Abstract
Instead of trigger warnings that can lead to avoidance of learning experiences and suppression of challenging material, Rebecca Flintoft and Christopher Bollinger share their strategies for deep learning about even sensitive subjects.
The seats were filled with 19â to 22âyearâold student leaders, all here to learn about the institution's protocol for responding to sexual assault. Facilitating the training, I (Rebecca) looked across my audienceâengaged, listening, noddingâwhen I noticed her weeping. I tried to stay focused, but she held my gaze through silent tears. On her face were raw pain, surprise, and fear, as if she had become lost in a dark, unknown place, surrounded by danger. Likely, her heart was racing, palms sweating, and mind triggered into survival mode of âfight, flight, or freeze.â Perhaps she was reliving a past experience of sexual violence. Clearly, she was not learning. I feared she was experiencing psychological or emotional harm that I might have prevented.
As educators in and out of the classroom, we strive to engage students in meaningful ways for the primary purpose of learning. We believe that the most effective learning requires both inâdepth engagement and recognition of individual learners as whole people. For some students and other campus community members, depending on their own personal history of trauma, inâdepth engagement itself can be a barrier to the very learning we aim to achieve. When we teach or train on topics, including but not limited to sexual violence, active shooter preparedness, and racism, we can reasonably expect someone in the audience (students, faculty, and staff alike) to have a related personal experience of trauma of which we are likely unaware.
We agree with Richard Keeling's assertion in his 2014 article in The Journal of College and Character that institutions of higher education are best positioned to achieve the primary mission of higher educationâlearningâwhen they act with an ethic of care, both as a collective human organization and as individual members of the faculty, staff, and administration. Keeling proposes a comprehensive ethic of engaging students and staff âas whole people,â sharing âresponsibility for learning,â and being responsive âto studentsâ well being.â This ethic calls us to notice and respond to personal concerns or circumstances that influence studentsâ abilities to learn. Various external and internal influences, such as personal histories including upbringing and other past experiences, affect student learning in different ways. Indeed, not all people respond identically to similar types of past trauma. There exists a very real possibility that an individual's pastâtrauma experience will adversely impact an individual's learning if the trauma is brought to the surface of consciousness. Such an event certainly can happen during educational programs or courses, especially when those programs or courses address specific forms of human trauma.
One prominent response to this concern has been to provide trigger warnings in courses and programs to alert students to content that could trigger a posttraumatic reaction. As Jenny Jarvie reports in âTrigger happy,â an article in The New Republic, discussions originating in the blogosphere with a genuine intent to help folks make informed choices about engaging with potentially traumaâinducing content have gained momentum, resulting in widespread student activism in favor of trigger warnings and, for a handful of colleges and universities, having evolved into policies or official recommendations regarding trigger warnings. As Peter Schmidt notes in the September 2014 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, such policies have undergone considerable scrutiny in higher education. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), in a 2014 committee report, provided a leading dissenting voice as they strenuously argued against mandating the inclusion of trigger warnings for certain content. The authoring committee raised concerns about the effectiveness of trigger warnings as a safeguard against potential harm to mental health, the ability to accurately identify courses needing trigger warnings, and the dangers of potential censorship emerging as these mandates evolve.
Our Dilemma
If we warn our students in advance of sensitive content, we risk individuals opting out of engagement, either with or without our knowledge. This might include skipping a class or orientation session, choosing not to read a portion of an assignment, or not fully participating in a group project. Yet, if we fail to take protective measures against triggering pastâtrauma reactions, we do not live up to the ethic of care we believe is core to achieving our educational mission. So how does one prepare for inâdepth engagement and effective learning on topics that are potentially triggering, yet urgently important, while harming neither the learners nor the ideals of learning? As two education practitioners approaching these concerns from different roles (i.e., academic faculty and student affairs), we have reflected on the challenges and opportunities to achieve effective and engaged learning, especially when dealing with traumaârelated topics. We believe that requiring trigger warnings, structured as they presently are, although rooted in real issues and well intended, has been an ineffective approach. We argue that focusing on providing appropriate mental health care support, communicating openly and honestly with learners, enhancing staff and faculty development, and rethinking our pedagogical approaches, all with an ethic of care in mind, is a decidedly more effective approach. Rather than warning learners and thereby providing them an opportunity to avoid potentially traumaâinducing engagement, we should seek to partner with them to better engage difficult material.
