The disproportionate discipline of Black male students is a pervasive problem in U.S. schools. To examine the role of stereotypes in disciplinary disproportionality, pre-service teachers were randomly assigned to read a vignette about a defiant student. Those who read a vignette about a Black student believed that the student was more likely to misbehave in the future, compared with those who read a vignette about a White student. These findings suggest that some teachers attribute the misbehavior of Black male students to more stable causes, which may lead them to alter their behavior toward these students.

This study examined how student characteristics (e.g., race, gender) and teacher characteristics (e.g., race, gender, years of experience, confidence in behavior management) influence the way teachers perceive and respond to student behaviors in the U.S.A. A rigorous process was used to develop and pilot a survey consisting of questions about a defiant student behavioral incident that might be encountered in a school. This process involved systematically identifying student names that would imply different gender/ethnicity combinations, creating the instrument using these names, expert review, cognitive interviews, and a pilot study using 135 pre-service teachers. After refining the instrument based on feedback from each of these activities, we administered it to 57 practicing teachers. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four scenario conditions, each of which implied a student with a different gender/ethnicity combination (i.e., African American female student, African American male student, European American female student, European American male student). Although some interesting trends in responding emerged based on the implied student race and ethnicity, none were statistically significant. However, teacher characteristics significantly influenced responding, with less experienced teachers being less likely to ignore behaviors -and more likely to address them directly -than their more seasoned counterparts. This adds to the extant knowledge about how teachers in different phases of their careers may interpret and approach classroom situations, and reveals implications for teacher professional development efforts. Further implications, limitations, and future directions are also discussed.Keywords: discipline, teachers, schools, bias, disproportionality, race, gender Literature ReviewDisciplinary disproportionality -also known as the "discipline gap" -refers to the overrepresentation of some student populations in school-based disciplinary proceedings. One of the most marked examples of this phenomenon in the U.S.A. is the disproportionate representation of African American students in school suspensions, expulsions, and other disciplinary actions. This phenomenon has been consistently documented beginning with the seminal Children's Defense Fund study (1975), which found that African American students were two to three times as likely to be suspended from school as their White counterparts. Findings indicate that these trends have persisted (e.g., Noltemeyer & Mcloughlin, 2010;Skiba et al., 2011), although the source of the discrepancy continues to be debated. Disproportionality is problematic because exclusionary discipline is associated with negative outcomes including academic difficulties (e.g., Rausch & Skiba, 2004), high school drop-out (e.g., Costenbader & Markson, 1998), participation in criminal activity (e.g., Florida State Department of Education, 1995), and grade retention (e.g., Safer, 1986). Given the severity of these and other potentially negative correlates of suspension...

Research in the United States suggests that teachers view Black students' misbehavior as more likely to reoccur, but such research has not disentangled the effect of race from related factors. We used conjoint analysis to experimentally test the effect of multiple student characteristics on the chances of being referred for a behavior intervention program. Although preservice teacher participants were not more likely to refer Black students, they were more likely to refer students who had lower grades, lived in poverty, lived with a single mother, and had been retained. We interpret these results and highlight directions for future research and practice.

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