Responsible Pedagogy During a Pandemic: Teaching Social Work Courses on Interpersonal Violence During COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Teaching courses that contain potentially high-emotional impact such as interpersonal violence (IV), have been noted as challenging. This is exacerbated during a pandemic when rates of IV are on the rise and requirements for physical distancing result in many courses being taught online. Although scholars have identified inherent challenges to teaching IV content online, additional considerations and necessary precautions in terms of student physical and emotional safety have not been adequately examined. Nor has the issue of instructor burden during the isolating restrictions of a pandemic been addressed. In this article, three Canadian social work scholars reconsider the challenges of online teaching environments involving IV course content and provide recommendations with an emphasis on risks related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Teaching social work courses on IV is a challenging endeavor at any time, and more so during times of crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to escalated rates of all forms of IV, and consequently poses additional and intersecting ethical and practical concerns for instructors teaching on such topics. For the purposes of this article, we defined IV as any form of family violence (e.g., intimate partner, child maltreatment, elder abuse) that occurs within a relationship. The aim of this article is to make some recommendations as well as to initiate a broader dialog about what constitutes a responsible pedagogy in teaching IV course content during a pandemic.

This article arose from the shared teaching experiences and scholarly reflections of three female Canadian social work educators who have taught interpersonal violence (IV) courses for many years. We came together to discuss these issues near the onset of the pandemic. Committed to the social justice values of our profession, we begin by acknowledging the ways our social identities influence our experiences and the types of issues we identified here (Moosa-Mitha, 2005). As White settler cisgender women, we recognize the scholarship of teaching IV courses has been almost exclusively undertaken by other White [presumably] cisgender women, and that collectively we have failed to represent the experiences and perspectives of racialized, Indigenous, queer, and transgender faculty (Absolon & Willett, 2005). Nor have we reflected the perspectives of contingent faculty and their multiple challenges, as noted in Cohan’s (2019) discussion of the effect of contingent labor practices on the teaching of such courses. However, we do bring at least two marginalized identities in addition to gender to the present work: queer and disability (nonneurotypical). Our lived experiences in these identities have allowed us to bring certain understandings of power and difference to our analysis (Herising, 2005). In the discussion section, we revisit the influence and effects of our social identities on our analysis and recommendations.

This article arose from our collective reflection and shared experiences, informed by the scholarship on teaching of IV courses. Although we used our own experiences as a starting point for critical reflection and theorizing in considering some of the ways that the pandemic heightens social inequalities, we recognize we are not representative of all instructors of IV courses and to enrich our understandings we sought to inform ourselves through emerging research about the experiences of other stakeholders with different social locations. We also recognize that the literature itself remains not fully representative of all perspectives in this instructional realm. The recommendations for a responsible pedagogy have arisen from our collective theorization of our lived experiences translated into collectively discussed actions. These were being put into practice by the lead author in an online intimate partner violence (IPV) course taught in summer 2020.

We bring some varied and similar lived experiences on the teaching of IV courses from several different universities and across several provinces. Jenney and Walsh both have considerable prepandemic experience teaching IPV via online delivery to both Bachelor and Master of Social Work students. Jenney came to academe after a dedicated career in the areas of violence against women and child mental health and has been teaching courses in violence against women for over a decade. She was scheduled to teach an IPV course in summer 2020 in a physical classroom environment, but quickly converted it to an online classroom. This article was conceived and written as she simultaneously delivered the course in the context of COVID-19, and so much of her experience informs this article. While Straka’s IPV course, scheduled for the fall semester was canceled by her university due to pandemic concerns, she continued to wrestle with the ethical and practical challenges of converting this course to an online delivery format on short notice. Having previously taught this course only in face-to-face physical classroom settings, Straka reached out to Walsh for consultation after reading Walsh and Baynton’s (2012) article about the online teaching of IPV. We assert that courses on IV are more important than ever to teach, given the escalating rates of IPV. This urgency is particularly apparent as Jenney’s current classroom cohort contained several students simultaneously working in the violence against women sector (e.g., women’s violence shelters).

By sharing our experiences, insights, and recommendations at this early stage, we hope to engage a broader base of scholars and other stakeholders in a collective dialog on what constitutes a responsible social work pedagogy during COVID-19.