Understanding Trauma, Triggers, and the People Experiencing Them
Chief among the problems of the trigger warnings approach is our understanding of and subsequent response to trauma. When students, parents, staff, and faculty express their concerns about âtriggeringâ material, whether in online discussion or faceâtoâface communication, they frequently conflate discomfort with trauma. When we see discomfort as trauma we ignore the more rare and serious consequences of trauma. Discomfort resulting from being challenged by new or different ideas is a natural consequence of education, but it is not trauma. If we are to engage our learners within an ethic of careârecognizing students as whole people, sharing responsibility for learning, and being responsive to studentsâ well beingâwe need to improve our understanding of their experiences and work to become more responsive to their needs. This begins with better understanding trauma.
Along with my coâauthor, Sally SpencerâThomas, I (Christopher) discuss trauma symptoms and recovery phases in âPreparing for the violence aftermath: A community affected,â a chapter in Violence goes to college, 2nd edition. SpencerâThomas and I propose that people have a basic assumption that the world is a good and safe place where they are not in danger. This deeply held assumption makes moving through life feasible for most people. When one experiences a traumatic event, these assumptions are shattered, often culminating in anxiety, depression, survivor guilt, and in more extreme cases, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
SpencerâThomas and I note that PTSD is characterized by intrusive symptoms, avoidance symptoms, and hyperâarousal symptoms. Intrusive symptoms emerge when âimages, sounds, smells, tactile, or taste sensations related to the traumatic event unexpectedly âintrudeâ into ⌠consciousnessâ (p. 117). These vivid memories often manifest âduring sleep in the form of nightmaresâ (p. 117). In some cases, cues resembling the sensory experiences of the trauma can trigger a flashback in which people feel like they are reliving the moment. This normal part of the healing process, in which the brain is trying to make sense of an unfathomable experience, âoften shocks and deeply upsetsâ survivors (p. 118). Such triggers are not bound to a specific program, course, or set of content. Rather, multiple environmental stimuli can serve as a trigger and could take place anywhere and at anytime. Unsurprisingly, intrusive symptoms are often accompanied by avoidance symptoms, characterized by avoiding potentially triggering aspects of one's daily routine to lessen the frequency and intensity of intrusions, and hyperâarousal symptoms, characterized by heightened senses, âirrational or new fears, increased irritability, and sometimes explosive angerâ (p. 118). Understanding these symptoms helps us to better support learners as they work toward trauma recovery.
SpencerâThomas and I also point out that as survivors work toward trauma recovery, they âlearn to rebuild their assumptions by integrating the new traumatic experienceâ (p. 117). This process can take time, during which survivors negotiate various kinds of symptoms with varying levels of intensity. Earlier on, processing the event and moving through daily routine will be more difficult. There will be more confusion and difficulty processing emotions and reasoning. As time passes, survivors transition to an almost normal routine with more stable days. There will be emotional swings, with survivors alternating between feeling in control and being overwhelmed by emotional intensity. In the latter phase, survivors experience longerâterm shifts in behavior and thinking. This can result in a positive resolution in which the event and new understanding of the world have been successfully integrated or in a negative reaction with no resolution, resulting in a chronic struggle. Survivors are searching for a way to âimpose order on a chaotic eventâ (p. 117). Contrary to avoiding engagement, talking or writing about the event can prove productive when working toward resolution.
Trauma versus Discomfort
While trauma certainly creates discomfort, we need to recognize that most discomfort learners experience is not traumatic and does not yield traumaârelated consequences. Indeed, many would argue that nontraumatic discomfort is a positive and necessary component of learning. Recognizing multiple points of view (many of which are not our own), empathizing with othersâ experiences, critically reflecting upon our own practices, and developing deeper and more complex understandings of the world all create discomfort and are necessary skills for our graduates. For example, struggling through and learning basic math and writing skills also creates discomfort. For many, their first graded assignment creates discomfort. Without question, living, eating, and sharing bathrooms with a few hundred people create discomfort. Most educational engagement necessarily creates discomfort but does not equate to trauma; we do a disservice to trauma survivors when we suggest that it does. For that matter, we should pay equal attention to not talking about trauma recovery as if it is synonymous with nontraumatic discomfort.
