At least one in four children from birth to 18 in the United States has experienced one or more traumatic events. Early exposure to trauma impacts brain development and can have lasting negative influence on a child's physical, behavioral, and mental health. Trauma-responsive schools support educators in recognizing signs of trauma and mitigating its impact on student learning and development. Using trauma-informed instructional practices (TIIP), educators create instructional scaffolds and learning environments that provide trauma-affected students “buffering protection” with “stable, responsive relationships”
In the post-pandemic education landscape, students’ learning and wellness needs are greatly intensified. It is incumbent upon teacher education programs to advance instructional practices that are responsive to the behavioral and academic challenges of trauma-exposed learners. Preservice teachers (PTs) must be prepared to integrate TIIP in their administration of the teaching-learning cycle, classroom structure, and routines.
Trauma-informed Instructional Practices (TIIP) mitigate the negative impact of trauma on student learning and development. Using TIIP, teachers establish positive student relationships and classroom structures that provide cognitive, social, and emotional support for learning. This may include providing instructional support for reducing cognitive load and increasing attention. It may also include scaffolds for regulating negative emotions, coping with anxiety, and maintaining positive peer relations.
TIIP focuses not only on supporting cognition, but also the intra-personal (self-management skills) and inter-personal skills. TIIP encompasses a generalized set of cognitive scaffolds, supports for social-emotional learning, tips for building positive teacher-student relationships, strategies for deescalating trauma responses. In practice, there is no single uniform instructional design model for implementing T IIP within the teaching-learning cycle.
Being a trauma-informed educator involves recognizing signs and symptoms of trauma, hypothesizing cognitive/social/emotional supports, and discerning which combination of instructional supports produces the best results. Teachers are susceptible to vicarious trauma, secondary trauma, and compassion fatigue that result in them feeling overwhelmed, burdened, and in need of support. In doing so, educators approach trauma-induced barriers to learning “through an equity and inclusive education lens, rather than an individual deficits-oriented lens”
Teachers struggle to balance staying emotionally distant with becoming too emotionally involved and having the emotional burden impacting their lives outside the classroom. It is vital that teacher preparation programs provide practice-based learning experiences that develop their self-efficacy and resilience for imparting TIIP. When teachers believe they can be successful, they are more likely to persevere through challenges.
Teachers with high self-efficacy may demonstrate commitment and effort in adopting approaches such as TIIP to support a diverse range of students. Resilience is multifaceted. It includes building and sustaining supportive relationships (personal/professional support networks), maintaining wellbeing and positive outlook in the wake of difficulty, as well as maintaining motivation and regulating emotion during repeated setbacks.
TIIP incorporates many areas where teachers are most tested in developing resilience and self-efficacy. These include being proactive with classroom management, de-escalating disruptive student behaviors, differentiating instruction, meeting needs of disadvantaged learners, and coping with a heavy workload and lack of time. Resilience can be developed with tools for managing task complexity.
Tait (2008) suggested that resilience and self-efficacy can be developed through case-based instruction in which PTs respond to challenging teaching situations. In order to better prepare PTs for supporting trauma-affected learners, it is important that teacher preparation programs structure opportunities for PTs to practice TIIP in a manner that promotes self- efficacy and resilience-building.
Learners engage in an iterative cycle of providing interpretive explanations of the problem. There are two types of case-based instruction approaches. A goal-based case presents a real-world scenario and places learners in a professional role in which they are required to achieve a goal. The other type of case utilizes a design-based scenario. Activities are organized around building a product or completing a project. TIIP might engage PTs in recognizing signs of a trauma affected learner, infer causes and effects of the student’s trauma-responses, and make recommendations for behavioral, cognitive, and environmental supports.
What is designed becomes an artifact of one’s learning, a representation of applied knowledge and skills acquired in-situ. A design-based case focused on applying TIIP might guide PTs in the development and implementation of an intervention plan for supporting a trauma-affected learner. Several features of case-based instruction may support the development of self-efficacy and resilience.
Case-based reasoning approaches provide tools for collaborative problem solving. With these tools, it is possible for PTs to develop a sense of self-efficacy and resiliency. In a case-based approach, learners’ failure explanations contribute to reformulation of the problem and development of mastery learning orientations.
When teachers’ expectations for implementing TIIP fail, they want to explain what happened so that they can gain perspective and re-strategize their approach. A well-designed case will embed prompts for reflective reasoning that heighten the agency of the problem solver. Guided reflection helps learners connect information and variables affecting the case to discern patterns of cause-effect to form an integrated problem-solution narrative (Riesbeck & Schank, 1989; Tawfik & Keene, 2013). Structured opportunities for reflective learning is yet another feature of case-based instruction that may enhance self-efficacy and resilience.
