Teaching and Learning for this Moment: How a Trauma Informed Lens Can Guide Our Praxis (original) (raw)
Related papers
International Journal of Multidisciplinary Perspectives in Higher Education, 2020
In this time of COVID-19, continued and relentless violence against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, (BIPOC), organized resistance by many young people, and violent institutionalized attempts to suppress resistance, demonstrations and social change movements, what should educators be thinking about as we return to our college classrooms? In this short piece, we share our thinking and experience about our students' psycho-social needs and our belief that faculty must be focused both on students' and faculty's socio-political context and students' and faculty's emotional wellbeing as we think about teaching and learning for this moment.
Electing to Heal: Trauma, Healing, and Politics in Classrooms
English Education, 2018
Among the lessons that emerged after the recent presidential election is a recognition that teach- ers are generally not prepared to address the intersections of healing, politics, and emotion in classrooms. Now, more than ever, English educators must address trauma in classrooms, while also recognizing how individuals and groups are positioned differently in the material and emotional stakes of this election. Drawing on research, the voices of teachers, and our experiences over this past year, we call for more expansive conversations among English educators across perspectives concerned with creating safe, relational, anti-oppressive classrooms.
Student Reflections on Shared Trauma: One Year Later
Clinical Social Work Journal
In March of 2021, as the world marked the first anniversary since COVID-19 altered our reality, graduate social work students in Dr. Carol Tosone's Evidence-Based Trauma class at NYU considered the challenges of learning about trauma treatment while simultaneously living through a global trauma. Students reflected on their home lives, school experiences, field placements, mental health challenges, feelings of burnout, and the added complexities of racial disparities and injustices. Students also shared their coping mechanisms and hope for the future. This paper aims to provide insight into their varied experiences while relating their struggles and demonstrating their pathways toward resiliency.
A Dangerous Place to Be: Identity, Conflict, and Trauma in Higher Education
Routledge, 2018
Over the past several decades, colleges and universities in the United States and United Kingdom have made significant commitments to increasing diversity, most notably with regard to race and gender. The result has not, however, been an amelioration of conflict over matters of difference. Instead, there has been continuing, if not increasing, conflict and strife in universities, often reflecting conflict in the larger society. While we might presume that university students and faculty are replicating and reacting to social conflicts of a larger scale, a closer examination of actions taken (and not taken) on university campuses suggests that the matter is more complex. Indeed, near-daily reports of protests, controversial decisions, firings, strikes, and other conflictual events on university campuses may tell us more about the emotional struggles of young individuals, and about institutional responses to those struggles, than about the politics of race, gender, sexuality, and identity in civil society. In this book we explore the idea that conflicts in colleges and universities express the way that students, teachers, administrators, and organizations are managing disturbances arising in the process of identity formation. We suggest that conflict over identity in learning institutions is rooted in what Donald Winnicott refers to as the struggle between creativity and adaptation, as manifested in the course of identity development. This struggle involves the individual's need to navigate the pressures and demands of families and identity-groups in such a way as to establish a safe place to be. Specifically, we investigate a number of recent, widely-publicized, and hotly debated events on university campuses, including vociferous protests of discriminatory treatment, calls for the resignation of university officials for failing to 'respond adequately' to social crises occurring both on and off campus, criticism of university spaces as being intolerably 'dangerous' and corollary demands for 'safe spaces,' rejections of 'free speech' as a norm governing campus interactions, the development of training programs to regulate everything from classroom misconduct to 'microaggressions' and debates over the inclusion of 'trigger warnings' on course-related material deemed likely to generate post-traumatic symptoms among students.
“I feel like I'm teaching in a landmine”: Teaching in the context of political trauma
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2019
h i g h l i g h t s President Trump's Executive Orders 13,767 and 13,769 impacted teaching and learning in k-12 schools. Eight k-12 teachers of English Language Learners were interviewed within six weeks following the orders. Teachers used instruction to support their students and ignite academic engagement. Teachers used curriculum and pedagogy as a stance of political resistance.
