ABSTRACT

This article investigates how 12 upper-elementary school teachers dealt with the occurrence of a terrorist attack in their city during school hours and in the immediate aftermath. All teachers were interviewed shortly after the terrorist attack about their goals, dilemmas, and pedagogical strategies employed in the classroom. We found that during the day of the attack the teachers tried to focus on providing both emotional support and adequate information to the pupils. While doing so, the teachers encountered four types of dilemmas: their perceived lack of knowledge concerning the attack and terrorism in general, their worry about increasing fear among pupils by discussing terrorism, the conundrum of balancing the different (and contrasting) perspectives of the pupils, and the lack of clear management support or guidelines issued. The findings are discussed through the lens of a pedagogy for political trauma, and a case is made for expanding this pedagogy with a historicizing approach. Such an approach may provide teachers with a (depoliticized) framework of reference that enables them to help pupils understand and reflect on the upsetting and contested topic of terrorism.

摘要

本文调查了 12 名小学教师如何处理他们所在城市在上学期间和刚发生的恐怖袭击事件。恐怖袭击发生后不久，所有教师都接受了关于他们的目标、困境和课堂教学策略的采访。我们发现，在袭击发生的那天，老师们试图专注于向学生提供情感支持和足够的信息。在这样做的过程中，教师们遇到了四种困境：他们认为缺乏对袭击和一般恐怖主义的了解，他们担心讨论恐怖主义会增加学生的恐惧，平衡学生不同（和对比）观点的难题，以及缺乏明确的管理支持或发布的指导方针。通过政治创伤教学法的视角讨论了这些发现，并提出了用历史化方法扩展这种教学法的案例。这种方法可以为教师提供一个（非政治化的）参考框架，使他们能够帮助学生理解和反思令人不安和有争议的恐怖主义话题。