Those That Remain: Novice Teachers Enact Nonexclusionary Classroom Policies Upon Studying the Impact of Exclusionary Practices on the Students That Remain in the Classroom

This qualitative study examines how novice teachers, through a justice-rooted Teacher Inquiry Group, used storytelling to reflect on exclusionary discipline and reimagine their roles. By attuning to the children who remain after a peer’s removal, teachers witnessed acts of care and kinship that challenged dominant disciplinary logics. Storytelling became a relational practice—pushing through fear, revealing fugitivity, and cultivating care-rooted pedagogies. Through discourse and abductive analysis, the study shows how teachers co-created classroom communities grounded in repair rather than removal. Ultimately, this work affirms that transforming discipline requires not only policy change, but also new ways of listening, sensing, and being.