"It's Not About Becoming a Better Educator": Negotiating Multiple Dimensions of Trauma at an F School

• In Event: 14.025 - (Re)Claiming Bodies Marked by Institutional Oppression and Trauma: Teachers and Youth Raise Their Voices

Abstract

In this paper, we aim to reveal the human cost of neoliberal school reform that ironically aims to remedy the education debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006) through approaches that inflict trauma on both students and teachers (Dutro, 2010; Hargreaves, 2001). In particular, we theorize the ways in which the narratives of 12 elementary school teachers working at Nopal Elementary, an “F” school in the urban southwest reveal three dimensions of trauma: the physical toll of an unrealistic workload, psychic disequilibrium, and ongoing marginalization both within local contexts and in national conversations about school reform.

We conceptualize and situate this study within two strands of literature: representations of teachers and teaching in neoliberal times (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2006; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2006; Hallinger, Heck, & Murphy, 2014) as well as the manifestation of trauma in schools. These threads of literature are interrelated in the sense that conceptions of schooling under No Child Left Behind (2002) have led to new dimensions of trauma within schools (Dutro, 2011; Dutro & Bien, 2013; Jones, 2012; Levins Morales, 2001). Specifically, we consider how neoliberalism is operationalized in ways that directly impact teachers, and make connections to how various forms of trauma might manifest themselves in school settings.

This study is designed as a phenomenological, qualitative research study aimed at understanding teachers’ relationships with policy at a particular school site in the urban Southwest. Phenomenological studies consider the life histories of participants while simultaneously interrogating specific phenomena, in this case, the impact of neoliberal policies such as school grading (Seidman, 2005; Schwandt, 2003) on teachers and teaching.

Data collection included formal interviews with 12 teachers, a focus group in which 7 of the teachers participated, as well as informal, semi-structured interviews that primarily took place outside of school. Initial data analysis occurred after the first round of interviews. We independently conducted a round of open coding and compared impressions to generate a set of broad themes (Strauss & Corbin, 1994). We developed 16 final codes and coded the data set a second time with specific attention to these categories. To ensure validity, we triangulated the data and cross-checked themes across all data sources. Through this process we arrived at three major themes related to the research questions on the kinds of trauma teachers narrated in relation to neoliberal reforms.

Our findings reveal that the teachers at Nopal experienced three dimensions of trauma including 1) the physical toll exacted by an unrealistic workload focused primarily on meaningless tasks 2) a sense of psychic disequilibrium resulting from teachers having to reconcile their own local understandings of their classroom, school and community with broader depictions of the school as failing and 3) experiences of ongoing marginalization based on repeated instances of de-professionalization.

This study revealed a primary tension that accompanies neoliberal reform: teachers who choose to teach in communities where families may be navigating multiple dimensions of trauma, including homelessness, endemic poverty and hunger are now themselves subject to various forms of trauma, a positioning which undoubtedly impacts their practice in profound ways.

Authors

• Katherine Crawford-Garrett, University of New Mexico

• Rebecca M. Sanchez, University of New Mexico