Introduction
Education is a highly important entry to achievement and to contributing to civic life, but the experience is different for everyone (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). In this respect, African American male students face an extremely challenging setting in which disciplinary offenses are twice as prevalent as compared to students of other cultural groups. The purpose of this study is to reveal what lies beneath the disturbing figures and to offer a more complex picture than the mere numbers can convey. It will study the maze of institutional regulations and socio-cultural factors and the systemic prejudices that are directly related to this gap. The pertinent value of this study lies in its capacity to contribute to policy change, teaching equity, and suppression of barriers to success in the school environment for African American male students.
Literature Review
The prevalence of disciplinary measures against African American male students is concerning, with this group receiving suspensions at far greater rates than their peers. Disciplinary measures are typically triggered by subjective breaches such as ‘defiance,’ a phrase that is imprecise and open to interpretation. This subjectivity creates fundamental issues regarding the fairness and uniformity of disciplinary approaches, which can vary greatly between educational institutions.
Exposure to these punishment systems at a very young age and this early exercise are definite signs of the effects that they can have on one’s education (Wildeman & Andersen, 2020). In the early years of development, boys assigned more diminutive termination than others due to their race at school may have a mistaken idea about the environment of the school, sometimes considering it antagonistic instead of friendly (Stollznow, 2020). This kind of uncompromising perception brings about a decreased sense of belonging and involvement that impairs academic performance and increases the possibility of abandonment (Visser et al., 2022).
Repeated penalties for subjective reasons not only lead to disruption of their learning path but also affect their self-value and confidence in school systems (Visser et al., 2022). Isolation and anger caused by such directed forms of punishment may never directly continue the cycle of misconduct and discipline but may unconsciously result in the behavior of the victims (Douglas, 2021).
Additionally, institutional factors play a major role in influencing disciplinary findings, especially for African American male students. Zero-policy policies have been provided as a remedy to school misbehavior only to be regarded as suspect for their correlation with increased suspension rate among this group (Howell, 2023). As such, such policies rarely allow room for individual considerations and thus tend to result in an overwhelming number of suspensions of African American students for minimal offenses.
According to Mavuru Ramnarain (2020), the socio-cultural context in which African American male students live has a tremendous impact on their educational experience. For instance, societal perceptions, often filled with prejudices, and the expectations placed on these pupils can have a significant impact on their conduct. This external pressure may lead to behavior that educational institutions regard as transgressions, even if it is a sign of greater socio-cultural difficulties (El-Amin, 2022). According to Tully (2020), recognizing the socio-cultural variables at play is crucial in addressing the core causes of such actions and altering school responses to be more culturally aware and responsive to these students’ lived realities.
The frequency and severity of discipline emerged as significant behavioral issues associated with negative effects on academic achievement among African American male students (Cohen et al., 2023). In this case, strategies may literally cut their active participation in the learning process, leading to a chain of unwanted consequences. Evidence of intertemporal analysis is strongly associated with these disciplinary processes and lowering academic performance, implying that strict measures can reduce the rate of learning (Peguero et al., 2018). According to Gollan & Torress (2020), dropout rates have surged to imply that disciplinary measures may be damaging the connection with education itself; hence, there should be a rather more supportive role of discipline that promotes academic perseverance and achievement.
For this reason, strategic intervention strategies can drastically alter the discipline landscape for the African American male student. For instance, mentorship programs have been shown to enhance the effectiveness of positive support systems, reducing infractions (York et al. (2020). These approaches do not only offer directions but also create a sense of homelike and representation among the school members (Craig, 2023). Faced with the right programs that emphasize empowerment and personal development, these programs may become central to the revitalization of the disciplinary narrative and create a beneficial learning environment for such students (Nelson et al., 2020).
Racial bias is a pressing issue in school disciplinary practices. Several educator implicit biases have a significant impact on why these African American male students are subjected to unequal rates of disciplinary actions (Yeung, 2022). Such biases may come from social images and prejudices, often unintentionally held by school staff, who make individuals look and be treated unfairly. The prejudices of this nature not only play into the factors in determining the fairness of disciplinary measures but also promote a vicious cycle of inequality within educational facilities. It is thus important to address these biases to combat the existing stereotypes by way of creating awareness, training, and policies that support the inclusion of all students in disciplinary practices, ensuring that they are equitable and just.
Problem Statement
While various measures were taken against the move toward the overall fairness of the educational substructure, African American male students still suffer from significantly more disciplinary actions than their peers do (Griffin et al., 2020). The difference compels the question of racial bias and discrimination in school disciplinary procedures, which results in poor academic outcomes as well as negatively influencing the outcome of their overall welfare. The need to sustain such differences warrants a systematic analysis of the causative agents and practical ways of resolving this grave issue.
Research Aim
This analysis seeks to determine what factors drive the elevated levels of disciplinary violations incurred by African American male students and analyze racial bias along with institutional policies, both factors that frame these results. The research will seek to find appropriate intervention practices that could help eliminate such inequalities by creating a level of common ground on which the needs of African American male students are taken into consideration.
