Background/Context: Recently there has been increased emphasis on disaggregating students' experiences collected through surveys based on student identities (Arredondo, 2016). Yet demographic data collection is problematic by nature, often reducing the complexity of an individual's racial, gender, or sexual identity to a single category. Racial…

This paper uses the case of New York City teachers' interpretations of the labels that are assigned to their performance to explore how teachers experience teacher evaluation systems. Based on our analyses of 141 interviews with New York City teachers, we argue that the ordinal performance labels assigned to teachers by New York City's…

Two studies, one of middle school students and the other of high school students, demonstrated that students who were labeled as 'struggling' in the area of literacy saw themselves quite differently when their voices were heard. When these labeled students were viewed through a strengths lens rather than a deficits one, competent literacy skills…

The experiences of girls of color labeled with significant cognitive disabilities in middle school and high school have historically been excluded from educational research. This study sought to better understand how girls of color labeled with significant cognitive disabilities navigated multimodal discourses and classroom practices as well as…

Intellectual giftedness is commonly associated with a high level of intellectual functioning, an identification process whereby individuals are labeled as "gifted," and adjustments in schools such as grade skipping. During adolescence, all these factors are prone to reduce peer connectedness and school life satisfaction. The aim of the…

Static reading labels are problematic not only because youths demonstrate varying reading skills and identities across secondary classrooms but also because being labeled as "struggling" can undermine literacy learning. Little research has investigated how "struggling" and "proficient" readers' interactions with…

To disrupt patterns of marginalization that play out through interactions in math classrooms, teachers need to identify and address inequities in student participation, both in terms of participation outcomes and processes. In this study, I take an expansive view of participation and examine how the "quiet" participation of one 9th grade…

Frequent discussion in the field of disability research focuses knowledge on rehabilitation for students with disabilities. However, lacking is a focus on student identity development in the face of a highly stigmatizing and stigmatized label. Semi-structured interviews with four freshman males labeled with high incidence disabilities were…

Racial minority youth are disproportionally removed from their learning environment due to school discipline and placed in special education for emotional disturbance. These disparities continue to trouble families, educators, and policy makers, particularly within urban schools. Yet there is a paucity of research on how behavioral outcome…

Using a combination of counter-storytelling, testimonios, and Chicana feminist epistemology, I report on the findings of an ethnographic study that explores and analyzes the educational experiences of geographically isolated Latina high school students in a rural city in Wyoming. I demonstrate the labeling of these students by peers and teachers…

For over a century, genetic arguments for the existence of racial inequality have been used to oppose policies that promote social equality. And, over that same time period, American biology textbooks have repeatedly discussed genetic differences between races. This experiment tests whether racial terminology in the biology curriculum causes…

This study addressed a need for research on the association between adopting or denying the label of bully victim and students' psychosocial functioning. Participants were 1,063 students in Grades 5, 7, and 9 in a school district in the northeastern United States. Students were grouped based on their pattern of responses to (a) the California…

In this paper, the authors examine how information that students receive about their academic performance affects their decisions to enroll in post-secondary education. In particular, they look at one specific piece of data--student performance on the state standardized mathematics test in grades 8 and 10 in Massachusetts. One key feature of such…

Using a realist grounded theory method, this study resulted in a theoretical model and 4 propositions. As displayed in the LINK model, the labeling practice is situated in and endorsed by a social context that carries explicit theory about and educational policies regarding the labels. Taking a developmental perspective, the labeling practice…

In a study of the New Orleans public schools, African American males represented 43% of the school population, while accounting for 58% of the non-promotions, 65% of the suspensions, 80% of the expulsions, 43% of the dropouts, and only 9% of the gifted and talented. African American males are denied equal educational opportunity at such alarming…