordinated students” (p. ix).
My conceptual framework positioned teacher ideology as a lens into the ways in which teachers
make meaning of historically marginalized students’ behavior. Teacher views on behavior were
important because the insight may help understand the ways teachers measure or judge students’
academic ability by relying on other non-academic markers or indicators. I also sought to
understand how two teachers made use of that meaning and consequently how it unfolded in
their respective classrooms.
My cross-case analysis will articulate five patterns that emerged from the findings in Mr.
Kalani and Ms. Munisa’s observations and interviews. First, both teachers operated their
classrooms ways that reflected specific beliefs about student behavior. Second, Mr. Kalani and
Ms. Munisa each expressed aspirations for their students to attain greater academic success.
Third, both teachers expressed and practiced very low expectations for students. Fourth, both
teachers’ pedagogies were guided in large part by their beliefs about student behavior. Fifth, Mr.
Kalani and Ms. Munisa exerted power in the classroom in ways that prioritized managing student
behavior over student learning.
Student Behavior
Both Mr. Kalani and Ms. Munisa’s observations and interviews revealed deep
entanglements between their beliefs of students’ capabilities and student behavior. Data from
both teachers emerged to indicate how beliefs about student behaviors influence classroom
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 97
practices. In both cases, beliefs about students influenced the teachers’ approach to the
classroom, its structure, student expectations, teacher practice, and student learning. The
revelations gave insight into how two chemistry teachers in a high poverty, urban school observe
and assess student potential based on their respective ideologies relative to student behavior.
Both teachers brought beliefs about student behavior to the classroom, and those beliefs could be
observed in the classroom as teachers enacted their practices. Data from both teachers indicate
that teacher ideology about student behavior can influence multiple layers of the classroom in
addition to directly influencing the student. Viewed in tandem, these two educators revealed how
views on student behavior suppress opportunities for classroom success by ultimately failing to
nurture supportive practices.
Data on Ms. Munisa revealed she believed that behavioral expectations were not the kind
of thing that she could set for her students. She shared, “That’s not something you can tell the
kids…. not something that day one you come and say [here are classroom expectations],” adding
later “that’s something that takes practice over time.” Effectively, Ms. Munisa explained and
showed she held behavioral expectations for her students but did not believe in their capacity to
meet these expectations, so she opted not to explicitly articulate those for/with students until or
unless she had to correct them. Ms. Munisa’s low expectations for student behavior reflected
Milner’s (p.35, 2009) characterization that “deficit mindsets make it difficult for educators to
develop learning opportunities that challenge students.” Ms. Munisa’s approach placed student’s
in the untenable position of having to meet expectations they were never told, it also reinforced
her negative view of student behaviors so that she would systemically continue focus on
behavior “needing correction.”
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 98
Mr. Kalani’s data revealed a similar function for behavioral expectations, or, as he
articulated euphemistically, “Just work hard.” He emphasized, “The only thing I ask them to do
is work hard.” He failed to articulate what he understood to be hard work, only continuing that
his view of behavior was as a student’s choice: “No, you don’t see any posting of the classroom
rules… I have to rely on them to make the right decision.” In his mind, Mr. Kalani made space
for himself to be on the periphery of student behavioral expectations as if he had no impact on
the classroom conditions for learning, and, more importantly, that it was the student’s job to
figure out what he expected from them. He further shared the source of his view in a nostalgic
recitation of his own past: “you do what expected.” His beliefs on student behavior drove his
classroom and his unexpressed expectations, his positionality paralleled Hatt’s (2012)
description of smartness or capability to be socially constructed, built out of his arbitrary metrics.
Further in line with Hatt’s finding that smartness, or “hard work,” was a concept used for social
control, the teacher determined his approach to the student.
Aspirations for Students
Both teachers verbalized what appeared as aspirations for student success and seemed to
suggest their belief in student potential. Both Mr. Kalani and Ms. Munisa seemed to want their
students to achieve. Similarly, they prioritized academic and economic conceptions of success.
However, as indicated by the data, both teachers operated classrooms in ways that ran counter to
said aspirations. In this way, while they may have desired for more opportunities for their
students, both teachers were providing limited types of learning experiences that can yield such
opportunities. In both cases, Ms. Munisa and Mr. Kalani provided minimal classroom structure
to foster the classroom growth and student learning.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 99
Ms. Munisa, demonstrated a sense of belief in the potential of her students. She drew
these aspirations from her own success immigrating to the United States. Ms. Munisa is aware
that many of her students come from immigrant background, which resonates with her hopes for
them. In her words, they are “capable, but they have to try to find their potential.” Ms. Munisa
believed in her students, but her belief was embedded with the ideas that students were
responsible for their own success: “I can’t do it, and they have to step up.” These ideas were
bound so that her aspirations combined with her meritocratic mindset (Milner, 2010) and enacted
by not taking an active role in facilitating class. In the classroom, the interactions were low
quality and ran counter to Munisa’s aspirations.
Mr. Kalani believed his students could achieve. This was demonstrated as recounted his
disappointment with a former student. Mr. Kalani was bothered by the student’s failure to attend
college and by not living to Mr. Kalani’s sense of potential. He also saw himself as encouraging
students to achieve: “You can encourage some of them by food. I used to give out food and stuff
like that.” Mr. Kalani would also attempt to motivate students “negatively” by scaring the
students with, “you’re going to fail the class…and some of them…that doesn’t really work.” Mr.