This article is guided by trauma-informed pedagogy (Cless & Nelson Goff, 2017), which considers the potential for students to have experienced trauma, and results in a classroom setting that takes into account the potential for course content and materials to be areas of harm if not adequately prepared for, as well as an ethical social work framework (Canadian Association of Social Workers, 2005a, 2005b). As educators of future social workers, we recognize that we have multiple accountabilities (Canadian Association of Social Workers, 2005b), initially to our students and our universities. However, based on our professional Codes of Ethics and the principles of Truth and Reconciliation (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2012), we also have important accountabilities to Indigenous communities and land, the broader local community and its agencies and practitioners, the profession, and our “gatekeeping” responsibility to the vulnerable clients served by social workers (Canadian Association of Social Workers, 2005a, 2005b; Redmond & Bright, 2007; The Justice Institute of British Columbia, n.d.). Our understanding of responsible pedagogy thus includes this range of accountabilities.

Context and background: Teaching IV and IPV prepandemic

To better understand the challenges of teaching IV courses online during a pandemic, we begin by describing the prepandemic challenges of teaching an IPV course. IPV is a complex and high-stakes issue in social work practice, making it a difficult-to-teach course at the best of times. This course content is commonly taught through a feminist intersectionality lens (Coker, 2016; Crenshaw, 1991), which is crucial for students to become ethical and competent practitioners when working with issues of gender-based violence. Moreover, as IPV involves multiple dimensions of causality, practitioners must have a strong capacity for theorizing, an understanding of important debates in the field, a knowledge of recent research, as well as a wide range of skills and practice knowledge. Lacking any of these capacities, social workers could fail to identify and intervene effectively in high-risk situations.

In addition to the pedagogical challenges, the overrepresentation of histories of abuse, violence, trauma, and mental health struggles among social work students (Horton et al., 2009; Lee, 2008; Phillips, 1988) influences effective ways to teach this content. In our experience as well as the experiences documented in the literature by others, some students seem especially drawn to take courses on violence and trauma, presumably to support their own healing from such exposure (Branch et al., 2011; Cohan, 2019). Instructors then may have to deal with personal disclosures and trauma responses in the classroom, in their offices, or through phone or e-mail communication (Adelman & Coker, 2016, pp. 1421–1422; Branch et al., 2011). In addition to attending to these factors as they play out in these settings, it is also important to note that many students from equity-seeking groups bring to the classroom setting significant experiences of past educational trauma (Kenner, 2020). The subject matter of IV can further elevate students’ stress such that it becomes extremely difficult for them to learn and their academic success is compromised. Even students without personal histories of IV can experience vicarious trauma in these types of courses due to exposure to the subject matter as well as witnessing disclosures from other students (Carello & Butler, 2015). From our experience, no matter how much care is taken to ensure students are safe and prepared for provocative material, disclosures are inevitable in both in-person and online environments. In the online environment, for example, disclosures can manifest through the use of discussion boards and other course components, which may be related to a sense of distance between themselves and their classmates. The online environment is further concerning as it may disadvantage instructors in recognizing early signs of students in distress (Chiacchia, 2012).

At a minimum, ethical and responsible teaching requires that we avoid inflicting further harm on students (Cares et al., 2014). Consequently, a trauma-informed pedagogy has been considered a best practice for the teaching of such courses (Carello & Butler, 2014, 2015; Rhodes, 2019). Responsible pedagogy, within this approach, means recognizing that while there are likely some students currently experiencing violence in their relationships, others, perhaps a larger number, can be triggered with respect to past experiences of violence. Indeed, some evidence suggests that such courses can result in vicarious trauma due to exposure, and that this overall context exacerbates mental health and academic struggles for many students (Cless & Nelson Goff, 2017).

