Teacher Perspectives on the Discourse of Youth in Crisis: Is “Returning to Normal” the Goal?

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: From Subservience to Strength: Discourse, Resistance, and the Future of Teacher Education (Table 3)

Abstract

In this qualitative study stemming from a discourse community with six elementary teachers in the United States, discourse analysis was used to explore how these teachers discuss the notion that youth are in a social and emotional crisis. Resisting a deficit narrative that youth are to blame for this crisis and require fixing, the teachers drew on various discourses to tell a multi-layered story: 1) the problems observed with youth are not inherent flaws but are shaped by social contexts, 2) these problems are not necessarily new or worse than in the past, 3) youth also possess social-emotional strengths, and 4) an uptick in neoliberal expectations may contribute to the way these problems are cast as “problems” to begin with.

Author

• Emma Minke McMain, University of Arkansas