Kalani’s aspirations were conflicted by mixed messages in the classroom: “what I believe in is,
as long as I show that love, compassion. I yell at them, but there’s never any malice in my heart.
I yell at the kid one day, the next day I go hug him.” Mr. Kalani’s encouragement comes with
crass words and disrespectful talk, but he believes students should not be offended because of his
positive intentions.
Both cases demonstrate a conflict of aspirations and their misaligned practices. The
conflict fits within the teacher approach Valenzuela (2010) referred to as aesthetic caring versus
authentic caring. While the teachers articulated high hopes for their students in different ways,
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 100
their classroom was not aligned to support these students’ success. Both held views the
seemingly conflicted views on achievement that were enacted through meritocratic mindsets
(Milner, 2010) in the form of aspirations for their students in an aesthetic caring sense, these
aspirations were solely the responsibility of the students.
Low Expectations
Both teachers held low expectations for their students in terms of their behavior and
academic growth. Both teachers also held beliefs that indicated the reason for their expectations
was that there was something being inherently wrong with the students themselves. This
unfolded in both the interviews and the classroom observations, so these expectations affected
several aspects of the classroom.
Ms. Munisa saw her students as capable of overcoming some their challenges, but only
on the condition that they overcome their, as she called it, “baggage.” However, in contrast to her
hope for the students’ future, she did not expect her students to focus in class, she failed to
capture their attention most times, and she seemed to expect little from students. Explaining her
low expectations Ms. Munisa states, “For most of the kids, it’s the emotional baggage. If it’s not
a disability, it’s emotional baggage that prevents them and they are teenagers and it’s our
particular student body.” These low expectations align with Milner’s (2010) description of low
expectations and seemingly described Ms. Munisa’s mindset in relation to the classroom as he
defined an educator mindset, “I need to distance the students of color from the horrors of their
present.”
Mr. Kalani’s low expectations also came from seeing students as having inherent flaws,
whether due to their environment, training, or mindset. In several instances, he crudely described
why some of his students would not achieve. When asked about students who were not meeting
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 101
his behavioral expectations, he shared, “there’s a kid who, in my period four, he has not been
doing much work and I just let him go because I didn’t want to bother with him.”
During one class observation, he blamed students’ “low standards” to explain their living in
lower income communities. Mr. Kalani used the term “ghetto” on multiple occasions to describe
communities and a mindset, suggesting that he was blaming his students for living in lower
income neighborhoods. Milner’s (p.,15 2010) framework helps describe this approach:
“educators focus on what students do not have rather than on the assets.” As noted previously,
these low expectations unfolded in the classroom through low-quality interactions and low-
quality use of classroom time, thereby adding another layer of challenge for students to be
successful.
Pedagogy
Neither teacher appeared to rely on effective pedagogical strategies. Teaching strategies
in both classes seemed to be based on deficit and place a majority of the responsibility upon the
students to perform. To some extent, both teachers disavowed their ability to meaningfully aide
in student growth and instead seemed to use student
Ms. Munisa’s pedagogy relied on little formal structure in terms of both social routines
and instructional routines. Most of her classes began haphazardly, and they all finished with the
teacher and students in a rush to clean up. Further, her opening instructions were unclear so that
students were often confused and convening after she attempted to give instructions. Class
closure was not guided, so students did not have a mechanism to help them process the day’s
learning activities. Even at times when Ms. Munisa attempted to articulate instructions for class,
they seemed poorly prepared, which reflected in the ongoing student confusion. These low-
quality models of interpersonal interactions are consistent with Matsumura et al.’s (2008)
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 102
description of low-quality instructional models largely co-occurring with a low-quality
classroom climate.
Mr. Kalani consistently relied on formal structure during classroom observations. His
classes began with a brief demonstration or review of expectations for student work. Despite his
structure and his clarity on parts of the assignments, Mr. Kalani also engaged in inappropriate
banter with students during each day of the observations. He circled the class visiting groups
and assessing student activity for progress. Despite being physically available and present, most
of his interactions were low-quality or involved insulting comments or demeaning judgments. As
Matsumura et al. (2008) found that low-quality learning environments co-occur with low quality
classroom climate, the same combination of traits was occurring in Mr. Kalani’s classroom.
Power in the classroom
Both teachers utilized their positions of power, yet both also de-emphasized their power
within the classroom. Power, as conceived by Delpit (1988), was enacted in covert ways to
coerce students into performing on-task behavior throughout the periods. The significance of this
is that it provided the appearance of two constructs vetted by the teachers: “hard work” for one,
and “effort “for the other. Students were expected to responsibly submit (Cox, 2015) to the
expectations of the teacher in order to succeed in class. This asymmetric power dynamic also
resembled Haberman’s (1991) description of the contention for power between student and
teacher. The significance is that suggested behaviors lent themselves to a classroom façade of
student learning, which, at the crux, displaced the responsibility for learning onto the student and
exculpated teachers for failure to teach. This type of aesthetic caring (Valenzuela, 2010)
emphasized that students, in some ways, needed to show their worthiness for the instructor’s
time and effort.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 103
Ms. Munisa exerted her energy and power in class by attempting to keep students
working or keep them appearing to work. Her low-quality relational interactions involved
visiting tables throughout the period, but only connecting with students at a superficial level to
check that they were actively engaged and to tell them to work whenever they were not on task.