Due to the course subject matter and its roots in a feminist lens, as noted in the literature and our own experiences, IPV course instructors appear to be overwhelmingly women. Of the 13 articles we found that were focused on the teaching of IV courses, 16 authors were female and 1 was male. The recommended trauma-informed pedagogy “is designed to aid instructors in recognizing and responding to student reactivity to traumatic materials in the classroom” and to reduce the harm caused by such reactions (Cless & Nelson Goff, 2017, p. 28). However, using a trauma-informed pedagogy may result in female faculty taking on large amounts of unrecognized emotional labor combined with exposure to potential vicarious trauma (Nikischer, 2019). It has been advanced that even in nontrauma-related courses students have been seeking increased emotional support from their instructors due to COVID-19 (Popescu, 2020). Female professors are more likely to be called on for relational support and are held to a higher standard than their male colleagues (El-Alayli et al., 2018). The position of the faculty member is another important consideration specific to this pandemic. Are instructors able to decline teaching specific content, do they have sufficient resources to support teaching IV content online, often for the first time given the incumbent additional learning and stress? This may be further exacerbated for contingent faculty who often do not have access to the same level of institutional supports (or paid time) to engage in teaching and learning resources, such as online tutorials and additional equipment, and how to manage the learning and emotional needs of their students in the online environment (Chiacchia, 2012). Existing prepandemic scholarship about teaching IV courses has almost exclusively focused on the well-being of students (i.e., Agllias, 2012). In the COVID-19 era it is both essential to address the inequities and wellness of both students and instructors.

The effect of COVID-19 on IV

IV (specifically IPV), child maltreatment, and elder abuse have been exacerbated globally by the COVID-19 pandemic, amid the resulting increased social isolation that individuals and families are experiencing (Bouillon-Minois et al., 2020; World Health Organization, 2020). All forms of IV tend to increase during times of economic, social, and familial crisis, specifically related to loss of employment and access to resources and the subsequent effect on mental health and substance use as additional risk factors (Usher et al., 2020; World Health Organization, 2020).

At the same time social workers are tasked to respond to the public health crisis (Walter-McCabe, 2020), COVID-19 disrupted the ability of family violence service providers in Canada to respond to situations of violence. This has occurred through limitations of available resources (staff and volunteers) as well as by having clients who could no longer access needed supports due to their partner’s continued presence (Golding, 2021). In addition, fears about contracting COVID-19 within communal living environments created additional risks for women who might otherwise have accessed a shelter for safety (The Learning Network, n.d.). Altheimer et al. (2020) reported that public health guidelines in Rochester, New York abruptly halted most in-person interactions between community social service agencies and clients. As organizations struggled to switch to online delivery of services by videoconferencing, many experienced gaps in resources and technological knowledge (Altheimer et al., 2020). The stress of workers in the violence sector has been heightened by the knowledge that violence rates have increased, while corresponding with a limited capacity to respond. Child welfare agencies have expressed heightened concern about children at risk (Human Rights Watch, 2020; Ward, 2020). As educational and child-care settings are now mostly closed or moved to online formats, the protective factor of being the places that have “eyes on” children has been reduced (Campbell, 2020). Also, the greater housing precarity and instability contributes to higher risks of violence and more severe effects on women and children (Behind the Numbers, 2020). Although starting to change with the gradual and phased reopenings across Canada, at the time of this writing, many in the housing and supportive sectors remain closed, with staff continuing to work remotely. Thus, at a time of great need and vulnerability, resources are limited.

Federal and provincial governments have responded with increased funding to gender-based violence services and distress lines to address safety concerns for the large majority of women and children who may be at risk (Indigenous Services Canada, 2020; Status of Women Canada, 2020). For example, a recent Canadian public service announcement offers information about a universal “hand signal” that may be used to convey the need for help without words (https://canadianwomen.org/signal-for-help/). However, during the current public health crisis, many of those at risk may be hesitant to use shelters or other supportive services, or even hand signals to cue demands for support due to concerns about increased exposure to the virus. Others may not have safe and accessible information about how to access help; for example, if their abuser is at home and surveilling their use of internet and phone. Such concerns are supported by a recent Statistics Canada report on COVID-19’s effect on victim services that indicated, despite the infusions of funding, just over half (54%) the domestic violence resources reported an increase of clients, 29% stayed the same, and 17% reported a decrease (Allen & Jaffray, 2020).

