Brief intervention to encourage empathic discipline cuts suspension rates in half among adolescents

Abstract

Growing suspension rates predict major negative life outcomes, including adult incarceration and unemployment. Experiment 1 tested whether teachers (n = 39) could be encouraged to adopt an empathic rather than punitive mindset about discipline-to value students' perspectives and sustain positive relationships while encouraging better behavior. Experiment 2 tested whether an empathic response to misbehavior would sustain students' (n = 302) respect for teachers and motivation to behave well in class. These hypotheses were confirmed. Finally, a randomized field experiment tested a brief, online intervention to encourage teachers to adopt an empathic mindset about discipline. Evaluated at five middle schools in three districts (N teachers = 31; N students = 1,682), this intervention halved year-long student suspension rates from 9.6% to 4.8%. It also bolstered respect the most at-risk students, previously suspended students, perceived from teachers. Teachers' mindsets about discipline directly affect the quality of teacherstudent relationships and student suspensions and, moreover, can be changed through scalable intervention.teacher-student relationships | empathy | respect | school suspensions | discipline

Trust and Discipline: Adolescents’ Institutional and Teacher Trust Predict Classroom Behavioral Engagement following Teacher Discipline

“…Moreover, students only reported on relatively lower level disciplinary incidents—ones in which they were not removed from class. While trust is particularly relevant to how students interpret lower level and thus more ambiguous discipline (Okonofua, Paunesku, et al., ; Okonofua, Walton, et al., ), a crucial task for researchers is to examine if trust also buffers against more severe discipline (e.g., suspension from school).…”

“…Regarding the teacher level, teachers’ perspective‐taking of their students appears to matter for building trust. For example, one intervention found that when teachers were encouraged to assume an “empathic mindset” (i.e., to understand the students’ point of view when deciding how to respond to misconduct) as opposed to a control condition about student learning, suspension rates were reduced by 50% (Okonofua, Paunesku, et al., ; Okonofua, Walton, et al., ). The authors speculated that these effects were likely explained by increased trust in the student–teacher relationship.…”

“…To date, minimal research has examined these processes in schools, though researchers note that advancing research in this developmentally salient, ecological context is critical (Hirschfield, ; Tyler & Trinkner, ). School is “a key” developmental context that provides opportunities for children to develop trust in societal institutions (Kupchik & Catlaw, ; Okonofua, Paunesku, et al., ; Okonofua, Walton, et al., ). Indeed, school is often where children first form relationships with nonfamilial authority figures that set the stage for later interactions (Tyler & Trinkner, ).…”

“…Despite the fact that disciplinary exchanges are a key source of stress for teachers and students alike (Allday, ; Okonofua, Paunesku, et al., ; Okonofua, Walton, et al., ), little research has addressed this question of whether school trust might motivate adolescents to increase their behavioral engagement after being disciplined. That is, whether adolescents respond to discipline more positively if they already trust the school system and its actors remains largely unknown.…”

“…Relatedly, adolescents tend to find mathematics to be one of the most challenging academic subjects (Fredricks et al., ), and such frustration may increase the occurrence of behavior problems. Finally, teachers often face pressure to increase student performance on standardized mathematics exams, which may increase the use of discipline to meet instructional goals (Okonofua, Paunesku, et al., ; Okonofua, Walton, et al., ). More practically, mathematics is one of the few subjects that students take every day of the week, which allows us to assess discipline and engagement daily.…”