Publication Date

2025

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Kahn, Elizabeth

Degree Name

Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)

Legacy Department

Department of English

Abstract

Trauma can impact the way a student learns and focuses. In higher education, without instructors realizing it, classes may retraumatize or trigger students with the texts, media, or materials utilized. Research suggests that little attention is given to helping students deal with potentially traumatizing course materials and students inside the classrooms may be impacted by trauma whether the teacher is aware or not. This dissertation examined the effects of teaching students specific coping strategies—Trigger Warnings (TWs) and Stress and Trauma Alleviation Techniques (STATs) —while reading, writing, and reflecting on possibly distressing materials in First-Year Composition courses through a mixed methods research study.

This research was constructed using theories of trauma-informed pedagogy and holistic teaching. The study contributes to existing research on trauma-informed pedagogy by uniquely combining tools, through the use of TWs and STATs, to help students before and after possibly being triggered. Undergraduate students at a large midwestern public research university learned about TWs, utilizing them as needed, and practiced STATs to help diminish traumatic responses from possibly distressing materials. Data was collected from surveys, interviews, and written journal responses from five sections of Developmental English Rhetoric and Composition with a sample size of 37 participants who consented to surveys and 9 to interviews. Participants were surveyed and interviewed to determine their perceptions of the usefulness and effectiveness of TWs and STATs.

TWs and STATs were collectively perceived as beneficial to a majority of the participants and even those who did not perceive them useful for themselves still found them potentially beneficial for others. These findings suggest that participants gained an awareness of trauma and tools that could be useful to themselves or others in mitigating the impacts of interacting with or reading possibly distressing texts.

Prior research focuses primarily on providing children (K-12) with proactive tools or techniques to help cope with potentially distressing topics, stress, or trauma. However, the data from this study shows that higher education is a potential space for its stakeholders, the students, and these techniques, TWs and STATs. As a result of providing knowledge and education about TWs and STATs, participants suggested that the classroom community was positively impacted and they were provided with techniques to help with stress and/or trauma responses.

This research examined the effectiveness of working to create a classroom that acknowledges the reality of trauma and possibly distressing reactions—by urging educators to create a proactive classroom environment instead of a reactive one. This research also helps to create further dialogue in classrooms about trauma, stress, and mental health by introducing mental health and well-being for both students and teachers.

Extent

241 pages

Language

en

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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