Resisting Disciplinary Discourses: Teachers’ Experiences Supporting Students With Trauma Through Shared Hidden Transcripts

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Urban Education Resilience: Exploring Teacher Autonomy, Trauma Support, and College Access for Underrepresented Students (Table 1)

Abstract

While trauma-informed-teaching is increasingly being adopted in schools, little research looks at teacher experiences supporting students with trauma in schools with traditional disciplinary systems. This critical ethnography of a teacher professional learning community (PLC) at a high-poverty, urban northeastern middle school during a year of district-mandated trauma-informed professional development considers how teachers are both witnesses to and enforcers of disciplinary discourses and practices that risk reinscribing structural trauma among students. Four themes emerged: understanding of hierarchical power, depersonalization within the disciplinary system, disciplined bodies and public performances, and shared teacher-student hidden transcripts created through micro-acts as sites of humanization and resistance.

Author

• Carly Berwick, Montclair State University