Teacher Strategies When Addressing Social Exclusion

Abstract

Teachers have a powerful impact on shaping developing children’s attitudes towards inclusion and cross-group friendships (Skinner & Meltzoff, 2019). Previous research has explored teachers’ comfort with discussing discrimination and how perpetuating bias impacts students (Kaufman et al., 2024). But how teachers approach discussion of intergroup exclusion among their students is less examined. For this project, our goal was to explore teachers’ reported strategies of addressing intergroup social exclusion in the classroom and the ways in which they perceive administrations support discussions of intergroup exclusion. Data were part of the Developing Inclusive Youth (DIY) program to examine teachers’ roles in supporting an intervention to reduce bias and increase intergroup friendships among children. A sample of 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade elementary school teachers (N = 51, 86% female, 76% White) in U.S. public schools in the Mid-Atlantic region took a pre and post test survey as a part of the DIY intervention. Our team of undergraduates developed a coding scheme to code and analyze teachers’ open-ended responses. Teachers reported addressing social exclusion by disseminating moral and prosocial principles to the entire class more often than speaking to individual students, yet they reported facilitating group discussion on the topic less than any other approach. And teachers cited professional development as administrations’ primary contribution. These results suggest teachers treat exclusion at the group level but aren’t trained to facilitate group conversations. This knowledge of teachers’ approaches and administrative support can inform future school interventions.