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Qualitative training rarely acknowledges the role of emotions in both data collection and analysis. While bracketing emotions is an important part of reflexivity, emotions are both a source of data...

Drawing on data from a year-long multi-case ethnography of three secondary urban public schools implementing restorative practices, the current piece examines how principals negotiate restorative practices despite conflicting pressures to maintain order and compel obedience. I frame my inquiry through Sergiovanni’s (2000) concept of “systems” in the “lifeworld,” asking whether principals use restorative practices as systems in service of cultural transformation or merely as a replacement for suspension. Findings suggest tensions between principals’ purposes for implementing restorative practices and the pressure they feel to maintain an image of “school order” and “toughness” in the eyes of internal and external stakeholders. I close with recommendations for research and practice. I also make some preliminary recommendations for principal preparation.

Increasingly, district leaders are turning to a community-based alternative to suspension called restorative practices (RP’s). While they correlate with lower suspension rates, Black, Latinx, and N...

Suspension rates for students of color are higher than for White students, even in schools that utilize alternatives to suspension like restorative practices. This study draws on data from a year-long multicase ethnography that sought to elucidate why such disproportionality prevails in schools that use restorative practices. This article focuses on one finding: that the individuals hired to be restorative coordinators were consistently young, non-White staff from the same neighborhoods as their students. The majority-White faculty and administration greatly depended on these coordinators to bond with, contain, and compel obedience from students of color.

Implicit in the discourse on school discipline reform is the belief that utilizing positive school discipline practices, as opposed to suspension and classroom removal, will necessarily reduce the racially disproportionate representation of black and brown students in school discipline outcomes. Yet even in schools that utilize positive school discipline approaches, racial disproportionality persists; students of color continue to be disciplined more often and more harshly than their white peers, even when controlling for gender, socioeconomic status, and behavior. Framed by Vavrus and Cole’s concept of the socioculturally contextualized disciplinary moment, this article argues for an approach to positive discipline that incorporates the tenets of culturally relevant education. Implications for policy, research, and practice are discussed.

Foucauldian theory serves as a natural frame for critiquing school discipline policies, the harsh, punitive policies used to correct misbehaviour in public schools (Devine, 1996).1 School surveilla...