‘When you told us what had happened to you, I started to shiver’ – what children and teenagers immediately express and comprehend after listening to testimonies of Holocaust survivors

ABSTRACT

We investigated how young people comprehend stories of trauma through their immediate expressions after listening to personal testimonies of Holocaust survivors. The material included 747 drawings and 182 texts by 10–16-year-old Swedish pupils from 14 schools. Qualitative analyses and cross-tabulations showed that the testimonies elicited complex patterns of emotions and cognitive processing. Personal testimonies can thus be a powerful way of teaching about historical trauma, although complex cognitive meaning making might often require additional time and adult-facilitated conversation. Also, as the testimonies aroused strong emotions, they should be used in a well-informed way.

KEYWORDS:

• Personal testimonies
• transformative learning
• teaching historical trauma
• mixed method
• pupils’ drawings and text

Introduction

Children and youth learn about themselves and their world through personal experiences and by listening to other people’s stories. Thus, listening to stories, from myths and fairytales to personal testimonies, can be an important learning tool to increase and transform our understanding of ourselves and the outside world.¹ Like other stories, personal testimonies have the potential to transform those listening, and influence how people think and feel about themselves and others. This is in line with the concept and development of identity,² i.e. how individuals understand themselves and the world around them. For example, Felman and Laub³ suggested that personal testimonies can be seen as an opportunity for learning since they evoke emotions and personal crisis. In addition, transformative learning can be a potential incentive for cognitive and emotional development,⁴ facilitating the process of maturity in young people.⁵ For these reasons, we believe transformative learning⁶ is a valuable approach to study the use of stories and personal testimonies, especially in young pupils. Although there is a longstanding notion in educational research that understanding through stories is a fundamental form of learning,⁷ research investigating how we learn from personal testimonies is scarce. In the present study, we aimed to further our knowledge about how young people convey their understanding when listening to other people’s personal stories of hardship and traumatic experiences. We did this by studying young pupils’ immediate expressions and comprehension, conveyed in texts and drawings after listening to personal testimonies of two Holocaust survivors. This was done in a Swedish educational setting by studying the pupils’ texts and drawings from a developmental perspective.

The paper is structured as follows: First, we give an overview on transformative learning and its connection to education about historical trauma and present a literature review on the use of personal testimonies in education. As the research field within the Swedish context on these subjects is not comprehensive, the referenced literature draws upon studies on similar themes, but from different educational contexts. We then describe the research design and methodology, followed by data analysis. Next, we present our results. The paper sums up with a discussion of the results in relation to transformation learning with a focus on emotional and cognitive developmental perspectives.

Transformative learning and education about historical trauma from a developmental perspective

The use of personal testimonies within educational fields has been sought to facilitate learning by providing an opportunity to be moved by someone else’s experiences while connecting these to your own experiences.⁸ With enriching experiences and opportunities to reflect both cognitively and interpersonally new meaning and knowledge can be added leading to transformational learning.⁹ Transformative learning theory was initially framed as a structural change in how we view ourselves and those close to us.¹⁰ It was later widened to describe the processes through which we transform our mindsets into a wider frame of reference that will prove truer or justified to guide action.¹¹ A transformative history education involves pedagogical approaches, such as oral history teaching, which enables critical thinking about different conflictual historical events, using multiple perspectives in order to get more insight and connecting the past, to the present and future. Transformative history teaching also raises awareness and empathy, which enables students to critique the dominant social order and to participate as critical citizens. Conclusions from existing literature suggest that oral histories are useful teaching and learning strategies in both history and social studies.¹² Benefits include more active engagement in the learning process, deeper connections to people, development of critical thinking skills as well as interpersonal skills, and a better understanding of the complexities of historical understanding.

Most studies of transformative learning focus on older youth and adults.¹³ However, research also shows that various aspects of transformative learning are present in the experiences of young people, suggesting its potential implications for cognitive and emotional development.¹⁴ For example, Nygren,¹⁵ who analyzed high school (aged 17–18 years) students’ exam essays, found that when studying indigenous peoples’ human rights, high school students were capable of intellectual reasoning and caring simultaneously, thus demonstrating both cognitive and emotional learning and growth. In line with these results, teaching about historical trauma has developed from focusing solely on facts about historical events to conveying primary sources and personal stories, thereby taking different aspects of learning into account. When it comes to younger pupils, i.e. those in early or mid-adolescence, it may be argued that their cognitive development limits the potential for transformative learning. However, it has been shown that middle school teachers (with 12–14-year-old pupils) often underestimate the capacity of their pupils,¹⁶ implying that younger pupils may also benefit from incorporating at least some elements of transformative learning.

