Trigger Warnings and a Pedagogy of Trust

Authors

Morgan Read-Davidson, Chapman UniversityFollow

Files

Description

"While the larger conversation about difficult content and trigger warnings is not new, the sudden need for urgently scheduled meetings with me did not begin until the COVID- 19 pandemic crisis and our move to remote instruction, and the subsequent adjustment back to the classroom. This seems to coincide with the increase of online and social media interaction during the pandemic, where the use of trigger warnings and content warnings on social media, particularly on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, have made the conversation far more visible. For students, this seems to have given them validation and confidence, as well as a discursive language, to express their concerns about content. While prior to the year of remote instruction (2020) I had heard from faculty now and again about tensions with students over discomforting content, it was after the return to in- person instruction (2021) that students seemed to feel confident to come to me for advice or just venting about what they felt was problematic or triggering course content."

ISBN

978-1-64315-090-1

Publication Date

2026

Publisher

Lever Press

Disciplines

Curriculum and Social Inquiry | Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research | Educational Methods | Educational Psychology | Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education

Comments

In Ian Barnard, Ryan Ashley Caldwell, Jada Patchigondla, Aneil Rallin, Morgan Read-Davidson, Ethan Trejo and Kristi Wilson (Eds.), Trigger Warnings: Teaching Through Trauma.

Recommended Citation

Read-Davidson, Morgan. “Trigger Warnings and a Pedagogy of Trust.” Trigger Warnings: Teaching Through Trauma, edited by Ian Barnard et al., Lever Press, 2026, pp. 117-125.

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

The editors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.