Advancing Culturally Relevant Discipline: An Ethnographic Microanalysis of Disciplinary Interactions With Black Students

Culturally relevant discipline (CRD) has the potential to mitigate the disproportionate disciplining of Black students in American schools. Utilizing interaction ritual theory, this research uses ethnographic microanalysis to investigate nonverbal, paraverbal, and verbal communication in three student-teacher disciplinary interactions from one predominately Black high school. The analysis (a) provides the first microlevel empirical evidence of the success of culturally relevant discipline. Then it uses microinteractional evidence to resolve theoretical neglect and strengthen theoretical assertions of past CRD scholarship. It argues that (b) CRD can reinforce learning processes and (c) critical consciousness is a teacher prerequisite for CRD.