âDiscomfort is the crucible of learning,â asserts Columbia University professor Todd Gitlin in a May 2015 Chronicle of Higher Education Review article. Gitlin goes even further to describe what he calls the âunwritten contract of university educationâ between student and university: âI am here to be disturbedâ (p. B6). While we agree that discomfort is part and parcel of deep learning, from our ethic of care framework, we see discomfort and trauma as opposite ends of a spectrum of impact, with each learner a whole person approaching that spectrum from his or her own perspective. Surely disturbance is on the spectrum too, a little more severe than discomfort but quite a bit less than trauma. Being disturbed is akin to an initial disassembling of one's preconceived notions about the world. Indeed how you see yourself, the world, and your relationship with the world comes under scrutiny. You begin to unpack your worldview and make alterations. That, however, is very different from having your worldview or sense of personal control violently stripped from you and shattered, as is the case for many trauma survivors. Discomfort or disturbance may nudge one further down the continuum toward transformational learning while still maintaining a great deal of control over that transformation. The challenge is to balance discomfortâeven possibly disturbanceâas reasonable products or tools of learning yet also to acknowledge trauma and traumaârelated responses as a degree of impact that deserves special attention in order to reduce, and hopefully prevent, the disruption of learning.
The Problematic Effects of Censorship
When specific programs, courses, or content are targeted as requiring trigger warnings or removal of potentially triggering material, there are corresponding problematic effects of indirect censorship. Oberlin College's policy evolution provides a compelling example. Jarvie reports that Oberlin College advised their âfaculty members to âbe aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression,â to remove triggering material when it doesn't âdirectlyâ contribute to learning goals and âstrongly considerâ developing a policy to make âtriggering materialâ optional.â On the surface, these considerations may not sound so unreasonable; however, they seem less reasonable when considering how staff and faculty are supervised within higher education in the wake of student and parent concerns about the identified educational content. For good reasons, institutions take the concerns raised by students and parents seriously, especially concerns that have a pattern of occurrence. Let's think through how this plays out in the larger context.
As we previously discussed, nontraumatic discomfort is created in most educational engagements that produce learning. Student and parent concerns that conflate discomfort with trauma seem to be heightened around a set of usual suspects: courses that focus on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, violence, and politics. This is unsurprising given the ways we struggle with these issues as a society. We argue that because we struggle with them as a society, education on these targeted content areas is even more important. The problem here is that conflating discomfort with trauma also increases the likelihood that programs and courses addressing these targeted content areas will diminish.
Trigger warning policies similar to the one above require faculty and staff addressing targeted content to position themselves defensively against a barrage of expressed concerns, relentlessly having to defend the ways course material directly relates to student learning. Under such pressures, staff and faculty will likely begin to trim down potentially triggering material or avoid programs and courses that address such issues altogether. These programs and courses play an important role in decreasing the marginalization of and violence against folks suffering discrimination, harassment, and abuse in the hostile environments emanating from the practices of these identified âisms.â Thus, we can reasonably expect an increase in oppression if we begin to reduce or water down programs.
Sharing Responsibility in the Provision of Appropriate Mental Health Care and Support
Beyond articulating the differences between discomfort and trauma and identifying residual effects of failing to recognize those differences, we should consider how colleges and universities can better address trauma in the cases where it does occur. Schools wrestle with legitimate quandaries regarding the roles the institution should play. To what degree are our institutions educational communities, therapeutic communities or both? What levels of resources should be committed to which services? Where will different kinds of support be housed both organizationally and physically? We agree with the AAUP's assertion that trauma should be treated by mental health care professionals trained to provide such support. Mental health care professionals are in the best position to diagnose and develop an appropriate treatment plan. Yet, we must acknowledge that trauma recovery happens within the context of our university community. If we are to take our ethic of care seriously, we must recognize that ours is a shared community with shared responsibility, and our learners are whole people, who may bring with them specialized needs. We should work cooperatively with our fellow community members in our various roles in order to respond to learnersâ needs. And while we do not suggest that staff and faculty pretend to be counselors, we do need to better understand trauma recovery in order to effectively guide students to achieve deep learning.
Communicating with Learners
As we noted earlier, trauma can be triggered by a variety of stimuli not bound by specific program or course. Rather than targeting specific content areas, we should be open and honest with learners about all the content and modes (lectures, readings, projects, etc.) of the educational experiences we intend for them. We do not seek to shelter learners from new discoveries or surprises in their learning experiences, but we believe that providing learners with a description of how and what they will study or experience is in the best interest of learning and is consistent with an ethic of care. Some may see this as a trigger warning. We would make two distinctions. First, all learning engagements should provide descriptions, not just those deemed sensitive. Second, we prefer sharing strategies for how to engage difficult material as a way of understanding versus warning learners that certain content may cause them distress. The way we narrate the learning engagement influences how a learner processes the experience.
