Beyond ‘Because I Said So!’ Three Early Childhood Teachers Challenge the Research on the Disciplinary Beliefs and Strategies of Individuals from Working-Class Minority Backgrounds

Abstract

Research literature suggests that adults from working-class minority backgrounds demonstrate authoritarian and coercive tendencies in their choices of disciplinary strategies when compared with adults from middle-class, ‘white’, ‘Anglo’, or ‘North American’ backgrounds. However, in a recent study in New York City, three early childhood teachers from working-class, Latino backgrounds were conspicuously democratic and non-authoritarian in teacher—child interactions involving discipline. This study points to the need to examine suggestions in the literature that adults from working-class minority backgrounds simply accept and reproduce traditional childrearing and early educational practices of the cultures in which they were raised. In addition, these data identify a need to question the usefulness of certain binary oppositional dualisms often appropriated for analysis of social phenomena, including minority/non-minority, working class/middle class and individualism/collectivism. The ultimate demand is for innovative language and concepts that take into account the complex interactions which come into play as teachers, parents and other adults formulate beliefs about disciplinary strategies. A major piece of this project involves re-evaluating the way we define, examine and write about culture.