In this way, she used her power to assess student performance. However, in the same
interactions, the connection was rarely instructional or directed towards providing a better
understanding. These visits were largely to correct student behavior as she checked to ensure
phones were not being used or if students were idle at their desks. Ms. Munisa also was either
unaware of or did not acknowledge how her poor explanations affected student engagement so
that the students largely relied on each other to make sense of the directions. Her position of
privilege resembled Delpit’s (1988) articulated tenets of the culture of power in that Ms.
Munisa’s role enabled her delivery of unclear guidance and her notion that much of the challenge
of teaching has to do with inherent traits of her students.
Mr. Kalani asserted his power to conduct his class in a way that was unsupportive and
marked by low-quality engagement with students. His seating arrangement similarly organized
students into groups with which he connected superficially. He characterized his approach as
“firm, sometimes abrasive” but suggested that this approach was conducive for the classroom
since he was also “fair and consistent.” His language in the classroom deployed sarcasm and
nicknames, referring to one student as “Boo Boo” and calling a table of young Latino males
“cholos.” Thus, Mr. Kalani’s power shaped the learning environment in a way that failed to
support students and, once challenged, he could always escalate to assert his will and authority as
when he held the entire class for 15 minutes of afterschool detention or when he told the student
“slap me, I slap back.”
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 104
Thus, both teachers asserted their respective power to influence on-task behavior.
Whereas Ms. Munisa engaged in regular feedback that appeared disinterested, Mr. Kalani
asserted his classroom authority by using a coarse and combative communication style. One way
neither teacher seemed to strongly assert their power was towards learning, as neither took a
position that gave top priority to ensure that students were meaningfully learning. Finally, both
teachers, to some degree, blamed their classroom challenges on the students in a way that
disavowed their respective power to influence student outcomes. Ironically, teachers disavowed
their abilities to control learning and relied on their authority to control behavior. This suggests
that teachers are in a position of power and influence in a way that allows them to lament their
lack of power over student learning.
Summary
This study aimed to identify ways in which teacher ideology affected the classroom.
Specifically, teacher beliefs about student behavior were analyzed for their relationship to
classroom climate, beliefs about student potential, and instructional practices. In the present case
studies, both teachers entered their classrooms in ways informed by their ideologies on student
behavior. The teachers entered the classroom with distinct beliefs about student ability, student
deficits, and their academic trajectory. These beliefs were not connected to teacher beliefs about
current students, the beliefs were generalized, yet for each teacher these generalized notions
about students were understood to be relevant to students at the time of the observations.
In the classroom, both teachers enacted practices directly influenced by their assessments
of student behavior. Mr. Kalani and Ms. Munisa facilitated learning environments colored by
beliefs about challenges students brought to the classroom, these challenges or deficits, largely
influenced how teachers shaped opportunities to learn, opportunities to engage, and opportunities
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 105
to connect meaningfully. By interpreting students as largely marked by challenges, each
teacher’s deficit perspective was a core feature of how they each set low expectations for
learning based on beliefs about students. These low expectations were enacted in ways that
minimized the potential for high quality learning since the teachers were more concerned with
students’ being on task. Their superficial connections positioned students as not ready to engage
deep learning. Finally, both teachers relied on a relationship style that located students as outside
of the realm of influence so that each teacher saw themselves as having very little influence on
student behavior, and this seemed to lend itself to low engagement effort.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 106
CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION
This dissertation sought to understand the connections between teacher beliefs and
classroom practices. A qualitative methodology was used to conduct case studies of two teachers
at a high school with a high percentage of marginalized and low SES students. The following
research questions drove the conceptual framework and the research:
1. How do teachers situated in high-poverty communities make meaning of the student
behavior that takes place in their classrooms?
2. What do teachers in high-poverty communities do as a result of their understanding of
that behavior?
I collected data via formal and informal interviews and classroom observations. The goal was
to conduct equal numbers of interviews and observations, but absences and challenges at the
school did not allow for such. Ms. Munisa sat for two formal interviews, and Mr. Kalani only sat
for one formal interview. I observed Ms. Munisa’s class six times Mr. Kalani’s class five times.
All observations were conducted serially for Ms. Munisa. Mr. Kalani’s absence made this
impossible for his class observations. There was one day between the third and fourth where he
was absent. The targeted data included an urban high school with a high concentration of
students from marginalized groups in order to gain insight into how teacher ideology influenced
the classroom. I chose to study both teachers based on the recommendation of the principal and
the teachers’ acceptance. The minimum experience criterion was 5 years. Both teachers had 3 to
4 times that amount of experience. My conceptual framework suggested the teachers’ ideology
may have driven classroom practices and as a collateral effect, might influence the students’ peer
relationships.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 107
Summary of Findings
Ms. Munisa taught 10th grade chemistry, and she stated it was her 27th year of teaching.
The number of students in her class varied from the low to high 20s. This particular class was an
honors chemistry course. Her students represented the diversity of the school and the
socioeconomic conditions of the local community. Ms. Munisa immigrated to United States from
Canada. She felt a connection to her students because she saw some of her own experience in
them.
Ms. Munisa held sincere beliefs that her students were capable of succeeding
academically, and she envisioned herself as a model of her students’ possible outcomes. Despite
believing in her students’ potential, she set up a learning environment that made learning and
academic success an untenable task for students. Her deficit beliefs and meritocracy mindset
meant that she acted more like a passenger to the student learning experience instead of a partner
or a professional. Consequently, her low-quality interactions, poor instructions and indifference
towards classroom structure all served her perspective in that they elicited behaviors from
students that reinforced her initial attitudes towards learning and achievement.