Shelters and their outreach programs, already underresourced to meet the need for violence prevention and intervention, are now faced with an even greater burden of need. For example, relationships that may not have been considered problematic or abusive before the pandemic may become so after months of sheltering in place during times of added duress. The pandemic has resulted in an increase in mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety (Horesh & Brown, 2020; Peterman et al., 2020), and individuals with past experiences of trauma may find their symptoms exacerbated by these additional stresses, while previous mechanisms for managing mental health, such as exercise, sleep, a healthy diet, and social support, may no longer be accessible (Kofman & Garfin, 2020). Using data from Statistics Canada, Allen and Jaffray (2020) found that when it comes to new clients, only 23% of the domestic violence resources reported an increase, which the authors suggested indicates there are many women and children coping with violence in their home—not to mention added stressors for both students and instructors, such as managing caregiving (i.e., child or elder care) and economic effects (i.e., layoffs of partners, family members, and precarious housing). This culminates in the loss of emotional stability and the increased risks involved in many social work workplaces (not just of exposure to the virus, but also increased aggression in settings, such as healthcare, shelters, and senior care, from clients or their families. These effects are inevitably felt by both students and instructors within and beyond what might be deemed spaces for teaching and learning.

Changing spaces for teaching and learning

In addition to the issues already identified related to the context of teaching and learning IV content, some students may have recently returned to live with families of origin where IPV or child maltreatment was part of their childhood. As young adults the risk may be diminished compared to those they were exposed to as young children; however, the presence of such harms still needs to be considered. Instructors, therefore, should be mindful of what it might be like for a student to be suddenly returning to live in their childhood home and recall an earlier time when they may have experienced trauma there. Even if this occurred in the distant past, the act of reading articles or watching lectures or educational videos on IV may recreate a sense of lack of safety that students may have felt that they had overcome. Also, they may also find themselves without community supports and the resultant social isolation increases risk factors and reduces protective factors such as being able to go outside, visit with a friend, see a therapist, get proper sleep, all of which aid in managing the increased adversity. Preexisting and systemic societal inequities also affect students. Several researchers have expressed grave concerns about the limited collection of race-based data (Laurencin & McClinton, 2020; Templeton et al., 2020). Templeton et al. (2020) argued that “identity processes related to structural inequalities are fundamental to understanding how and why disasters should be managed,” considering that in past public health emergencies racialized groups have been disproportionately affected (Templeton et al., 2020, p. 674). Recent research confirms this, highlighting that Indigenous, racialized people, and immigrants appear to have suffered more adverse economic effects of the pandemic (City of Toronto, n.d.). This has largely been attributed to pre-COVID-19 social inequalities (Arriagada, Frank, et al., 2020; Hou, Frank, et al., 2020; Hou, Picot, et al., 2020). These same groups have reported increased fears for their safety during the pandemic, partly associated with increased COVID-19-related stigma (Arriagada, Hahmann, et al., 2020; Hango, 2020; Heidinger & Cotter, 2020). Also, access to resources imperative for online success—such as quality internet services—are inequitable across geographic and economic lines (Acorn Canada, 2019).

Along with these considerations, before COVID-19, students might have had more choices about where and when they took the course, such as being able to actively engage in course material when they are alone (e.g., when they themselves or their partner were at work) or at the library, a coffee shop, or the university, or when they could seek support from others. For example, Jenney had one student who did not have Wi-Fi at home and relied completely on a local coffee shop to access the online materials, attend classes, and complete online assignments. The coffee shop closed at 7:30 pm, a full half-hour before the synchronous online session did; this resulted in three additional hours of lost classroom participation time over a short 6-week summer course. It is difficult to determine how many students chose to drop the course due to safety concerns or lack of resources (i.e., Wi-Fi) when the course transitioned to the online format.

In addition to the numerous and complex issues related to the course delivery and materials, the first wave of the pandemic as experienced in Canada has elevated levels of student distress and difficulties around learning. Students were abruptly faced with a learning and studying environment that for many no longer allowed them the time to digest such difficult and emotionally evocative material. Stress alone does not create a barrier to learning; in fact, the optimal zone for student learning is when they are feeling challenged and somewhat uncomfortable (Ludvik, 2020). However, when retriggering of trauma or exposure to traumatic material causes them to feel unsafe and unable to find their way back to emotional safety, it is very difficult for individuals to learn (Carello & Butler, 2015). The COVID-19 pandemic has created conditions for many that multiply stressors overlaid with exposure to traumatic materials. Consider, for example, students who are parenting their own young children: how might they find the space and time to watch or read potentially distressing materials without inadvertently exposing their own children to the same? In this case, does responsible pedagogy mean it is our responsibility as instructors to educate students on how to remove their internet histories so young children do not accidentally press play on a public service commercial illustrating a terrifying IPV incident on YouTube?

