This paper proposes a design for a trauma-informed learning community for faculty and staff (herein called educators) The TLC for Educational Professionals aims to support and respect the resilience of all faculty and Staff in higher education. It aims to deliver a sense of belonging through the communal facilitation of trauma- informed curricula, connection, and collaboration for isolated and disheartened educators. Through a structure for community, identity, meaning, and practice, this educator learning community aims to provide a shared positive, life-giving, and enriching environment.
The COVID-19 pandemic has pressed higher education leaders to create ambiguous, ever-evolving policies over semesters of uncertainty and disorder. For university faculty and staff to survive and thrive in the face of such ambiguous factors, a collaborative process to support an educator’s sense of belonging and mental health should be developed. Research continually highlights that stress among higher education faculty and Staff contributes to overall dissatisfaction and can lead to burnout.
A resilient educator learning community would provide a collaborative opportunity for colleagues to recognize how the experiences of all faculty and staff are connected. The development of self-worth and self-esteem and the chance to make constructive contributions to their institution’s learning community are all essential for educators' emotional well-being. A new sense of affirmative connection will provide a positive emotional balance of resilience and mental health for faculty, staff, and student success.
This conceptual paper provides a foundation for understanding how the LCPF phases provide the framework for trauma-informed education. In the analysis phase, the educators should establish a distinct objective for their learning community. Leverage communication to help forge intentional connections to cultivate community. This collaborative concept can provide institutions of higher education with a model for how a trauma- informed learning community can support the need for building a supportive work environment focused on safety, empowerment, community, and meaning.
The cultivation of a safe learning environment connected through trust-building and transparent relationships with and among educators is the recommended first step in developing the TLC for Educational Professionals. It is not surprising that higher rates of stress, burnout, low morale, and job discontent have been reported by college students, teachers, and staff in all areas of American higher education since the onset of COVID. Uncertainty, isolation, and the loss of meaning continue to be emotional triggers that all members of the higher education academy have continued to combat since March 2020 (Imad, 2021, p. 7).
University faculty and staff have been facing a prolonged state of stress on their physical, emotional, and social existences. This increased exhaustion from actions due to COVID and the mental health pandemic has disconnected faculty from their original motivations for joining the higher education community. Still, the stress and chronic overwork have seemingly been accepted as ordinary in many institutions across the nation, which are eager to return to what “once was’ (Gaard & Ergüner-Tekinalp, 2022)
The American Council on Education polled college and university presidents to better understand how they and their institutions were handling the COVID-19 pandemic. What emerged as the most pressing issue in the first (February 2021) and second (April 2021) distributions of survey results was students’ mental health. Workshops, videos, and toolkits for faculty and staff to help support stronger trauma-informed learning environments for student success are needed.
In most cases, the trauma-informed strategy is for teaching students or engaging classroom spaces for student use. Rarely are the tools and systems in place to help faculty and staff members foster a safe and connected learning environment. The lack of intentional connection between educators has become nationally pervasive and continues to elevate the necessary need for academic interdependence in stressful times. Trustworthy communication and cultivating community will help to connect how trauma- informed approaches can support the purposeful development of a trauma-sensitive faculty/staff learning community.
The TLC for Educational Professionals aims to tackle professional obstacles and reduce the uncertainty faculty and staff stakeholders are feeling. The design phase aims to determine what kind of learning community is needed, with a focus on membership, delivery, duration, and disciplinary formats. Step 2: LCPF Design Phase + Trauma-Informed Education Strategy (Empowerment): Reduce uncertainty to help foster a sense of safety.
The TLC for Educational Professionals aims to foster safe connections and self-advocacy among faculty and staff on a campus. The design process should focus on balancing regular communication with interested campus colleagues around the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the community. The curriculum of a topic-based learning community is designed to meet a particular campus teaching and learning need, concern, or opportunity.
The TLC is focused on trust and combating educators’ feelings of isolation and stress (Cox & Richlin, 2004). This specific faculty learning community, in collaboration with trauma-informed educational practices, should be designed as a face-to-face cohort-based community. The TLC will be long-term, open to all faculty and staff, and flexible enough for all colleagues to come and go as they feel they need the support.
The TLC for Educational Professionals design should be communicated through all university educator channels. In the early communication to faculty and staff, a first draft structure of goals and outcomes should be shared that focuses on the "team aspect" of support. This communication should highlight how the design of the TLC connects trauma-informed educational practices to faculty learning community best practices. It should create a framework for assisting educators in reaffirming their purpose, reforming deliberate relationships, and reconnecting with the specific meaning and community that sparked their initial purpose to be educators.
The educators leading the early design of the TLC should also consider providing examples of pedagogical approaches that could be explored within the learning community. For example, a biweekly, 8-session TLC for Educational Professionals schedule aligned with trauma-informed educational practices could introduce the strategies around “reducing uncertainty to help foster a sense of safety” in the first session. By simply introducing evidence-based strategies such as gratitude journals, “done” lists, and focusing on the process versus the outcomes of positive mental health, the educators can model through transparent communication the building, development, and core values that are expected within this learning community (Cox & Richlin, 2004).
