Symbolic Representation in American Schools: Race, Gender, and Intersectionality

Lael Keiser¹^,^*, Donald Haider-Markel²

¹Truman School of Government and Public Affairs

²Political Science, University of Kansas, dhmarkel@ku.edu

^*Corresponding author: Corresponding Author: Lael Keiser Truman School of Government and Public Affairs 615 Locust Street Columbia, MO 65211

ⓒ Copyright 2022 Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Feb 10, 2022; Accepted: Aug 28, 2022

Published Online: Dec 31, 2022

Abstract

A growing body of research suggests that representation among elected and bureaucratic officials can shape the attitudes and behavior of constituents and clients. We explore the impact of race and gender representation in public schools using a unique survey of students and school personnel from 44 different schools in an Ohio county about school discipline. We use ordered logit models to analyze the survey data. Our analysis suggests race affects attitudes toward institutions and authority even when controlling for individual experiences, that Black student attitudes are influenced by minority teacher representation, student attitudes are different depending on teacher gender representation, and student race and gender condition the influence of representation. Our results have potentially broad implications for understanding attitudes about political institutions, the administration of authority, and the theory of representative bureaucracy.

Keywords: Representative Bureaucracy; Intersectionality; Minority; Discipline; Schools; Race; Gender; Education Policy