Obedience Over Curiosity
A Legacy of Colonial Education Models
Education is often described as the foundation of opportunity. Yet schools have also functioned as instruments of social control. Decolonial and historical scholarship frames colonial schooling as aimed at assimilating colonized peoples by privileging the colonizer’s language, curricula, and norms. That theoretical frame helps explain why contemporary disciplinary systems sometimes reward compliance over inquiry.
Contemporary Discipline Patterns
Recent empirical research shows persistent problems in modern disciplinary systems that disproportionately affect marginalized students and that often rely on exclusionary, compliance-oriented approaches.
• A 2021 meta-analysis synthesizing 40 primary studies (274 effect sizes) found that exclusionary discipline (suspension/expulsion) is associated with increased delinquent and antisocial outcomes, suggesting exclusionary responses can exacerbate the very behaviors they aim to reduce (Gerlinger et al., 2021).
• Large, recent empirical studies document persistent racial and school-composition dynamics in discipline: Black students are suspended more often and for “soft” infractions; the school context (racial/ethnic diversity, majority composition) matters for who receives exclusionary discipline (Smith et al., 2023).
• Systematic reviews of restorative practices and restorative justice in schools show promising but mixed evidence: many studies report improvements to school climate and reductions in some exclusionary outcomes, yet reviews emphasize implementation variability and a need for higher-quality, experimental evidence (Zakszeski & Rutherford, 2021; Lodi et al., 2021).
Human and Educational Costs
The evidence base links exclusionary discipline to lost instructional time, lower school engagement, and downstream risks to educational attainment and behavior. Meta-analytic and longitudinal work indicates that suspensions and expulsions are not neutral: they predict worse academic and behavioral trajectories for many students (Gerlinger et al., 2021).
Alternatives: Restorative, Relational, Culturally Responsive Practices
A growing body of experimental and quasi-experimental research evaluates alternatives. Important recent findings include:
• A rigorous cluster randomized evaluation of a whole-school restorative practices project (18 schools, N ≈ 5,878) found that, after one year, intervention schools had lower rates of recorded discipline incidents than comparison schools, but effects on suspension disparities were limited and multi-year implementation appears necessary to address entrenched gaps (Gregory, Huang, & Ward-Seidel, 2022).
• A separate cluster randomized trial focusing on out-of-school suspensions found restorative practices did not significantly change suspension likelihood for the entire student body after one year. However, reductions occurred for students with prior suspensions, again underscoring that outcomes depend heavily on implementation details and student subgroups (Huang, Gregory, & Ward-Seidel, 2023).
• Systematic reviews emphasize that restorative and relational approaches show promise for improving climate and reducing some exclusionary actions, but that high-quality, long-term, and equity-oriented implementation is essential to reduce discipline gaps (Zakszeski & Rutherford, 2021; Lodi et al., 2021).
Conclusion: Reframing Respect and Practice
Framing respect as reciprocal, honoring students’ languages, questions, and cultural knowledge, aligns with both decolonial theorizing and emerging empirical evidence on what reduces exclusionary discipline.
The recent peer-reviewed literature supports three practical points:
(1) exclusionary, compliance-based discipline is associated with harms and persistent disparities;
(2) restorative/relational approaches can reduce some disciplinary incidents, but are not all-encompassing; and
(3) reducing disciplinary disparities requires multi-year, well-resourced, equity-centered implementation rather than one-off programs.
References
Gerlinger, J., Viano, S., Gardella, J. H., Fisher, B. W., Curran, F. C., Higgins, E. M. (2021). Exclusionary school discipline and delinquent outcomes: A meta-analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 50(8), 1493–1509. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01459-3
Gregory, A., Huang, F., & Ward-Seidel, A. R. (2022). Evaluation of the whole school restorative practices project: One-year impact on discipline incidents. Journal of School Psychology, 95, 58–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2022.09.003
Huang, F. L., Gregory, A., & Ward-Seidel, A. R. (2023). The impact of restorative practices on the use of out-of-school suspensions: Results from a cluster randomized controlled trial. Prevention Science, 24(5), 962–973. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-023-01507-3
Lodi, E., Perrella, L., Lepri, G. L., Scarpa, M. L., & Patrizi, P. (2021). Use of restorative justice and restorative practices at school: A systematic literature review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(1), 96. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19010096
Smith, L. H., Bottiani, J. H., Kush, J. M., & Bradshaw, C. P. (2023). The discipline gap in context: The role of school racial and ethnic diversity and within-school positionality on out-of-school suspensions. Journal of School Psychology, 98, 61–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2023.02.006
Zakszeski, B., & Rutherford, L. (2021). Mind the gap: A systematic review of research on restorative practices in schools. School Psychology Review, 50(2–3), 371–387. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1852056