Emotional engagement with trauma and suffering: An opportunity to foster social justice and inclusion in English language education

MELINA PORTO

Seminario; Breaking Borders: Critical and Multimodal Literacies in Rethinking Language and Literacy Education for Inclusive Citizenship. Theory and Practice; 2024

This presentation describes a case study framed within a regular language course for future teachers and translators of English at an Argentinian university carried out in 2023. Theoretically, the case is based on a humanist foundation for English teaching in higher education. This view integrates the development of intercultural communicative competence; disciplinary and professional knowledge, skills and competencies; and civic and social engagement (Barnett, 2011; Byram et al., 2017). A pedagogic proposal based on literary works with intercultural citizenship and human rights content was designed and implemented as a task and theme based project. After a description of this theoretical framework and the project, I will present the case study (Yin, 2018). Participants were 80 second year students, aged 18-22, with a B2/C1 level of English (CEFR framework), who engaged in work with literary texts in their practical classes for a period of four months. Data comprise teacher field notes, student artefacts (multimodal creations, written artistic statements and final individual reflection logs). Data were analysed using content analysis (Mertens, 2015). Findings indicate that: a) the students engaged emotionally with the citizenship and human rights content in the literary texts; b) this engagement with trauma and suffering opened up opportunities for individual and social transformation through action-oriented empathy and solidarity (Zembylas, 2017). Implications for language education will be considered. ReferencesBarnett, R. (2011). The coming of the ecological university. Oxford Review of Education, 37(4), 439-455.Byram, M., Golubeva, I., Han, H., & Wagner, M. (Eds.). (2017). From principles to practice in education for intercultural citizenship. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Mertens, D. (2015). Research and evaluation in education and psychology: Integrating diversity with quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods. Fourth edition. Los Angeles: Sage.Yin, R.K. (2018). Case study research. Design and methods. Sixth Edition. London: Sage.Zembylas, M. (2017). Teacher resistance to engage with ‘alternative’ perspectives of difficult histories: the limits and prospects of affective disruption. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 38(5), 659-675.