Scholars are divided about the appropriate age to introduce detailed education about historical traumas, given the cruel content of many such events, for example, the Holocaust.¹⁷ There is agreement that little is to be gained from introducing more detailed descriptions of the Holocaust, for example, personal testimonies, until around age ten and always with great care and respect for children’s developmental level.¹⁸ To the best of our knowledge no study has previously used transformative learning as a basis for studying the extent to which younger pupils can experience transformative learning.

Personal testimonies in education

In educational research, it has been suggested that understanding through the use of personal stories serves as a fundamental form of understanding,¹⁹ resulting in more complex knowledge and development than other forms of learning. Accordingly, listening to other people's personal experiences is viewed as an intimate and powerful way of educating, communicating and providing inspiration.²⁰

Different pedagogical and didactical reasons can be offered to explain the use of personal testimonies in history teaching.²¹ One is that testimonies are seen as representing ‘true’ stories, which create opportunities for pupils to build values, such as a historical consciousness or an ethical approach to the world and toward other people.²² When it comes to teaching about difficult historical events, research has investigated the advantages as well as the difficulties of using personal testimonies about violence, loss and conflict.²³ First, it needs to be acknowledged that because of the subjectivity of a personal memory, a testimony alone cannot be seen as a sufficient source of knowledge. For example, as pointed out by Blutinger,²⁴ a potential issue in using survivor testimonies in education, in their example from the Holocaust, is that these stories are by definition atypical, as most people targeted during the Holocaust did not survive. Moreover, listening to stories about extreme suffering can be an emotional challenge for both teachers and pupils, which may affect if and how this is incorporated into teaching.²⁵ Nevertheless, stories from eyewitnesses can still be used in the curriculum as a complex and personal learning tool which most often contain personal information not found in official documents. Used in this way, testimonies can have a number of functions in an educational context. For example, personal testimonies have been described as having the potential to transform historical events into personal reflections,²⁶ which can give rise to emotional responses and new questions among students. The use of testimonies has also been described as sparking ethical consciousness.²⁷ When shared in personal settings it can also increase the commitment to listening and learning on the part of the students, leading to increased knowledge of the historical event. A recent experimental study also showed that the use of primary sources, in the form av historical documents, led to higher quality in 11th- and 12th-grade student’s (with an average age of 17.26, SD = 0.73) written historical arguments.²⁸

In sum, previous studies have found that testimonies of hardship are often used in history teaching to enable an affective and authentic learning process which transforms the students’ view of themselves and others, leading to engagement in others far beyond the classroom. However, to the best of our knowledge only two previous studies, both using digital prerecorded testimonies, have investigated the more detailed outcomes of such encounters. In a recent study Haas²⁹ interviewed teachers about their perception of middle- and high school pupils’ learning when working with prerecorded personal stories of hardship. The teachers reported that the pupils, by working with the stories, showed greater historical empathy and understanding, as well as caring more about the issue and people in society at large. Another study found that after listening to digital testimonies of harassment during the Holocaust as part of a larger assignment, the work and reports of 10–11-year-old pupils showed a better understanding of the subject, the importance of responsibility, and active participation in society.³⁰

Although pupil’s texts have been frequently used in educational research,³¹ the use of drawings has expanded as well, where researcher has pointed to how drawing and writing together can provide pupils with opportunities to extend their thinking. For example, scholars³² have suggested that young people’s learning in general increases when they become more engaged – moving from passive to active – via the learning materials and task demands presented to them, where this can include drawing, imagining, and enacting. Drawings can thus promote this engagement – all of which result in higher levels of comprehension and reflection. Moreover, several studies have shown that children’s and young people’s drawings are full of meaning and indirect statements, which are increasingly being used in research to provide insight into children’s thoughts.³³ However, to the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have used drawings as a research tool in order to understand young people’s expressions and comprehension after listening to personal testimonies about the Holocaust.

In the present study, we aim to expand this knowledge by further investigating the details of how children and teenagers make sense of testimonies of hardship as part of their education. The design is primarily descriptive, where our aim is to illustrate how pupils in an educational setting comprehend historically based testimonies and express their understanding, as this has previously not been studied in the Swedish school context. We address this issue by analyzing middle and high school pupils’, between 10 and 16 years of age, immediate expressions and comprehension, conveyed in drawings and writings, after listening to personal testimonies of two Holocaust survivors. We do this by addressing the following specific research questions:

1. What emotions are conveyed in the drawings and texts? Do these differ depending on mode (drawing/text)?

2. What evidence of higher cognitive processing can be found?

Method

Below we first describe the context in which the drawings and texts were collected and how we as researchers were granted access to them (Procedure and materials). This is followed by a description of the analytic procedures (Data analysis). Lastly, we present some basic descriptive information about the drawings and texts included in the study (Descriptive information about the material).