Enhancing Staff and Faculty Development
So, how do we encourage or persuade staff and faculty to adopt an ethic of care approach to student learning? We have come to believe that providing development opportunities to explore how an ethic of care may shape educatorsâ individual pedagogical choices is more effective than providing a checkâbox requirement for trigger warnings, which we find to be not only less effective but also counterproductive to achieving deep learning. For staff and faculty who already have an interest in developing better ways to achieve deeper learning, simply learning more about our community members struggling with trauma and understanding that options exist for better education is motivation enough to work toward this end. Requirements are unnecessary to their motivation. For faculty and staff who are not concerned with achieving deeper student learning, trigger warning requirements are not motivating. Conversely, some faculty and staff will include the warning and see it as the extent of their responsibility, no longer needing to be concerned about the potential effects on learners. Faculty and staff motivated in this way would rationalize that they met their requirement and would not necessarily continue to engage students within an ethic of care.
We believe approaching this issue from a staff and faculty development perspective instead provides greater potential to model the ethic of care we want people to embrace and, as such, will be more effective. Staff and faculty development programs should educate on the various nuances that accompany trauma and triggers, on how to design pedagogy that shares responsibility for learning, and on how to be responsive to studentsâ varying needs. This strategy allows individual educators to take an active role in reshaping their pedagogical approaches, recognizing the diverse needs and styles they each bring to the table, and indeed recognizing educators and learners alike as whole people.
Rethinking Our Pedagogical Approaches
While we do not claim to have all the answers, we have achieved some success with engaged learning on traumaârelated topics using the following approaches: structuring learning through gradually increasing levels of intensity, employing multiple modes of delivery, collaborating proactively with students we know have had pastâtrauma experiences, and responding appropriately when students experience a trigger response. In the next several paragraphs, we offer specific examples from our experiences, as an attempt to rethink our own pedagogical practices, grounded in an ethic of care. Again, we borrow from Richard Keeling's description of an ethic of care as recognizing students as whole people, sharing responsibility for learning, and being responsive to studentsâ well being. Certainly, these are not the only effective ways to engage these approaches nor are these the only effective approaches available. We hope these pedagogical practices serve as a catalyst in considering your approach to current and future educational engagements.
Structuring Learning through Gradually Increasing Levels of Intensity
As we discussed previously, learners coping with trauma are moving through multiple phases of recovery. They engage educational activities with varying levels of sensitivity at different times. Recognizing when the emotional weight of a particular engagement is becoming too heavy, as it becomes so, can be extremely helpful. Programs, courses, and assignments can be structured in ways that allow for more opportunities to evaluate the state of student engagement. By building with levels of intensity in mind, each level increasing the depth of the engagement, we can identify potential difficulty as it emerges rather than after it has peaked.
For example, in an ethnography course, students write a narrative description of a moment from their own lives about an experience related to respect. This narrative uses vivid description, capturing much of their sensory experience. Students then performâthat is, they attempt to physically embody rather than to readâeach other's narratives. This exercise is designed to teach young researchers the importance of empathy and responsibility in research. In the assignment, students are encouraged to think carefully about how ready they are to wrestle with a past moment and have it on public display. Sometimes students overestimate their readiness. Scaffolding this assignment allows multiple points to evaluate student readiness prior to heavier exposure.
In one case, a student chooses to narrate a moment from her past when she shared with her parents that their neighbor sexually abused her. The professor discusses with the student her choice, how the assignment may impact her, and provides counseling referral information. She discloses she has sought counseling and sees the assignment as a way to regain a sense of control over her history. With her permission, the professor makes a point to check in with both the writer and the performer, reviewing potential risks and resources, as they work through narrative construction and performance preparation. Again with both studentsâ permission, the professor prepares the class for the upcoming performance, discusses how the performance may impact them, and provides counseling resources on campus. Students are informed and supported through the process, powerful learning can take place, and potential harm is mitigated or eliminated. The assignment is built with the intention of providing opportunities to evaluate the quality and safety of the experience with the students at multiple points. In cases where issues emerge, referrals are made and an alternative narrative moment may be chosen.
Employing Multiple Modes of Delivery
Because students bring with them a variety of external and internal influences, including personal histories and the manner in which past experiences impact them individually, they engage material from radically different perspectives with a unique set of needs and vulnerabilities. Simply put, we are each differently impacted by trauma. Some interactions may be more difficult for us than others. Employing multiple modes of learning can be effective in providing ways to engage the material with decreased vulnerability.
