Pre-service Teacher Attitudes Relevant to Trauma-Informed Practice
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2021-08
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Abstract
Childhood trauma is widely acknowledged to be a leading cause of a diverse range of physical, biological, psychological, and social-emotional impairments, and these factors undoubtedly have an impact on students’ abilities to thrive academically and socially. However, while pre-service teachers are an important stakeholder group as future teachers, there is limited research on their perceptions of students demonstrating symptoms of traumatic stress and related trauma-informed practices/care (TIP/TIC). This study focused on pre-service teacher familiarity and attitudes regarding childhood trauma and TIP, through two main research questions: 1) What are pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards TIP? and 2) Amongst the variables of age, gender, racial/ethnic identity, knowledge/familiarity with childhood trauma, knowledge/familiarity with TIP, and support for TIP, are there statistical group differences in ARTIC-35 mean scores? This study utilized the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) scale, an instrument developed to evaluate TIC-relevant attitudes of staff working in settings serving individuals with histories of trauma. Online survey data was gathered from (N = 70) participants recruited from the Bachelor of Education programs of four Alberta universities. Overall ARTIC-35 mean scores were calculated, and a series of one-way Analysis of Variances (ANOVAs), a Mann-Whitney U test, and independent samples t-tests were run using SPSS Version 26. Results showed that pre-service teachers demonstrated favourable attitudes towards TIC, 100% wanted to learn more about TIP, and there were statistically significant group differences between the variables of “familiarity with childhood trauma” and “familiarity with TIP” with overall ARTIC-35 mean scores. Additionally, four interconnected themes were developed using open-ended question data, including: 1) teachers should understand the underlying/root cause of students’ behaviours to improve their teaching practices; 2) knowledge of trauma and TIP could enhance empathic responses to problematic behaviour; 3) knowledge of trauma and TIP could contribute to teachers feeling better prepared to support students who exhibit symptoms of trauma; and 4) trauma in the classroom is inevitable, and teachers must have the knowledge and skills to address symptoms of trauma and create a safe learning environment. The study concludes with a discussion of ethical considerations, implications related to the findings, and directions for further research.
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Howorun, N. (2021). Pre-service teacher attitudes relevant to trauma-informed practice (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.