Procedure and materials

Between 2014 and 2019 a married couple who were both Holocaust survivors visited 14 Swedish schools to share their life stories with pupils. The majority of the pupils who took part in these talks were aged 14–16, but in two schools they were 10‒12 years old. The pupils included both boys and girls. We (the authors) did not have access to any case-specific background information or contact information for individual pupils and for that reason the sex and age distributions are unknown. The pupils listened to a joint talk by the married couple as part of their regular curriculum in school. In the first part of this talk, about 90 minutes long, the couple talked about their life and experiences during the Holocaust. This was followed by a session when pupils had the opportunity to ask questions. All the pupils listened to the same talk, with small variations. An example of the talk can be provided through contact with the Swedish Public Television’s archive.³⁴ The pupils were subsequently encouraged to draw pictures and/or write texts to give to the speakers, which was voluntary. The pupils were free to use their mode of choice and no further specific instructions were given. Most of them had access to colored pens or watercolors, while a few only had paper and pencils. After the task, the texts and drawings were given voluntarily by the pupils to the lecturers. The material was the subject of an exhibition at the Living History Forum³⁵ from September 2019 to January 2020, initiated and in collaboration with the lecturers. The authors of the present paper contributed a qualitative analysis³⁶ of the material and the present study is a further development of the previous analysis. When the researchers received the material, it had been digitalized and all direct identifiers (full name) and indirect identifiers (e.g. age, name of city) had been deleted. For this reason, we could not collect full inform consent from the pupils as we had no way of identifying specific individuals. Also, as the material did not include any personal nor sensitive information (e.g. political opinions, religious belief or information about health, sexual life or sexual orientation) there was no need for ethical approval from the Ethics review authority in Sweden. For these reasons, we believe the potential knowledge offered by having access to such a huge amount of ‘found’ data outweighs the potential infringements of the participants privacy. However, in an effort to inform as many pupils and guardians as possible about the project, information about the study was posted on the Living History Forum’s website. We also contacted the headmasters of all 14 schools and asked them to distribute information to the pupils and their guardians via the school’s website. However, as most of the pupils had graduated from the school in question, there is a possibility that this information did not reach them.

Data analysis

The study applied a mixed method exploratory design³⁷ in which qualitative analyses, guided by the research questions, were first conducted separately for drawings and texts. Where pupils had made both texts and drawings, these were analyzed separately. Statistical analyses were then applied to the coded material in order to answer the second part of RQ1. Below is a more detailed description of all steps taken in the analysis.

Qualitative analysis of drawings

In order to create a systematic understanding of the motifs and content of the drawings, a content analysis was performed.³⁸ The analysis started by reviewing 80 randomly selected drawings, which were examined several times to gain an overall understanding of the material. Then, common motifs and themes were identified. A first version of a codebook was drawn up and the first 80 drawings were coded accordingly. Modifications were made continuously during this process: minor themes were merged and clearer distinctions were made between themes to avoid overlaps. When the final version of the codebook was completed, the remaining drawings were coded accordingly. Different categories, themes and motifs could be found in each of the drawings, and these were therefore not mutually exclusive. The analysis of each drawing consisted of three steps. The first involved describing the drawing, without any interpretation, and noting the persons, objects, shapes and colors that were apparent. The next step was to provide a clear and descriptive account of what the drawing represented on a more manifest level. Finally, an interpretation of the content of the drawing was made beyond the manifest level. This meant making an interpretation of the content by including the context in which it was drawn, based on the associations and feelings evoked by the drawing, including any statements that were reflected.

One of the authors coded the drawings, and the other independently rated 75 randomly selected drawings (10% of the total) for reliability coding. The measure of interrater reliability using Cohen’s kappa was 0.78.