Methodology
The study will use a mixed-methods approach to gain a thorough knowledge of the disciplinary inequities experienced by African American male students. The methodology will have two major components.
Quantitative Approach: This study will use existing data on education for statistical analysis to look at the occurrences of disciplinary citations among African American male students and their peers to ensure that there is fairness. Each of these will help put figures on the nature and scale of inequalities as well as identify any coherence or consistency over time.
Qualitative Approach: As for the data collection method, semi-structured interviews will be used to collect information from educators, school administrators, and African American male students to reveal their perceptions of issues around school discipline. This qualitative methodology seeks to reveal how racial prejudices, institutional policies, and socio-cultural factors may affect disciplinary measures.
By combining results from both quantitative and qualitative findings, this study will conduct a comprehensive analysis of disciplinary disparities affecting African American male students in schools that requires the basis to build interventions based on policy recommendations (Nagpal et al., 2021). This method ensures a complete assessment of the complicated issue, providing complex insights into the structures underlying disciplinary inequities and viable paths to fair practices in education (Vivek & Nanthagopan, 2021).
The study will also comply with ethical considerations such as obtaining personal consent from the participants and keeping their identities anonymous. Also, the research will be carried out under the ethical guidelines of this academic institution.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is a problem in our educational institutions that must be reformed with immediate effect, which is the disproportionate disciplinary infractions among African American male students drive home this point. This study shows the complicated intersection of racial biases and institutional policies as well as socio-cultural variables other than individual factors, which result in the current disparities. Through the use of broad intervention strategies that are focused on promoting a culture where equity and acceptance prevail, schools can initiate the process of removing obstacles for African American male students through improved performance levels in their academic and social lives. In the future, educational stakeholders must agree to the process of unceasing reflection, policy scrutiny, and application of equity practices for a just environment where all participants acquire knowledge.
References
Griffin, C. B., Metzger, I. W., Halliday-Boykins, C. A., & Salazar, C. A. (2020). Racial fairness, school engagement, and discipline outcomes in African American high school students: The important role of gender. School psychology review, 49(3), 222-238.
Sensoy, O., & DiAngelo, R. (2017). Is everyone really equal?: An introduction to key concepts in social justice education. Teachers College Press.
York, L. D. (2020). The Effects of Mentoring on Student Outcomes.
El-Amin, A. (2022). Know Thyself: The Power of Transgression to Break Barriers. In Black Female Leaders in Academia: Eliminating the Glass Ceiling With Efficacy, Exuberance, and Excellence (pp. 35–57). IGI Global.
Vivek, R., & Nanthagopan, Y. (2021). Review and comparison of multi-method and mixed-method applications in research studies. European Journal of Management Issues, 29(4), 200-208.
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Tully, L. D. (2020). The Cultural (Re) Turn The Case for Teaching Culturally Responsive Lawyering. Stan. JCR & CL, pp. 16, 201.
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Douglas, J. A. (2021). African American Students’ Experiences with Teachers’ Discriminatory Behavior in the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Doctoral dissertation, Walden University).
Yeung, R. P. (2022). Implicit Bias, Discipline, and Academic Disparities: A Phenomenological Study to Understand White Teachers’ Perceptions of Black Students (Doctoral dissertation, Baylor University).
Mavuru, L., & Ramnarain, U. (2020). Learners’ socio-cultural backgrounds and science teaching and learning: A case study of township schools in South Africa. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 15, 1067-1095.
Visser, L. N., van der Put, C. E., & Assink, M. (2022). The association between school corporal punishment and child developmental outcomes: a meta-analytic review. Children, 9(3), 383.
Nelson, K. L., Morris, J. R., Brinson, J., & Stahl, M. A. (2020). School-community group model: Collaborating for the empowerment of adolescent African American male students. The Journal for Specialists in Group Work, 45(2), 113-128.
Craig, Q. (2023). Factors that influence success for African American students. In How Black colleges empower Black students (pp. 101–108). Routledge.
Golann, J. W., & Torres, A. C. (2020). Do no-excuses disciplinary practices promote success? Journal of Urban Affairs, 42(4), 617–633.
Wildeman, C., & Andersen, L. H. (2020). Long‐term consequences of being placed in disciplinary segregation. Criminology, 58(3), 423-453.
Stollznow, K. (2020). On the offensive: Prejudice in language past and present. Cambridge University Press.
Cohen, D. R., Lewis, C., Eddy, C. L., Henry, L., Hodgson, C., L. Huang, F., … & Herman, K. C. (2023). In-school and out-of-school suspension: Behavioral and psychological outcomes in a predominately Black sample of middle school students. School Psychology Review, 52(1), 1–14.
Howell III, C. (2023). Exploring Teachers’ Strategies That Motivate Achievement Among African American Students: A Single-Case Study.
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