The literature linking adulthood criminality to cumulative disadvantage and early school misbehavior demonstrates that understanding the mechanisms underlying student behavior and the responses of teachers and administrators is crucial in comprehending racial/ethnic disparities in actual or perceived school misbehavior. We use data on 19,160 ninth graders from the nationally representative High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 to show that boys’ and girls’ negative achievement and negative experiences with teachers relate more closely to school misbehavior than the contextual measures (e.g., negative peer climate, proportion Black) that have often been emphasized as most salient for misbehavior. Differences in negative achievement and experiences completely explain Black boys’, Latinx boys’, and Black girls’ heightened levels of school misbehavior relative to White youth, and Asian boys’ and girls’ lower levels of school misbehavior. In contrast, differences in negative achievement and experiences only partially explain Latinx girls’ higher levels of school misbehavior relative to White girls.
From kindergarten through college, students perceive boys as more intelligent than girls, yet few sociological studies have identified how school processes shape students’ gender status beliefs. Drawing on 2.5 years of longitudinal ethnography and 196 interviews conducted at a racially diverse, public middle school in Los Angeles, this article demonstrates how educators’ differential regulation of boys’ rule-breaking by course level contributed to gender-based differences in students’ perceptions of intelligence. In higher-level courses—where affluent, White, and Asian American students were overrepresented—educators tolerated 6th-grade boys’ rule-breaking, such that boys challenged girls’ opinions and monopolized classroom conversations. By 8th grade, students perceived higher-level boys as more exceptionally intelligent than girls. However, in lower-level courses—where non-affluent Latinx students were overrepresented—educators penalized 6th-grade boys’ rule-breaking, such that boys disengaged from classroom conversations. By 8th grade, lower-level students perceived girls as smarter than boys, but not exceptional. This article also demonstrates how race intersected with gender when shaping students’ perceptions of intelligence, with students associating the most superlatives with affluent White boys’ capabilities. Through this analysis, I develop a new theoretical understanding of how school processes contribute to the gendered social construction of exceptionalism and reproduce social inequalities in early adolescence.
more » « less- PAR ID:
- 10102819
- Publisher / Repository:
- SAGE Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- American Sociological Review
- Volume:
- 84
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0003-1224
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 369-393
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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