Qualitative analysis of texts

A thematic analysis³⁹ of the texts guided by the research questions was performed. The analysis was performed on a semantic level, meaning that we interpreted the words in the text rather than the latent meaning behind the words. The analysis started out with a subset of 50 randomly selected texts (without associated drawing). These texts were read multiple times to get familiarized with the material. After this, the specific research questions were formed. By doing so this early in the process we set out with a clear perspective for the analysis, as multiple ways of analyzing a qualitative material are always possible. This was followed by a line-by-line coding of the 50 first text, by which all meaningful elements related to the research questions were identified and given initial codes. Similar codes were then grouped in broader themes and a first version of the codebook was created. For example, codes describing expressions of sympathy, fascination, admiration, gratefulness, interest, engagement, hope and joy were grouped into the broader theme ‘pleasant emotions,’ whereas codes describing fear, worry, sadness, anger, frustration, chock/surrealness, shame, and guilt were grouped into the broader theme ‘unpleasant emotions.’ After this, the 50 initially selected texts were re-coded in accordance with the codebook. When needed, small changes were made to the codebook to better reflect the data and avoid overlap between themes. When the codebook was finalized the remaining 84 texts (without associated drawing) and 48 texts with a drawing were coded in accordance. No substantial changes to the codebook were needed during this process, but for example, the emotion shame had not appeared earlier and was thus carefully considered when categorized (unpleasant). To avoid overlap with the drawing analysis, some writing on the drawings was excluded. These were texts that only described the drawing’s motif, only cited parts of the Holocaust survivors’ story as part of the drawing, only included single words as part of the drawing (for example the word ‘Jew’ next to a drawing of the Star of David), or only stated that the drawing was a gift. The final analyses were based on 182 texts that varied between 2 and 385 words in length.

One of the authors coded the texts and the other author independently rated 36 randomly selected texts (20% of the total) for reliability coding. The measure of interrater reliability using Cohen’s kappa was 0.92.

Statistical analyses

To address the second part of RQ1, cross tables were created. These were then used in the EXACON procedure, which is built on the Fisher four-field hypergeometric distribution test and identifies which categories in a cross table occur more and less often than statistically expected by chance.⁴⁰

Descriptive information about the material

The material consisted of 699 drawings, 134 texts and 48 combined drawings and texts. Each drawing included one or several motifs. Half of the drawings (n = 373, 50%) included portraits of people, such as images of the speakers as children or adults, soldiers or Jewish people. A third (n = 242, 32%) included political and/or religious symbols, mostly in the form of swastikas and/or Stars of David. Other common motifs were places and environments described in the speakers’ stories, such as concentration camps or the river Danube (which was the site of a specific massacre described; n = 234, 31%). Various objects, such as gas wagons and weapons were also common (n = 231, 31%). A smaller proportion (n = 87, 12%) included an activity or movement, such as someone being shot or people fleeing. Motifs containing other symbols such as heart, sun and flowers were also found in a few of the drawings (n = 48, 6%). A small proportion (n = 36, 5%) of the drawings were coded as abstract, as it was not possible to decipher a clear motif. See Figure 1 for example for each category.

Figure 1. Example of different motifs in the drawings: (1) portraits, (2) political/religious symbols, (3) objects, (4) environments, (5) activities, (6) other symbols, and (7) abstract.

Regarding text style, the majority (n = 127, 70%) were written as letters to or intended dialog with the speakers. A smaller proportion (n = 48, 26%) were monologs without an apparent specific reader in mind. A minority of texts (n = 7, 4%) were primarily a retelling or dramatization of parts of the stories told by the speakers. Regardless of text style, most texts were written in common prose (n = 161, 88%), but a few were written in poetic prose or verse (n = 21, 12%).

Results

Research question 1: what emotions are conveyed in the drawings and texts? Does this differ depending on mode (drawing/text)?

Regarding the emotional content of the drawings and texts, two different main themes were identified, here called pleasant emotions and unpleasant emotions. In the drawings, pleasant emotions (see Figure 2) conveyed a positive or optimistic feeling, such as hope, love, resistance and solidarity. These included drawings of hearts, flowers, and people holding hands, hugging or smiling. Pleasant emotional content also included images conveying a statement, such as distancing oneself from violence and/or Nazism as well as the importance of talking about and remembering the past. Unpleasant emotions (see Figure 2) included feelings such as grief, fear and shock. Examples of drawings conveying these negative emotions included people crying, or being frightened. Unpleasant emotions also included war-related images, such as blood, dead, executions, devastation and captivity.

Figure 2. Example of pleasant (1) or unpleasant (2) emotions, or both (3) expressed in the drawings.

Where the texts are concerned, pleasant emotions were often directed towards the speakers’ story or the speakers themselves. These included feelings of sympathy, fascination, and admiration, as well as gratefulness to the speakers for sharing their story: ‘You seem to be lovely people with nice personalities, although the things you have been through has impacted you.  …  Your job and what you do is really important. Thank you so much.’ Other pleasant emotions were feelings of sparked interest and engagement for the issues discussed, and feelings of hope for the future.

Let no one forget that there are people yet today, who hate and think other people should go away. But we are more, and we will win, so please let no one forget what happened back then. When you and I were children.