Mr. Kalani taught 10th grade chemistry. He was originally from Vietnam, though, unlike
Ms. Munisa, his background was not explicitly seen as a point of connection with his students.
He taught at only two schools in his entire career. He shared that he was happy to stay at the
same schools, as he had 17 years of experience teaching for the same district, although he was
only at his second school in his career. Despite expressing that his student could potentially be
successful academically, Mr. Kalani acted in a way that failed to act in a way that believed in the
probability of their success.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 108
Mr. Kalani held to beliefs about hard work and effort, as he saw these signs of a student
who would succeed. Alternatively, he focused on off-task behavior in the classroom and
recognized it most frequently so that he mostly spoke with students when he thought they could
do better. He believed that his students brought with them many negative traits that would limit
their potential to be academically successful. Mr. Kalani described himself in the classroom as
fair, firm and consistent but also abrasive.
In the classroom, Mr. Kalani did not approach students as if he believed they would
succeed. He provided a sense of structure in the classroom that relied on his opening monologue
of some element of the project. Then he would allot the remainder of the classroom time to be
used as needed for students to progress with their projects. During this open work time, students
worked in groups of four to five ,and Mr. Kalani made rounds visiting each table. His
connections with students were low-quality because he spoke to students with sharp sarcasm and
inappropriate language. This style of connection fostered a negative class climate where, in some
cases, students took his model of relations to connect with their peers. His critiques of his
students suggested something about them explained their challenges in school, but his own
judgments were reinforced by his approach and deficit focus.
The following section will discuss recommendations for teacher practice and policy as a
result of my study.
Implications and Recommendations
This dissertation sought insight into connections between teacher ideology, student
behavior, and classroom climate. Two case studies were used to analyze how teacher ideology
impacted the classroom. This study found that teacher ideology and classroom practices were
linked through the quality of instruction, belief in student success, and quality of teacher-student
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 109
relationships. Additionally, in both cases, the teacher’s approach to the classroom influenced
how peers related to each other during class. Consequently, low confidence in student ability in
both cases was associated with a low-quality learning environment that was driven by the teacher
but alleged to be caused by traits inherent to the student. In both cases, teachers saw themselves
as having a limited ability to influence major behavioral change, and it unfolded as teachers
disavowed their power to shape the learning environment. Thus, in both cases, teachers used
their position of power to claim a lack of power to affect student behavior. In broader terms,
teachers approached the classroom with general ideas about student behavior that had major
consequences in the ways a learning environment was shaped. In this way, students’ cognitive
abilities were affected and measured for their potential by general beliefs about student behavior.
The following section will advance a series of implications supported by this study. They include
recommendations for teacher practice, educational policy and future research.
Teacher Practice
Bartolomé (2008) calls on educators to critically reflect on their ideologies, but with a
contextual element that allows for one to gain bearings in relation to their beliefs, those of the
larger public, and those advanced by the students. Several other researchers cite critical
reflection, in specific reference to ideological positionality, as a way for educators to examine
how their views can impact the classroom negatively (Haberman, 1991; Milner, 2010;
Valenzuela, 2010). As a result of this study, my recommendation is that teachers critically reflect
and examine their beliefs about students to understand the entailments embedded within those
beliefs. To be clear, educators do not need to simply critically reflect, as this reflection will yield
greater impact when they observe and understand how their views inform their actions and
practices.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 110
Milner’s (2010) opportunity gap framework calls on educators to observe the persistent
disparities in student achievement as an opportunity gap. He suggests that a cluster of
interconnected mindsets and practices illustrate how student achievement is not a neutral
occurrence (Milner, 2010). Instead, he posits a framework for disentangling the achievement gap
by advancing the opportunity gap framework. One specific concept advanced by Milner is the
myth of meritocracy. As its impact is presented by Milner and observed in this study, it is critical
for teachers to understand the nature of student adversity and the dismissive nature of addressing
student achievement under the assumption that knowing a student’s context automatically
provides the teacher with the tools to support that student’s unique needs. Furthermore, teachers
must reflect closely on their use of language and their closely held beliefs about concepts like
hard work, effort to ensure they aren’t approached with deficit mindsets.
Educational Policy
Given my findings, the following section will advance four recommendations at each of
the district, organization, state, and federal levels. This study focused at a granular level on
teacher beliefs and their implications for classroom practices. However, these beliefs and
practices were not shaped in isolation. They were likely developed along the way as educators
were prepared for their classrooms. Thus, in order to better prepare educators, a force for change
is needed across levels of policy and practice. The following recommendations aim to yield
teacher insight into their ideological positionality. The benefit of this insight would lead to
development of expertise on asset ideology, deficit ideology, and biases in the classroom:
professional development in the area of teacher ideology and biases, teaching/teacher evaluation
standards include specific goals related to positionality awareness, articulate common school-
based pedagogies.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 111
At the district level, accountability mechanisms can quickly outstrip time for what appear
to be more urgent day-to-day issues. However, teacher professional development should include
guidance and companion funding to ensure that students receive the high-quality education that
will allow them to grow into their talents and potential. A focus on showing educators the
impacts of their beliefs and biases will give rise to the opportunity to address and bring to the
surface a benign but powerful influencer in the classroom. The organization or school site would
be best served to adopt a preemptive intervention to systemically reflect on and address teacher
ideology as a part of a stated pedagogy and sustained with regular professional development.