As part of a responsible pedagogy grounded in a trauma-informed approach, Jenney advises students to be mindful about when, where, and how they engage with course materials (e.g., not too close to bedtime) to manage the effect of distressing content. While this approach is designed to consider ways to engage with the material in less harmful ways, it may be less effective if students no longer have such choices. For instance, they may need to wait until after they have completed their own workday, homeschooled their children, cooked meals, cleaned up, managed bedtime routines and found what was left as the only time for themselves in the evenings right before their own bedtimes. We recommend that instructors advise students to allocate specific times to coursework where they are free from distractions and interruptions and have the necessary interpersonal resources to process the emotive content. Furthermore, IV courses are taught as electives and often may be offered in the evenings to provide accessibility to students who may be working, taking core classes, or immersed in practicum during the day. In this regard, Danis (2016) recommended that such courses be taught online in an asynchronous format to allow students to access them at times that are optimal for them. This, we know, is not always possible in every household. Furthermore, the absence of any in-person activities presents challenges in terms of skills development (Danis, 2016).

As we discovered from the disruption of the 2020 winter semester, student difficulties in learning and completing course materials were immediately compromised. They faced many of the same issues that affected all sectors of society, including increased caregiving responsibilities both for children and aged family members, financial concerns, delays and barriers to returning home to their families, and overwork.

Implications for a responsible pedagogy

Scholars have reinforced the need for instructors to manage student disclosures as well as reactions to course material that is found to be triggering or distressing (Branch et al., 2011). Beyond instructional competence, teaching within this context means that instructors have the additional burden of managing, responding to, and referring students who present in distress. To preempt the need for these highly skilled and labor-intensive clinical-like interventions, Jenney proactively cautioned students in an introductory e-mail prior to the course commencing to consider whether they should be taking such a course if they have or are currently experiencing any IPV in their relationships, as this may place them at greater risk for emotional or physical harm. In addition to providing warnings about potentially distressing content, instructors also should include concrete information about how course content could result in changing worldviews (Goldblatt & Buchbinder, 2003). For example, some students may begin to question the safety of their current relationship or reevaluate past experiences as abusive. This may be particularly problematic during a pandemic, as students may be unable to address emergent issues due to limited resources and options for escape or mobility. For the current course being taught by Jenney, the communication included recognizing the potential risk for violence or controlling dynamics, should course materials be discovered by abusive partners or family members. To this end, similar to course prerequisites, students should be informed that they will do best in a course such as this if they are residing in a safe space, with safe supportive relationships available to them, and if they have access to therapeutic supports for moments when material may become distressing for them. In addition to the introductory e-mail, Jenney included a section in the course syllabus of resources that were listed (along with active links) within the course digital platform. Despite careful preparation by the instructor outlining the nature of the course in relation to traumatic experiences, she discovered many students had little insight as to how the course would inevitably affect them; others advised that they had never taken the time to read the e-mail. It is therefore important to recognize the limitations of such preparations in the context of student realities.

Teaching IPV online during the pandemic

The IPV course taught by Jenney in winter 2020 contains the following learning outcomes for students: (a) to identify and define the various forms of IPV, violence in families, and the effects on children; (b) to articulate theoretical frameworks relevant to understanding key issues of violence in relationships; (c) to demonstrate awareness of the multicausal nature of violence in families and the extent to which this social problem exists; (d) to develop a critical awareness surrounding the characterization of victims and offenders and to identify potential risk factors; (e) to provide a gender, class, race, age, ability, sexual orientation, and power analysis relating to the problem of interpersonal violence; (f) to identify the effects of violence on people in relation to psychological trauma, socialization, and social location; (g) to examine ethical issues and personal values in working with victims and perpetrators of violence; (h) to identify policies affecting abused women and children exposed to woman abuse; and (i) to be able to identify and articulate evidence-based interventions and applicability to this field of practice. Straka and Walsh’s previous courses had similar objectives.

