Teaching with a Racialized Heart: Reclaiming Emotion as Theory and Praxis in Trauma-Informed Education

• In Event: Racialized Emotions, Trauma, and the Ethics of Feeling in Teacher Education

Abstract

Purpose
As trauma informed practice (TIP) has become a prominent approach in U.S. K–12 education (Thomas et al, 2019), it often remains undertheorized. Thus, we propose a theoretically grounded shift: that racialized emotions are not peripheral to trauma informed work but central to it. Drawing on interdisciplinary race-based emotion (Author, year; Ahmed, 2004; Boler, 1999; Bonilla-Silva, 2019) and trauma-informed theories (Author, year), we argue that emotional awareness is essential in making TIP racially just and relationally effective. The purpose of this paper is to theorize about how racialized emotions shape teachers’ engagement with trauma-informed practices, and then understand the implications for advancing racial justice in education.

Theoretical Framework
Our paper aims to theorize feelings in racial hierarchies as a pre-cursor to trauma-informed practices. Our work is grounded in a synthesis of Bonilla-Silva’s (2019) concept of racialized emotions and Author's (year) theory of white emotionality. These frameworks help elucidate how emotions are in fact socially constructed, racially coded, and deeply implicated in sustaining or disrupting white supremacy in education. Our analysis also takes up theories of feeling from Zembylas (2012) and Ahmed (2004), positioning emotions not merely as internal states but as circulatory forces that align bodies with or against racial justice work.

We then explore these race and emotions-based theories as a vehicle to race-conscious trauma-informed practices. We acknowledge that trauma informed practices are not developed and implemented in a racialized vacuum. Theoretically speaking, when teachers recognize power, privilege, and racialized emotions, they may be more likely to develop skills and capacities to be trauma-informed. Without these racialized and emotional acknowledgements, teachers may limit students’ healing opportunities within learning contexts. To make this theoretical link, we introduce a forthcoming meta-framework for trauma-informed practice (the CARS framework), which includes 4 elements
• Critical- Explores issues of oppression and injustice as they may relate to the traumatic
wounds people experience when they are targeted for their marginalized racial identities
• Agentic- Disrupts power dynamics and empower people through opportunities to heal
• Relational- Prioritizes connections, collaborations, and humanization
• Strengths-based- Acknowledges, uplifts, and honors the assets of trauma exposed people

Findings and Significance
Through our theorizing, we offer a detailed look at how emotions can be overlayed onto trauma-informed work and what potential healing contributions we might expect. Our paper contributes to a growing but under-theorized strand of scholarship on the emotional dimensions of anti-racist and trauma-informed teacher education. By naming the role of racialized emotions, the paper pushes the field to move beyond surface-level commitments to “trauma-informed care” and confront the affective labor required to sustain truly transformative educational spaces. It also issues a call to teacher educators and policymakers to consider how programs might better prepare teachers to support trauma-exposed students, while examining how teachers’ own emotional orientations to race and trauma affect their pedagogical decisions and ethical responsibilities. Ultimately, the paper argues that attending to the ethics of feeling is indispensable if trauma-informed work is to realize its potential as a racially just and relationally grounded framework in teacher education.

Authors

• Adam J. Alvarez, Texas A&M University

• Cheryl E. Matias, University of San Diego