Attempting Equity in Classroom Practice

This article reports on findings from an ethnographic and comparative study examining interactions between educational systems and mutual respect in classrooms. I define mutual respect as the work of intervening on power asymmetries typically found in classrooms—both between teachers and students, and among students—by way of according children increased equality, autonomy, and equity. I partnered with four elementary schools, situated across two systems (i.e., International Baccalaureate [IB] and Montessori) and two national contexts (i.e., Washington, DC, and Toronto). Analysis of observation and video-cued focus group data revealed the following: IB and Montessori teachers differed in how they attempted equity in practice, and, relatedly, they differed in how they understood equity to interact with other dimensions of mutual respect (i.e., equality, autonomy). These differences between the systems held constant across two national contexts. This study contributes to ongoing conceptualizations of equity, educational systems, and the potential relationship between the two.