Teachers wanted to know if case-based instructional scenarios focused on trauma-affected learners had any significant impact on PTs' self-efficacy toward classroom management, instructional strategies, student engagement, and their own personal resilience. The study was published in the journal Teaching and Learning in the Context of Trauma.
This project attempts to address the following questions through a quantitative analysis of the candidates' growth. The participants were 26 pre-service teachers (PTs) who took part in a four-and-a-half-week study abroad in London, England. All PTs were from the same Midwestern private university in their third or fourth year of a 4-year teacher preparation program. Twenty-five of the participants were female, and one was male. All were between 18-22 years of age and studying to be early childhood (grades pk-5) or intervention specialist (grades k-12) teachers.
During the project, PTs registered to take two of three offered courses. All participants (n=26) chose a course on educating diverse student populations in inclusive settings. 16 chose one on children's literacy (control group) and eight chose a special topics course focused on developing trauma-informed instructional practices (treatment group) The treatment group of eight PTs examined TIIP through a case-based instructional approach.
The instructor assisted the PTs in narrowing the case focus to a specific situation with the student that had perplexed them and could serve as a case for identifying symptoms of trauma for relating TIIP. Examples of cases they selected from their prior field experiences included a withdrawn middle schooler whose parents were getting a divorce; a child struggling with emotional regulation; and an autistic teen triggered by touch, noises, and transitions between activities. An example of one of the case scenarios presented for analysis follows: Each morning James arrives at school we never know what he will be feeling like. Some days, like most kids, he is excited and wants to see his friend. However, most days tend to be frustrating for him.
James' parents work long hours at their jobs at the local hospital. James and his siblings get up early, eat a quick breakfast, and are headed to before-care around 6AM. When his dad drops him off, he tends to be more relaxed and transitions into the school routine without much issue. When it is his mother, he gets angry and acts out. It is mostly on these days, when things don't go his way, we see him say whatever his is thinking (most often negative comments) and defy any adult. The behavior is most extreme after being dropped of at school. The PTs, having gathered information and analyzed the case during the first phase of the inquiry, now poses it as a problem
In the iteration of the case analysis, the PTs draw upon their own prior knowledge that they have gathered from their own inquiries into trauma-informed practices. To measure the effect of this case-based approach, all participants electronically completed the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) and the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10) on separate occasions before traveling abroad. While the surveys were considered part of the course, participation in the research project was voluntary, and the university's Institutional Review Board granted approval.
The TSES measures self-efficacy through a self-rating 24-item Likert scale. It has been used extensively to measure teacher efficacy. A factor analysis for construct validity was conducted, and it has published reliabilities of 0.91 (instructional strategies), 0.90 (classroom management), and 0.87 (student engagement)
It is used to identify a person’s ability to respond to setbacks and “bounce back.” The instrument has extensive psychometric research to establish validity and reliability. It can be used to measure growth in resilience over just a few weeks (Davidson JRT, 2022). On the final day of the courses, all participants again electronically completed both the CD-RISC-10 and TSES (Tschannen-Mornan & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001; Swan et al., 2011).
This study examined whether case-based instructional scenarios focused on trauma-affected learners impacted PTs' self-efficacy toward classroom management, instructional strategies, student engagement, and their own personal resilience. Results indicated that all participants, as well as the control and treatment groups independently, made statistically significant gains in overall self- efficacy. There were no significant differences though in a comparison between the control or treatment groups.
Both groups made significant gains on the TSES but neither group made significantly greater gains. The results of a dependent sample t-tests (p < 0.05) reveal significant increases in general efficacy scores for all participants (t(622) = 21.42, p <.001), as well as the control and treatment groups. All groups also madesignificant gains in each of the three subtests of classroom management, instructional strategies, and student engagement.
Results for Q2 in whether there is a difference in pre and post self-efficacy scores between those receiving case-based TIIP and those that did not (control group, N =16) are detailed in Table 2. The results for Q3 are also detailed in table 2.
The results of a t-Test of Two Samples Assuming Unequal Variances indicate that both the pre (t(337) = 6.95, p <.001) and post ( t(430) = 8.27, p =.001), scores were significantly different. In both instances, the control group scored higher, but the resulting change in scores between the two groups was not significantly different, according to the study. These results were consistent in general efficacy and for the three subtests.
The results indicated that while both groups made significant increases in self-efficacy, there were no statistical differences in the results. Table 2 shows the comparison of Pre and Post Scores Between the Control and Treatment Groups. The results indicate that while the Control group made significant Increases in Selfefficacy and Student Engagement, there was no statistical difference between the two groups in the pre- and post-test results.
