The Discourse of Discipline Reform: Media Coverage of Restorative Justice in New York City Schools

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: The Impacts of School Discipline Policies on Students' Sense of Belonging and Mattering

Abstract

The 2026 AERA conference focuses us on how research documents history. Media is a form of living history, and discourse analysis helps us tell a particular history: how power operates through media and the potential for disrupting inequality. In New York City (NYC), as in many places throughout the US and world, zero tolerance discipline policies have come under critique for high suspension rates that impede learning and for perpetuating racial disparities (Teasley, 2014). Working in partnership with a special interest group comprised of teachers and families, this empirical study of media coverage of restorative justice in New York City used critical discourse analysis (CDA) to uncover how power is maintained, challenged, or shifted through protest of school discipline policy.

Authors

• Hilary Lustick, University of Massachusetts - Lowell

• Rachel Garver, Montclair State University