A Violence of 'Best Practice' and Unintended Consequences?: Domestic Violence and the Making of a Disordered Subjectivity

Often, efforts by schools to standardize marginalized children with histories of domestic violence have alarming effects. More recent efforts of standardization typically find a sustained existence in the discourse of 'best' practices predicated upon a religious-like adherence to behavioral data driven frameworks. This article traces how children and youth with histories of domestic violence (or HDV youth) navigate and resist deficit laden school subjectivities shaped by special education discourses of medicalization and pathologization. In one case study, I spell out how an elementary school created and maintained an HDV child's EBD (emotional behavioral disordered) subjectivity with detrimental effects. The article ends with further critique of the social and emotional (behavioral) frameworks populating our schools today and their relationship to the school-to-prison pipeline for children and youth with histories of domestic violence.