The persistence of displacement crises, enduring conflicts, and unstable sociopolitical contexts underscores an urgent demand for education that fosters positive peace. This concept extends beyond negating direct violence to encompass the active cultivation of societal frameworks that encourage empathy, dialogue, and enduring nonviolent relationships (Bajaj, 2008; Galtung, 1969). In borderland and marginalized contexts, both displaced and host communities experience overlapping forms of trauma caused by violence, loss, and chronic insecurity, which shape learners’ sense of safety, identity, and belonging in the classrooms (Betancourt et al., 2013; Brabeck et al., 2014; Fazel et al., 2012). Despite growing awareness that trauma profoundly affects participation and relationship-building (Perry, 2006), trauma-informed pedagogy remains limited in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) settings, where emotional vulnerability often intersects with linguistic risks. A critical perspective demands that these experiences be understood within historical and institutional power structures that shape whose voices are legitimized in educational spaces (Apple, 2013; Giroux, 2011; Fairclough, 2003).

Conventional peace education often presumes emotionally regulated learners and politically neutral classrooms (Salomon, 2002; Davies, 2017), assumptions that collapse in contexts of instability. As critical pedagogy reminds us, classrooms are ideological spaces where dominant norms are either reproduced or resisted (Freire, 1994; Giroux, 2011). Trauma, viewed as a relational and embodied disruption of safety (Perry, 2006; van der Kolk, 2014), undermines attention, memory, and social regulation which are key foundations of learning. Hence, educators must challenge deficit-based discourses that belittle marginalized students (Fairclough, 2003; Zembylas, 2018).

EFL classrooms can serve as transformative spaces for peacebuilding, where language becomes both an emotional and communicative bridge. Through scaffolding, empathy, and dialogic engagement, students can find inner peace and develop relational safety (Amerstorfer, 2021). Yet, even communicative and humanistic methods may reproduce hegemonic linguistic norms that marginalize minority voices (Pennycook, 2001; Norton, 2013). To counter this, narrative, reflective, and strength-based approaches grounded in critical awareness support self-expression, cultural recognition, and emotional regulation (Mason, 2021; Midgette & González, 2023).

Positioning hope as a collective, discursive practice rather than a personal trait (Freire, 1994; Zembylas, 2018), this study situates teachers as mediators of recognition and inclusion, particularly in multilingual, marginalized contexts. By fostering storytelling, reflective dialogue, and empathy, trauma-informed peace pedagogy not only enhances language acquisition but also nurtures belonging, safety, and social connection (Pappamihiel et al., 2022; Birch & Nasser, 2017). The study contributes to the emerging field of peace and trauma-integrated English language teaching by demonstrating how EFL classrooms can be reimagined as sites of nonviolence, critical hope, and relational healing.

By applying a design-based research (DBR) approach (Barab & Squire, 2009), this study integrates trauma-informed and critical peace education within an EFL context, grounded in Schön’s (2017) reflective practitioner model. Introducing an 11-week trauma-informed peace curriculum for seventh-grade students, it addresses the lack of empirically grounded and context-responsive models in peace-oriented EFL teaching. The study follows a critical peace framework that confronts how classroom discourse normalizes exclusion, silencing, and emotional misrecognition (Bajaj, 2008; Zembylas & Bekerman, 2013) throıugh trauma-informed principles (SAMHSA, 2014).

This study adopted a design-based research (DBR) methodology to examine how a trauma-informed peace education curriculum could be developed, implemented, and refined within an EFL classroom located in a historically marginalized border region of Türkiye. DBR was selected because it enables the investigation of pedagogical interventions within authentic educational settings while remaining responsive to sociocultural, political, and material constraints (Barab & Squire, 2009). The research design was further informed by Schön’s (2017) reflective practitioner model, positioning the teacher-researcher as a reflexive actor whose pedagogical decisions and assumptions were continuously interrogated throughout the research process. The study was conducted in a public middle school in Suruç, Şanlıurfa, with 22 seventh-grade students (11 girls and 11 boys, aged 12). All participants were bilingual speakers of Turkish and Kurdish, resonating the multilinguality of the area. While no students were identified with learning disabilities, the school context was characterized by uneven literacy development, socioeconomic disadvantages, and long-standing structural marginalization. These contextual conditions were treated not as background variables but as integral to understanding students’ educational experiences and classroom interactions. An 11-week trauma-informed peace education curriculum was collaboratively designed by two researchers prior to implementation. The curriculum integrated EFL objectives with trauma-informed principles such as safety, trust, emotional regulation, and empowerment (SAMHSA, 2014), alongside critical peace education’s emphasis on power, recognition, and relational coexistence (Bajaj, 2008; Zembylas & Bekerman, 2013). Lessons were implemented in weekly 40-minute sessions and included structured activities focusing on emotional literacy, narrative expression, empathy, listening, cooperation, and peaceful conflict resolution. Data collection prioritized the discursive enactment of peace and trauma-informed pedagogy. Sources included classroom interactions, student written reflections, classroom artefacts, teacher field notes, observations and weekly reflective meetings between researchers. Data were analyzed using critical discourse analysis (CDA), informed by the Discourse-Historical Approach (Fairclough, 2003; Wodak & Meyer, 2016). Analysis focused on interactional patterns, lexical choices, positioning practices, and recurring discursive shifts related to participation, emotional expression, and relational norms. Ethical considerations were foregrounded throughout the study, with informed consent, voluntary participation, and ongoing sensitivity to students’ emotional safety guiding all research procedures.

This study demonstrates that integrating trauma-informed and critical peace education within an EFL classroom does not merely add peace-related content but fundamentally reorganizes the discursive conditions of learning. Across the 11-week intervention, students increasingly conceptualized peace not as a regulation or external authority, but as a relational practice sustained through care, listening, emotional recognition, and collective responsibility. These findings support the central argument that trauma-informed peace education operates at the level of everyday classroom discourse, reshaping how participation, voice, and belonging are negotiated. Three interconnected discursive shifts were particularly noticeable; peace as relational safety rather than behavioral control, emotional and bodily awareness as classroom knowledge, and listening as moral agency rather than a skill. Students’ reflections illustrate how trauma-informed pedagogical practices legitimized emotional plurality and difference, enabling learners to frame emotions and bodily sensations as shared resources for coexistence rather than as disruptions. Participation expanded beyond verbal performance to include reflective writing, embodied awareness, and collaborative meaning-making, challenging deficit-oriented interpretations often applied to marginalized, multilingual learners. The findings highlight the ethical significance of care and recognition in language education. Students repeatedly indicated that they felt heard and valued for their willingness to engage, communicate, and collaborate. The statement “Our teacher cares about us. The others were teaching English too, but this teacher cares” encapsulates this shift, reframing care as integral to pedagogical engagement, not as an affective factor. In this sense, peace emerged not as an abstract ideal but as something co-produced through everyday classroom practices (Bajaj, 2008). While context-specific, the study contributes through analytic generalization by showing how trauma-informed peace education is discursively enacted in an EFL classroom. It offers transferable insights for marginalized and conflict-affected contexts, demonstrating that EFL classrooms can function as sites of everyday peacebuilding where nonviolence, dignity, and hope are cultivated through intentional pedagogical practice.

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