Organized within 12 sessions over 6 weeks, this format may not adequately consider the intensity of the material or the barriers it may pose to learning. The two weekly sessions consist of one 2-hour synchronous learning experience within a live lecture via Zoom, and one 2-hour asynchronous learning experience that comprises prerecorded lecture material, webinars, short films, YouTube videos, podcasts, and TED Talks. The course is designed in a progressive framework, with the first two class sessions providing theoretical context and frameworks to situate student learning in the language and discourse of social problems such as IPV. The third session offers an optional experiential practice opportunity with a simulated client as an introduction to service provision in this field. Session four focuses on perpetrators of violence in relationships, followed by an exploration of how intersectionality creates inequities in experiences of IPV and the resources and services available and accessible to them (e.g., state structures such as police and social service systems). The current issues and controversies surround violence in relationships, such as gender symmetry/asymmetry debate and violence occurring within sexual/gender minority communities are presented in session five. The effects on children and youth are then presented in session six, along with considerations for intervention. Session seven examines violence across the lifespan and how other forms of vulnerability (e.g., disability) may increase risk, which then leads to session eight on risk assessment and safety planning strategies. Session nine offers an optional experiential practice opportunity with another simulated client, followed by session 10, which addresses understanding disclosure, safety, and help-seeking. The course concludes with sessions 11 and 12, which speak to hope and healing as we consider resilience in the face of violence and a renewed focus on self-awareness and self-care as critical for managing this work moving forward (Hollander, 2005).

The course has two main assignments and a participation component for evaluation. A responsible pedagogy means selecting assignments that are not harmful or too taxing but are useful and integrative. In keeping with trauma-informed principles, Jenney relies on providing voice and choice to students around assignments through options that involve expressive arts-based work, experiential learning (i.e., use of real-time simulation with standardized client actors), and traditional research papers to allow students to approach their learning from multiple perspectives. Real-time client simulations had initially been organized with the expectation of classroom-based learning but were adapted with complete success to the online environment. The expressive arts assignments may involve artwork, stories, creating and performing spoken word, writing and performing skits, creating beadwork and photography projects, to name but a few. In Straka’s experience, arts-based assignments seem to be especially successful with Indigenous students.

However, while offering high-effect learning, the expressive arts assignment seems to run the most risk of personal disclosure or triggering. Despite guidelines and procedures, such as the requirement that the project is fully discussed with the instructor before beginning, that openly discourage personal storytelling, many students invariably put their direct experiences into the projects they create. For example, a former student disclosed at the end of the course that the “stock photos” she claimed to have used for the assignment were actually photos of her own injuries sustained during the time she was in the course, when an estranged partner broke into her home and assaulted her. She identified this act of veiled disclosure was purposefully chosen as part of her healing process. Working closely with students who wish to tell a personal story to find ways of creating something more universally generic that does not contain identifying personal content could be useful to that end. The art projects themselves are posted for their classmates to experience, but the reflective content is submitted privately to the instructor.

Straka has used a critical and feminist pedagogy approach (Freire, 1998; hooks, 1994) for her undergraduate IPV course over the past few years as an important basis for her trauma-informed pedagogy. The course begins with readings and discussions on vicarious trauma, and students create a wellness plan for the course. A core repeating assignment is to write a one-page classroom preparation assignment for seven of the 12 weeks of the course, which involves answering two out of four structured integrative reflection questions that connect the reading to their own lived experience. These assignments are read by the instructor only and are due the day before class. Students are instructed to focus on professional experience in these mini papers, but if their main connection to a reading has been a personal story, Straka strongly recommends they structure their personal experience as a case example (similar to the strategy used by Jenney). She shares her philosophy of using the classroom to not only teach course content, but also provide an opportunity for students to learn and practice professional values and boundaries. Students then bring their reflections on the readings for discussion in a circle format (circle pedagogy) at the start of class, with students always being given permission to pass.

