Ethnic Integrity or Dysfunctional Behavior?

This paper examines Chicano high school students' perceptions of disciplinary actions experienced or witnessed. Interviews and focus groups were conducted in an urban high school with the two Chicano students with the worst disciplinary records and the two with the best disciplinary records. Other data collection included classroom observations, examination of student records, and interviews with four teachers suggested by the four student subjects. Four themes emerged from the data: (1) students perceived school as a place centered on school staff's needs, resulting in feelings of alienation and disempowerment for students; (2) student and teacher perceptions of disciplinary incidents differed with regard to both the substance of the events and specific components of the misbehavior; (3) students perceived injustice in the application of rules due to different sets of values, attitudes, and beliefs held by students and teachers; and (4) knowledge of the disciplinary consequence did not influence student actions. Contains 50 references. (SV) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document