Date of Award
1-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College/School
College for Education and Engaged Learning
Department/Program
Teacher Education and Teacher Development
Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair
Monica Taylor
Committee Member
Reva Jaffe-Walter
Committee Member
Patricia Virella
Abstract
As school districts enact more teacher training in trauma-informed practices to support students, teachers experience several constraints in practice, among them implementation challenges in schools and a tension between a desire to enact healing supports and the reality of existing disciplinary responses to students with trauma. This critical ethnographic study analyzes the discourses produced over two years by seven teachers in a professional learning community (PLC) in a low-income urban middle school, as well as my reflections as a participant-researcher and documents related to the district’s discipline code and trauma-informed professional development. Teachers’ desire to care for students exhibiting trauma behaviors existed in tension with their construction of a figured Real World as a harsh, unforgiving carceral society, for which they felt obliged to prepare students. District leaders as well were caught between competing priorities for care and control. Teachers’ descriptions of micro-acts of community and care with students and colleagues were fleeting moments of speculative enactment of school as an anti-carceral site of community; these moments offer alternate visions of possibility to enhance, particularly within the reflective, trauma-informed PLC.
File Format
Recommended Citation
Berwick, Carly, "Disciplining Discourses: Teachers' Experiences Navigating Trauma-Informed Practices in a Carceral Era" (2026). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 1631.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/1631