Coloniality and the template of White Beings: hegemonic expectations in school discipline

Research has continued to illuminate the school-to-prison nexus, with PK-12 schools seeking to mitigate exclusionary discipline practices in the United States. Despite the abundance of research available, there is an absence of knowledge regarding school discipline from the lens of coloniality and, specifically, the role of disciplinary policies in affirming school structures in reproducing Dylan Rodriguez’s notions of the White Being. This critical review of the literature interrogates the historical genesis of disciplinary policies and the expectations underlying schools’ fundamental role to assimilate students within a template that reproduces white ways of knowing and being. The system continues its steadfast efforts to control knowledge systems and emotionality, using school disciplinary policies to extract those who fail to comply with the template of White Being. The results of the study argue that decoloniality efforts against the racial template must be a precondition to disrupting the school-to-prison industrial complex.