The state could support this initiative in two ways: mandate training for established
professionals and train future teachers through credentialing requirements. Training could also be
standardized and supported through initiatives and publicly reported metrics similar to those
currently used to hold schools accountable for student performance. Recommendations could be
made for teacher evaluations to contain some elements that would help teachers to continually
reflect on their positionality.
On the federal level, money could be tied to teacher training in a way that would require
states to enforce but leave room for districts or schools to tailor to their students’ particular
needs. Alternately, or additionally, the federal departments could loosen restrictions on
requirements so that training could be blended into the school schedule and thereby systematize
growth by systemizing the availability of time to support growth.
Future Research
Given these findings, more research is needed to further understand the nuances of how
ideology and beliefs about students influence the learning space. Ideally, more investigations
would examine teacher ideologies with more teacher interviews and observations so that teachers
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 112
could have the opportunity to explain more of their decisions in the classroom. Additional
studies should attempt to integrate student perspective to understand more about how specific
teacher ideologies are interpreted by the learners. A study with a larger sample could lend aid in
identifying more patterns and further nuance into how ideology impacts the classroom through
teacher practices. The combination of these approaches could yield significant data that may
support other, more broader initiatives about what is missing in education, or, equally important,
the initiatives could yield insight into the strengths of with current systems. Finally, future
research may consider assessing professional development designed as intervention to these
ideological influences. Potential results could yield better interventions or additional nuance
needed to mitigate the impact of teacher ideology in the classroom.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 113
References
Anderson, C. S. (1982). The Search for School Climate: A Review of the Research. Review of
Educational Research, 52(3), 368–420. http://doi.org/10.3102/00346543052003368
Anyon, J. (1980). Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work. Journal of Education,
162(1), 67–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/002205748016200106
Bartolomé, L. (2008). Ideologies in education: unmasking the trap of teacher neutrality. New
York: Peter Lang.
Bartolomé, L. I. (2004). Critical pedagogy and teacher education: Radicalizing prospective
teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31(1), 97-122.
Bartolomé, L. (1994). Beyond the methods fetish: Toward a humanizing pedagogy. Harvard
Educational Review, 64(2), 173(22)
Bogdan, R., & Biklen, S. (1992). Qualitative research for education: an introduction to theory
and methods (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Bondy, E., Ross, D., Gallingane, C., & Hambacher, E. (2007). Creating Environments of Success
and Resilience: Culturally Responsive Classroom Management and More. Urban
Education, 42(4), 326–348. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085907303406
Brown, K. E., & Medway, F. J. (2007). School climate and teacher beliefs in a school effectively
serving poor South Carolina (USA) African-American students: A case study. Teaching and
Teacher Education, 23(4), 629–640.
http://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.11.002
Chavez, A., & Guido-Dibrito, F. (1999). Racial and Ethnic Identity and Development. New
Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 1999(84). https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.8405
Cohen, E., & Allen, A. (2013). Toward an Ideal Democracy: The Impact of Standardization
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 114
Policies on the American Indian/Alaska Native Community and Language Revitalization
Efforts. Educational Policy, 27(5), 743–769. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904811429284
Cohen, J., Mccabe, L., Michelli, N., & Pickeral, T. (2009). School Climate: Research, Policy,
Practice, and Teacher Education. Teachers College Record, 111(1), 180–213.
Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for
developing grounded theory (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, Calif: Sage Publications, Inc.
Cothran, D., & Ennis, C. (1997). Students’ and Teachers’ Perceptions of Conflict and Power.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 53(9), 541–553.
http://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004
Creswell, J. (2014). Research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches
(4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications.
Creswell, John W. (2013). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed
Methods Approaches (p. 259). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.
Davis, H. A. (2006). Exploring the contexts of relationship quality between middle school
students and teachers. The Elementary School Journal, 106(3), 193-223.
de Valenzuela, J. S., Copeland, S. R., Qi, C. H., & Park, M. (2006). Examining educational
equity: Revisiting the disproportionate representation of minority students in special
education. Exceptional Children, 72(4), 425–441.
http://doi.org/10.1177/001440290607200403
Delpit, L. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people’s
children. Harvard educational review, 58(3), 280-299.
Forte, E. (2010). Examining the Assumptions Underlying the NCLB Federal Accountability
Policy on School Improvement. Educational Psychologist, 45(2), 76–88.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 115
http://doi.org/10.1080/00461521003704738
Gay, G. (2007). The rhetoric and reality of NCLB. Race Ethnicity and Education, 10(3), 279–
293. http://doi.org/10.1080/13613320701503256
Gregory, A., Skiba, R. J., & Noguera, P. A. (2010). The Achievement Gap and the Discipline
Gap: Two Sides of the Same Coin? Educational Researcher, 39(1), 59–68.
http://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X09357621
Hatt, B. (2012). Smartness as a Cultural Practice in Schools. American Educational Research
Journal, 49(3), 438–460. http://doi.org/10.3102/0002831211415661
Haberman, M. (1991). The Pedagogy of Poverty versus Good Teaching. Phi Delta Kappan,
92(2), 81-87.
Heckman, P. E., & Montera, V. L. (2009). School Reform: The Flatworm in a Flat World: From
Entropy to Renewal through Indigenous Invention. Teachers College Record, 111(5), 1328–
1351.
