From Trauma to Transformation: Cultivating Care and Resilience in the English-medium instruction

• In Event: Toward Trauma-Informed Care in TESOL: A Multimodal and Multisemiotic Approach

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation examines how trauma-informed multimodal pedagogical practices evolve through the experiences of two racialized faculty members in Canadian postsecondary institutions where English is the medium of instruction (EMI). Racism persists in the trajectories of racialized learners and faculty in white-settler colonial postsecondary settings (Mohamed & Beagan, 2019), especially for those using English as an additional language (EAL) (Jiang, 2024). EAL racialized faculty face discrimination, microaggressions, and the burden of meeting institutional and student expectations shaped by monolingual ideologies favoring native speakers (Author 1 & Author 2). Reflecting on this trauma and trauma-informed pedagogies in higher education (Carello & Thomspon, 2022), we ask: How can we interrogate our pedagogy to avoid replicating the abuse and oppression we have faced? This presentation details our collaborative efforts to move from trauma to healing and empowerment, leading to changes in our teaching, enhancing our well-being and that of our students.

Perspectives
As racialized faculty from the Global South navigating academia in the Global North, we identified colonial patterns of power that continue to define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production (Maldonado Torres, 2007; Mignolo, 2012; Quijano, 2007). Decolonial perspectives challenge the colonial logic that positions racialized individuals as inferior and rejects nonconforming ways of thinking and speaking (García et al, 2021) of settler-colonial institutions.
We use translanguaging and flows (Lemke & Lin, 2022) with meaning-making as an emergent phenomenon shaped by historical contexts, social interactions, and the material environment. This perspective promotes epistemic justice by challenging hierarchies and fostering trauma-informed pedagogical practices that include excluded voices and knowledges.

Modes of Inquiry
We used duoethnography, a methodology where researchers juxtapose life stories to reflect on and examine social phenomena (Burleigh & Burm, 2022; Norris & Sawyer, 2012). This methodology helped us deeply reflect on our pedagogy, making sense of our lived experiences while examining trauma-informed practices in our classrooms. We explored how trauma from racialized experiences may resurface as retraumatization (Carello, 2018) when working with students who endured similar oppression, influencing their pedagogies and relationships.

Results
Our narrative shows that destabilizing racist and colonial structures in higher education is psychologically and emotionally demanding for racialized faculty (Arday, 2018). However, the multimodalities-entextualization cycle (MEC, Lin, 2015, 2020) provided a multimodal heuristic tool for reimagining curriculum design, instruction, and assessment with our students. This approach helped us challenge assumptions about academic literacy and knowledge, promote critical thinking, and break down the expert-novice binary, thus socializing students into academic literacies and including them in scholarly conversations.

Scholarly Significance
Our work enacts an activist pedagogy (Eizadirad & Campbell, 2021) by sharing our process of trauma and healing and a pedagogy of hope (Freire, 1994) by modifying our curriculum, teaching, and assessment to inspire students to believe in change. This transformation aims to improve learning experiences, literacy practices, and access to academic knowledge. Through our duoethnographic narrative, we show how trauma-informed pedagogy helps educators resemiotize their trauma, leading to new ways of feeling, knowing, and being in the classroom, and emphasizing the value of relationships with students.

Authors

• Bong-gi Sohn, University of Winnipeg

• Pedro L dos Santos, Kwantlen Polytechnic University