Whose trauma is it anyway?: the depicted trauma of another in post-secondary education
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2012
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Abstract
Butler (2009) in Frames of War asked about the frames through which we have come to understand grievable and precarious lives. She asked us to consider how our boundedness with others makes all of our lives precarious. In this dissertation, I consider how post-secondary teachers might frame the necessity of using materials that depict suffering and the effects on students from encountering such materials. There is an aporia in this topic; that using materials that depict suffering could both enrich and
impede learning. The practice of depicting sufering others may be fraught with representational challenges and this topic sits within a discourse that remains unresolved and contentious.
Recognizing this impasse, I thought that a hermeneutic approach was necessary. Interpretive inquiry provides a reflection of how a topic might present itself in the world. Therefore, I invited six post-secondary teachers from human service programs who use materials that depict suffering to dialogue about their practices; in addition, a postsecondary counsellor was also invited to join these conversations. The participants assisted in opening up the topic, and they described pedagogical experiences that garnered my attention. True to hermeneutic work, what is offered herein is not about the participants but rather the topic. These pages speak to the aporia of using traumatic materials in teaching, and include the complications related to teachers' ethical responsibilities.
While I stopped short of providing an answer to the aporia of this topic, I offer an opportunity for post-secondary teachers to consider their own actions and their own responses to students who have suffered from encountering such materials. In essence, I throw open an opportunity to understand this teaching practice as a reflection of the self in relation to others through the work of Paul Ricoeur. I also offer questions that may open up a new understanding of the assumptions we take up easily when we are teaching, and how such assumptions impact the students in our care. It is my hope that opening up this topic for further discussions could bring about more informed and responsible teaching practices in the future.
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Bibliography: p. 265-281
Includes copy of ethics approval. Original copy with original Partial Copyright Licence.
Includes copy of ethics approval. Original copy with original Partial Copyright Licence.
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Citation
Kostouros, P. A. (2012). Whose trauma is it anyway?: the depicted trauma of another in post-secondary education (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/4797