In sexual violence and harassment prevention programs (now mandated by federal law), we suggest supporting survivors of genderâbased violence, who are typically unidentified, by offering multiple modes of delivery. This allows for participants to select safe learning spaces in order to gain necessary knowledge, without exposing themselves to harmful environments that could unduly trigger pastâtrauma reactions or requiring survivors to selfâidentify for accommodations. Consider the possibility of a student who uncovers memories of sexual abuse during an orientation session on sexual assault prevention, or a faculty member who experienced sexually harassing behavior from a colleague now sitting beside them in sexual harassment prevention training, or staff who experience domestic violence at home having to engage in conversations about reporting suspected domestic violence among colleagues at work. Large group training settings can be supplemented or replaced by small group meetings, selfâpaced online learning modules, or realâtime distance webinars. Such options give the learner greater control over how, when, and with whom they engage these important conversations in the educational and work environment. Multiple delivery modes give learners options and flexibility to benefit from inâdepth engagement on critically important topics within a context that best supports their unique perspectives and that respects their identities as whole people.
Collaborating Proactively with Students Known to Have Pastâtrauma Experiences
In the previous examples, we did not know what past traumas people were bringing to the table. In situations that we do, we can be proactive in our outreach. Gun violence and active shooter scenarios have become all too familiar at colleges and universities as well as schools and public venues. Many institutions have education programs in place to train their community to respond in these harrowing emergencies. In this example, prior to active shooter preparedness training at new student orientation, the parents of several new students contact new student orientation staff members regarding the studentsâ recent experience of gun violence within their high school, which is located within the same metro area. In response, staff members reach out to those students and their parents in advance of the training and other potentially triggering events, such as residence hall fire drills, to explain the purpose and scope of the safety trainings and related exercises. New student orientation and residence life staff members actively partner with students to plan for effective but nonharmful training. Campus counseling resources are provided to help bridge the gap in support that often occurs when students transition from high school to college. In this scenario, the impacted students have a singular perspective on the impact of gun violence; they understand firsthand how important violence prevention and active shooter readiness education is, and yet, their personal histories make that educational experience apt to trigger a posttrauma reaction. This proactive, collaborative approach is effective in creating a successful education program that is particularly appreciated by those students who have been directly impacted by past gun violence.
Responding Appropriately When Students Experience a Trigger Response
While we cannot always anticipate what might serve as a trigger, we can certainly respond effectively when we learn a student has experienced a trigger. In a course addressing gender violence, a student contacts the professor indicating that she is struggling with reading the material and engaging with the class discussion. She realizes it is substantive to the course but does not know how to proceed. The professor contacts her, thanks her for sharing the concern, lets her know there are options available to help manage her concerns, and asks for more information. The student tells the professor she was previously assaulted, and as a result, she has difficulty with the use of some specific words and struggles with more descriptive reading material about moments of sexual assault. In this course, some students, less aware than this student, need to learn from the more descriptive accounts in the material. However, the student who had been assaulted does not. She would learn best from a slightly different set of content. As such, the professor works with her to develop an appropriate plan using different readings to accomplish similar end goals. Knowing which specific words trigger posttrauma responses for the student, the professor is able to choose a different set of words that still capture the same meaning. In this case, tailoring the content to a student's expressed needs is effective while not compromising maximum learning for anyone else in the class.
Conclusion
In our search to solve the dilemma of how to foster inâdepth engagement and effective learning on potentially triggering topics while also attending to the needs of learners who have been touched by trauma, we have found success with pedagogical approaches grounded in an ethic of care. These approaches include structuring learning through gradually increasing levels of intensity, offering multiple modes of delivery, collaborating proactively with students we know have had pastâtrauma experiences, and responding appropriately when students experience a trigger response.
These strategies may not work in every case and are certainly not the only possible strategies. Indeed, it seems there are no easy answers that provide a solution to every scenario. We have articulated our skepticism about relying on trigger warnings as a means of addressing the needs of students who have experienced trauma. Instead, we offer our hope for a reflexive, collaborative, and supportive approach, calling us to rethink our educational practices with an ethic of care in mind. We believe that a commitment to achieving the goal of engaged learning within an ethic of care requires adaptability, willingness to acknowledge a variety of life experiences and individual perspectives, and humility to recognize that we might just get it wrong. Despite our best efforts, we might occasionally fail. And then, we try again. We try again because we believe it offers us the best opportunity to achieve student learning and success.