Safe space(s), content (trigger) warnings, and being ‘care-ful’ with trauma literature pedagogy and rape culture in secondary English teacher education

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on data from a larger feminist study that explored how secondary English teacher candidates responded to a sexual trauma text set and pedagogy for teaching such narratives with Canadian adolescents, this paper examines how caretaker discourses emerged in response to these stories and learning. This especially manifested as emerging teacher participants discussed and troubled the notion of ‘safety’ in schools altogether, searched for ways to cultivate ‘safe-er’ classroom spaces, and critically considered triggering and content (trigger) warning practices. With the aim of thinking about how educators might build radical classrooms prepared to address Tarana Burke’s Me Too movement, the pervasiveness of sexual assault, and the insidiousness of rape culture through literacy learning, this paper details the sometimes precautionary but overall promising ways in which teacher candidates considered tackling difficult subject matter in English Language Arts.