Jonathan Luke Austin

Abstract

Visualizing evil: Avoiding trauma when teaching about political violence

How do we teach students about political violence without risking inflicting (secondary) trauma? This question is longstanding. But it has intensified in the last decade due to the increased availability of visual material (videos, documentary films, artworks) that depict graphic violence in visceral ways. This material can be extremely useful for teaching purposes as it moves us closer to the ‘reality’ of political violence. But introducing it into teaching settings risks trauma for students with past experiences of violence (of any kind), amongst other factors. In this project, I took a student-led approach for co-producing a classroom environment in which we could engage such material in the most ethically appropriate manner. This involved asking students which strategies they most wished to see deployed in the classroom setting to avoid these risks, followed by iterative rounds of feedback designed to measure the efficacy of those strategies and monitor student well-being. In general, the project found that 1) students have substantive prior experience engaging with material of this kind (via social media, etc.) that allows them to ‘co-produce’ a safe classroom environment in collaboration with the teacher, 2) student strategies correlate with those found in the formal pedagogical literature, 3) students rarely withdraw from engaging with such material and its scientific importance, and 4) students appreciate the construction of a classroom environment in this manner and perceive it as increasing their engagement and capacity to learn.