Empowerment through Historical Thinking: Trauma Informed and Feminist Approaches to the Teaching and Learning of Gendered Violence

Grant Recipients

Greta Kroeker, History

Rebecca MacAlpine, History

(Project Timeline: September 1, 2021 - August 30, 2022)

Description

  • This project explores how the incorporation of trauma informed care (TIC) and feminist pedagogies (FP) into the university history classroom can support the overall socio-emotional wellbeing and resilience of students learning about traumatic histories.
    • Through a combination of innovative assessments and engagements that empower voice, choice, and agency, this course will offer students multiple entry points to engage with the subject of gender-based violence in early modern Europe.
    • We will redesign a fourth-year history course to promote higher order historical thinking (Sexias & Morton, 2013) and skill development, with a particular emphasis on the digital humanities, to empower students to “make history.”
  • This project will mobilize, observe, assess, and articulate scaffolding mechanisms to provide safe and collaborative learning environments in which to address complex and difficult topics in the classroom.

Questions Investigated

  • How can history educators teach about trauma-informed subjects, like sexual violence, to support both the socioemotional wellbeing of students? 

  • How can educators support serious historical inquiry through an emphasis on historical thinking skills (i.e., “show your work”) and engagement with the digital humanities? 

Findings

  • Skill-building workshops on a variety of tools (Excel, Transkribus) and methods (constructing a lesson plan, how to teach a concept) enhanced student confidence with difficult and potentially traumatic material in a way that fostered a sense of community among learners.
  • Further results will be published at a later date.

Dissemination and Impact

  • Students responded well to the supportive and skill-building aspects we introduced based on TIC and FP principles.
    • One student, for example, said that they “learned a lot in the workshops about skills that have been helpful across my courses. I liked the teaching one in particular because it really challenged the way I thought about writing history.”
    • Another student said that “they enabled me to learn more about a variety of tools that wouldn’t have normally been learned about in a history seminar.”
  • The emphasis on digital humanities through digital tools, and, by extension, historical methodologies created a learning space in which students could explore hard topics with multiple entry points.
  • A proposal was submitted to present this project's research at the 2023 UW Teaching and Learning Conference.

  • This project's methods and connection to the SSHRC funded The Artemisia Project will be discussed at the upcoming Toronto International Conference, “Worlds of Conflict.”

  • An article, that is currently in the editing phase, will be submitted to Feminist Pedagogy, in the future.

Implications

  • We will continue to incorporate TIC and FP in course design and implementation.

    • This will include a focus on skill-building, the whole learner, and group activities to support community building and reliance. 

  • Many of these components were further integrated into history courses that both applicants are teaching in 2023.

  • In the second phase of this project, the applicants are interested in designing a series of open education materials for instructors to better be able to integrate feminist pedagogies and TIC into their classrooms.

References

Carillo, E.C. (2007). “Feminist” teaching/teaching “feminism”. Feminist Teacher, 18(1), 28-40. https://doi.org/10.1353/ftr.2008.0019

Chow, E. N.-L., Fleck, C., Fan, G., Joseph, J., & Lyter, D. (2003). Exploring critical feminist pedagogy: infusing dialogue, participation and experience in teaching and learning. Teaching Sociology, 31(3), 259-275. https://doi.org/10.2307/3211324

Sanders, J.E. (2021). Teaching note – Trauma-informed teaching in social work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 57(1), 197-204. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2019.1661923

Sexias, P. & Morton, T. (2013). The big six historical thinking concepts. Nelson Education.