Unpleasant emotions conveyed in the texts included feelings of fear, worry and sadness: ‘When you told us what had happened to you, I started to shiver’ and ‘I thought it was tragic. And my eyes teared up.’ Other unpleasant emotions were feelings of chock and surrealness: ‘All I have read, heard, seen and thought of, it has always been so unthinkable, so unreal.  …  I will always know, but [I will] never understand,’ anger and frustration: ‘I am angry that people live with these [experiences]. That everyone is scared of being killed,’ and feelings of collective shame and guilt about what happened during the Holocaust: ‘The Holocaust is a shame of our time on this earth.’

Overall, 83% (n = 616) of all the drawings and 94% (n = 171) of all texts conveyed an emotional content (see Table 1 for emotional content across mode). Statical analyses showed that only unpleasant emotions and no emotions were found in the drawings more often than statistically expected, whereas only pleasant and a mix of pleasant and unpleasant emotions were found less often than statistically expected. The opposite was found for the texts: only pleasant and a mix of pleasant and unpleasant emotions were found more often than statistically expected, and only unpleasant emotions and no emotions were found less often than statistically expected.

Table 1. Descriptive data and results from EXACON analyses for emotional content across mode.

Emotional content	Drawing (n = 746)	Text (n = 182)
	n (%)	n (%)
Unpleasant emotions	471 (63)***^+1.2	24 (13)***^−4.0
Pleasant emotions	94 (13)***^−1.6	97 (53)***^+2.6
Mixed emotions	51 (7)***^−1.6	50 (27)***^+2.5
No emotion	130 (17)***^+1.1	11 (6)***^−2.5

Note: The number next to indication of significant difference shows how many times more (+) and less (−) common this pattern was observed than would be expected from chance alone.

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

Research question 2: what evidence of higher cognitive processing can be found?

Our attempt to analyze higher cognitive processing in the drawings found that higher abstraction, where pupils expressed their own reasoning and conclusions, was rare. However, as we do not know how the pupils reasoned when drawing their pictures, it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions about higher abstraction in the drawings. For that reason, this part of the analysis will focus on the texts only.

Evidence of higher cognitive processing was found in 60% (n = 110) of the texts. These findings could be categorized into two main themes: Personal meaning and Social meaning. Each of these themes and respective subthemes are described below. Multiple elements of higher cognitive processing could be found in the same text; it was, therefore, possible for a text to be coded to both main themes as well as multiple subthemes.

Personal meaning

The theme Personal meaning derived from text elements indicating that pupils reflected over the talk and made some sort of connection between it and their personal experiences. The label personal meaning refers to that the reasoning represented here concerned the students’ personal experience and learning process. Such elements were found in half of the texts (n = 92, 51%) and can be further described in three subthemes: The power of the personal story; Putting myself in someone else’s shoes, and Lessons and insights.

The first subtheme, The power of the personal story, represents texts that described the experience of listening to the personal stories of Holocaust survivors as particularly meaningful, and different from learning about these events in other ways (e.g. reading a textbook). This was found in 21% (n = 39) of the texts. Common expressions were for example that it ‘felt real, like you were there,’ or that it ‘touches you in a deeper sense.’ Some pupils also explained how it felt as if the personal story gave them an additional perspective aside from what they had already learned in school: ‘I have always been particularly interested in World War Two, so it was very interesting to listen to your personal stories. It gave me a different impression of the time.’

The second subtheme, Putting myself in someone else’s shoes, represents texts that included elements of relating to or identifying with the speakers or part of their story. This was found in 23% (n = 42) of the texts. Some texts coded to this theme simply stated that the pupils saw themselves in the position of the speakers. Other pupils made a connection between the stories they heard and specific events from their own life:

You said that your worst memories from those times were that people close to you, even your mom and dad, died. I understand that these are your worst memories. I lost my grandpa not too long ago, and that is the absolute worst thing I have been through.

All first-person retellings or dramatizations of parts of the talk were coded in this subtheme. They indicate that the pupil was processing the story through writing in identification with the speaker. A final aspect of these subthemes was that a small number of texts coded here (n = 9) explicitly described how the pupils, because of the horrors described in the speakers’ story, found it difficult to relate to or identify with them, even though they tried: ‘I can in no way describe how horrible it was, I was not there, I cannot see what they have seen, I can only try to understand.’ These types of statement indicate that the pupils processed what they heard by trying to relate it to their own experiences but came to the conclusion that (at least in this moment) it was very difficult for them to put themselves in the speakers’ shoes.