Teaching and Teacher Education
To explore how teachers navigated the days after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we conducted a national, anonymous questionnaire. In this paper, we focus specifically on those participants who re- ported what we conceptualize as students' political trauma. Drawing on participants' responses, we outline a pedagogy to respond to this political trauma that includes: 1) attending to students' emotions; 2) emphasizing civic knowledge; and 3) developing students’ critical consciousness and activism. We argue that these three domains collectively create opportunities to work toward the democratic and emancipatory purposes of education in the wake of politically traumatic events.
Applying trauma-informed pedagogy to faculty development in times of crisis and uncertainty
2021
This workshop report describes the facilitation of and insights resulting from two sessions on applying the principles of a trauma-informed approach to working in educational development during times of uncertainty which took place at the 2021 Swiss Faculty Development Conference in Spring 2021. The goal was to bring an awareness to how pandemic-induced trauma is affecting both educators and students, and how educational developers can encourage inclusive teaching by embedding these principles into their own programming. Our recommendations expand on the existing work related to classroom practices by offering tips on how to model a trauma-informed approach through the lens of the seven principles from the Substance and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) when working with faculty members.
Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2023
We incorporated trauma-informed principles into the design of a synchronous, online Religion and Politics course and then evaluated impacts on student learning through qualitative methods. Using a novel approach, students self-evaluated their learning throughout the course in weekly reflections. Using content analysis and directed coding techniques, we analyzed students' reflection assessments for themes of trauma-informed principles: safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment. We found that students co-developed a sense of safety by engaging in respectful peer dialogue; established trustworthiness through self-disclosure of personal beliefs; collaborated with peers to develop a deeper understanding of course content; and acquired transferable skills through choice in assessments. In addition, students experienced empowerment by recognizing their growth in four primary areas: (1) their personal beliefs and perspectives; (2) their understanding of the course material; (3) their learning; and (4) their ability to use academic tools. Our findings extend and support existing research on the efficacy of trauma-informed practices; furthermore, our research suggests that incorporating trauma-informed principles into course design can support students in their learning as well as bolster their capacity to succeed in other areas inside and outside of the classroom (e.g., engaging in difficult conversations, seeking out support, using transferable skills in other contexts, applying course content to their own lives). Finally, our case study presents innovative approaches for assessing how students engage with trauma-informed course design.
Supporting All Students: Teacher Education and the Realities of Trauma
Revista Interuniversitaria de Formación del Profesorado. Continuación de la antigua Revista de Escuelas Normales
This article addresses the potential for preparing teachers to instruct students who are living in contexts of trauma as well as the implications of excluding such preparation. Literature in education, social work, and health care are drawn from to highlight important concepts related to trauma. These include types of trauma, effects of trauma on learning, trauma-informed teaching strategies, and the secondary trauma often experienced by bystanders such as teachers. The current state of trauma training in U.S. teacher educational programs is considered generally as well as within the authors’ specific institutions. Against this backdrop, case study research was conducted of novice and experienced teachers in the United States teaching in contexts in which their students with immigrant and refugee backgrounds were experiencing the impacts of political trauma. Interviews took place immediately after executive orders imposing immigration limits intended to stop or reduce refugee resett...
Transcending Adversity: Trauma-Informed Educational Development
To Improve the Academy, 2021
The purpose of this article is to reflect on the pertinence and utility of using a trauma-informed lens in educational development. A trauma-informed approach is a framework grounded in an understanding of and responsiveness to the impact of trauma. After I describe the primary source of traumatic stress many faculty members are experiencing, I offer trauma-informed suggestions for how educational developers can help mitigate the effects of that stress. Importantly, in order to do this work of supporting faculty effectively and sustainably, it is critical that educational developers continue to attend to their own well-being. The overarching theme of this article is the importance of cultivating empowering relationships to help engage faculty members in supporting and improving the design and development of inclusive and equitable student learning experiences.