Jussim, L. (1986). Self-fulfilling prophecies: A theoretical and integrative review. Psychological
Review, 93(4), 429–445. http://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.93.4.429
Kena, G., Hussar, W., McFarland, J., de Brey, C., Musu-Gillette, L., Wang, X.,….Drake, L.
(2010). The Condition of Education 2010. (NCES2010-028). National Center for
Educational Statistics, Institute of Educational Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
Washington, D.C. 2016144.
Leana, C. (2011). The missing link in school reform. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 31–35.
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jelectrocard.2011.07.027
Lee, J., & Shute, V. J. (2010). Personal and Social-Contextual Factors in K–12 Academic
Performance: An Integrative Perspective on Student Learning. Educational Psychologist,
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 116
45(3), 185–202. http://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2010.493471
Levin, B. (2000). Putting Students at the Centre in Education Reform. Journal of Educational
Change, 1(2), 155–172. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010024225888
Matsumura, L., Slater, S., & Crosson, A. (2008). Classroom Climate, Rigorous Instruction and
Curriculum, and Students’ Interactions in Urban Middle Schools. The Elementary School
Journal, 108(4), 293–312. https://doi.org/10.1086/528973
Merriam, S., & Tisdell, E. (2016). Qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation
(Fourth edition). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Brand.
Milner, H. (2010). Start where you are, but don’t stay there: Understanding diversity, opportunity
gaps, and teaching in today’s classrooms. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Education Press.
Patrick, H., Kaplan, A., & Ryan, A. M. (2011). Positive classroom motivational environments:
Convergence between mastery goal structure and classroom social climate. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 103(2), 367–382. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0023311
Ready, D. D., & Wright, D. L. (2011). Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Teachers’ Perceptions of
Young Children’s Cognitive Abilities: The Role of Child Background and Classroom
Context. American Educational Research Journal, 48(2), 335–360.
http://doi.org/10.3102/0002831210374874
Reyes, M. R., Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S. E., White, M., & Salovey, P. (2012). Classroom
emotional climate, student engagement, and academic achievement. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 104(3), 700–712. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0027268
Rist, R. C. (1970). Student Social Class and Teacher Prophecy in Ghetto Education. Harvard
Educational Review, 40(3), 411–451.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 117
Thapa, A., Cohen, J., Guffey, S., & Higgins-D’Alessandro, A. (2013). A Review of School
Climate Research. Review of Educational Research, 83(3), 357–385.
http://doi.org/10.3102/0034654313483907
Thomas, D. E., Bierman, K. L., & Powers, C. J. (2011). The Influence of Classroom Aggression
and Classroom Climate on Aggressive-Disruptive Behavior. Child Development, 82(3),
751–757. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01586.x
Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring.
Albany: State University of New York Press
Wallace Jr, J. M., Goodkind, S., Wallace, C. M., & Bachman, J. G. (2008). Racial, ethnic, and
gender differences in school discipline among US high school students: 1991-2005. The
Negro Educational Review, 59 (1-2), 47.
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 118
Appendix A
Pre-Observation Interview Protocol
I. Introduction
Thank you for agreeing to participate in this study…. I appreciate the time that you have set aside to for
this interview regarding classroom instruction. I expect us to talk for approximately 30 minutes, though
I appreciate any extra time you have.
Before we begin, I want to provide you with an overview of my study and answer any questions you
might have about participating… I am currently conducting a case study in the USC program in
educational leadership. The primary purpose of this study is to learn how teachers approach the
dynamics of classroom behavior. “I am particularly interested in teachers views and the classroom
climate In order to gain insight my driving research questions, I am observing multiple classrooms and
talking to multiple teachers.
I want to assure you that I am here strictly as a researcher today. This means my questions (and
observations) are not evaluative. I am not here to make judgments on your performance as a teacher.
Moreover, none of the data I collect will be shared with other teachers, the principal, or the district.
I am happy to provide you with a copy of my final paper if you are interested. Do you have any
questions about the study before we get started? If you don’t have any (more) questions I would like
your permission to begin the interview. I have brought a recorder with me today so that I can accurately
capture what you share. May I also have your permission to record our conversation?
II. Setting the Stage & Questions
I will begin by asking questions about your students, your teaching, then I will ask about classroom
norms, what they are, who sets and enforces them.
Students
1. Describe your typical student’s academic skills.
2. Describe your typical student’s classroom behavior.
Norms
3. Describe some of your classroom norms, expectations or ideal behavior, explain.
4. To better understand, tell me about a norm that is central to your classroom.
5. Please share about how that norm figured into a recent lesson.
6. How do you ensure connect your student’s affective/emotional states with your lessons?
Establishing and Enforcing Norms
7. How did norms above get established in your classroom? Others?
8. Are there behavioral expectations that your students would like in place that are different from
the established norms?
9. If norms are negotiated, are there norms the students asked for or indicated they wanted that the
teacher either said no to (what were they and why did the teacher say no?) or were there norms
that the teacher said yes to even though they are not his/her favorite and if so, why did he/she say
yes?
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 119
10. What would be some reasons your students would not follow the standard expectations?
11. Describe a recent time when a student acted outside of the acceptable behavioral range and your
reaction and response.
Behavior and Instruction
12. What if any connection does classroom behavioral norms have to learning?
13. Some say that in order to learn, students must come to school with a basic set of behavioral
skills. How would you respond to this?
