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Towards a Trauma-Informed Pedagogy for EFL Teaching with Displaced Students Online

by Jonathan Joseph Birtwell

Schools are often the first institutions that children and young adults with refugee backgrounds encounter upon arrival in countries that accept claims for asylum. They are therefore instrumental in shaping the way that these children and young adults relate to their new environment and make sense of potentially traumatic experiences of forced migration. Many have fled war, violence, and discrimination, they may have suffered exploitation and loss of family and treasured belongings throughout their journeys, and often encounter a hostile and unwelcoming environment upon arrival in a “safe” country. These students arrive in classrooms filled with hope for rebuilding their lives, and may come across as eager to learn. However, they may also carry with them unfamiliar feelings and scars of trauma that have an impact on the ways in which they learn, and teachers often find themselves on the front line of dealing with the ways that psycho-social distress is manifest in a classroom environment.

Trauma informed pedagogy developed by applying tools used in the treatment of PTSD to therapeutic practice used with war veterans who had had traumatic experiences (Barnard College, 2023). Lessons learned from this application have been taken to improve pedagogical practice for integrating children and young people with refugee backgrounds into host education systems and for teaching adult English language learners (Palanac, 2019). Schools and educational practitioners therefore have access to strategies for enhancing the learning experiences of students with refugee backgrounds and helping them to process trauma through educational interventions. However, many of these techniques have been developed for classroom settings and the kinds of student-teacher interactions facilitated by face-to-face teaching. Given the rise of online learning in recent years, particularly following the necessity of teaching to move online during COVID-19 lock downs, how can trauma informed pedagogical tools be adapted for use in remote learning with students with refugee backgrounds?

More than two thirds of the world’s refugee population are displaced in camps or temporarily in urban settlements in developing countries. These so-called protracted refugee situations (PRS) are often characterised by a lack of access to public services, like education. There is therefore huge potential for reaching students through educational interventions online. This is particularly true in the case of higher education, as this level of learning is resource heavy and notoriously difficult to implement in PRS contexts (Gallagher & Bauer, 2020; Pherali & Abu Moghli, 2021; Reinhardt et al., 2018). A key barrier to online provision is a lack of suitable pedagogical tools to achieve the best impact in remote learning, and drop-out and engagement rates are often unfavourable. Much is known about the presentation of trauma symptoms and strategies for dealing with these in the classroom. Trauma informed pedagogy could therefore be essential to developing online pedagogical practice and improving the impact of remote learning initiatives.

A key element of trauma informed pedagogy is identifying and being responsive to symptoms of trauma or the ways in which its impacts are manifest through learning. A teacher’s ability to do this is markedly reduced in online classrooms as they cannot see the student physically in front of them. Due to poor connectivity, many students also join online classrooms without using a camera, so participate in the lesson as a disembodied voice (Dridi et al., 2020). It can therefore be challenging for teachers to get to know students or identify when they are having difficulty. The remote element of online learning also impedes a teacher’s ability to build trust with students. Experiences of trauma can affect an individual’s ability to trust other people, which can be exacerbated towards people in positions of authority, like teachers, as students may have had negative experiences with authority figures in the past. A question remains then about how to overcome this remoteness to be able to identify the impact of trauma on learning and build trusting relationships with students online.

Helping to overcome the negative impact of trauma on learning requires building a safe space in the classroom. In a physical space this can be achieved by allowing students to be physically removed from environments in which they experience trauma. However, in remote learning students may join an online classroom while still being in an environment that may trigger their trauma. The process of joining the class may also cause stress that adds to their trauma. For example, they may join the class secretly and fear being reprimanded facing judgement for participating in learning if they are caught. In addition, difficulty in connecting and remaining connected to a live online class may be overwhelming and cause a student to feel helpless even when trying to engage with an opportunity to improve their situation. Online trauma informed pedagogy should therefore engage with these issues and opportunities should be provided for asynchronous learning or offline elements that students can engage with when they have difficulty connecting.

We can draw on existing elements of trauma informed pedagogy to help create a safe space in the online classroom. For example, Furneaux (2018) suggests defining a structure and expectations for learning helps alleviate stress by creating a routine a feeling of familiarity or comfort, which can be extended to managing a course taught online. Teachers can also adapt class content to avoid topics that may cause students to reflect on their trauma, such as family, past life, and journeys (Palanac, 2019). Taking a student centred approach can guide teachers towards topics that students feel are pertinent to their needs and raise pertinent issues when they are ready to discuss these. For example, while teaching Afghan students displaced in Pakistan online, I avoided talking about issues related to Afghanistan. However, the students raised the issue of Afghan women being barred from universities of their own accord, which presented the opportunity to develop language skills to express these ideas and experiences, whilst not imposing a potentially overwhelming topic for discussion.

This post is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of the issues in developing trauma informed pedagogy for online teaching. Rather, I hope by reflecting on my own experiences as a teacher that attempts to take a trauma-informed approach I hope to start a discussion here that others can contribute to and build a stronger body of knowledge for engaging students with refugee backgrounds in learning online. Developing remote education programmes can be an important for giving a sense of hope to students in situations where stress and trauma can inhibit future-oriented activities and behaviour, as well as give isolated students access to a supportive online community. Developing a better online trauma-informed pedagogy could emphasise these benefits, but only if we can overcome the drawbacks that might exacerbate or cause further trauma. I look forward to reading everyone’s comments on this topic and seeing how the discussion unfolds.

References

Barnard College. (2023). Trauma-Informed Pedagogy. https://barnard.edu/trauma-informed-pedagogy

Dridi, M. A., Radhakrishnan, D., Moser-Mercer, B., & DeBoer, J. (2020). Challenges of Blended Learning in Refugee Camps: When Internet Connectivity Fails, Human Connection Succeeds. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 21(3). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v21i3.4770

Furneaux, C. (2018). Trauma and second / foreign language learning’. In T. Capstick (Ed.), Language for Resilience: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives. British Council. https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/language_for_resilience_-_cross-disciplinary_perspectives_0.pdf

Gallagher, M., & Bauer, C. (2020). Education for Humanity: Higher education for refugees in resource-constrained environments through innovative technology. Journal of Refugee Studies, 33. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feaa040

Palanac, A. (2019). Towards a trauma-informed ELT pedagogy for refugees. Language Issues, 30(2), 3–14.

Pherali, T., & Abu Moghli, M. (2021). Higher Education in the Context of Mass Displacement: Towards Sustainable Solutions for Refugees. Journal of Refugee Studies, 34(2), 2159–2179. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fez093

Reinhardt, F., Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., Deribo, T., Happ, R., & Nell-Müller, S. (2018). Integrating refugees into higher education – the impact of a new online education program for policies and practices. Policy Reviews in Higher Education, 2(2), 198–226. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322969.2018.1483738

Jonathan Joseph Birtwell completed a PhD at the Faculty of Education of the University of Cambridge, where he explored sociological drivers behind access to higher education for students with refugee backgrounds based in Malaysia. He helped to found the CERTE programme, a short and intensive higher education bridge course that teaches soft skills for making applications to university for students with refugee backgrounds, and connects these students to opportunities to continue post-secondary study. He is also assisting to develop online EAP programmes for students in protracted refugee situations with the University of Cambridge, Future Brilliance and the Rehala Trust. Currently, he is completing a short-term remote fellowship with the University of Auckland, through which he is converting his PhD thesis into a guide for higher education establishments in Malaysia to widen access and participation for students with refugee backgrounds.

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Towards a Trauma-Informed Pedagogy for EFL Teaching with Displaced Students Online

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