Traumatisation, Critical Reflection, and Painful Pedagogy: Students’ Reflexive Engagement with Difficult Content

Recent international and cross-disciplinary studies have reported that 66-85% of undergraduate students have already experienced at least one traumatic event prior to entering university. This finding suggests that any reasonably sized class of students today will likely contain individuals who have experienced personal trauma. The COVID-19 pandemic further compounded the complexity of the student experience and exposed the need for universities to develop trauma-informed approaches to support students’ well-being during times of crisis. Educators have a social responsibility to account for, accommodate, and actively address adversity and traumatisation in their classrooms. This paper analyses the role of critical reflection in both developing emotional resilience and managing traumatisation in students engaging with challenging, sensitive or triggering content, with a particular focus on responding to trauma and the complex entanglements of language, identity, and power. It draws on considerations of trigger warnings in the context of a first-year literary studies classroom, before applying that knowledge to the learning and teaching of helping professions. In doing so, this paper aids in developing our understanding of how critical reflection can function as a useful strategy for reading a wide range of ‘triggering’ texts, and for supporting students to navigate their own adversities in order to promote academic retention, progression, and success