Lessons from Gaza: My Journey into Critical Trauma-Informed Pedagogy in English Language Teaching for Refugees

Abstract

This paper outlines the journey of an English language teaching (ELT) practitioner–researcher in terms of her evolving understanding over a 10-year period of how an effective trauma-informed pedagogy (TIP) might look for learners from refugee backgrounds. Informed by both emerging practical needs and theoretical insights, the journey starts with a focus on applying trauma symptom mitigation strategies, followed by a shift away from a deficit model towards strategies to promote well-being and growth in individual students. The focus then zooms out from the individual student to explore how institutional systems might be modified to support a trauma-informed approach. The author then reports a further widening of perspective brought about by attempting to apply trauma-informed principles to teaching displaced students located in Gaza during an active genocide. This situation highlights the need for any TIP approach to recognise the wider structural foundations of societal and global injustice and trauma, to develop, alongside our students, a critical awareness of these factors and to take meaningful action to stand in solidarity with oppressed groups against these injustices to attempt to bring about social change. The article ends with a call for the concept of critical TIP for ELT to be further explored and practical strategies developed.