14. How would you describe your teaching role in relation to these classroom norms? Some people
would say that your job is to teach them only subject matter. How would you respond? (Devil’s
Advocate)
V. Closing:
Thank you so much for you sharing your thoughts with me today! I really appreciate your time and
willingness to share. Everything that you have shared is really helpful for my study. If I find myself
with a follow-up question, I am wondering if I might be able to contact you, and if so, if email is ok?
Again, thank you for participating in my study.
VII. Special Considerations and Probing
i. Transitions (notice the sections in your protocol where you transition from one topic to the
next… pre-manufacture a transitional statement that will help make the switch more natural and
insert where appropriate) (Patton p. 371):
So, we have spent most of our time talking about …. Now I would like to change gears a little bit and
ask about…. (Is there anything else you would like to add before we transition?)
ii. Probing Statements/Questions (it is a good idea to pre-manufacture some potentially helpful
probing statements/questions):
That is interesting, would you please tell me a little bit more about…
I want to make sure I understand; would you please tell me what you mean by…
Can you please tell me how you were led to that conclusion
It would be great if you could walk me though…
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 120
Part II.
Interview Questions
RQ 1: How do
teachers situated
in high-poverty
communities
make meaning of
the student
behavior that
takes place in
their classrooms?
1. Describe some of your classroom norms, what are they?
2. To better understand, tell me about a norm that is central to your
classroom.
3. Please share about how that norm figured into a recent lesson.
4. Describe some of your classroom norms, what are they?
5. To better understand, tell me about a norm that is central to your
classroom.
6. Please share about how that norm figured into a recent lesson.
7. How do you ensure that behavioral norms are incorporated into your
lessons
RQ 2: What do
teachers in high-
poverty
communities do
as a result of
their
understanding of
that behavior?
1. Describe your typical student’s academic skills.
2. If you had to describe a “typical” class, how would you describe their
average academic skills?
3. If norms are negotiated, are there norms the students asked for or
indicated they wanted that the teacher either said no to (what were they
and why did the teacher say no?) or were there norms that the teacher
said yes to even though they are not his/her favorite and if so, why did
he/she say yes?
4. What would be some reasons your students would not incorporate these
norms?
5. What if any connection does classroom behavioral norms have to
learning?
6. Some say that in order to learn, students must come to school with a
basic set of behavioral skills. How would you respond to this?
7. How would you describe your teaching role in relation to these
classroom norms? Some people would say that your job is to teach
them only subject matter. How would you respond? (Devil’s
Advocate)?
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 121
Appendix B
Post-Observation Interview Protocol
I. Introduction
Thank you for ongoing participation…. I appreciate the time that you have set aside to for this
interview regarding classroom instruction. I expect us to talk for approximately 45 minutes, though I
appreciate any extra time you have.
The primary purpose of this study is to learn how teachers approach the dynamics of classroom
behavior. “I am trying to understand classroom climate and the interaction between the teacher and
the student(s) in the construction of that climate.
Do you have any questions about the study before we get started? If you don’t have any (more)
questions I would like your permission to begin the interview. I have brought a recorder with me
today so that I can accurately capture what you share. May I also have your permission to record our
conversation?
II. Setting the Stage & Questions
I will begin by asking questions about your vi ewson teaching, instruction, and student behavior.
Ideology
1. How would you describe your strategy on [insert recent date(s)] as it connects to your
teaching philosophy? If necessary, probe:
a. How would you describe your role in students’ learning?
b. What is your students’ role in learning?
c. How, if at all, do you see your role as being different from your students’ role?
d. Some people would say that your job is to teach them only subject matter. How
would you respond?
Establishing and Enforcing Norms
2. We last spoke about spoke about teachers that see themselves as strict, authoritarian, push
overs, or authoritative. How would you describe yourself [insert recent date(s)] or with
[student]?
a. Why would you describe yourself that way?
i. What did you do and say that demonstrates you to be that kind of a person
(at least as a teacher)?
b. (If relevant) I noticed that [your or student] became upset or frustrated during the
class on [insert recent date(s)]. How did you make the decision to act the way you
did?
c. (If relevant) I noticed that [student] did not want to participate. How did you make
the decision to act the way you did?
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 122
3. We spoke about how _____ is what you expect to happen on a given day. How do you
think this played out on [insert recent date(s)], if at all?
a. Who decided the behavioral expectations for your students? For example, some
teachers co-construct classroom norms. Other teachers establish them and give
them to students.
b. How did you decide your communication strategy to express your behavioral
expectations insert recent date(s)]?
c. Which student behavior in your classroom is most likely to lead to a student’s
success in your class?
4. Walk me through your decision to ____________ on insert recent date(s)] do you do when
a student is not meeting your behavioral expectations?
a. What happened? Describe it to me.
5. Tell me about the way students treated each other in your class insert recent date(s)].
a. Think about an interaction that you think does a good job of demonstrating the way
your students treat each other.
6. How would you characterize your relationships with your students on [insert recent
date(s)]?
a. Describe a specific example showing this kind of relationship (ask about the
different kinds of relationships individually).
b. How do you think your students would describe their relationships with you?
7. What was the overall climate of your classroom on [insert recent date(s)]?
a. Describe specific examples that illustrate this.
So, we have spent most of our time talking about classroom behaviors in general. Now I would
like to change gears a little bit and ask more specifically about the differences you might see in
terms of behavior between high achieving and low achieving students.
