An Evaluation of Whole-School Trauma-Informed Training Intervention Among Post-Primary School Personnel: A Mixed Methods Study

Abstract

Students’ ability to reach their potential in school—both behaviourally and academically – is linked to their educator’s knowledge of child and adolescent development, childhood adversity and trauma, and how these impact learning and behaviour. However, teacher pre-service training programmes often offer inadequate instruction to meet the needs of trauma-impacted students. The purpose of the study was to investigate the benefits of professional development training in trauma-informed approaches on school personnel attitudes and compassion fatigue. There is a paucity of research on whole-school trauma-informed approaches and most have methodological limitations via the absence of a control group. In addressing this gap, the study is one of the first to utilise a control group in the research design to ensure findings are robust. The study utilised a quasi-experimental wait-list control pre-post intervention design to evaluate the efficacy of trauma-informed professional development training. We compared attitudes and compassion fatigue among 216 school personnel (n = 98 intervention, n = 118 comparison) utilising the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) scale and the Professional Quality of Life scale (Pro-QoL). Quantitative data was supplemented by qualitative focus group data. Findings demonstrated that school-personnel within the intervention group reported significant improvements in attitudes related to trauma-informed care, and a significant decrease in burnout at 6-month follow-up. Our findings demonstrate that with minimum training on the dynamics of trauma, personnel attached to a school can become more trauma-informed and have more favourable attitudes towards trauma-impacted students and consequently be less likely to experience burnout.

Trauma in Schools: A Review of the Impact of Childhood Trauma and Assessment of a Potential Intervention

“…MacLochlainn and colleagues [10] used the ARTIC and follow up focus groups to assess 216 school personnel before and after a trauma-informed professional development training. Utilizing a comparison group (n = 118), their promising findings demonstrated that school-personnel in the intervention group (n = 98) reported significant improvements in attitudes related to traumainformed care, and a significant decrease in burnout at 6-month follow-up.…”

“…As recounted, evidence for the impact of trauma in schools is irrefutable, which creates a need for schools to find a way to support these students and prepare their teachers. Recent studies into TIC training as professional development show a great deal of promise as school-wide intervention strategies to support students who have experienced trauma and protect their teachers from burnout and compassion fatigue [10,21,54,71]. There are, however, limitations worth mentioning.…”

“…ACEs are experiences such as physical or sexual abuse, physical or emotional neglect, loss of a parent to death or divorce, or living in a household with an addict or mentally ill caregiver. Blaustein [9] likens childhood trauma to a prevalent, complex virus that has the potential to negatively impact brain development and functioning, well-being, nutrition, risk for other illnesses, and ultimately mortality [3,5,10]. In an effort to combat these negative effects, trauma-informed care approaches are being increasingly employed, and recently are being implemented and evaluated as potential school-wide interventions [10][11][12].…”