The third subtheme, Lessons and insights, represents texts in which the pupils said they had learned something from the talk and/or described a specific insight they had made. This was found in 25% (n = 46) of the texts. Common statements concerned having learned new things and having reached a different perspective on the Second World War and the Holocaust: ‘After listening to your perspective I have got a [new] view about what the world has been and is like’; an increased understanding of people who suffer, and/or that the pupils came to realize how good/safe their own lives are: ‘It made me realize what people will do to survive  …  that I should appreciate what I have. It is so unfair that you and many others have been through this.’ Some statements also had a more unique character, for example, new perspectives about how a single individual’s choices can impact life and death situations, or how you should never give up. A few even had a deeply personal character, connecting lessons and insights back to the pupils’ personal relationships, life events or family history. For example:

When you told your story I also thought about your mum. How she really did everything she could so that you would make it. It made me think about my relationship with my own mum, and how important parents are.

About a third of the texts coded to this subtheme simply stated that they had learned something from the speakers’ story without specifying any particular insights.

Social meaning

The theme Social meaning includes texts about reflections about consequences for the world at large. The label social meaning refers to the reasoning represented here going beyond the student’s personal experience and into social consequences and actions. Such elements of social meaning were found in a little less than a third of the texts (n = 51, 28%) and could be further assigned to two subthemes: Connecting past, present, and future and Tell ye your children.

The first subtheme, Connecting past, present, and future, represents texts that draw connections between the stories they listened to and the present day and/or the future of the world. This was found in 15% (n = 28) of the texts. Texts coded to this theme concerned awareness and vigilance about present day xenophobia and that something like the Holocaust could happen again: ‘What happened during the war is terrible and we can never forget the Holocaust, because actually it can happen again.’ However, a few pupils connected past, present and future in other ways, such as how their current place of residence is a safe place or how experiences of the Holocaust are carried over time in a personal or collective memory: ‘A bird is only free once let out of its cage. But the burden and pain are what he carries with his name.’

The second subtheme, Tell ye your children, represents texts that emphasized the importance of never stopping telling people and talking about what happen during the Holocaust. This was found in 21% (n = 38) of the texts. Some pupils said how important it was that the speakers as survivors told their story, while others wrote that they now felt a responsibility to pass the speakers’ story on: ‘Thank you for sharing the horrible things you have experienced. Now it’s my responsibility to pass it on to the next generation.’

Discussion

The aim of the present study was to improve our understanding of how young people comprehend testimonies of hardship as part of their education. The results showed that listening to personal testimonies from Holocaust survivors affects the pupils emotionally and may promote cognitive processes of making meaning about life beyond the classroom. These findings are largely in line with previous research, which has found, for example, that including testimonies of hardship in education can facilitate a complex learning curve of emotional engagement and a new view of the world,⁴¹ and transformative learning theory. However, the results also showed a complexity in pupils’ emotions and cognitive processing which may help us to better understand the detailed effects and possible pitfalls of including testimonies in education about historical trauma. This is discussed in the sections below, followed by a discussion of the implications and limitations of this study.

Expression of emotions after listening to personal testimonies of hardship

The results suggest that personal testimonies of hardship often elicit complex patterns of emotions in pupils. These include gratitude, interest and resistance as well as feelings of discomfort and surrealness. Unpleasant emotions were more likely to feature in the drawings, while the texts often described pleasant or a mix of emotions. Although it is difficult to determine the exact reasons for the difference in emotional content, it might be that the different mode primarily invites expressions of different aspects of processing the speaker’s story. For example, the drawings often depicted concrete images of the stories listened to (e.g. weapons, objects, people who were mentioned) while more abstract aspects were less common. As written language includes shared words, expressions and metaphors for emotions, perhaps a common ground for the conveyance of complex emotions between the writer and the reader already exists when expressing oneself through text. In the act of drawing, on the other hand, a person may focus on distinct images or raw feelings to explore the experience of listening to the testimonies. Although the unpleasant emotional content in the drawings could also have led to positive or mixed emotion meaning making, no firm conclusions about this process can be drawn.

As might be expected, the results showed that personal testimonies of hardship in education have the ability to stir up strong negative emotions among young pupils, as feelings of shock and de-realization were fairly common. Critics have argued that educational content that actively puts the pupil in a position of discomfort is ethically problematic.⁴² Scholars emphasize that when personal testimonies are included in education it is of great importance to do it in an age-appropriate way and provide continued support to take care of any processes that might be awoken among pupils and teachers.⁴³ Unfortunately, because of the lack of background data available in this study, we cannot know if the emotional experiences differed for pupils of different ages or what structure for continued discussion and support was available to them. However, because the results support the notion that personal testimonies can provoke powerful emotions in pupils, it suggests that they should be implemented with care and not without a plan for handling possible lingering negative effects for students as well as teachers.

