Confining Curiosity: An Ethnographic Study Analyzing the Operation of Science Education in a Disciplinary Alternative School

This ethnographic study investigates how science education is facilitated within a disciplinary alternative school (DAS) and how the property functions of Whiteness shape its structure, access, and implementation. Drawing from Critical Race Theory, and more specifically Harris’s (1993) concept of Whiteness as property, this study analyzes the racialized dynamics embedded in the everyday practices of science instruction at a disciplinary alternative school.Data was collected through science classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with two science teachers who were new to the U.S. school system and participating in the J-1 Exchange Visitor Teaching Program. Although both teachers brought over a decade of experience teaching in the Philippines, they faced a distinct set of challenges within the disciplinary setting, shaped by institutional constraints, scripted curriculum, and heightened behavioral surveillance. Findings are organized around the four key property functions of Whiteness: the right to disposition, the right to use and enjoyment, the right to status and reputation, and the right to exclude. These themes reveal how Whiteness operates materially and symbolically in alternative education, influencing who is granted access to meaningful science learning and under what conditions. Science instruction was frequently overshadowed by behavioral management, institutional interruptions, and a pervasive culture of surveillance, resulting in a learning environment focused more on control than on scientific inquiry. This study contributes to growing conversations at the intersection of race, discipline, and science education by highlighting how educational equity is undermined through the racialized mechanisms embedded in alternative school structures. The findings call for a critical reimagining of how science is taught in carceral-like educational spaces and how policy and practice can better serve students systematically excluded from comprehensive classrooms.