Identifying trauma-informed teaching practices in early education settings: Implications for school social work

Our project is focused on identifying what trauma-informed teaching looks like in early childhood education classroom settings. We used a mixed method approach, pairing classroom observations, surveys on trauma-informed attitudes, and interviews with teachers on their trauma-informed practices to see if we can identify alignment between how teachers talk about their trauma-informed teaching and what we see in the classroom.

 

Abstract Overview: Social workers are increasingly asked to support trauma-informed (TI) efforts in schools, despite limited evidence of what TI teaching actually looks like. To fill this gap, this presentation reviews mixed-methods data of preschool teachers’ descriptions of TI teaching and classroom observations to identify specific practices that align with TI care.