8. How, if at all, would you say that your high achieving students behaved differently than
your low achieving students insert recent date(s)]?
a. Think about insert recent date(s)] do you think these differences in behavior played
themselves out. What happened?
b. How would you describe smart students and how they behaved?
9. On [insert recent date(s)] were there certain students you expected to misbehave or not
meet behavioral expectations? If so,
a. What, if anything, did they have in common?
10. Did those students you expected to meet your expectations do so? If so,
a. What, if anything, did they have in common?
b. Think of one of those students and describe him or her for me.
V. Closing:
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 123
Thank you so much for you sharing your thoughts with me today! I really appreciate your time and
willingness to share. Everything that you have shared is really helpful for my study. If I find myself
with a follow-up question, I am wondering if I might be able to contact you, and if so, if email is ok?
Again, thank you for participating in my study.
VII. Special Considerations and Probing
i. Transitions (notice the sections in your protocol where you transition from one topic to the
next… pre-manufacture a transitional statement that will help make the switch more natural
and insert where appropriate) (Patton p. 371):
So, we have spent most of our time talking about …. Now I would like to change gears a little bit and
ask about…. (Is there anything else you would like to add before we transition?)
ii. Probing Statements/Questions (it is a good idea to pre-manufacture some potentially helpful
probing statements/questions):
That is interesting, would you please tell me a little bit more about…
I want to make sure I understand, would you please tell me what you mean by…
Can you please tell me how you were led to that conclusion
It would be great if you could walk me though…
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 124
Appendix C
Classroom Observation Protocol
Teacher Name ____________________________
School Location Code ____________________________
Grade Level ____________________________
Observer ____________________________
Date ____________________________
Type of Activity Observed:
Observation
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day
8
Coach Demo Other Demo___________________
name/title
Coach Observation Other Observation_____________________
name/title
_____________________
name/title
Activity Description:
1. Time spent on the activity: Start End Total
Minutes:_________________
2. Activity and materials:
___________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
________________________
3. Was the Concept Question Board used? Yes No
4. Did the teacher refer to the Must Do/May Do for IWT? Yes No
TEACHER INTERPRETATION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR 125
In a narrative, describe the activities taking place in the classroom. Focus on teacher to
student(s), and student to student interaction as well as activities of individual students. A
narrative requires that you directly quote the teacher as he/she asks questions, models
reading strategies, presents material, works with students in small group, large group, or
individually. Additionally, you should document student engagement in response to the
teacher, as well as individual or group work and non-work activities.
TIME
TIME
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Abstract (if available)
Linked assets
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
Conceptually similar
PDF
Which grain will grow? Case studies of the impact of teacher beliefs on classroom climate through caring and rigor
PDF
Examining the learning environments of urban high school educators who are culturally aware and serve a majority of students from historically marginalized populations
PDF
Examining the intersection of ideology, classroom climate, and pedagogy in creating open-forum discussions in secondary English classrooms
PDF
Examining elementary school teachers’ beliefs and pedagogy with students from low socioeconomic status and historically marginalized communities
PDF
Examining the practices of teachers who teach historically marginalized students through an enactment of ideology, asset pedagogies, and funds of knowledge
PDF
Positive classroom leadership: how teachers manage meaningfully in high needs contexts
PDF
Student perceptions of teacher pedagogical practices in the elementary classroom
PDF
Discipline with dignity for African American students: effective culturally responsive practices used by teachers in kindergarten through second grade in Los Angeles County urban elementary schools
PDF
How do teacher beliefs shape the approaches used to support low-income, Black, White, and Latino students in Advanced Placement English?
PDF
Examining urban high school English language arts teachers’ written feedback to student writing and their perceptions and applications of culturally relevant pedagogy
PDF
Best practices general education teachers implement to foster a positive classroom environment
PDF
Understanding the teachers' perception of impeding bullying in the middle school classroom
PDF
Integrated technology: a case study surrounding assertions and realities
PDF
An analysis of the selection and training of guiding teachers in an urban teacher education program
PDF
The intersections of culturally responsive pedagogy and authentic teacher care in creating meaningful academic learning opportunities for students of color
PDF
Teacher perception on positive behavior interventions and supports’ (PBIS) cultivation for positive teacher-student relationships in high schools: an evaluation study
PDF
Teacher management style: its impact on teacher-student relationships and leadership development
PDF
Teacher efficacy and classroom management in the primary setting
PDF
A qualitative examination of PBIS team members' perceptions of urban high school teachers' role in implementing tier 2 schoolwide positive behavior supports
PDF
Teachers in continuation high schools: attributes of new teachers and veteran teachers in urban continuation high schools
Asset Metadata
Creator
Carvajal, Everardo B.
(author)
Core Title
Enacting ideology: an examination of the connections between teacher ideology, classroom climate, and teacher interpretation of student behavior
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Education (Leadership)
Publication Date
04/15/2020
Defense Date
01/28/2020
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
classroom climate,ideology,OAI-PMH Harvest,pedagogy,student behavior,teacher neutrality,teacher perception,urban schools
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Slayton, Julie (
committee chair
), Baca, Reynaldo (
committee member
), Green, Alan (
committee member
)
Creator Email
ebcarvaj@usc.edu,philosofize@gmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-281673
Unique identifier
UC11674982
Identifier
etd-CarvajalEv-8261.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-281673 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-CarvajalEv-8261.pdf
Dmrecord
281673
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Carvajal, Everardo B.
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA
Tags
classroom climate
pedagogy
student behavior
teacher neutrality
teacher perception
urban schools