To convert this course to online would require some important changes, as all online courses at her university are required to be fully asynchronous. This would necessitate developing creative ways of asynchronously reproducing a critical pedagogical approach through a dialogical approach. To address the social isolation of this approach, Straka has considered dividing her class of 30 into smaller groups consisting of seven to eight students, who may arrange among themselves when they can best meet virtually to reproduce the intent of the circle pedagogy. The need to personally support such groups in their early weeks of learning circle pedagogy is with the understanding that teachers are also learners and students also are teachers. Central to critical and feminist pedagogy, instruction in some basic competence in this pedagogy is one of the course objectives. Straka would also find some way for students to provide quick, ongoing feedback on how the groups are functioning for them, possibly during office hours appointments or a confidential two-to-three-question invitation. She anticipates that this kind of approach would maintain student engagement and relationships, while also supporting a previous successful pedagogy. Finally, most institutions offer instructional and supportive sessions for both faculty and students created in response to COVID-19 shifts in higher education. These could support developing technological skills and a learning culture.

Discussion and recommendations

Instructors in professional programs must ensure they have integrated relevant information about the rapidly changing practice environment into their courses. This is critical to prepare their students for practice, in this case the escalating violence and rapid changes in policy and practice as a result of COVID-19. Courses on IV are a necessary component of social work education and even more so during a pandemic. However, they need to be offered in a careful, trauma-informed way that maximizes effective learning and reduces potential negatives harms. To this end, we offer the following recommendations:

1. Offer courses as both synchronous and asynchronous components, if possible. Asynchronous components allow students to access the course content at times most convenient to them, while the synchronous components facilitate the opportunity to engage with the instructor and classmates in a learning experience that is optimized by supportive contact with others and early recognition of problems with students, as noted above. With respect to the latter format, the instructor can more readily “take the pulse” of the classroom and note any difficult areas. If only asynchronous is possible the instructor should be encouraged to develop other methods of creating opportunities for connection.

2. Offer courses with the “prerequisite” warning that learning requires safety and promote the necessary resources for students to access resources and supports to ensure that safety for themselves whenever possible. This recognizes that instructors are not required to be therapists (nor should they act as therapists) and assists in setting boundaries to manage the effect of disclosures. It also recognizes that, despite all of these precautions, due to lack of experience, self-awareness, or both, some students may still find themselves in a situation that they may not have been able to predict or prevent (Agllias, 2012).

3. Offer courses with a limit on class size to create an environment in which students can receive the individualized attention that would provide the optimal degree of learning as well as safety and prevent the risk of missing student warning signs. As an example, it is very important for instructors to read student discussion board posts regularly and consistently to monitor content and address any issues, ensuring safety and confidentiality, such as disclosing experiences of IV for the first time. As universities are facing severe budgetary limitations with resultant increasing class sizes, considerable advocacy and education are needed to underscore the pedagogical and ethical issues, including potential harms to students in large-class-size IV courses.

4. Offer courses with the recognition that disclosures are inevitable and that instructors require clinical social work skills and supports to respond effectively. The provision of a teaching assistant (TA) or the recognition of additional teaching time that is required to perform the emotional labor expended by this type of course offering would assist in offsetting the burden on faculty who willingly teach these important courses (Branch et al., 2011). However, mentoring and supporting a TA to manage their own vicarious trauma requires a careful consideration of the clinical exposure and experiences of the right candidate for such a position. These resources are likely not available in smaller universities, however.

5. Offer courses with clear policies and guidelines around student expectations, as well as grading and extensions. These are courses for which concrete rubrics may offer both the student and the instructor “objective” criteria to grade content that is often subjective or personalized. Jenney has noticed a definitive increase in requests for extensions, absences from classes, and poor-quality work in assignments since the pandemic started. This is to be expected but also needs to be thoughtfully managed through clear expectations and options to enable students to succeed or remove themselves from a course without academic penalty.

6. Alternatively, some form of contract grading, an approach congruent with critical pedagogy, could be used. Contract grading shifts power relations by inviting students, as a class, to negotiate learning contracts that describe the expectations of work for each final grade level, including all the indicators one might usually use (e.g., A, B, C grades) (Danielewicz & Elbow, 2009; Shor, 1996). Through this democratic and dialogical process, the rules for different grade levels are set, with some options for individual variations arranged one-on-one with the instructor (Shor, 1996). In this view, responsible pedagogy includes sharing curriculum and assessment responsibility and underscoring the importance of students taking responsibility for their own learning in a supported and negotiated manner. This approach may also allow for the many different COVID-19-related and other issues to surface in this process. Faculty everywhere are struggling with how much to ask, and how much to let go of expectations during COVID-19. However, in a social work program and in a course whose content prepares them for life-and-death scenarios, social work educators are concerned that we still must prepare students for safe, ethical, and competent practice.