The control group made greater gains in general efficacy than the treatment group. The treatment group made a more significant gain on the CD-RISC than the control group. All participants, and the control and treatment groups, had statistically significant gains from the pre to post scores. In comparing pre and post scores, the pretest results did not indicate a significant difference, but the post-tests did.
There was no significant difference in resilience between the two groups at the start of the program. While both groups made significant gains, the treatment groups' gains were significantly greater. Table 3 shows the results of Q1 in terms of the impact of case based TIIP on candidates' resilience. The results of a dependent sample t-test (p < 0.05) reveal significant increases between the pre and post scores for all participants (t(257) = 7.57, p <.001) as well as both the control and treatment groups.
All participants, the control and treatment groups, had statistically significant increases in the pre and post-scores on the CD-RISC-10. The results of a t-Test of Two Samples Assuming Unequal Variances indicate that the pre-test score (t(145) =.616, p =.538) between the two groups was not significantly different, but the post test scores ( t(213) = 4.08, p <.001) were significantly different.
There was no significant difference in resilience between the two groups at the start of the program, but there was a significant difference after the program. The treatment group made statistically more significant gains in the pre to post scores than the control group. In terms of self-efficacy for teaching, as measured by the TSES, participants made significant gains over the course of theprogram.
The researchers had expected to see greater gains in teaching efficacy from the treatment group compared to the control group. Both groups made significant gains regardless of the content, indicating that trauma-informed instruction using a case study approach may potentially increase a teacher's self-efficacy, similar to a traditional academic content-driven course. The sample size of this study was too small to determine any conclusion and indicates an area for further research.
In terms of self-reported resilience, as determined through the CD-RISC-10, both groups again made significant gains, but the treatment group made greater statistically significant gains. There was no significant difference between the pretest scores between the two groups, but there was in the post-test scores. This difference may indicate that using a case-based, trauma-informed approach may help better facilitate a PT's overall self-resilience. This finding is important as Sharifian et al. (2022) identified that teacher training programs are essential in helping teachers develop protective factors that increase their resiliency through practice-based learning.
Although this study did not examine the instructional design features that resulted in resiliency gains, we point to two features that we believe set conditions for resilience building. The first feature is prolonged inquiry into a situated problem of practice that can serve as a locus of resilience building and that is complex enough for critically framing professional skillsets, dispositions, discourse practices, and interpersonal relations. PTs in the treatment group recalled a situation from a prior field experience that involved a trauma-affected student that had left them with lingering uncertainties and concerns about how to support the student. The situation each PT identified became the locus. of inquiry into TIIP and the source material from which they developed a case scenario to solve with their peers.
Using the perspectives gained from phase 1 to develop a case scenario for others to solve; Phase 3). Presenting the case to peers and engaging them in isolating the underlying issue and addressing them from a TIIP perspective. The other feature we believe was important for optimizing resilience building is a collaborative learning environment that honors the sharing of challenges and failure stories around the cases presented. PTs fostered collaboration in sharing failure explanations that initiated new avenues of thought and application of T IIP.
Case-based instruction provides sustained inquiry into authentic problems of practice. However, instructional designers will need to expand learning tools and cognitive scaffolds for problem solving to include tools for building and modeling resilience. These might include tools that map to the different facets of resilience building. For example, to leverage personal and contextual resources, tools can be provided for reflecting and discussing with peers, mentors and teachers.
For promoting self-regulation and management of task complexity, tools for goal setting, time management, help-seeking, reframing failure, and managing emotions can be integrated into the learning environment. More research is needed to discern how these and other scaffolds may be embedded within case-based instruction and used to build PTs resilience. In doing so, PTs may be more prepared to model resilience building and support within the teaching-learning cycle. These findings contribute to the research in providing PTs with a cased based TIIP approach may have the potential to increase self-efficacy to a similar degree and increase resilience to a greater degree than a traditional academic content-driven course.
This study indicated the benefit of implementing a TIIP case study approach to promote self-efficacy and resiliency in PTs. Limitations Further research would benefit from using a larger sample size for both the control and treatments group. While not all treatment group members had taken the children's literature course provided to the control group, some had. This does not negate the gains made but may indicate a greater maturity in the treatment group, which may impact scores.
Designing a similar study using a mixed method approach that incorporated the PTs’ voices could also further the research into trauma-informed practices and building resilience. The TIIP case study approach better facilitated the “support and encouragement” to develop PTs protective factors in this research project.
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