Witnessing transgenerational trauma in teacher education: decoloniality of time, rupture of developmentalism, and settler resistance

Abstract

ABSTRACT How can educators and students from settler backgrounds engage with and acknowledge the experiences and representation of transgenerational trauma among Indigenous peoples in educational environments, while remaining cognisant of the ethical and political implications? This challenge arises within the context of societal structures still influenced by colonial legacies, where systems of power are ingrained along lines of race, ethnicity, class, gender, disability, and sexuality. What would be some of the necessary conditions that educational environments would need to meet in order to ethically and politically respond to transgenerational traumatic encounters? This paper addresses these questions and suggests three conditions that educational environments would need to meet, when educators and students are invited to become witnesses of transgenerational trauma: decoloniality of time, rupture of developmentalism, and an ethic of non-innocence. Both these conditions and their pedagogical implications are discussed and analysed through the lens of a decolonial ethic.