Trauma-informed teaching for teachers of English as an additional language

This study presents findings on the need for trauma-informed teaching to mitigate vicarious trauma transmission in English language learning (ELL) classrooms, generated from interpretations of 10 stakeholders’ perspectives. In this study, stakeholders were either academics specializing in vicarious trauma or coordinators who oversee ELL programming. All participants are leaders in their organizations. Research began with a literature review to examine the potential for vicarious trauma of English language teachers in relation to the importance of integrating trauma-informed teaching that might benefit ELL teachers. This study was conducted qualitatively, taking on an interpretive-phenomenological methodology to reach a shared meaning of vicarious trauma’s impact on ELL educators. Themes were identified in the data, and emergent ideas were analyzed against the literature about trauma-informed teaching. Relevant themes included stakeholder perspectives on the manifestation of trauma in the classroom, mitigation strategies, and teacher self-care. As an opportunity to understand the impact of teaching English to immigrant and refugee populations, we undertook a study to investigate the potential vicarious trauma of these teachers. Researchers present discussion based on these findings in relation to how a trauma-informed teaching model and classroom could be of importance to learners and teachers, and includes discussion around the organizational stakeholders in leadership positions that impact the ELL classroom. This research study identifies a gap as well as the need for further research about trauma-informed teaching practices for educators in ELL settings.