Trauma in TESOL: Theoretical, Methodological, and Pedagogical Perspectives

This editorial introduction frames the special issue ‘Trauma in TESOL: Theoretical, Methodological, and Pedagogical Perspectives’ by advancing a decolonial, feminist, and socially grounded orientation to trauma in language education. Moving beyond dominant medicalized models that treat trauma as an individual, pathological condition, we conceptualize trauma as a relational, sociopolitical, and affective phenomenon that is mediated through language and embedded in broader structures of power, inequality, and historical violence. We argue that the nexus between trauma and language is inextricable: while trauma is often described as “unspeakable,” processes of narrating, representing, and engaging with traumatic experience through language are central to healing, resistance, and identity reconstruction. The contributions in this issue, across both research articles and a Forum section, extend TESOL scholarship by broadening the range of traumatic contexts examined, foregrounding the experiences of both learners and teachers, and demonstrating how pedagogical practices, care work, and communicative activity are deeply interconnected. Methodologically, the articles adopt ethically responsive and innovative approaches, including arts-based methods, autoethnography, and nonrepresentational inquiry, which attend to the embodied and affective dimensions of trauma. Theoretically, they mobilize frameworks such as affect theory, feminist and decolonial thought, and relational ethics to move beyond deficit-oriented accounts and to reframe vulnerability as epistemically generative. We conclude by arguing that trauma is no longer an exceptional condition but a defining feature of contemporary times, calling for TESOL to embrace relational, ethical, and politically engaged pedagogies that address both the lived realities of trauma and the structural conditions that produce it.