Development through rupture: Trauma literature as emotional development tool. What effects does reading trauma literature have on the emotional development of A-level students?

Background Emotional development involves "mastering" experiences. In order to master experience, young adults have to construct an identity, through which experience is organised on an autobiographical framework. Although traumatic experiences may seem counter to the idea of emotional development, traumatic experience filtered through literature has been previously explored in education as a potential avenue for developing students· empathy and resilience. In its attempts to represent terrifying experience, trauma literature exhibits how narrative tools can be applied to traumatic experience to help master it. My aim is explore the effects reading trauma literature has on emotional development. Reading trauma literature may be useful for emotional development through supporting identity formation. Methods The intervention involved asking 8 sixth-form students (4 in Year 12; 4 in Year 13) to read a trauma literature curriculum consisting of 9 mandatory texts (validated as trauma literature) made up of novels, short stories, and excerpts, with a further 4 optional novels. I conducted interviews with the cohort pre-intervention and post-intervention to explore the effects of reading trauma literature on their identity. Awareness of identity changes became a means of tracking emotional development. Findings All 8 participants noticed changes in the way they perceived themselves having read the trauma curriculum. The texts were well tolerated by students. Previous tools participants described using for identity construction 2 literary, linguistic, philosophical, and role-models - were challenged by the experience of the intervention. Postintervention, participants seemed to have created new tools for identity construction and maintenance to replace previous ones: new interpretative strategies; a desire to "speak up" rather than stay quiet. One tool for identity construction that was not altered but better appreciated after the intervention was the parental role model; students found role models from real life remained useful for constructing their identity. Conclusions Emotional development is the bedrock of learning. Trauma narratives make readers aware of the structural instability of their own autobiographical narratives and demonstrate ways of mastering traumatic experience through suggesting the possibility that even terrible events are representable and therefore comprehendible. And this idea of making the seemingly incomprehensible understandable is central to the project of teaching. By rupturing previous tools of mastery and identity construction, participants found themselves in a disquieted state of negative capability leading to a better understanding of their identity and emotional development. As emotional wellbeing becomes an ever-growing concern in education, English, as a subject, finds itself in a privileged position. As English teachers, both myself and colleagues who helped with the study were reminded of the unwitting, but potentially beneficial, power we wield when we design our curriculums.