Cognitive processing after listening to personal testimonies of hardship in a developmental context

Listening to personal testimonies was shown to lead to cognitive processing, in terms of making meaning of the experience. About half of the texts contained elements of personal meaning, for example, elements of identification, lessons and insights. Elements of social meaning, such as connections between past, present, and future, and the importance of passing on the story to future generations, were less common. From a developmental point of view, this is not surprising, as most pupils were in their early to mid-adolescence and the ability to make complex meaning from experiences develops gradually, intertwined with cognitive development, throughout adolescence and into adulthood.⁴⁴ Adolescence is also the prime time for identity formation and self-focus, thus connecting with the speakers through a highly personal sense of meaning could be interpreted as a way of forming personal, identity-defining values.

More complex cognitive processing, going beyond the individual experience, might require additional time, as well as facilitation from teachers. Brooks⁴⁵ suggests that teachers should openly invite students to moral discussions, without giving away ‘all the answers,’ in order to enable the making of connections between past, present and future and help the students not only to see the testimonies as belonging to a distant past. Some pedagogic initiatives featuring such elements have also been evaluated. They show an increase among students in skills such as analyzing evidence, understanding historical cause and effect, and civic efficacy.⁴⁶ In the light of this, the results from the present study suggest that listening to personal testimonies in teaching rather often result in almost immediate efforts to make meaning of the experience on the students’ part, but mainly in a personal context. More complex processing, such as making connections between present and past and seeing consequences for the world at large, was less common. This suggests that for many pupils this might require additional processing time and further pedagogic initiatives, adjusted to their developmental level.

Personal testimonies as a basis for initiating transformative learning

Although it is evident that the pupils were both emotionally and cognitively affected by the personal testimonies they listened to, the results can only provide preliminary evidence about the depth and lasting effects as outlined by transformative learning theory. Even so, the results suggest that the emotional and cognitive comprehension expressed in the drawings and the texts do fit within the scope of transformative learning. The pupils found these testimonies meaningful and both emotionally and thought provoking, which they articulated through both writing and drawing. The reflections made by the pupils suggest that they had integrated what they had listened to into a deeper understanding of themselves and, for some, those around them. For some pupils, listing to the testimonies also led to gaining new values or deepening and widening beliefs already present. The unpleasant emotions evoked may have had the function of a disorienting dilemma,⁴⁷ where the details of the hardships in the personal testimonies could have sparked an inner conversation and formed new ideas. As transformative learning has been defined by its irreversible nature⁴⁸ with regard to both time and context, more longitudinal studies across domains (e.g. school, home, interpersonal relationships) are needed to provide evidence of transformative learning.

Limitation, strengths and implications

The present study is based on secondary⁴⁹ data not initially collected for research purposes. This poses a number of limitations, such as no access to background data on the individual pupils providing the material and no information about the pedagogic integration of the talks in the different schools. These limitations also restricted the analyses, especially for the drawings, as we were not able to discuss and ask about the thought process behind the motifs with the pupils, as has been advised in previous literature.⁵⁰ Also, as this is primarily a descriptive study, the results give us information about what the pupils drew and wrote and via this how they comprehended the testimony they listened to. The results can be used in future research, for example, designing an educational intervention or longitudinal study to investigate long-term effects. Despite some limitations, the use of secondary data can also be seen as a strength. One such strength is the large quantity of available drawings and texts. Another strength with the study is that it was conducted in the participants everyday school environment, thus providing an opportunity to study the outcome of an organically developed initiative on the part of the speakers, which may be fairly close to how many young people actually come into contact with and learn from stories of hardship during primary education.

The direct and clear power of personal testimonies in education, as shown by the results, often provoke emotional reactions and interest in the matter at hand. Listening to other people’s life stories also seems to open up an opportunity for the pupils to enhance their own reasoning in personal development as well as their engagement in others and the world at large. Regarding the latter, however, it should be noted that for many pupils this progress may depend on their developmental level and require additional time, reflection and adult-facilitated conversation around the experience of listening to such stories. Furthermore, the strong emotional reactions found in the work of many pupils suggest that when using personal testimonies of hardship in education, continued access to support for pupils is advisable. All in all, we can conclude that personal testimonies can be a powerful and thought-provoking way of teaching about historical trauma, when used in a well informed and planned way, and with great care and respect for the pupils and teachers, as well as the people sharing their stories.

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the Living History Forum for sharing their material with us and to all the pupils who contributed drawings and texts. We also thank the speakers for sharing their stories with the pupils.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Azadé Azad

Azadé Azad has a PhD in developmental psychology, and is also a certified teacher. She is currently a principal investigator at the Department of Psychology at Stockholm university and working as research leader at The National Board of Institutional Care. Her research focus on qualitative methods mainly within the field of developmental aspects of delinquency and children's and youth's experiences of violence.

