4 The negative impact of emotive and triggering content on learners’ wellbeing and resilience
You may have noticed that throughout this course, trigger warnings have been provided about content that might be distressing, or that could cause negative emotions. Similarly, your learners’ various lived experiences could potentially mean that some of the educational content you are using could be emotive and ‘triggering’. Of course, it is not possible to know the background experience of all of your learners but carefully considering educational content from different perspectives in advance could help you to guide your learners through potentially emotive situations.
Emotive content could be anything that triggers negative emotions for a learner. These could be linked to negative life experiences, issues close to someone’s personal identity, or any current struggles that a learner is experiencing. You, or your organisation, might already have processes in place that enable learners to identify, and inform, if any content might be emotive. Even if you do not, just applying some common sense and sensitivity towards potential issues may resonate on a personal level with your learners. Facilitating learner wellbeing is about both the actions taken to create positive emotions and the preventative steps implemented that can reduce, or remove, negative emotions.
To discover more about some topics that might be emotive for learners, explore the guidance document produced by the Positive Digital Practices project.
Activity _unit8.5.1 Activity 5 Retaining positive emotions when faced with emotive content
Review the case studies of Nicola and Jolanta: Case studies. Based on what you know about their lives, what might be potential causes for triggering content? Remember to consider not just the direct specifics of their lives, but also how certain life aspects that each person identifies with may be portrayed through lesson content. For example, the content may contain stereotypical characterisations of certain ethnicities, or old and historically inaccurate information.
In the text box below, use bold to highlight the individual characteristics of each case study which are relevant.
Discussion
You may have selected the following terms (in bold).
Name: NICOLA
- Identifies as female and is in her early 20s.
- Studying for a National Diploma course at her local college.
- Returning to education after a gap due to pregnancy and child-care responsibilities.
- Is a single Mum, living with her parents.
- Diagnosed with mild-moderate depression two years ago. Symptoms fluctuate with occasional periods of depressive episodes.
- Course work assessment.
- Study motivations; To gain a formal qualification to be able to work part time and be able to afford her own home.
Being a single parent and having a diagnosis of depression may not necessarily be emotive when referenced or mentioned within the context of the learning environment. However, if the way these issues are presented is stereotypical, negative, or patronising, then this could potentially cause an emotive reaction from Nicola.
Name: JOLANTA
- Identifies as female and is in her late 50s.
- Studying an online degree course and is in her 2nd year of study.
- Recent bereavement of her husband.
- Has a physical disability affecting her mobility.
- Left school early to support family due to financial pressures, living in a deprived area.
- Assignment based assessment.
- Study motivations; Personal achievement – no previous formal qualifications, Low in confidence and wants to achieve something and then to be able to volunteer in the office of the disability charity she has received support from.
Jolanta’s recent bereavement may well be a trigger for a negative emotional reaction if the topic of illness or death is being covered. As with Nicola, aspects of her life, such as being disabled or under financial pressures, could also be triggering if such topics are covered in a negative or unsympathetic way.
If you have time, you may like to watch this video from the Digital Practice Project, produced by a learner whose resilient mindset helped them to overcome emotive content on their course.