Trauma and Healing-Centered Writing: Identity Development and Individual and Communal Healing

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session Six
  In Roundtable Session: Memory, Community, and Healing Through Writing With Preservice and In-Service Teachers (Table 3)

Abstract

Today, childhood and youth trauma is identified as “America’s hidden health crisis” (e.g. ACEs Connection, 2016). Research within higher education (e.g., Anderson & MacCurdy, 2000) and more recently within elementary school classrooms (e.g., Dutro & Zenkov, 2008) has demonstrated that trauma and healing-centered writing can have powerful effects on the writer and the readers/witnesses. Equivalent research is lacking in secondary school classrooms and teacher education programs. This study focuses on six preservice teachers who composed and shared trauma and healing-centered writing within a one-semester Adolescent Literacy course. The following questions guide this study: (1) How does trauma and healing-centered writing shape preservice teachers’ identity development? (2) How does trauma and healing-centered writing shape preservice teachers’ understandings of traumatic experiences?

Author

• Laura Van Dike Adair, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author