Johanna Carlsson

Johanna Carlsson has a PhD in psychology, and is also a licensed clinical psychologist. She is currently a senior lecturer and researcher at the Department of Psychology at University of Gothenburg. Johanna does research within developmental psychology, currently mainly focused on different aspects of identity and narrative development.

Notes

1 Ascher, “Thinking the Unthinkable,” 1–13.

2 Erikson, Identity, 51–107.

3 Felman and Laub, Testimony: Crises, 1–56.

4 Schnitzler, “Success Factors,” 834–43.

5 Mitchell, “Towards Transformative,” 96–168.

6 Mezirow, Learning as Transformation.

7 Clabough et al., “Digital Storytelling,” 131–46.

8 Ibid.

9 Mezirow, Learning as Transformation.

10 Mezirow, “Perspective Transformation,” 100–10.

11 Mezirow, Learning as Transformation.

12 Dutt-Doner, Allen, and Campanaro, “Understanding the Impact,” 257–65.

13 Aalai, “College Student,” 209–30.

14 Meerts-Brandsma and Sibthorp, “Considering Transformative,” 7–28.

15 Nygren, “Thinking and Caring,” 113–35.

16 Brooks, “Connecting the Past,” 65–95.

17 Lindquist, “Guidelines for Teaching,” 215–21; and Short, “Holocaust Education,” 119–29.

18 Richler-Friedman, “Teaching About Trauma,” 109–25.

19 Clabough et al., “Digital Storytelling,” 131–46.

20 Egan, “Education,” 60–74.

21 Hållander, Pedagogical Possibilities.

22 Felman and Laub, Testimony: Crises, 75–92.

23 Mierwald, Lehmann, and Brauch, “Writing About,” 163–84.

24 Blutinger, “Bearing Witness,” 269–79.

25 Levy and Sheppard, “Difficult Knowledge,” 365–87.

26 Maynes, Pierce, and Laslett, Telling Stories.

27 Felman and Laub, Testimony: Crises; and Simon et al., “Witness as Study,” 285–322.

28 Mierwald, Lehmann, and Brauch, “Writing About,” 163–84.

29 Haas, “Bearing Witness,” 86–103.

30 Carnes, Street, and Wiedeman, “Using Holocaust,” 21–40.

31 Ibid.

32 Chi and Wylie, “The ICAP,” 219–43; and Fiorella and Mayer, “Eight Ways,” 717–41.

33 Horstman et al., “Methodological Issues,” 1001–11.

34 https://kontakt.svt.se/guide/kontakt.

35 The Living History Forum is a Swedish public authority founded in 2003. Its task is to strengthen values of democracy, tolerance and human rights, using historical knowledge as a starting point. Collecting and spreading knowledge about the Holocaust has been one of the authority’s main focuses from the start. For example, they produced the book Tell ye your children, which was distributed free of charge to all households in Sweden. https://www.levandehistoria.se/english.

36 Azad, Azadé and Johanna Carlsson. Barns blick på Förintelsen – en kvalitativ analys av texter och teckningar skapade av skolelever efter att de tagit del av personliga vittnesmål från Förintelsen [Children’s view of the Holocaust – a qualitative analysis of pupils’ texts and drawings after listening to personal testimonies from the Holocaust]. Forum för Levande Historia: Stockholm, 2019.

37 Creswell and Clark, Designing and Conducting.

38 Krippendorff, Content Analysis.

39 Braun and Clarke, “Using Thematic Analysis,” 77–101.

40 Bergman, Magnusson, and El Khouri, Studying Individual, 125–34.

41 Haas, “Bearing Witness,” 86–103; and Carnes, Street, and Wiedeman, “Using Holocaust,” 21–40.

42 Zembylas, “Pedagogy of Discomfort,” 163–74; and Hållander, “On the Verge,” 467–80.

43 Blutinger, “Bearing Witness,” 269–79.

44 Habermas and Reese, “Getting a Life,” 172–201; and McLean and Lilgendahl, “Narrative Identity,” 418–32.

45 Brooks, “Connecting the Past,” 65–95.

46 Barr et al., “A Randomized,” 1–52.

47 Mezirow, “Perspective Transformation,” 100–10.

48 Hoggan, “Transformative Learning,” 57–75.

49 Thorne, “Secondary Analysis,” 263–79; and Yardley et al., “Ethical Issues,” 102–13.

50 Einarsdottir, Dockett, and Perry, “Making Meaning,” 217–32.