The LCPF Implementation Phase is where culture is developed, core values and norms are determined, as are policies, roles, and resources. The TLC for Educational Professionals will provide faculty and staff with consistent professional and personal development days or hours so they can design a growth and learning culture for themselves. The previous phases of analysis and design implement very specific trauma-informed practices to build trust and provide choices to combat the potential ambiguity that may surround such an ambitious educator learning community. At the implementation phase, early stakeholders have been identified, and the initial community experiences have begun.
Teachers should take the initiative to discover the shared desires and motivations surrounding their trauma. To implement the collaborative teaching and learning structure for the TLC, educators should consider using Lombardi’s emerging “construction of understanding” framework for active learning possibilities. This person-to-person approach provides an operationalized model that gives educators in the community control of their learning through active reflection and agency.
The “construction of understanding” framework aims to implement a system of dialog to help educators find meaning in their work as they might connect to trauma-informed educational practices. To understand how Lombardi’s system might work within the developing TLC for Educational Professionals structure, compare traditional learning, which takes place in a model where learning funnels through the teacher, or head of the class. The faculty and staff can explore the different ways they can engage with trauma- informed educational practices while providing the agency to “intentionally make things happen by one's actions” (Badura, 2001; Lombardi & Shipley, 2021, p. 15).
The “construction of understanding” framework aims to implement a system of dialog to help educators find meaning in their work as they might connect to trauma-informed educational practices. The system provides communication connections between all educators while building self-efficacy and assisting in their commitment to their own personal wellness and growth. Giving educators options and empowering them to speak up can remind them that their diverse experiences benefit everyone's learning (Iman, 2022). Educators will benefit from this structured process for active, peer-to-peer learning that provides great empathy towards their colleague’s current state of mental health. It gives the faculty and staff a sense of personal power and helps them work toward getting back to a healthier mindset.
The TLC for Educational Professionals should not demand any experience in clinical psychology or social work to use this trauma-informed approach. The learning community should be human-centered, focused on the well-being and care of their faculty and staff colleagues. The final phase of the LCPF asks the community to decide what evidence will be provided, what assessment format will be applied, and the general design of the program evaluation report.
The short-term and long-term learning community goals should be identified and then mapped to trauma-informed educational practices. The TLC for Educational Professional’s learning outcomes and goals (see Table 1) would be influenced by a similar learning community developed at California State University San Marcos. Once created, the current educators within the TLC should communicate with the larger campus community of educators as a way to continuously communicate the invitation of the learning community to all faculty and staff members.
Table 1: Outcomes, Practices and Strategies for the TLC for Educational Professionals. Outcome Trauma-Informed Educational Strategy (Meaning) Initial Support Strategies. Demonstrate an understanding of how trauma can affect faculty and staff behaviors and responses within and outside the university setting. Reduce uncertainty to help foster a sense of safety. Make intentional connections to cultivate community.
Help faculty and staff identify short-term goals that connect to their long-term “why’ Integrate trauma informed care practices into university policy and practices to reduce re-traumatization. Reaffirm or re-establish goals to create meaning. Leverage communication to help forge trust. Reframe obstacles to reaffirm meaning and purpose. Remind that small actions can make a big difference.
Carello (2020) has developed seven trauma-informed principles in support of students’ trauma. These principles can be adapted to evaluate key outcomes of TLC educators focused on trust, connection, and educators’ mental health (see Table 2): Table 2 Draft adaptation of Trauma-Informed Teaching and Learning Environments: Self-Assessment Questions (Carello, 2020)
How do you handle dilemmas between role clarity and accomplishing multiple tasks? To what extent do educators share common goals and share power? Is faculty and staff accountability or impairment handled in a way that conveys “What’s happened to the educator?”
Do educators get clear, consistent, and appropriate messages about their rights and responsibilities? To what extent are policies and practices responsive to issues of privilege and oppression and respectful of diverse individual and collective experiences and identities? Resilience, Growth, and Change: Do learning and feedback emphasize faculty and staff growth more than student deficits? Conclusion According to research, trauma-informed teaching and learning increase faculty and Staff capacity and experience, which lowers attrition while also reducing burnout (University of Michigan School of Public Health, 2022)
The TLC for Educational Professionals will engage all faculty and staff on college campuses and provide ways for educators to put contemplative practices at the center of their academic lives. Through a model of discretionary leadership, this specific trauma-informed faculty learning community will develop a powerful group of people who can lead the practice of contemplation. This learning community design focuses on the total wellbeing of the campus community using an evidence-based, effective educational framework that understands and makes use of the power of relationship through shared teaching and learning.
Any evaluation of a trauma-informed faculty learning community should always take into account campus institutional policies and practices. Intentionality should be given to the tone and rhetoric of the university in relation to what emerges from the learning community’s understanding of their own informed trauma (Gaard & Ergüner-Tekinalp, 2022). This collaboration between the educators who make time for the learning. community and university leadership’S understanding of the intended impact of the. learning community must be collaborative, patient, and provide opportunities for shared reflection of the learning impact that. will occur when the TLC for Educational Professionals is established on their campuses.
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