From Producing to Reducing Trauma: A Call for “Trauma-Informed” Research(ers) to Interrogate How Schools Harm Students

Abstract

Although “trauma-informed education” has gained momentum across the United States in recent years, a question remains neglected by the research community: How can education research inform understandings of “trauma-informed” approaches when education itself is trauma-producing for many students? This article (1) explores limitations of trauma informed educational scholarship, particularly its reliance on individualized, biomedical understandings of trauma; (2) articulates theoretical reconceptualizations for subsequent research to account for historical trauma and ways schools and research inflict harm on students; and (3) calls for expansion of relational, participatory, and humanizing methodologies. Overall, we argue for a shift from research that focuses on “trauma-informed education” to scholarship that enacts a sociohistorical trauma-reducing framework to more effectively interrogate the intersections of trauma, schooling, and research.