Contradictions as an entry into inclusive systemic design: Addressing racial disparities in the discipline at an urban middle school

Abstract

In the United States, school disciple has been racialized. Youth from racially minoritized backgrounds receive exclusionary discipline more frequently and severely for more subjective reasons such as disrespect, excessive noise, and dress code violation in U.S. schools. The study presents how an urban school community in Wisconsin engaged in inclusive knowledge-production and systemic design process, Learning Lab, to collectively examine and address racial disparities in school discipline. Learning Lab members (school staff, parents, and community representatives) engaged in root cause analysis behind disproportionality in their local context and identified the manifestations of the systemic contradiction (racial disproportionality) as dilemmas, conflicts, critical conflicts, and double binds in everyday practices of the school community. They collectively designed a new culturally responsive school-wide behavioral support system to address the systemic contradiction. We identified 194 discursive manifestations of contradictions in the 14 meetings of the Learning Lab. These manifestations stemmed from three main contradictions as tensions between components in the school activity system related to classroom management, school-community partnership, and behavioral support tools.