Beyond the Pipeline: Exclusionary Discipline and Youth Power in K-12 Education

Dear Colleagues,

Decades of scholarship on exclusionary discipline and the school-to-prison pipeline have advanced research, policy, and practice interventions to address educational inequity (see Gregory et al., 2010 for review). Embracing Noltemeyer and Mcloughlin’s (2010) conceptualization of exclusionary discipline as any incident when a student is removed from their everyday educational setting, Beyond the Pipeline: Exclusionary Discipline and Youth Power in K-12 Education welcomes papers that confront exclusionary discipline as a carceral practice in schools, address the impacts of carceral interventions across a range of educational contexts, interrogate power, examine resource distribution, and decenter the Global North. This Special Issue will interrogate, complicate, and expand scholarly discourses about exclusionary discipline, moving beyond preoccupations with disproportionalities, disparities, and the school-to-prison pipeline.

The school-to-prison pipeline suggests a direct, linear pathway from schools into carceral contexts (e.g., prisons, jails, juvenile incarceration). In the public imagination, exclusionary discipline and the school-to-prison pipeline are concepts that intersect with identity, power, resources, and other factors reinforcing the status quo arrangements of racial, gender, class, and educational hierarchies. Intersectionally marginalized and structurally oppressed youth tend to be adultified and dehumanized (Goff et al., 2008; Goff et al., 2014), and/or perceived as “problems” (Meiners, 2017) or “troublemakers” (Okonofua & Eberhardt, 2015). These overt and insidious biases may explain persistent discipline and criminalization. Yet, the prevalence of “damage-centered” narratives (Tuck, 2009) overshadows a full picture of exclusionary discipline, anti-carceral activisms, and abolition futures (Meiners, 2011) in schools.

This Special Issue will move scholarship beyond examinations of disparities and inequities in exclusionary discipline to address the fundamental problem of schools as carceral sites where exclusion is merely one aspect of a system of punishment. We invite submissions that interrogate the school-to-prison pipeline narrative, make space for youth power and radical imagination, and invite actions to transform schools to a homeplace (hooks, 2007) where all carceral interventions are abolished. Through a lens of abolitionist praxis in education (Love, 2019), this Special Issue welcomes papers that refuse race-neutral and dominant ideologies, uplift anti-carceral approaches in education, and amplify youth perspectives.

Suggested themes and article types for submissions

We are pleased to invite submissions for Beyond the Pipeline: Exclusionary Discipline and Youth Power in K-12 Education. This Special Issue aims to expand scholarship about exclusionary discipline through an inclusive platform for diverse perspectives and innovative methods. We welcome the submission formats: traditional manuscripts, including original research articles, review papers, theoretical and conceptual analyses, case studies, etc. Submissions should align with the journal’s focus.

Topic areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Intersectional and structurally conscious narratives and analysis;
• Youth perspectives on exclusionary discipline and just futures;
• Youth-led and youth-centered programs for justice and well-being;
• Place-based investigations of anti-carceral and abolitionist education;
• Complication and expansion of exclusionary discipline as a concept and practice;
• Creative anti-carceral and youth power projects within schools and community settings;
• Critical theoretical and methodological approaches.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References

Goff, P. A., Eberhardt, J. L., Williams, M. J., & Jackson, M. C. (2008). Not yet human: Implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporary consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(2), 292–306. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.94.2.292

Goff, P. A., Jackson, M. C., Di Leone, B. A. L., Culotta, C. M., & DiTomasso, N. A. (2014). The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing Black children. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(4), 526–545. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035663

Gregory, A., Skiba, R. J., & Noguera, P. A. (2010). The achievement gap and the discipline gap: Two sides of the same coin? Educational Researcher, 39(1), 59–68. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X09357621

hooks, bell. 1984. Feminist theory from margin to center. Boston: South End Press.

Meiners, E. R. (2011). Ending the school-to-prison pipeline/building abolition futures. Urban Review, 43(4), 547–565. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-011-0187-9

Meiners, E. R. (2017). The problem child: Provocations toward dismantling the carceral state. Harvard Educational Review, 87(1), 122-146. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-87.1.122

Noltemeyer, A. L., & Mcloughlin, C. S. (2010). Changes in exclusionary discipline rates and disciplinary disproportionality over time. International Journal of Special Education, 25(1), 59-70.

Okonofua, J., & Eberhardt, J. (2015). Two strikes: Race and the disciplining of young students. Psychological Science, 26(5), 617-624. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615570365

Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409–427.

Dr. Ceema Samimi
Dr. Brita A. Bookser
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Youth is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• exclusionary discipline
• school-to-prison pipeline
• youth power
• abolitionist praxis
• social justice
• education
• schools