Teaching under attack: The dilemmas, goals, and practices of upper-elementary school teachers when dealing with terrorism in class

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.