Reconceptualizing early childhood exclusionary discipline: A critical review of two decades of research

Abstract

Over the past two decades, early childhood exclusionary discipline has received significant public and research attention in the USA, yet its use and disproportionate application continue. Existing research lacks a critical examination of the underlying paradigms guiding current investigations, motivating the authors’ adoption of “immanent critique” to address this gap. Specifically, they conducted a comprehensive review of empirical studies on early childhood exclusionary discipline published between 2005 and 2023, and asked how early childhood exclusionary discipline has been theorized, how it has been investigated, what recommendations researchers have offered for practice, and how the issue has been conceptually framed. Using immanent critique as their analytical framework, they identified contradictions in how individual and collective studies approached theory, methods, and implications, and from these contradictions inferred the paradigms underlying the field. The findings show that functionalism overwhelmingly dominates current early childhood exclusionary discipline research, and three recommendations are offered: (1) broaden the theoretical perspectives; (2) diversify the research methodologies; (3) and challenge the field's reliance on functionalist framings.