These are the issues that arose in our discussions over the past few months as we collaboratively developed our approach to a responsible online pedagogy during the pandemic. However, we recognize that our individual backgrounds and identities have influenced our identification of issues and our solutions. The variations among us, despite a certain homogeneity connected with us all being White settler cisgender tenure track/tenured faculty, proved to expand the overall types of issues beyond what we had individually considered. For example, Jenney brings strong clinical background and skills to her pedagogy, which have resulted in clear ideas about how to manage students’ traumatic reactions through trauma-informed pedagogy. Straka brings a critical pedagogical approach with an especially strong emphasis on critical reflexivity that includes an analysis of how power operates in higher education. To find solutions that would align with critical pedagogy, she has turned to some literature on digital versions of critical pedagogy (Brookfield, 2015; Morris & Stommel, 2018). Walsh, as the most senior among us, brings administrative experience and institutional perspectives as well as a long experience of teaching and researching on IV topics. However, we recognize the ways that White feminists have often oppressed other types of women, partly in the ways they have centered gender over all other identity factors in IPV, as well as in the ways that academic structures have privileged their experiences and voices. We recognize that we too are reproducing this dynamic but hope that by acknowledging it and committing to inclusion and diversity for the next stage of our reflection, we will open up the dialog and listen more than speak. This is important in an era where all societal inequities have increased due to a pandemic, while at the same time Indigenous and anti-Black racist movements have given notice that the societal status quo is multiplying existing inequities and taking too many lives. As social work scholars, educators, and practitioners of considerable privilege, we hope to create spaces that are more equitable and democratic. It is in these spaces that social transformation can occur (Absolon & Willett, 2005; Herising, 2005).

Conclusion

Courses in IV are both necessary for social work education and also complex and challenging to teach and for students to learn. Our purpose was to propose some principles for a responsible digital pedagogy for the teaching of social courses on IV during a global pandemic. We have illustrated numerous issues that faculty who provide such critical courses face in delivering such components of a trauma-informed curriculum and pedagogy. In particular, it is important to consider how COVID-19 has changed the context for teaching such courses. First, the escalated rates of all forms of IV have resulted in greatly increased risks to women, children, and other people at already elevated risk of IV. At the same time, the public health guidelines have required service providers to address a myriad of challenges while also responding to heightened rates of IV and greater difficulties in accessibility of their services and supports. Moreover, COVID-19 has had personal effects on students, social workers, and faculty that have made teaching and learning more difficult. Finally, the sudden shift to online has brought unique ethical and safety concerns, as well as opportunities in the teaching of such courses that serve to prepare professionals for practice in this area. The question that brought us, as authors, together was, how can we have a sustainable and responsible pedagogy at this time and under these conditions?

Our conversations over the past several months have created a small community of practice, one that has allowed us to exit the isolation we often experience in the teaching of such courses with difficult and potentially traumatizing material. This community of practice has also been a feminist practice of circle work and consciousness raising. It has allowed us, at various moments, to give voice to difficult aspects of our experiences and hold space for each other as part of our critical reflections. While we agreed among ourselves about the challenges and ethical concerns of teaching IV courses online during COVID-19, we have also come to recognize and respect that different social identities and philosophies of teaching may lead us to develop diverse responses. The recommendations for a responsible pedagogy thus include some variations in responses, because as social work scholars and educators, we must first be aligned with our own values and the approaches that most resonate with each of us. Even as we teach students to develop their own personal philosophy of practice, we recognize the importance of doing so ourselves in our teaching practice. While we acknowledge the many limitations of an experiential article written by three authors who, in many ways, have privileged and homogeneous social identities, it is our intention to begin an open dialog with a wider diversity of other scholars, educators, practitioners, and students. In closing, we commend those scholars who are engaged in this important and difficult work to ultimately improve social workers’ responses to IV in the field.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Angelique Jenney

Angelique Jenney is Associate Professor at University of Calgary. Silvia Straka is Associate Professor at Thompson Rivers University. Christine A. Walsh is Professor at University of Calgary.