School discipline research has demonstrated that the labeling of student behaviors as requiring disciplinary action is a selective process in which school staff take into account other factors than the characteristics of the behaviors. We argue that school staff react in a disciplinary way to students with negative attitudes toward the educational system. Concretely, we examined if feelings of futility caused students to suffer disciplinary consequences more often. Multilevel analysis was carried out on data of 2,358 students in 28 Ghentian (Belgium) schools that participated in the International Study of City Youth (ISCY). Results indicate that school staff do not react to students’ sense of futility directly by means of disciplinary actions, however, they impose disciplinary actions following disruptive behaviors on students displaying higher feelings of futility more often.

学校学科研究表明，将学生行为标记为需要纪律处分是一个选择性的过程，在此过程中，学校工作人员应考虑行为特征以外的其他因素。我们认为，学校工作人员会以纪律方式对对教育系统持消极态度的学生作出反应。具体而言，我们检查了徒劳的感觉是否导致学生更频繁地遭受纪律处分。对参与28个Ghentian（比利时）学校的2358名学生的数据进行了多级分析，这些学校参加了国际城市青年研究（ISCY）。结果表明，学校工作人员不会通过纪律处分直接对学生的徒劳感做出反应，但是，