VU assistant professors Maartje Weerdesteijn and Marije Luitjens share their insights from their teaching practice. Their reflections stem from the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning initiated by Weerdesteijn together with Willemijn Born (lecturer and PhD candidate in Criminology), and co-implemented by Luitjens in the Peace and Conflict Studies minor.
Students want to make a difference in the world
Our classes include heartbreaking stories of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Students are confronted with the personal stories of victims, perpetrators and conflict-affected societies. These stories are typically characterized by a lack of effective remedies to alleviate suffering.
A large proportion of students want to make a difference in the world, but some become disillusioned by the complexity of the problems and solutions. For others, the topic is deeply personal because of their family history or because they come from a conflict zone. In addition, it is not always possible for students to estimate when, or the extent to which, they will be affected by a topic.
This can be very difficult for lecturers to manage and “role strain” may arise when they feel they are not only required to be lecturers, but also therapists, making them acutely aware of their lack of training in that regard. There is, however, a lot that lecturers can do within their roles as lecturers to help students understand and process their emotional reactions.
What can you do as a lecturer? Role model, trigger warnings & self-care
Lecturers can help students be there for each other, for instance, by discussing emotions and the need for self-care. After an intense documentary, it can help to ask students about their emotional reaction first. Not only does this help normalize sharing these feelings, but it can also create the mental space to analyse the documentary with a scientific lens afterwards.
It is also appreciated by students when lecturers themselves act as role models and are open about the topics that affect them. In addition, it is important to offer students meaning when they are confronted with difficult stories. For example, by explicitly explaining to them why this story is so important, what we can learn from it, and how it fits into the course and scientific debate.
Trigger warnings (ed. brief notices given in advance to prepare students for potentially distressing or emotionally charged course content) may also help because it normalizes and acknowledges emotions, and can facilitate a sense of community that allows students to be there for each other outside the lecture hall.
Academic circles and the 'emotion taboo'
Lecturers and scholars are also not immune to the emotional consequences of the research and teaching they do. Depending on the topic, the research methods and the personality and background of the scholar, they will be affected by this to a greater or lesser extent. Among lecturers and scholars too, a sense of community and self-care is important, but even in scholarly circles the ‘emotion taboo’ is only slowly being broken down.
This is also visible in the often limited institutional attention. Although some ethics committees already take into account the emotional consequences for staff, many ethics committees focus mainly on the consequences for research participants, not researchers themselves. In addition, it is not always clear to what extent universities can provide psychological support, especially if it needs to be more specialized to treat secondary or vicarious trauma.
Break the taboo and talk about emotions
It is important to recognize that dealing with negative emotions takes time. In addition to dealing with the emotional impact of teaching and research, it also takes time to provide better supervision for junior lecturers and early career scholars. In a sector with an already relatively high workload, this remains a recurring point of tension. Yet making time, and so preventing worse, can be the healthiest and most efficient choice.
It is still an open question how we can do better to help ourselves and each other as lecturers and researchers in this regard, but one thing seems clear; there is a need to break the taboo and talk about emotions. By giving them space and embracing them, it becomes possible to better process the negative emotions, and students, lecturers and researchers can get back to the actual content of the work.
Want to research your teaching too?
More information about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).
VU Centre for Teaching & Learning: workshops & training
Teaching in Times of Fracture offers practical tools for navigating difficult conversations, tailor-made Hot Moments workshops help lecturers learn how to respond when emotions run high. Interested? Email ctl@vu.nl.
