Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear

Appendix: Research Methods and Analysis

223 Appendix Research Methods and Analysis The original research described in the preceding chapters took place in four schools—two in a southwestern state and two in a mid-Atlantic state—and includes interviews, observations of schools, and surveys. I then supplemented these data with data from the Federal Department of Education ’s National Center for Education Statistics and the University of Delaware ’s Center for Drug and Alcohol Studies. My selection of school sites proceeded in several stages. First, I chose four appropriate districts and schools based on student demographics within each of the two states: two districts/schools housing mostly middle-class white youth and two with mostly lower-income youth of color. Second, I leveraged professional contacts in an attempt to gain access to one of each of the selected districts and schools. Since I needed to secure the approval first of each school district and then of each principal, it helped when I was able to have a colleague who could introduce me to a member of the district or school community. Despite these efforts, however, I was denied access to research in one selected district in each state. I then proceeded to the second (equally appropriate, demographically) choice for each state; in both cases access was then granted. Once I obtained permission from each school district and school principal , I then visited each school, accompanied by a graduate student research assistant. During this initial visit we met the school principal and assistant principals, toured each school, and obtained a primary contact to help with our initial visits (a dean of discipline at Frontera High and Unionville High, a “team leader” at Fairway Estates High, and an interventionist at Centerville High). For our first several visits we would find the contact and trail him or her; the contact then introduced us to other school staff, whom we could then trail and observe on subsequent visits. After several visits, we were able to meet and eventually observe all personnel involved in punishing students at each school. 224 | Appendix Each research assistant had prior training and experience in qualitative data collection. Before entering each site, the research assistants and I discussed the theoretical issues being considered (e.g., governing through crime, cultural reproduction) and the particular technologies in which I was most concerned (e.g., student-disciplinarian interactions, the manner in which rules are enforced, etc.). I accompanied each research assistant on the first few site visits; after each visit we would compare field notes and discuss what we observed and how these observations should be recorded. This process led to a consistent format and tone of field notes, and helped established reliability in our data. I also read each field note carefully and met regularly with each research assistant to discuss the process of data collection. Olivia Salcido, a graduate student at Arizona State University, and I collected data in the southwestern schools throughout the 2005–2006 school year, beginning at Frontera High and soon proceeding to Fairway Estates High, so that we were studying both schools simultaneously for most of the time. Olivia continued this research in the fall of 2006. Nicole Bracy, a graduate student at the University of Delaware, and I mimicked this procedure in the mid-Atlantic schools during the 2006–2007 school year; we began at Centerville High and then continued with Unionville High. For the first three months at each school we trailed school staff and observed interactions with students. We would shadow an administrator, police officer, security guard, or dean of discipline, sit in on classrooms, or observe common areas (e.g., cafeterias, hallways). We noted interactions between adults and students, particularly in response to perceived misbehavior among students. The majority of the interactions we observed were casual conversations in the hallways or classrooms, since this is the most common type of student-staff interaction. We observed hundreds of meetings between students who were given a referral (i.e., removed from class and sent “to the office”) and were sent to either their dean of discipline, interventionist, or assistant principal (whoever handles referrals at each school), and we also observed arrests on campus and expulsion hearings (though these are far less common). Though I refer to what “I” observed throughout this book, the data collection was truly a team effort. We logged at least one hundred hours of observational time at each school, with visits lasting two to three hours on average. We wrote field notes immediately upon leaving each...